PERCEPTION

PERCEPTION

Process by which you become aware of the many stimuli impinging on your senses Five stages

Stimulation Organization Interpretation-evaluation Memory Recall

PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES Implicit [hidden] personality theory

Theory on personality that influence how you perceive other people Beware

Can lead you to perceive qualities in someone that your personality theory tells you should present when they are not

Can lead you to ignore or distort characteristics in someone that do not conform to your personality theory

PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES Self-fulfilling prophecy [forecast]

Occurs when you make prediction or formulate a belief that comes true because you made the prediction and acted as if it were true Beware

Can lead you to influence another’s behavior to conform to your prophecy

Can lead you to see what you predicted rather than what really is

PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES

Primary-RecencyThe relative influence of stimuli as a result

of their order Primary – what occurs first exerts greater

influence Recency – what occurs last exerts greater

influence Beware

Can lead to formulate a total picture of someone on the basis of initials impression that may not be accurate

Discount/distort later perceptions to avoid disrupting initial impressions

PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES Stereotyping

A fixed impression of a group of people that ignores their individual, unique characteristics Beware

Can lead you to perceive someone as having group characteristics only and fail to appreciate the multifaceted nature of people and groups

Can lead you to ignore unique characteristics of an individual and fail to benefit the special contribution each has

PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES Attribution [acknowledgement]

The process by which you try to explain the motivation for a person’s behavior Beware

Can lead you to the self-serving bias: you evaluate your own behaviors and take credit for the positive and deny responsibility for the negative

Can lead you to over-attribution: single out one or two obvious characteristics of a person and attribute everything that person does to these characteristics

Can lead you to the fundamental attribution error: you conclude that people do what they do because they do because that’s the kind of people they are and not because of the situation they are in