COURSE NAME: BEHAVIORIALPSYCHOLOGY

COURSE INSTRUCTOR: MARIAM IKHLAQ

 “ WE DON’T SEE THINGS AS
THEY ARE, WE SEE THINGS AS
WE
ARE”
Perception
Perception refers to the way we try to understand the
world around us. We gather information through our
five sense organs, but perception adds meaning to
these sensory inputs. The process of perception is
essentially subjective in nature, as it is never an exact
recording of the event or thesituation.
Perception is the set of processes by which an
individual becomes aware of and interprets
information about the environment.
Person perception: Making
judgment about others
The term person perception refers to the different
mental processes that we use to form impressions of
other people. This includes not just how we form
these impressions, but the different conclusions we
make about other people based upon our
impressions.
Our perceptions of people differ from the
perceptions of inanimate objects like tables, chairs,
books, pencil, etc. mainly because we are prone to
make inferences regarding the intentions of people
and thus form judgment about them. The
perceptions and judgments regarding a person’s
actions are often significantly influenced by the
assumptions we make about the person’s
What Information Do We Use to
Form Impressions of Others?
Factorsthatcan influence the impressions you form of
other people include the characteristics of the
person you are observing, the context of the
situation, and your own personal traits.
People often form impressions of others very quickly with
only minimal information. We frequently base our
impressions on the roles and social norms we expect from
people. For example, you might form an impression of a
city bus driver based on how you would anticipate that a
person in that role to behave, considering individual
personality characteristics only after you have formed this
initial impression.
Physical cues can also play an important role. If you
see a woman dressed in a professional-looking
suit, you might immediately assume that she
works in a formal setting, perhaps at a law firm or
bank.
Salience of the information we perceive is also
important. Generally, we tend to focus on the most
obvious points rather than noting background
information. The more novel or obvious a factor is,
the more likely we are to focus on it.
Physical attractiveness
Physically attractive people are considered by
others to be more sociable, more popular, more
sexual, more successful, and more persuasive.
They are also thought to be happier and to have
more appealing personalities (Berkowitz, 1974).

“The Beautiful People” in newspapers,

magazines Premise - “What is beautiful isgood.”

Experiment:
Photographs of unknown people were shown
to subjects.
If they were physically attractive, subjects inferred
that these people were happily married, were
successful professionally, and had engaging
personalities (Dion et al., 1972)
T he attraction is linked w ith perceptions of power and
status.

Experiment:
Hewitt and German (1987) - when women ranked
men in terms of four modes of attire - military
uniform, suits, slacks/sweater, shirt/jeans - men in
uniform were judged to be most attractive whereas
men who were dressed in jeans and a shirt were
perceived as least attractive.
Person perception in the
public sphere
Can campaign consultants manipulate voter
preference by shaping the appearance of
political candidates they present?
Studies by Rosenberg and McCafferty (1987)
conducted in 1984 during elections in USA
evaluated the impact of different photographs of
the same candidate in an effort to answer just
that question.
Experiment: manipulation of voter
preference

It was found that image manipulations was

possible: different photographs of the
same person could produce quite different
images of that person’s likeableness,
integrity, competence, and general fitness
for public office.
The results also indicate that different
presentations of a given candidate’s
appearance result in differences in how
many votes a candidate receives.
Limitation of the research: artificial
elections.
THEORYOF
PERSON
PERCEPTION
•Attribution theory refers to the ways in which we judge people
differently, depending on what meaning we attribute to a given
behaviour.

•Whenever we observe the behaviour of an individual, we attempt to

determine whether it was internally or externally caused. Internally caused
behaviours are those that are believed to be under the personal control of
the individual or have been done deliberately by him. Externally caused
behaviour is seen as resulting from outside causes, that is the person is seen
as having been compelled to behave in a particular way by the force of the
situation, and not because of his own choice. When after repeated requests
your friend failed to turn up at the special old school boys’ meet you might
ascribe his absence as a deliberate move on his part, and you will feel hurt
since it appeared that he is quite unconcerned and careless about your
feeling. But if someone now points out about his recent increased
responsibilities in the business after his father’s untimely death and acute
time shortage, you tend to condone him as you are now ascribing his
absence to the external factors.

•The determination of internally or externally caused behaviour

depends chiefly on the following three factors
Distinctiveness which refers to whether an individual displays
different behaviour at different situations. If the behaviour (say
being late in the class on a particular day) is unusual, we tend to
give the behaviour an external attribution; and if it usual, the
reverse.

 Consensusrefers to the uniformity of the behaviour shown by all the

concerned people. If every one reports late on a particular morning, it
is easily assumed that there must be a severe traffic disruption in the
city and thus the behaviour is externally attributed. But if the
consensus is low, it is internally attributed.

 Consistency is the reverse of distinctiveness. Thus in judging the

behaviour of an individual, the person looks at his past record. If the
present behaviour is consistently found to occur in the past as well
(that is being late at least three times a week), it is attributed as
internally caused. In other words, the more consistent the behaviour,
the more the observer is inclined to attribute it to external causes.
There are often some errors or biases in our
judgment about others. When we make judgment
about other people’s behaviour, we tend to
underestimate the influence of external factors
and overestimate the influence of internal or
personal factors. This is called fundamental
attribution error.

Another noticeable tendency, called self-serving

bias, refers to the inclination for individuals to
attribute their own successes to internal factors
while putting the blame for failures on external
factors.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy or
Pygmalion Effect
An interesting aspect of people perception is the fact that
people’s expectations are often found to determine the actual
performance level. If a manager expects an excellent level of
performance from his subordinates, chances are quite high that
they will actually reach up to his expectation and will make
impossible possible. Surely the contrary is also true. If you feel
your subordinates are a worthless bunch of people, they will
only prove the same. Attributions are found to strongly affect
various functions in an organization, e.g. the process of
employee performance evaluations, nature of supervision or
guidance or the general attitude towards the organization in
general. As mentioned earlier, we also tend to make various
types of errors while judging others. A few of the frequently
committed mistakes are given below
♦Selective Perception: People have a tendency to selectively interpret
what they see on the basis of their interests, background, experiences
and attitudes. We hardly have either time or inclination to process all
the relevant inputs and we automatically select a few. Naturally
chances are there to miss some important cues in the process. Ex ♦

Halo Effect: It refers to the tendency of forming a general

impression about an individual on the basis of a single
characteristic. The smartly dressed guy who is very fluent in
English often tends to create a favorable impression on the
interviewer even when the job is of an accountant or engineer,
requiring little or no verbal fluency.
 ♦Contrast Effect: It refers to the process of rating individuals in the
light of other people’s performance which are close in time frame. You
might be rated excellent in your project presentation if your
predecessor makes a mess in his presentation. The case would have
been just the reverse if you were to present just after a superb
presentation!

♦Stereotyping: It is the process of judging someone on the basis of

one’s perception of the group to which that perception belongs to.
Common examples include the debate regarding the effectiveness of a
lady doctor or manager or MBA from prestigious B’schools.