Perception

Session 5
 Topic Outline
• Information Processing Model
• Sub processes of perception
• Perception Selectivity
• Perceptual Organization
• Perceptual Interpretation
• Common perceptual distortions
• Depth Perception and Illusions
 Sensation Versus Perception
• Behavioral scientists generally agree that people’s reality ( the world around
them) depends on their senses
• The raw sensory input is not enough
• They must process the raw sensory data and make sense out of them in order
understand the world around them
• The physical senses are considered to be vision , hearing, smell, touch, and taste
• The five senses are continuously bombarded by stimuli that are both outside and
inside the body
• Examples of outside stimuli include light waves, sound waves, mechanical energy
of pressure, and chemical energy from objects from objects that one can smell and
taste
• Inside stimuli include energy generated by muscles, food passing through the
digestive system. And glands secreting behavior influencing hormones
• These examples indicate that sensation deals chiefly with very elementary
behaviors that is determined largely by physiological functioning
• Perception is more complex and much broader than sensation. The perception
processes or filters can be defined as complicated interaction, of selection,
organization, and interpretation
• Although perception depends largely on the senses for raw data, the cognitive
process filters, modifies or completely changes these data
 What is perception and, Why it is important

Perception is the process by which individuals

organize and interpret their sensory impressions in
order to give meaning to their environment
What one perceives can be substantially different
from objective reality

Perception is important in the study of psychology

because people’s behavior is based on their
perception of what reality is, not on reality itself
 Information Processing Model

Information input

Exposure

Involvement

Attention

Memory
Comprehension
 The Basic Sub processes in Perception

Attention Perceptual Interpretation

Organization
( Selectivity)
 Perception Selectivity and
Organization
• Numerous stimuli are constantly confronting
everyone
• With all these stimulation on people how and
why do they select out only a few stimuli?
• Part of the answer can be found in principles
of perceptual selectivity
 Attention Factor in selectivity
1. Intensity:
 The more intense the external stimuli, the more likely
it is to be perceived
 A loud noise versus soft sound
 Strong odor versus weak odor
 Bright light versus dim light
 Advertisers use intensity to gain consumer ‘s attention
 Bright packing
 Television advertisements that are louder than the
regular program
 Teachers may raise their voices to gain attention
 Attention Factor in selectivity
2. size:
 Closely related to intensity principles
 It says that larger the object the more likely it will be
perceived
 A 6-foot 5inch person may receive more attention than a 5-
foot 6 inch person
 A full page advertisement is more attention getting than a
few lines in the classified section
3. Contrast:
 External stimuli that stands out against the background or
that are not what people are expecting will receive their
attention
Attention Factor in selectivity
 Attention Factor in selectivity
• Contrast
• Created by Saatchi & Saatchi NY, the clever campaign consists of delicious
looking photos of coffee printed on vinyl and placed on top of steaming
manhole covers around New York. Holes cut out of the photographs allow
the steam
 Attention Factor in selectivity
• Repetition
 Repeated external stimulus is more attention getting than a
single one
 The worker will hear better when directions for a dull task
are given more than once
 Important announcements are posted on all the notice
boards of the company
 Advertisers trying to create unique image for a product
from its competitors rely heavily on repetitious advertising
• Motion
 People will pay more attention to moving objects in their
field of vision than they will to stationary objects
 Advertisers capitalize on this principle by creating signs that
incorporate moving parts
 Attention Factor in selectivity
• Novelty and Familiarity
 Either novel or familiar external situation can
serve as an attention getter
 New objects or events in a familiar setting or
familiar objects or events in a new setting will
get attention
Examples of Novelty principles
Examples of Novelty principles
 Pop-up Quiz
1. The difference between sensation and perception is
_______________________
2. Perception is important in the study of psychology
because______________
3. With all these stimulation on people how and why do they select
out only a few stimuli?______________
4. A loud noise versus soft sound indicates which external attention
getting factor _____________
5. A full page advertisement is more attention getting than a few
lines in the classified section indicates which attention factor
6. When External stimuli are not what people are expecting will
receive their attention indicates which external factor
7. Advertisers trying to create unique image for a product from its
competitors rely heavily ______________
8. Advertisers capitalize on the principle of by_________ creating
signs that incorporate moving parts
 Internal Factors in Selectivity
• Learning ( Past Experience)
 Companies that have gained your confidence
in terms of consistent quality, when they
advertise about a product you tend to give
attention to their advertisements
• Motivation
 When you are hungry you will notice all the
restaurants on the road
 Perceptual Organization
• One factor that determines how a stimulus will
be interpreted is its assumed relationship with
other events, sensations, or images.
1). Our brains tend to relate incoming sensations
to others already in memory based on some
fundamental organizational principles.
a). These principles are based on gestalt
psychology (meaning is derived from totality of a
set of stimuli.)
b). Sometimes the “whole is greater than the sum
of its parts.”
 Perceptual Organization
• Figure and Ground principle
 is considered as the most basic form of
perceptual organization
 Means that perceived object stands out as
separable from their general background
Figure and Ground Principle
The Forest has eyes
Q3. Figure & Ground
This ad has very creatively
used the perceptual
organization principle of
Figure & Ground. When
focusing on the black figure,
we see hand and the white
figure becomes the ground
for it. And if we focus on the
white figure it becomes legs
and the black figure of hand
becomes ground for them.

This ad is against Child Abuse.

Where the Hand figure is
giving a gesture of STOP, on
the ground of legs, very
effectively communicates its
message to the target
audience.
Billboard for Wrangler Jeans Makes Creative
use of the Figure-Ground Principle
 Perceptual Organization
• The grouping principle of perceptual organization
states that there is tendency to group several stimuli
together into recognizable pattern
• This principle is very basic and may be largely inborn
• When simple constellations of stimuli are presented to
people they will tend to group them together by:
1. Similarity
2. Proximity
3. Common Fate
4. Closure
5. Continuity
 Proximity
• The principle of proximity is that features which are
close together are associated.
• What you are likely to
notice fairly quickly is that
this is not just a square
pattern of dots but rather
is a series of columns of
dots
 Examples
 In organizations several workers who work on a
particular may be perceived as a single group. If their
out put is low and supervisor reports a number of
grievances, the management may perceive all the
workers as one trouble making group. When in fact
some of them are loyal and dedicated employees
 Marketing: co-branding
We are more likely to associate the lines which
are close together than those which are further
apart. In this example we tend to see three pairs
of lines which are fairly close together (and a
lonely line on the far right) rather than three
pairs of lines which are further apart (and a lone
line on the far left).
 Proximity
• In this ad two
different brand
names are shown
connected,
creating an
association with
each other.
This Ad Relies on
proximity rule

organization holding that

(other things being equal)
objects or events that are
near to one another (in
space or time) are
perceived as belonging
together as a unit.

In this ad Ufone and

ABN AMRO are
perceived as a unit.
 Similarity
• The principle of Similarity states that the greater the similarity
of the stimuli, the greater the tendency to perceive them as a
common group
Here the little circles and squares are evenly
spaced both horizontally and vertically so
proximity does not come into play.
However, we do tend to see alternating
columns of circles and squares.
This is because of the principle of similarity -
features which look similar are associated.
Without the two different recurrent features
we would see either rows or columns or both
Similarity is conceptually related to proximity but in most is more stronger than
proximity.
In an organization, all employees who wear blue collars may be perceived as a
common group, when in reality, each employee is a unique individual
Similarity also applies to minority, women employees as a single group.
In marketing usually follower brands copy the packaging, names etc of the brand
leader to look alike
 Common Fate
If things appear to be
moving in the same
direction people tend to
group them together

Moving dots are classified

together as a group, with
same fate in common
We make predictions about the future by developing
common relationship among objects
 Closure
• A basic gestalt principle is that a person will some times
perceive a whole when one does not actually exist. The
person’s perceptual process will close the gaps that are
unfilled by sensory input

Here we tend to see three broken rectangles (and a lonely shape on

the far left) rather than three 'girder' profiles (and a lonely shape on
the right.
In this case the principle of closure cuts across the principle of
proximity, since if we remove the bracket shapes, we return to an
image used earlier to illustrate proximity
This Ad Demonstrates the Use of Closure: People
Have to Mentally Fill in the Gaps in the Sentence
This Ad Demonstrates
the Use of Closure:

organization holding that there

is an innate tendency to
perceive incomplete objects as
complete and to close or fill
gaps and to perceive
asymmetric stimuli as
symmetric

People Mentally
perceive and relate that
first and last word is C
• These ads are using the
cropping technique where
it is showing the
incomplete picture by
showing male and female
relaxing and having fun
instead of car itself thus
shows the impact of
Beetle in their lives. They
cant get out of the
thoughts of it anywhere.
Closure
• NFB {National Foundation of the
blinds } uses the closure principle .
 Continuity
Is closely related to closure principle
Closure supplies missing data, whereas the continuity principles
say that a person will tend to perceive continuous lines or
patterns
Here, for instance, we are more
likely to identify lines a-b and c-d
crossing than to identify a-d and c-b
or a-c and d-b as lines.

This type of continuity may lead to inflexible, or non

creative , thinking on the part of organizational
members
 Perceptual Constancy
• One of the more sophisticated form of perceptual organization
• People correctly perceive the objects as constant in their shape,
size, and brightness despite raw sensory data that could mislead
perception
• How does the brain know that a person is six feet tall when the
retinal image of that person changes size according to how near or
far he is
• How does the brain know that snow is white, and a tire is black,
even when snow at night or a tire in bright light might send the
same luminance cues to the brain
• For the most part, changing the angle, distance, illumination of an
object does not change our perception of that subject’s size,
shape or color.
 Perceptual Constancy
• To perceive any of these constancies, we need to understand the
relationship between at least two factors
• For size constancy we need to know how far away the object is
from us
• For shape constancy we need to know from what angle we are
seeing the object
• For color constancy we need to compare the wavelengths of light
reflected from the object with those from its background
• In each case brain is computing the ratio based on the relative
magnitude rather than relying on the absolute magnitude of each
sensation
• The ability of perceptual system to make relative judgments is what
allows constancy to be maintained across variety of perceptual
context
Perceptual Constancy
Depth cues make the
man with beard and tie
look smaller in (b) than
in (a) but he isn’t. The
retinal image is the
same but the depth
cues in (a) make him
look further
 Perceptual Context
• The highest, most sophisticated form of
perceptual organization
• It gives meaning and value to simple stimuli,
objects, events, situations, and other persons
in the environment
• The organizational culture and structure
provide the primary context in which workers
and managers do their perceiving

Doodles study
 Pop- up Quiz
1. ____________ principles are based on gestalt psychology (meaning is derived
from totality of a set of stimuli.
2. _______________ states that perceived object stands out as separable from
their general background
3. ________________ states that there is tendency to group several stimuli
together into recognizable pattern

4. The principle of ____________ is that features which are close

together are associated
5. In an organization, all employees who wear blue collars may be perceived as a
common group, is an example of ________________ principle
6. The principle of ______________ states that If things appear to be moving in the
same direction people tend to group them together
7. A basic gestalt principle is that a person will some times perceive a whole when
one does not actually exist is called ______________
8. ______________________ principle say that a person will tend to perceive
continuous lines or patterns
9. Brain is computing the ratio based on the relative magnitude rather than relying
on the absolute magnitude of each sensation results in the principle of
________________________
 Factors Affecting Interpretation
• Expectation
 Past experience and learning often point what should be expected
 Example: if you were in a card games, with some persons who had
cheated you before, you would be on guard for deceptive actions. Simple
coughs or foot tapping might be interpreted as trickery
 People have some idea of what exist out there, and to some extent this
determines what is perceived
• Frame of reference:
 Past knowledge also provides frame of reference, a basis on which we
judge the incoming information
 Example of frame of reference, three people are walking together, one is
botanist, second is land developer, third is cricket enthusiast. Suddenly
they see a large piece of vacant land, the botanist think of the type of
natural flora growing here, the land developer estimates the financial
potential of developing apartments, the cricket enthusiast thinks of the
potential of developing a cricket stadium
 Factors Affecting Interpretation
• Some times you are told what to expect
 Your own past experience and frame of reference will have less
importance.
 In one experiment two groups of subjects were shown the figure
Shown Below

One group was told it was number “7” and the other group was told it was
number “4”
When the two groups were asked to reproduce the figures , their drawings
those shown in next slide
 Factors Affecting Interpretation

• Being told what to expect had a clear impact on what was perceived
• In another experiment a psychologist told one group of subjects that he would
present words related to boats. He then presented stimulus words, “sael”,
“dack”, and “wharf”. The group interpreted the words as “sail”, “deck”, and
“wharf”
•To another group he presented the same words but this time he said the words
would be related to animals. This group interpreted the words as follows, “seal”,
“duck” and “ “whale”
 Factors Affecting Interpretation
• Needs, Motivations, and Emotions;
 Needs and motivation constantly interact to create emotions
 It is difficult to separate the roles these three factors, but there has
been considerable research on how they work together to affect
perception
 One group of psychologists studied how financial needs affect
perception of coin size
 College students were asked to adjust the size of the light to
approximate the sizes of penny, a nickel ( 5cent coin), a dime (10
cent coin) and a quarter (25 cent coin)
 The students were then hypnotized and told they have the history
of poverty and lacked even the basic necessities. Now they were
asked to adjust the size of the four coins. They adjusted the light to
sizes significantly larger than each coin.
 During the second hypnosis session, the same students were told
they had wealthy background and enjoyed many sumptuous
luxuries . This time they adjusted the lights to smaller size than they
had in their normal conditions
 Factors Affecting Interpretation

Although it is impossible to separate the roles of needs, motivation, and

emotions in the perception of the subjects, it is clear that three factors
interacted to change its perception of the coin size
Common perceptual distortions

 Stereotypes or prototypes.
– Combines information based on the category or
class to which a person, situation, or object
belongs.
– Individual differences are obscured.

– Strong impact at the organization stage.

Common perceptual distortions

 Halo effects.
– Occur when one attribute of a person or situation
is used to develop an overall impression of the
individual or situation.
– Likely to occur in the organization stage.
– Important in the performance appraisal process.
Common perceptual distortions

 Projection.
– The assignment of one’s personal attributes to other
individuals.
- This tendency may be especially strong in case of
undesirable traits that perceivers posses but fail to recognize
themselves.
– Especially likely to occur in interpretation stage.
– Projection can be controlled through a high degree of self-
awareness and empathy.
Common perceptual distortions

 Contrast effects.

– Occur when an individual is compared to other

people on the same characteristics on which

the others rank higher or lower.
– People must be aware of the impact of

contrast effects in many work settings

Common perceptual distortions

 Self-fulfilling prophecy.
– The tendency to create or find in another situation
or individual that which one expected to find.
– Also called the “Pygmalion effect.”
– Can have either positive or negative outcomes.
– Managers should adopt positive and optimistic
approaches to people at work.
Common perceptual distortions
Primacy Effect
• The biased perceptions that results when the
first information that a perceiver has about a
target has an immediately large influence on the
perceiver’s perception of the target. Most
common in interviewing situation
Similar to me Effects
• People tend (often unconsciously) to perceive
those who are similar to themselves more
positively than those who are dissimilar
 Pop-up Quiz
1. Factors affecting interpretation are (1)__________ ,(2) _________, (3)
________, (4) ___________
2. The perceptual distortion that combines information based on the
category or class to which a person, situation, or object belongs is called
___________
3. The perceptual distortion that occur when one attribute of a person or
situation is used to develop an overall impression of the individual or
situation is called _____________
4. The perceptual distortion that occur because of the assignment of one’s
personal attributes to other individuals ____________
5. The perceptual distortion that occur when an individual is compared to
other people on the same characteristics on which the others rank
higher or lower
6. The perceptual distortion that occur because of the tendency to create or
find in another situation or individual that which one expected to find
7. The biased perceptions that results when the first information that a
perceiver has about a target has an immediately large influence on the
perceiver’s perception of the target is called ______________
8. People tend (often unconsciously) to perceive those who are similar to
themselves more positively than those who are dissimilar is called
_______________
 Depth Perception and Illusions
• One of the most important tasks of our visual system is to
locate objects in space
• Without this capacity we would find it difficult to navigate
in and interact with the world
• Our ability to construct a three dimensional mental
representation of visual world on the basis of two
dimensional retinal image
• We are able to perceive depth in two dimensional pattern
because the brain is able to apply same rules or mechanism
that it uses to workout the spatial relations between
objects in the (three dimensional)world
• To understand this process we must consider the cues that
are available to help the visual system perceive depth.
• These cues can be divided in to binocular depth cues and
monocular depth cues
 Binocular Depth Perception
• One of the most important cues to both perception is
the binocular disparity ( or retinal disparity) caused by
the distance between the eyes
• Because each eye has a slightly different view of the
world, the brain has two eyes
• Because each eye has a slightly different view of the
world, the brain has two different but overlapping
images
• The brain uses the disparity between these two retinal
image
• The ability to determine the depth of an object on the
basis of the different projection of each eye is called
stereoscopic vision
 Binocular Depth Perception

Our two eyes causes to see every object from two distinct vantage points, resulting
in two slightly different retinal images.
The distance between the images for objects A and B is different for each eye. This
disparity is an important cue for depth
 Monocular Depth Perception
• Is the vision with one eye.
• Monocular cues are available to one eye
• These are the kind of cues that give landscape painting depth
• Although you normally look at such painting with both eyes open, in this
case depth perception is not arising because of retinal disparity
• A first monocular cue is linear perspective, the tendency of parallel lines
seem to converge as they approach horizon
• A second monocular cue, a cue created when one object blocks some
position of another object. If a person is standing in front of tree, and the
tree is partly blocked, it is easy to see that tree is behind, not in front
• A third monocular cue is shadows. Shadows are different in illumination
gradients. These tend to help us see rounded surfaces as convex or
concave
• A fourth monocular cue is texture gradient. A texture gradient is
perceived when we can see less detail in far away objects than those that
are closer
• A fifth monocular cue is motion parallax, the tendency when moving
forward rapidly to perceive differential speeds in objects that are passing
and in those that are being approached
 Texture ingredient
Motion Parallax: Uniformly textured surfaces appear
Near objects seem to pass us more denser as objects recedes, when
quickly in the opposite direction of our texture drop disappears, it indicates a
movement. The objects farther away drop-off
seem to move slowly
 Perceptual Illusions`
• The process by which the brain interprets the
ambiguous and incomplete information that
reaches retina can give rise to inaccurate
interpretation of physical illusions
• Inappropriate interpretation of physical
reality, perceptual illusion often occur as
result of the brain’s use of otherwise adaptive
organizing principles
The Ames room
The girl on the right appears to be much taller than the girl on the left. But this an
illusion induced by the visual system’s assumption that room is rectangular. The
sloping ceiling and floors and the angle of back wall, along with systematic distortion
of the shape and size of details in the room provide misleading cues.. For example
neither of the window is really rectangular, and the window on the left side is larger
than that on the right. To the viewer looking from the peephole , the room appears
perfectly normal. The misleading cues lead visual system to perceive the two girls as
being approximately the same distance from the viewer, hence the girl on the right ,
who(because she is nearer) projects a larger image on the retina is perceived larger
The Ponzo illusion
The explanation for this illusion is that
monocular depth cues makes the two This illusion occurs because the
dimensional figure seem three dimensional. photo does not capture the hill on
Parallel lines appear to converge in the which the girl is standing and fails
distance. The two lines drawn to look like a to convey depth information
railroad track receding in the distance trick
your brain that the lines are parallel. Therefore
you perceive two parallel lines in the center as
they are at different distances, and thus
different in size, when actually are the same
exact size
Moon looks much larger when it is near the horizon then when it is overhead. This is an
illusion the moon remains the same size and distance from the earth. The most
common explanation for this illusion is that when the moon is near horizon, several depth
cues indicate that it is really far away, when the is overhead, no such cues are available
so the moon looks as if it is closer to the earth. The logic of explanation similar to that
offered for the Ponzo illusion. The horizon looks farther away from the overhead moon ,
yet since they are same distance away, create identical images on the retina. The only
way for the brain to reconcile this discrepancy is to assume the horizon moon is larger
than the overhead moon
 Illusions in Daily Life
• Beauty Experts, clothing designers and interior
decorators all use their knowledge of illusion
to improve appearance
• Eye shadow is used to create the illusion of
deep set of eyes
• Obese men wear suits with vertical stripes to
appear slimmer
• Rooms are painted white and equipped with
small furniture to appear more spacious