Perception

What’s the connection to Psychology???

• Perception is one of the oldest and most fundamental disciplines within Psychology, dating back to at least the time of the ancient Greeks. The goal of perception research is to understand how stimuli from the world interact with our sensory systems.

• The stimuli forms visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory representations of the world.

• Research in perception focusses on relationships between environmental events and subjective experience.

 

What affects our perception???

First Impressions

• A powerful influence on how we perceive people & events.

• Determine the way we think &/or behave in certain situations.

• Once an impression has been stamped into your brain, it can be difficult to change.

Personality of the Perceiver

• Everyone thinks & behaves differently, and therefore we all have our own unique mental sets of perception; we perceive things differently because we are different.

• Our personalities contribute to our expectations in life, our understanding of things/events/people, & our reaction to these things/events/people.

Life experiences of the perceiver

• These teach us how to think and act toward people and events- all of us have our own unique experiences and personal points of view.

• Bad experience = if difficult, will make you want to avoid similar experiences in the future.

• Good experience = if good, you congregate to similar experiences in the future.

Selective Memory

• Each of us chooses, either consciously or unconsciously, to remember certain things or block other things out.

• Things that are unpleasant or upsetting are more often blocked out than those that are pleasant and enjoyable.

The Object of Perception (The Object Itself)

• Certain object in our environment naturally attract & warrant more attention than other things.

• Large, noisy, moving objects tend to get noticed easier and more frequently.

• Ex: A student who walks in late to class is more likely to be noticed, than students who walk in on time.

Background and Surroundings of the Object

• Our surroundings during the moment we are perceiving things have an impact on how we perceive something.

• Example: people often enjoy food more when they are in a comfortable surrounding with people whose company they enjoy.

Pictures tell a story……but

which story???

Police Maintaining Order? Or....Citizens Fighting For Their

Rights?

A Murderer or An Innocent Victim?

Police Brutality or Resisting Arrest?

Animal Cruelty or Making Money To Survive?

Are you ready for some optical

illusions?

Faces or Vases?The answer depends on what you perceive as the

background--the black spaces or the white.

Photographer Zeke Berman has created this intriguing

collage using silhouettes of real people.

Words and ColorsRead the image aloud--but rather than reading the words, say the color of the ink that was used to write each word. It's not easy; the written words have a suprisingly strong influence over the actual color.

Do you see the Phantom Spots?You may see spots where the white lines intersect, but if you try looking right at one, it will disappear.

The spots, of course, aren't really there. They're caused by the way your eyes respond to light and dark areas. When an area is surround by light, your eye compensates by "turning down" the

brightness a bit, making you see darkened blobs. In this grid, the areas surrounded by the most white are at the intersections of the white lines. Since this phenomenon works best in your peripheral

vision, the spots disappear when you look right at them.

Fading Dot

Stare at the bluish dot for awhile without moving your eyes or your head. The dot will gradually fade into the field of green. Some people find that the dot fades more rapidly if they stare blankly at the edge of the square. As soon as you move your

head or eyes, notice that the blue reappears.  

Even though you're not aware of it, your eye is always making tiny jittery movements. Each time your eye moves it receives

new information and sends it to your brain. You need this constant new information to see images.

You may have noticed that although the dot fades just about everything else in your field of vision remains clear. That's

because everything else you see has distinct edges.

 

Look at these two upside-down pictures of Mona Lisa.

You probably recognized Mona Lisa right away--even upside-down. Two upside-down Monas may

look strange (one perhaps stranger than the other), but turn them right-side-up and one looks normal,

the other grotesque. Why the surprising difference? Since an upside-down face is not a familiar point of view, you may not have noticed that one of these pictures has been altered. In the right-hand photo, Mona's eyes and mouth have been turned around. It's only when the photos are turned right-side-up, and the view is more familiar, that you notice the

real distortion.

Mirror CarryingHere's a simple illusion achieved with the use of a mirror, this man is carrying the mirror on his shoulder with the reflective side outward

thus achieving the illusion that he has no head.

 

Moving Spirals

This image of coloured spirals appears to be

moving if you stare at it, however in reality it is completely stationary.

Perception

• Habit makes us fail to perceive things as they really are.

• Learning affects our perceptions by creating expectations to perceive in a particular way.

• Perception is an intrapersonal phenomena.• No 2 people perceive the exact same things

all the time.• Perceptions are culturally based.• Through feedback, we can check and see if

our perceptions are similar.