Factors That Affect Perception: Defense

And finally, let's talk about the defensive bubbles of perception that protect us!

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All of us live in a “bubble” of our own making and we don’t easily let that bubble get burst!

Our natural defense mechanism rejects all the intrusive ideas and objects that threaten our world-view. This builds blind-spots in the perceptual process so that I “see” only what I want to see and negative sensory data does not upset or disturb my fundamental beliefs and values.

This automatic, instinctive resistance to any input that threatens to upset, alter, damage or destroy my conception of life and humanity acts as a knee-jerk reaction that repels any attacks.

Thus, my mental defense mechanism protects me from emotional distress. I can keep all threats to my self-esteem at bay. I can reject any unwanted thoughts and impulses. And I can ensure that attitudes I hold dear and inviolate are kept pure, untouched, unblemished.

In other words, I can live on with my bubble intact.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.

Factors That Affect Perception: The Halo-Effect

Perception is never the same as reality and the halo-effect is a common culprit in the way our perception of our environment gets skewed.

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Say a subordinate we shall name ‘A’ has this extremely abrasive, in-you-face manner of expressing his opinions that really irks his superior. This one defect blinds his superior to A’s diligent work habits, his punctuality and his high moral values. She cannot see beyond his loud and brash behaviour. When it is time for her to evaluate his performance, this halo-effect will distort her perception of his work and, in turn, will affect A’s career prospects.

When you put a spotlight on one particular characteristic, whether it is categorised by you as good or bad, you blind yourself to other valid characteristics a person, place or event may have.

Beware of halo-effect! It will affect and distort your perception of the world around you.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee, is Managing Partner at Expressions@Work, a training, consulting and mentoring studio for the development of communication and soft skills

Factors That Affect Perception: Projection

More on perception and distortions:

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People are generally self-centered and tend to evaluate other people and events from the perspective of their own attributes and values. If we look carefully, we see that we are constantly projecting our own needs and feelings, values and attitudes, our own traits and personal likes and dislikes on to others.

If I can be alert and work 20 hours a day and be fresh after 4 hours of sleep, why can’t you? And if you need 8 hours of sleep and a break every couple of hours, you must be lazy and inefficient. I take great pride in perfection and efficiency and therefore these are desirable traits in all my colleagues. If you are careless, you don’t deserve my respect however brilliant and imaginative you may be.

When we project our personalities and motivations onto other people and their actions, it distorts our perception of those people and those actions.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee, is Managing Partner at Expressions@Work, a training, consulting and mentoring studio for the development of communication and soft skills

Factors That Distort Perception: Attribution Errors

Attribution Errors: How we cheat ourselves!

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People behave a certain way in certain situations either because of internal, built-in characteristics or because of external circumstances.

We make judgments about why we behave in a certain way or why others do things in another manner and allocate or attribute “internal” or “external” motifs to conduct.

More often than not, we have a self-serving bias: we credit ourselves and our internal characteristics in positive circumstances and blame external factors in cases of negativity or failure. When it comes to others, however, we tend to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate internal characteristics.

Often, we make errors in judgment and mishandle situations because these attribution errors cause perceptual distortions.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee, is Managing Partner at Expressions@Work, a training, consulting and mentoring studio for the development of communication and soft skills

Factors that Distort Perception: Selection

Continuing my discussions on perception and sensation and the perceptual dimension...

Perceptual selectivity is one of the most common factors that distort perception. It is our ability to focus on some sensory inputs while we disregard others. I will, for instance, tend to focus on stimuli that satisfy my needs and are consistent with my attitudes, values and personality.

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Thus, as I've described in another post on this blog, if I'm really hungry on my walk down the street, I will notice the jhalmuri-wallah, the samosas being fried in the corner shop, the puchchka vendor and in the process, I would perhaps miss the DON'T WALK signal being flashed as I cross the street.

Of course, some stimuli have the ability to draw attention to themselves whether or not I want to select them. A really bad smell will make itself registered whether I want to select it, as will a really loud bang

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The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.

Sensation and Perception

Looking for articles that answer your questions on sensation and perception? This one should do it!

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Perception is a part of the cognitive process that helps us make sense of our environment so that we can make decisions in our own, unique ways through the inputs we select and prioritise; how we organise the selected inputs and our personal interpretations of the information we gather from the way we have arranged the inputs we have selected.

Human perception, thus, is the subjective or personal result of sensation. It is the dynamic "knowing" about the direct sensation "in your mind." Perception is subjective because it occurs within you. It is dynamic because can change from moment to moment and situation to situation. Depending on the moment, the mood and other factors, you may perceive the same sensations differently at various instances.

To explain the perceptual process in more detail, let me take a personal example:

As I stand and deliver a lecture to my class, your consciousness makes you aware of sitting there listening to me, the external other. As I speak, you hear the sensation of sound, feel the discomfort of your chair, smell the cold air blowing from the air-conditioner mixed with other people smells, see me standing, a colleague sleeping, another texting, the LCD PowerPoint display, the cloudless blue sky, workers on the terrace next door and so on...

These sensations are available to the entire class but its individual members "perceive" different things. One student chooses to select a whispered comment from his friend over my words; another concentrates on the pain the chair causes her back instead of my lecture; a third compares the colour of my sari with the blue sky while you listen closely to what I'm trying to get across.

Each student will have a different perception of the class depending on her selection of sensations to prioritise, the way she organises the sensations she selects and the interpretations she derives from the structures she has created in her mind.

Sensation is automatic. If my visual and aural mechanism works, I cannot NOT see or hear. So as I stand in class, I can see and hear and feel and smell all that is available within the range of my sensory abilities. At the end of my lecture, though, if you asked me what I saw, I would only be able to identify those things that I actually "looked" at--i.e., those objects I chose to select and organise and interpret in my mind. Therefore, my perception of the class and yours would be very different because you and I would probably be selecting different objects to "look at" depending on our individual filters--our own personalities, our interests, our knowledge-set, our previous experiences, our moods, emotions, attitudes etc.

A policeman friend once told me that one of his worst nightmares was to investigate a public incident of which there were many different witnesses because witness accounts of the same event are sure to differ wildly and even contradict each other because of individual perceptions (which each witness would be sure was 100% correct!)

It should be obvious to you now that perception is not--and cannot ever be--reality and that just as Gerbner's General Model shows, the real event E ceases to exist once it has been perceived and become E¹. The degree of similarity or distance of E¹ to E (or the perceived event to the real event) depends on certain factors. Gerbner suggests selection, context and availability as factors controlling the perceptual dimension.

I will discuss some other factors that affect sensation and perception in the next few posts.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.