The Role That Perception Plays Psychology Essay

The Role That Perception Plays Psychology EssayTo a great extent, our doings is fashioned by our informations, soulalities, emotions and experiences. In this essay, the role that detection plays in affecting the way that we see the world and its impact on our work related behaviors ordain be examined. Perception is the knocked come out of the closet(p)growth by which individuals select, organize, and interpret their sensory(prenominal) impressions in order to give meaning to their environment (Ivancevich, Konopaske, Matteson). Perception and reality in time canful be two entirely different things and in summation to this, the perceptions of two or several different people pull up stakes very r arely be the like even when reflecting back on the same disaster or event. It can therefore be argued that the accuracy of ones interpretation of a given situation will determine the effectiveness of their response to it and essentially, the outcome. This is why perception is an essential factor to be considered when examining Organizational Behavior.More often than not a passenger vehicle is rated differently by his or her subordinates. The importance of taking perception into consideration in an organization cannot be overlooked by the managers themselves. The way a manger perceives an employee within an organization should not be influenced by their tiptop or position as with different situations for which perceptions feature to be primarily establish as closely as possible on solid facts. The beneath table depicts significant mean differences of perception between supervisors and their subordinates on a scale from 1-5.On these grounds, three distinct factors that contribute to perceptual differences and the perceptual process among people at work boot outThe Perceiver (Factors of influence past experiences, needs or motives, soulality, values and attitudes).The Situation or Setting (Factors of influence physical, social, and organizational).The comprehend or Object/Target (Factors of influence characteristics of the perceived person, object, or event, such as contrast, intensity, figure/ground separation, size, motion, and repetition or novelty).It must not til now be overlooked that although these factors help in shaping the perception of individuals, they may in addition sometimes distort such perceptions. fig 2 (Kondalkar 2007, p.117)THE PERCEPTUAL exhibit in that location are several confronts that determine a subjects perception and reaction as a result of processing information these information processing stages are best depicted in the following figure.The information-processing stages are divided into information attention and selectionorganization of information information interpretation and information retrieval.Fig 3 (Schermerhorn,, Grant Osborn 2002, p.32)Our senses are repeatedly overloaded with too much information to process, unless our minds are selective in what to absorb and what to overlook we wo uld quickly ferment debilitated as a result of this overload of information. Much of this mental sieving is done consciously and the perceiver is full-aware that they are processing information. This function of the mind is referred to by Schermerhorn, Grant Osborn as selective screening.On the new(prenominal) hand, this selective screening process can take place sub-consciously without the awareness of the perceiver. When the mind is functioning analogous this, it is normally whilst performing a task such as walking and talking on ones mobile phone at the same time, in other words, walking devoid of consciously thinking of the act walking. The ability of the mind to slip out of this sub-conscious state is there in event of a non-routine occurrence, however if not done quickly enough an accident can occur.Despite selective screening taking place in the attention stage, it is still required for this information to be organized in such a way that it can be retrieved efficiently. Cognitive frameworks know as schemas help us earn this by acquiring knowledge through experience.A self schema is created by ones self awareness and is rooted around their appearance, behavior and face-to-faceity.A person schema refers to the way by which one melt d knowledges to categorize others based on prominent features normally regarding such demographic characteristics as gender, age,able-bodiedness, and racial and ethnic groupings this is normally referred to as stereotyping or prototyping. Once this stereotype is created it is then stored in the long term memory for future reference. Once formed a stereotype may be difficult to change and will tend to last a long time (Schermerhorn,, Grant Osborn). On this note it can be express that our tendency to create stereotypes can be attributed to our memories oversimplifying of polished information in order to prevent overloading.A script schema is the mental acquisition of the undeniable steps which need to be taken in ord er to complete a given task (based on experience), such as a manager running a meeting. Finally, person in situation schemas are combinational and are built around people (self and person schemas) and events (script schemas).As is made unornamented in the above figure, schemas have a powerful impact on the organizational and other stages of the perception process. Schemas are primarily automatic and sub-conscious responses that free up space in order to maximize ones mental capacity for controlled processing.From the moment that ones mind is drawn in by a stimulus and this information has been processed the next course of action is to expose the underlying reasons behind it. This is otherwise known as interpretation. This method of deduction applied the same situation by two different people will not necessarily lead to the same interpretation.To utilize information stored in ones memory it has to be retrieved. This is depicted by the retrieval step in the above figure. From time t o time all of us have difficulty with the recollection of stored information in our memories, to a greater extent precisely, our memories tend to crumble and only provide us with partial bits of the information we are attempting to recall. Schemas play an important role in this as they make it difficult for us to remember traits or characteristics not relatable to ourselves.PERCEPTUAL DISTORTIONSIt should now be clear that varying view bakshishs in perception result in different people seeing different things and consequently attaching different meanings to the same stimuli. When examining the dynamic between the perceiver and the other subject, the accuracy of interpersonal perception and judgments made can be influenced by factors such as the nature of the relationship between the two parties, the order and amount of information received by the perceiver and the overall extent of interaction. There are five main features that can lead to perceptual problemsStereotypingStereotypin g is the tendency that people have to attach positive or negative labels on others based around their own personalized process of categorization and perceived similarities. This perception is normally centered on what is expected, in this respect, by the perceiver. As mentioned earlier on, stereotyping or prototyping is the minds way of simplifying its intake of stimuli in order to prevent overloading itself (a form of selective screening). The perceiver will tend to place the subject into a preconceived group in which they feel that they best fit. Therefore questionable pre-judgments are formed. Despite the fact that this process condenses information stored in the memory, some extremely negative implications arise which can lead to situations of bigotry or bias. At the workplace, stereotyping can have negative effects on an employee as a negative preconception will normally have the capability to stick and as a result stigmatize and hinder the subjects career.The Halo EffectThe Ha lo Effect occurs when one wizard characteristic of a person or situation is used by the perceiver to create an overall image or impression. This effect triggers the shutting out of any other relevant characteristics. A specific negative impact of The Halo Effect is what Mullins refers to as perceptual blindness, more specifically this is when rash judgments are made and other important stimuli are simply overlooked as a result of utilizing only what is readily available at that instance.Another phenomenon known as the Rusty Halo Effect exists this is where general judgments are made on what can be justified and isolated incidents and a person subjected to this can be wrongfully branded as something that they are not.Perceptual DefensePerceptual Defense is a mechanism that surfaces when someone unwittingly or knowingly filters out specific parameters from a given situation that they may find threatening or intimidating. This inadvertently leads to people selectively striking from th eir minds information that does not support their opinions or points if view.ProjectionPerception is distorted by feelings and emotions. Projection can result from people overemphasizing undesirable traits that they see in others, whilst at the same time refuse to see such traits in themselves. Projection also implies attributing or projecting ones own feelings, motives or characteristics to other people (Mullins). This implies that people will tend to be more favorable towards others who seem to be more relatable to them in terms of character, emotional state or momentary state of mind. harmonise to Freud, projection is a means by which we protect ourselves from acknowledging that we possess undesirable traits and assign them in exaggerated amounts to other people.The Self Fulfilling ProphecyThis phenomenon arises when a person or situation is hijacked by the misconception of the perceiver or perceivers and consequently ends up becoming that very delusion. This can be attributed to peoples strong desire to validate their own perceptions whilst disregarding the actual reality of the situation.IMPRESSION MANAGEMENTIn certain situations, we all attempt to depict our attitudes, personality and competence to others by putting feature emphasis on the way that we physically present ourselves. A job interview is a common example of this which is referred to as impression management. In the forming of an impression, more emphasis is put on some bits of information than others. It has been proven through research that truly first impressions count, this is formally known as the primacy effect. Interestingly enough, it has also been proven that a negative impression is less likely to change than a positive one.DISTORTION MANAGEMENTIn a healthy work environment, the collective perceptual process, at some level should be regulated or supervised. This responsibility, known as distortion management, falls to the managers and supervisors of an organization. A manager who s uccessfully practices distortion management should willfully balance conscious and sub-conscious (automatic and controlled) information processing at the attention and selection stage (refer to Fig 3). Responsibilities of theirs such as cognitive process assessment and clear communication require conscious information processing which will potentially be a hindrance to other job responsibilities. in concert with this, managers should strive toward seeking out disconfirming information (concerning previous deductions that they have reached in assessing a subordinate or situation) that will help level out their typical perception of information, thereby avoiding bias.Particular care has to be taken when considering the range of schemas and stereotypes at the information organizing stage. A manager should make a point to expand on his/her schemas and even consider replacing them all together with more precise or wholesome ones. Additionally they should acknowledge that the retrieval s tage of the memory can be imprecise. With this in mind a manager should never rely too much on schemas and sensitivity toward perceptual distortions should be ever-present.ATTRIBUTION THEORYThe attribution theory focuses on how people attempt to understand the causes of a certain event, assess responsibility for the outcomes of the event and evaluate the personal qualities of the people involved in the event.There are internal and outer attributions that can be linked to causes of behavior. Internal causes are within the control of the individual, whereas external causes are variables within a persons environment. There are several factors that can influence internal and external attributions these includeDistinctiveness consistency of a persons behavior across situations.Consensus likelihood of others responding in a similar way.Consistency whether an individual responds the same way across time.In addition to these three influences, two errors have an impact on internal versus ex ternal determinationThe fundamental attribution error This applies to the evaluation of someone elses behavior whereby success is attributed to situational factors and failure to personal factors.The self-serving bias This applies to the evaluation of ones own behavior, where success is attributed to personal factors and failure to situational factors.CONCLUSIONAll problems encountered throughout the course of this paper point directly toward the massive pointedness of bias which lurks within the perceptual process. Both personally and professionally, people strive to exist in a world ruled by certainty, more specifically their own certainty and it is our individual perceptual systems that oversee this. The underlying absurdity behind all of this is that it is this very idea that is our downfall as this system is run down with errors and bias at the same time. And although we are conscious of this and attempt to rectify these glitches, we are essentially working against our percep tual system in its natural state.