MR.

ABHAY GUPTA

INTRODUCTION
Human beings may differ because of their differences & uniqueness. People often see the same situation/ phenomenon differently within the organisation & outside the organisation. For example: when there is an accident in the factory,the supervisor may treat it as the carelessness of worker while the worker may treat it as lack of adequate provision of security measures.

Thus the situation remaining the same, cause have been assigned differently by different group of people. In order to understand why people see the same situation differently,one has to understand PERCEPTION & its different aspect.

WHAT IS PERCEPTION ?
Perception is a cognitive process. Cognition is basically bit of information, cognitive process involves the way in which people process/understand that information. Perception process involves selecting, organising and interpreting the stimulus. Thus perception is the process selecting, organising and interpreting or attaching meaning to the events happening in the environment. However, what one can perceive can be different from objective

reality. Their need not be but there is often, disagreement. For example: its possible that all the employee in a firm may view it as a great place to work favourable working conditions, intresting job assignment, good pay and excellent benefit but as most of us know,its very unusal to find such agreement.

DEFINITION
PERCEPTION may be defined as a process by which individual organise and interpret their sensory impression in order to give meaning to their environment.

FEATURES OF PERCEPTION
Perception is the intellectual process through which a person select the data from the environment, organise it, and obtains meaning from it. Perception is a psychological process also. The manner in which a person perceive the environment affects his behaviour.. Perception, being an intellectual and psychological process, become a subjective

process and different people may perceive the same environmental event differently.

PERCEPTUAL PROCESS :
Perception process is explained by input-throughput-output approach. This approach emphasises that there is input which is processed and gives

output.

PROCESS OF PERCEPTION
Characteristics of stimuli or input

Perceptual inputs -Objects -Event -People

Perceptual mechanism Selection Interpretation

Organisation

Perceptual output -Attitude -Opinion -Values.

Behaviour

Characteristics of the situation

Characteristics of the perceiver

Perceptual process present three elements of perception. These are: existence of stimuli(objects, event, & people) perceptual mechanism (selecting, organising,& interpretation) and perceptual outputs(attitude, opinion,& values). Perceptual output along with other determinant of human behaviour affects and shape behaviour. Let us see how perceptual process works in terms of its three basic elements.

PERCEPTUAL INPUT :
The stimuli in the environment- objects, events, or people- can be considered as the perceptual inputs. Thus everything in the setting where the events occur, or which contributes to the occurrence of the events, can be treated as perceptual input. When the perceiver interacts with a stimulus, sensation take place which starts perceptual process. (Sensation can be described as the response of a physical sensory organ. The physical senses are vision, hearing, touch, smell,and taste.)

PERCEPTION MECHANISM
Perceptual mechanism involves three elements- selection of stimuli,organisation of stimuli, and interpretation of stimuli.

SELECTION OF STIMULI :
After receiving the stimuli from the environment, some are selected for further processing while others are screened out because it is not possible for a person to select all stimuli which he see in the environment. There are two types of factors which affects the selection of stimuli. These are external and related to stimuli and internal related to the perceiver.

ORGANISATION OF STIMULI :
After the stimuli are selected these are organised in some form of in order to make sense out of that. The various forms of organising stimuli are figure-ground, perceptual grouping, simplification and closure.

INTERPRETATION OF STIMULI:
The perceptual inputs that have been organised will have to be interpreted by the perceiver to extract some meaning of what is going on in the situation. People interpret the meaning of what they have selected and organised in term of their own assumption of people, things and situations. They interpret the things as good/bad, beautiful/ugly, and so on. Interpretation of stimuli is affected by situation under which perception take place and characteristics of perceiver.

Factors contributing to interpretation Perceptual Set:-Previously held beliefs about objects influence an individuals perception of similar objects. For example, a manager may have developed general beliefs and attitudes that workers are lazy and shirkers and that they want t gain whatever is possible from organizations without giving their best to it

 His or her subsequent perception will be influences by this set when he or she meets a group of workers. The manager tends to interpret the behaviour of the workers according his mental set.
Attribution:- It refers to the process by which the individual assigns causes to the behaviour he or she conceives. People are interested not only in observing behaviour in organizations but in determining its causes. Their evaluation of and reaction To others behaviour may be heavily influences by their perception that the others are responsible for their behaviour.

 Stereotyping:- It is the tendency to assign attributes to someone solely on the basis of a category of people to which that person belongs. The process of stereotyping helps individual assign meaning to a mass of data. Some examples of stereotypes are women, doctors. It begins by categorizing people into groups according to various criteria such as age, sex, race, and occupation. Then we infer that all people within a particular category possess the same traits. Then we form expectations of others and interpret their behaviour according to our stereotypes. Halo Effect:- It refers to the tendency of perceiving people in terms of good and bad and ascribing all good qualities to one who is liked and bad all qualities to another who is disliked. It does not always mean overrating positive characteristics.

Projection:- Under some cnditions people tend to see in another person traits that they themselves possess. That is they project their own feelings, tendencies or motives into their judgment of others. This may be particularly true regarding undesirable traits which hen perceiver possesses bit fails to recognize in himself.

PERCEPTUAL OUTPUT :
Based on perceptual mechanism which ends with interpretation of stimuli, perceptual output emerge. The output may be in the form of attitudes, opinions, beliefs, impression about the stimuli. These output along with other factors affecting human behaviour may result in overt behaviour.

PERCEPTUAL SELECTIVITY
Perception is a selective process. While selection, certain aspects of stimuli are screened out and others are admitted. For example: when people read a newspaper, they do not read the entire newspaper but read only those news which intrest them. This is known as perceptual selectivity. This caused by variety of factors which may be grouped into two categories:

1. External factor 2. Internal factor

EXTERNAL FACTORS
The external factors are Nature, Location, Size, Intensity, Repetition, Novelty & Familiarity, Contrast And Motion. Their impact on the perceptual selectivity is as follows:

NATURE :
By nature we mean, whether the object is visual or auditory, and whether it involves pictures, peoples or animals. It is well known that pictures attract attention more readily than words.

LOCATION :
The best location of a visual stimulus for attracting attention is in the center of the

page. When this position is not available in the newspaper or a magazine, a position in the upper portion of a page is more favourable than on in the lower portion and left hand side receive more attention than the right hand side.

SIZE :
Generally objects of larger or bigger size attract more attention than the smaller ones. For Example: in an advertisement in newspaper full page spread attract more attention than a few lines in the classified section.

INTENSITY :
The intensity principle states that more intentse the external stimulus is, the more likely is to be perceived. A loud sound, or bright light is noticed more as compared to soft sound, or dim light. For Example: advertisement on televisions are slightly louder than the regular programmes to gain customers attention.

REPETITION :
The repetition principle state that a repeated external environment is more attention- getting than a single one. Repetition increase peoples alertness to the stimulus. For example: Advertisers use this principle by repeated advertisement of the same product to attract peoples attention.

NOVELTY & FAMILIAIRTY :

Novelty & familiarity principle state that either a novel or a familiar external situation can serve as attention-getter. New objects or events in a familiar setting, or familiar objects or events in new setting draw better attention. For Example: in job rotation, when workers jobs are changed from time to time, they become more attentive to their new jobs as compared to the previous ones.

CONTRAST :
contrast is a kind of uniqueness which can be used for attention getting. Letters of

bold types, persons dressed differently than others, buildings of different colours in the same locality, etc. get more attention.

MOTION :
Motion principle states that a moving object draws more attention as compared to a stationary object. For Example: commercial on televisions(moving ones) get more attention than print media.

INTERNAL FACTORS
While external factors are related to environment stimuli, internal factors are related to the individuals complex psychological makeup or oneself.people generally select those stimuli and situation which are compatible to their personality, motivation, and other personal factors. Such factors are- selfconcept, inner- needs, response disposition, individual attitude, interset, learning, and experience. A brief discription of their impact on perception

selectivity is as follows:

SELF-CONCEPT :
The way a person views the world depends a great deal on the concept or image he has about himself. Knowing oneself makes it easier to see others accurately. Peoples own characteristics affect the characteristics which they are likely to see in others. They select only that aspects which they find match with their characteristics.

INNER NEEDS :
Peoples perception is determined by their inner needs. The need is feeling of tension or discomfort when one thinks he missing something or when he feels he has not quite closed a gap in his knowledge. People with different needs select different items to remember or respond to. When people are not able to satisfy their needs they are engaged in wishful thinking, which is a way to satisfy the needs not in real world but imaginary world , the day dreaming.

RESPONSE DISPOSITION :
Response disposition refers to a persons tendency to perceive familiar stimuli rather than unfamiliar ones. Thus, a person perceive the things with which he is familiar. For Example: persons having dominant religious value took lesser time in recognising such related word as priest whereas they took longer time in recognising words related with economic value such as cost or price.

INDIVIDUAL ATTITUDE :
The person tries to fit his attitude (whether positive or negative) in the situation and perceive something . For Example: if a person always think negative,he thinks that whatever is happen in his life will be negative, he will perceive everything in the negative way. On the contrary if he thinks positive, he is an optimistic, he will perceive everything in a positive way.

INTEREST :
If a person is interested in something he will perceive that thing in better way. On the other hand, if the person is not interested in that thing, he will not perceive that thing in a better way. For Example: children watch television with the good interest and curiosity, so they perceive quickly whatever is shown in TV.

LEARNING & EXPERIENCE :

People perceive many things differently according to their learning and experience of the past. If a person has wrong impression or bad past experience of something, he see the things negative and he perceive that thing in only negative way because it is his experience that forces him to perceive in this way.