Perception

2. Perception Perception is an active process of creating meaning by selecting, organizing, and interpreting people, objects, events, situations, and activities.

3. Selection Qualities in the phenomena Self-indication Culture Organization Cognitive schemata Interpretation Attributions

4. Selection • Some qualities of external phenomena draw attention. • They are larger, more intense, or more unusual. • Change compels attention. • Our motives and needs affect what we see and don’t see. • Cultures also influence what we selectively perceive.

5. Organization • Constructivism • We organize and interpret experience by applying cognitive structures called schemata. • Prototypes • Personal constructs • Stereotypes • Scripts

6. Cognitive Schemata Prototype The most representative example of a category Personal Construct Bipolar, mental yardstick we use to measure people and situations Stereotype Predictive generalization about individuals and situations based on the category into which we place them Script Guide to action in particular situations

7. Interpretation • The subjective process of explaining perceptions in ways that let us make sense of them. • Attributions are explanations of why things happen and why people act as they do.

8. Dimensions of Attributions 1. Locus Internal External 2. Stability Stable Unstable 3. Responsibility Within personal control Beyond personal control

9. Interpretation • Attributional Errors • A self-serving bias • Is a bias to favor ourselves and our interests. • Allows us to avoid taking responsibility for negative actions and failures by attributing them to external, unstable, and specific factors that are beyond personal control. • The fundamental attribution error • Involves overestimating the internal causes of others undesirable behaviors and underestimating the external causes.

10. Influences on Perception • Physiology—differences in sensory abilities affect our perceptions. (We do not all hear, see, taste the same.) • Age— • The older we get the more complex set of experiences we have. • Time is different for different ages. • Age influences our perception of social life and its problems.

11. Influences on Perception • Culture consists of beliefs, values, understandings, practices, and ways of interpreting experience that are shared by a number of people. • Standpoint theory claims that we are affected not only by the culture as a whole, but by our particular location within the culture. • Standpoints reflect power positions in social hierarchies.

12. Influences on Perception • Cognitive Abilities—How we think about situations and people, and our personal knowledge of others. • Cognitive complexity is the number of constructs used, how abstract they are, and how elaborately they interact. • Person-centeredness is the ability to perceive another as a unique individual apart from social roles and generalizations based membership in groups. • Person-centeredness in not empathy which is the ability to feel with another.

13. Influences on Perception • Self—What we selectively perceive and how we organize and interpret phenomena are shaped by many aspects of our selves. • Attachment style • Implicit personality theory is unspoken and sometimes unconscious assumptions about how various qualities fit together in human personality.

14. Guidelines for Improving Perception and Communication • Recognize that all perceptions are partial and subjective. • Avoid mindreading which is assuming we understand what another person thinks or perceives. • Check perceptions with others. • Distinguish between facts and inferences. • Guard against the self-serving bias. • Guard against the fundamental attribution error. • Monitor labels.