Perception

By
Dr. Sampath Kappagoda
Faculty of Management Studies
Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
Intended Learning outcomes

1. Explain what is perception

2. Understand the perceptual process
3. Understand the factors influencing perception
4. Understand the perceptual errors
5. Identify the application of perception in
organization
Right or Left brain ???????
If you see dancer rotating clockwise, you are right-brained
(creative), counter-clockwise, left-brained (logical).
Are these red squares the same color in the upper
part and in the lower part of the "X"
??????
Are diagonal lines
parallel ?????
Are there gray spots at the
corners of the
squares ????????????
The Vertical lines are both the same
length??????
The pillars are identical in
size?????
There are only white circles at the
intersections
Disappearing Dots
fix your eyes on the dot in the center of the picture. The
colored dots will seem to disappear in a few seconds
Can you see the dog?
Can you see 10 faces
in the tree?
There’s a face
in here.

Can you see it?

Can you see the baby?
Can you see
the kissing
couple?
Can you see three women in
Einstein’s face?
 Perception
• What is Perception?
• A process by which individuals select, organize and interpret their
sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their
environment.
• Sensory impressions (සංවේදී හැඟීම්)means the details
that appeal directly to our senses
Sense Sensory impressions
Organs
Eyes Roopa- Shape/sight
Ears Shabda- Sound/ hearing
Nose Gandha- Smell
Tongue Rasa- Taste
Skin Sparsha- Touch
 Cont’d….

• Perception is process of transforming sensory impression to

meaningful information.
• It is the process of interpreting something that we see, hear, touch,
smell and taste in our mind and use it to judge and give a verdict on
a situation, person, group etc.
• Perception is the process through which the information from
outside environment is selected, organized and interpreted to give
meaning to objects.
 Importance of Perception in OB
1. Perception is very important in understanding the
human behavior because every person perceives the
world according to their perception
2. People formulate their values and attitudes
and behave on the basis of their perceptions.
3. Perception is very important for the manager who
wants to avoid making errors when dealing with
people and events in the work setting.
Factors Influencing Perception
• The Perceiver
• This includes certain personality traits that influence the
perceptual process.
• A person’s needs and motives, the individual’s self concept, past
experience, current psychological state also plays an important
role.
• The Target(Stimuli)
• Size, color, content, intensity, novelty, ambiguity, motion
Factors Influencing Perception....
• The Situation
• This includes the physical, social and organizational setting in
which an event occurs.
•Time
•Place
•location
•light
Factors that Influence Perception
The Situation

• Time
• Work setting The Perceiver
• Social setting
• Attitudes
Perception • Motives
• Interests
• Experience
• Expectations

The Target

• Novelty
• Motion
• Sounds
• Size
• Background
• Proximity
Perceptual process

Perceptual Inputs Perceptual Mechanisms

Perceptual
Or Stimuli
Output
Object
Selection Interpretation Attitudes
Events
Opinions
People
Feeling
Values
Organization
Perceptual process....

Perceptual inputs
These inputs encompass all stimuli that exit
in our environment including the objects,
events, statements, people etc.

Perceptual Mechanisms
1. Selection
2. organization
3. interpretation
Perceptual process....

1. Selection/Perceptual selectivity

• Perceptual Selection is the process by

which human beings filter most stimuli
so that they could deal with the most
important ones and turning off the
others.
• Perceptual selection defends on various
factors
 Perceptual process....
• Figure-ground principle
• Certain factors are considered significant and give a meaning to them,
and certain others are unimportant and left them as insignificant

• The meaningful and significant portion is called “figure” and the

insignificant or meaningless portion is labeled as “ground”
• Relevancy principle
• People selectively perceive things that are relevant to their needs and
desires
Perceptual process....
External factors

Size
• The size principle says that people pay more attention to large
objects than to small objects

Intensity
• The intensity principle of attention states that the more intense the
external factor the more likely it is to be perceived. Bright lights,
loud noises, strong order will be noticed than a dim light, soft sound
or weak sound
Perceptual process....
Contrast
• External factors that stand out against the background or that are
not what people expect are the most likely to be perceived.

Motion
• A moving factor is more likely to be perceived than a stationary
factor
Repetition
• A repeated external factor is more likely to be perceived than a
single factor
Perceptual process....

Novelty and familiarity

• Familiar stimulus in strange surroundings captures our focus.
And novel of unfamiliar object or events in familiar territory
grabs our attention

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWXd4Hpkbrg

Internal factors
• The selectivity of our perception is influenced by our own
internal state by motivation, learning, and psychological
elements that make up our personality.
• Personality
• The various personality dimensions influence the perceptual process.
• A conscientious person is likely to pay greater attention to external
environmental stimuli than a less conscientious person who is likely to be
careless, impulsive and irresponsible.
• Motivation
• Motivation also plays an important role in influencing the process of
perception.
• For example, a hungry person is likely to be sensitive to the sight or
smell of food than a non hungry person.

• Need and desire

• An individual’s perception about something or somebody is
influenced by his needs and desires at a particular time.
• Power seekers more likely notice power related stimuli. Socially
oriented people pay attention to interpersonal stimuli.
Perceptual process....

• Perceptual organization
• Perceptual organization is the process by
which people group environmental
stimuli into recognizable patterns
• Certain factors in perceptual organization
are helpful in understanding perceptual
organization
Perceptual process....
• Perceptual grouping
• Grouping principle states that tendency to group
several stimuli into a recognizable (meaningful)
pattern
• Using similarity (employees from same area) pro
ximity (two robberies happen in one week time-
can guess they have been done by same person)
• Continuity (the supplier who supply the raw
materials to the organization will continually
supply raw materials
• Simplification (only select few information to make
decision- org performance -profit
Perceptual process....
• Interpretation of perception
• The most important step of the perceptual
process
• It does not make any sense without
interpretation
• Interpretation is subjective and judgmental
process
• There are few general categories of problems
or errors that creep into problems.
(Perception errors)
Perceptual process....

• Outputs
• Output is derived through the processing mechanism.
• Outputs are

• Actions
• Attitudes
• Beliefs
• Feelings
• Sentiments
Perception Errors

• Attribution Theory
• Selective Perception
• Halo Effect
• Contrast Effects
• Projection
• Stereotyping
Perception Errors….
• Attribution Theory
• When individuals observe behaviour, they attempt to
determine whether it is internally or externally caused

1. Fundamental Attribution Error

 The tendency to underestimate the influence of external
factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors
when making judgments about the behaviour of others
 Perception Errors….
example
• Susan has an interview with Company ABC at 1pm. She catches the train and
when she is getting off, she gets pushed by another passenger who is running
for another train. In the process, Susan twists and sprains her ankle. Filled with
pain but desire, she hops along as best as she can to get to the interview on
time.
• When she arrives, she is over 15 minutes late. Fred and Louise who are the
interviewees say to each other, ‘she’s late and not very punctual. I don’t know
if we can trust her to come to work every day on time’. ‘It must be something
in her character’.
• Despite having a good interview, Susan doesn’t get the job. Fred and Louise
blame the poor punctuality on her character. In other words, they think it’s a
distributional attribution. Perhaps she is just a disorganised person, but that
wouldn’t fit well into the role.
• Yet, the real reason was a situational attribution. She sprained her ankle. A
situation she could not have foreseen. In turn, there is a fundamental
attribution error.
Self-Serving Bias
 you were quick to take credit for a victory, but looked to other
possible causes when things went wrong

 The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes

to internal factors while putting the blame for failures on
external factors

 self-serving bias is a pattern of thinking in which people

attribute positive outcomes to internal factors (e.g. talent and
hard work) and negative outcomes to external factors (e.g. bad
luck or the difficulty of the task)
Perception Errors….
• Selective Perception
• People selectively interpret what they see based on
their interests, background, experience, and attitudes
• Halo Effect
• Drawing a general impression about an individual
based on a single characteristic
• We misjudge people by concentrating on one single
behavior or trait. It has deep impact and give
inaccurate result most of the time. For example we
always have an impression of a lazy person can never
be punctual in any occasion.
Perception Errors….
Contrast Effects
 A person’s evaluation is affected by comparisons with other
individuals recently encountered. E, g, Interview of job
applicants

Projection
 Attributing one’s own characteristics to other people (believing
other people are similar to you)
Perception Errors….

• Stereotyping
• Judging someone on the basis of your perception of the group
to which that person belongs
Application of perception in organization
• In employment interviews
Researches have indicated that many
interviewers make perceptual judgment
that are often inaccurate

• Performance expectations
Evidence demonstrate that people will
attempt to validate their perceptions of
reality, even when those perceptions are
faulty
Performance expectations

• describe how an individual’s behavior is determined by others’

expectations.
• If a manager expects big things from her people, they’re not likely to
let her down.
• Similarly, if she expects only minimal performance, they’ll likely meet
those low expectations.
Application of perception in organization

• Performance Evaluation
An employee’s performance appraisal is
very much dependent on the perceptual
process e.g subjective evaluation
-Thank You-