Perception:-

The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
OR
The way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory

information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the
environment.
Perception can be defined as our recognition and interpretation of sensory
information. Perception also includes how we respond to the information. We can think of
perception as a process where we take in sensory information from our environment and use
that information in order to interact with our environment. Perception allows us to take the
sensory information in and make it into something meaningful.

Perception Under Psychology:-

While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information from the
environment, it is ultimately how we interpret that information that affects how we interact
with the world.
Perception refers to the way sensory information is organized, interpreted, and
consciously experienced. Perception involves both bottom-up and top-down processing.
Bottom-up processing refers to the fact that perceptions are built from sensory input. On the
other hand, how we interpret those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our
experiences, and our thoughts. This is called top-down processing.
One way to think of this concept is that sensation is a physical process, whereas
perception is psychological. For example, upon walking into a kitchen and smelling the scent
of baking cinnamon rolls, the sensation is the scent receptors detecting the odor of cinnamon,
but the perception may be “Mmm, this smells like the bread Grandma used to bake when the
family gathered for holidays.”
Although our perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations result in
perception. In fact, we often don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant over
prolonged periods of time. This is known as sensory adaptation.
Imagine entering a classroom with an old analog clock. Upon first entering the
room, you can hear the ticking of the clock; as you begin to engage in conversation with
classmates or listen to your professor greet the class, you are no longer aware of the ticking.
The clock is still ticking, and that information is still affecting sensory receptors of the
auditory system. The fact that you no longer perceive the sound demonstrates sensory
adaptation and shows that while closely associated, sensation and perception are different.
There is another factor that affects sensation and perception: attention. Attention
plays a significant role in determining what is sensed versus what is perceived. Imagine you
are at a party full of music, chatter, and laughter. You get involved in an interesting
conversation with a friend, and you tune out all the background noise. If someone interrupted
you to ask what song had just finished playing, you would probably be unable to answer that
question.
One of the most interesting demonstrations of how important attention is in
determining our perception of the environment occurred in a famous study conducted by
Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999). In this study, participants watched a video of
people dressed in black and white passing basketballs. Participants were asked to count the
number of times the team in white passed the ball. During the video, a person dressed in a
black gorilla costume walks among the two teams. You would think that someone would
notice the gorilla, right? Nearly half of the people who watched the video didn’t notice the
gorilla at all, despite the fact that he was clearly visible for nine seconds. Because participants
were so focused on the number of times the white team was passing the ball, they completely
tuned out other visual information. Failure to notice something that is completely visible
because of a lack of attention is called inattentional blindness.
Motivation can also affect perception. Have you ever been expecting a really
important phone call and, while taking a shower, you think you hear the phone ringing, only
to discover that it is not? If so, then you have experienced how motivation to detect a
meaningful stimulus can shift our ability to discriminate between a true sensory stimulus and
background noise. The ability to identify a stimulus when it is embedded in a distracting
background is called signal detection theory. This might also explain why a mother is
awakened by a quiet murmur from her baby but not by other sounds that occur while she is
asleep. Signal detection theory has practical applications, such as increasing air traffic
controller accuracy. Controllers need to be able to detect planes among many signals (blips)
that appear on the radar screen and follow those planes as they move through the sky. In fact,
the original work of the researcher who developed signal detection theory was focused on
improving the sensitivity of air traffic controllers to plane blips (Swets, 1964).
Our perceptions can also be affected by our beliefs, values, prejudices,
expectations, and life experiences. As you will see later in this chapter, individuals who are
deprived of the experience of binocular vision during critical periods of development have
trouble perceiving depth (Fawcett, Wang, & Birch, 2005). The shared experiences of people
within a given cultural context can have pronounced effects on perception. For example,
Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits (1963) published the results of a
multinational study in which they demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures were
more prone to experience certain types of visual illusions than individuals from non-Western
cultures, and vice versa. One such illusion that Westerners were more likely to experience
was the Müller-Lyer illusion (Figure 2): The lines appear to be different lengths, but they
are actually the same length.

Figure 2. In the Müller-Lyer illusion, lines appear to be different lengths although they are
identical. (a) Arrows at the ends of lines may make the line on the right appear longer,
although the lines are the same length. (b) When applied to a three-dimensional image, the
line on the right again may appear longer although both black lines are the same length.
 These perceptual differences were consistent with differences in the types of
environmental features experienced on a regular basis by people in a given cultural context.
People in Western cultures, for example, have a perceptual context of buildings with straight
lines, what Segall’s study called a carpentered world (Segall et al., 1966). In contrast, people
from certain non-Western cultures with an uncarpentered view, such as the Zulu of South
Africa, whose villages are made up of round huts arranged in circles, are less susceptible to
this illusion (Segall et al., 1999). It is not just vision that is affected by cultural factors.
Indeed, research has demonstrated that the ability to identify an odor, and rate its pleasantness
and its intensity, varies cross-culturally (Ayabe-Kanamura, Saito, Distel, Martínez-Gómez, &
Hudson, 1998).
Children described as thrill seekers are more likely to show taste preferences for
intense sour flavors (Liem, Westerbeek, Wolterink, Kok, & de Graaf, 2004), which suggests
that basic aspects of personality might affect perception. Furthermore, individuals who hold
positive attitudes toward reduced-fat foods are more likely to rate foods labeled as reduced fat
as tasting better than people who have less positive attitudes about these products (Aaron,
Mela, & Evans, 1994).

Nature of Perception:-
“Perception refers to the interpretation of sensory data. In other words,
sensation involves detecting the presence of a stimulus whereas perception involves
understanding what the stimulus means. For example, when we see something, the visual
stimulus is the light energy reflected from the external world and the eye becomes the sensor.
This visual image of the external thing becomes perception when it is interpreted in the visual
cortex of the brain. Thus, visual perception refers to interpreting the image of the external
world projected on the retina of the eye and constructing a model of the three dimensional
world.”
From the above explanation it becomes clear that perception is something more
than sensation. It correlates, integrates and comprehends diverse sensations and information
from many organs of the body by means of which a person identifies things and objects, the
sensations refer to.
Perception is determined by both physiological and psychological characteristics
of the human being whereas sensation is conceived with only the physiological features.
Thus, perception is not just what one sees with the eyes it is a much more complex process by
which an individual selectively absorbs or assimilates the stimuli in the environment,
cognitively organizes the perceived information in a specific fashion and then interprets the
information to make an assessment about what is going on in one’s environment.
Perception is a subjective process, therefore, different people may perceive the
same environment differently based on what particular aspects of the situation they choose to
selectively absorb, how they organize this information and the manner in which they interpret
it to obtain a grasp of the situation.

Importance of Perception:-
(i) Perception is very important in understanding the human behaviour, because
every person perceives the world and approaches the life problems differently- Whatever we
see or feel is not necessarily the same as it really is. It is because what we hear is not what is
really said, but what we perceive as being said. When we buy something, it is not because it
is the best, but because we take it to be the best. Thus, it is because of perception, we can find
out why one individual finds a job satisfying while another one may not be satisfied with it.
(ii) If people behave on the basis of their perception, we can predict their
behaviour in the changed circumstances by understanding their present perception of the
environment. One person may be viewing the facts in one way which may be different from
the facts as seen by another viewer.
(iii) With the help of perception, the needs of various people can be determined,
because people’s perception is influenced by their needs. Like the mirrors at an amusement
park, they distort the world in relation to their tensions.
(iv) Perception is very important for the manager who wants to avoid making
errors when dealing with people and events in the work setting. This problem is made more
complicated by the fact that different people perceive the same situation differently. In order
to deal with the subordinates effectively, the managers must understand their perceptions
properly.
Thus, for understanding the human behaviour, it is very important to understand
their perception, that is, how they perceive the different situations. People’s behaviour is
based on their perceptions of what reality is, not on reality itself. The world as it is perceived
is the world that is important for understanding the human behaviour.