Perception

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 MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF
PERCEPTION

 Perception may be defined as the process by which an individual

selects, organizes and interprets stimuli into a meaningful and
coherent picture of the environment in which he lives.
 It is a complex cognitive process and differs from one individual
to another, depending on the needs, value and expectations of
the individual.
 Sometimes, an individual’s perception may be far removed from
the reality.
 Perceptual differences can sometimes lead to conflicts in the
organization.
 Perceptions may also differ from organization to organization.
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SENSATION VS PERCEPTION
SENSATION:
 People use their sensory organs to sense.

 The sense receive stimuli both from within and outside the
body. Some of the external stimuli are light and sound,
mechanical pressure, the taste of food and the smell of
chemicals. The internal stimuli include hunger, thirst, pain etc.
PERCEPTION:
 Perception is a more complex concept.

 An individual takes in the raw data through his senses and

them, refines, modifies or completely alters it by his cognitive
process.

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 The Subprocesses of Perception
STIMULUS OR SITUATION PERSON

EXTERNAL CONFRONTATION REGISTRATION INTERPERTATION

ENVIRONMENT of specific stimulus of stimulus (e.g., of stimulus (e.g.,
(e.g., supervisor or sensory and neural motivation, learning
Sensual stimulation
new procedure) mechanisms) and personality)

Physical Environment
Office FEEDBACK
Factory for clarification (e.g.,
Research laboratory kinesthetic or
psychological
Store
Climate
etc.

BEHAVIOR
BEHAVIOR
Sociocultural (e.g., overt such as
Environment
rushing off or covert
Management styles such as an attitude)
Values

CONSEQUENCES
Discrimination
etc.
CONSEQUENCE
(e.g., reinforcement/
punishment or some
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organizational outcome
PERCEPTUAL SELECTIVITY

 Though people are exposed to several stimuli, they tend to select

only a few at a given point of time.

External Attention Factors

Intensity

 The intensity of an external stimulus determines its

probability of being perceived.
 A bright light, a strong odor or a loud noise are more likely
to be noticed.
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Size
 A larger object is more likely to be noticed than a smaller object.

Contrast
 The stimuli that contradicts most with the background or the
expectations of people receive maximum attention.

Repetition
 The more number of times a stimulus is repeated, the more it is
likely to be noticed.

Motion
 People give more attention to moving objects than to stationary
objects.
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Novelty and Familiarity

 New objects in a familiar situation or familiar objects in a new

situation draw the perceiver’s attention.

 For example, during job rotation, when an employee is shifted

from one job to another, he is likely to give more attention to the
new job because he has to perform new duties.

Internal Set Factors

 People select those stimuli from the environment that appeal to

them and suit them based on their learning, motivation and
personality. 7
Learning and perception

 Learning by itself plays a major role in developing the

perceptual set.

Learning and Perception

HILLY
TERRRAIN
AHEAD

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Perceptual set in the workplace

 Learning leads to substantial individual differences. Employees

may perceive a particular situation or stimulus in completely
different ways.
 For example, different people in an organization may attribute
low production levels to different reasons.
 The work environment provided in an organization is
perceived as the best by the management while the trade
unions perceive the opposite.

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Motivation and perception

 The primary motives such as hunger and thirst influence the

perception of an individual.

 The people in a country affected by drought will give more

attention to the sight, mention or aroma of food.

 Perceptual set is also influenced by secondary motives, such as

the need for power, affiliation or achievement.

 A person who has a high need for power, affiliation, or

achievement is more attentive to the situations which provide
him an opportunity to attain them.

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Personality and perception

 An individual’s personality may also affect his perception of a

particular situation.
 For example, young managers often complain that senior
managers resist change, rely heavily on paperwork and delay
decisions. The senior managers often perceive that young
managers initiate unnecessary changes, fail to maintain record for
future reference and make hasty decisions.

FACTORS INFLUENCING PERCEPTION

 The factors which influence perception include the perceiver

himself, the object or target being perceived, and the situation in
which the perception occurs.
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The perceiver

 The perceiver’s personal characteristics play a major role in

influencing the way he interprets target (stimulus). A
person’s attitudes, motives, interests, past experiences and
expectations affect his perception.
 An individual’s perception is greatly influenced by his
unfulfilled needs and goals.
 People who had not eaten food for a longer time interpreted
blurred pictures as images of food more often, than the
people who had not eaten only for a shorter time.
 One’s past experiences may also influence a person’s
perception.
 Individual perceptions are influenced by expectations as well.

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The Target
 Perception is affected by the characteristics of the target
(stimulus).
 People who are loud or very tall or attractive are more likely to
be noticed in a crowd.
 The target is perceived based on its attributes such as motion,
sound, size.
 Sometimes, a target is not perceived in isolation but it is
grouped or associated with things similar to it.
 People tend to group objects together because of the physical
proximity of the objects.
 Events may be grouped together because they occurred during
the same time.
 It is also common to group together persons by profession, age
or race.
 People perceive the police as hardhearted, lawyers as liars,
young army officers as active and tribal people as innocent.13
 The situation

• The context or environment, in which objects or

events are seen, plays an important role in
influencing an individual’s perceptions.
• When a person wearing a tracksuit walks into a
health club, he will not attract attention from his
boss, who may have come to the same health
club, but if he does so in office he will attract
attention.

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 Factors that Influence
Perception
Characteristics of
Characteristics of
Target Characteristics of
Perceiver
Situation
Novelty
Attitudes
Motives
Motives Time
Sound
Interests Work environment
Size
Experience Social environment
Background
Expectations
Proximity

Perception of the individual

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 PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION

 Perceptual Organization emphasizes on the subsequent activities

that take place in the perceptual process after a stimulus is
received.

 A person rarely perceives the extent of color, light or sound

associated with objects. Instead he perceives organized patterns,
stimuli and identifiable whole objects.

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Figure-ground

 Perceived objects are separated from their general background

by the perceiver.
 When a person is given a white paper with something written
in black ink in a language unfamiliar to him, he may perceive it
as patches of irregular black and white shapes.

Perceptual Grouping

 An individual tends to group several stimuli together into a

recognizable pattern.
 When a simple set of stimuli are presented, an individual will
tend to group them together on the basis of closure,
continuity, proximity or similarity. 17
Closure
A person may sometimes perceive a whole, where it does not exist
while sometimes, a person may not be able to perceive a whole
although one exists.
Example:
 A departmental head who wishes to increase the work load of
employees to meet a deadline, may ask them if they would
agree with his proposal. Some of the employees may agree with
the head although there may also be several who disagree.
 The agreement obtained from some of the employees may cause
the head of the department to close the existing gaps and
perceive absolute agreement of all employees to his proposal,
which in reality, does not exist.

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Continuity
 Continuity principle states that a person tends to perceive
the extension of a stimulus.
 It may lead to inflexibility and non-creative thinking in
organizational members.
 An employee in a fashion designing firm may come out with
a new textile design for customers. If the design becomes
popular in the market, the other employee may simply
modify and add more colors or shapes to it and release it
into the market later. New, innovative ideas or designs may
not be perceived by these employees.
 Continuity has a major impact on the systems design of an
organizational structure.

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Proximity
 A group of stimuli that are physically close to each other are
perceived as a set of parts that belong together.
 All the members of a particular department or team may be
perceived as a single entity by those external to the department
or team because of the physical proximity of the members of the
department or the team.

Similarity
 The greater the similarity of the stimuli, the more they are likely
to be perceived as a common group.
 All blue-collared workers may be perceived as a single group,
though in reality, they are all individual employees with their
own unique personalities.
 Similarity, women, minorities, student unions and doctors
association are all described as common groups because of the
similarity in gender, background and profession etc.
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 Such grouping by similarity causes problems of stereotyping.
Perceptual Constancy

 The perception of elements like size, shape, color, brightness and

location of an object remains constant and does not change from
one individual to another.

 If a photograph of a person is printed in a newspaper and

although the photograph measures only 2-3 inches in length, we
still perceive the individual to be between 5 to 6 feet in height.

 Learning helps individuals perceive certain patterns of cues in a

similar way and leads to perceptual constancy.

 The image of an apple remains constant in our mind and doesn’t

change irrespective of the color of the picture.
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Perceptual Context

 Sometimes, the visual stimuli, by themselves, do not convey any

meaning. It is only when they are placed in a certain context that its
meaning and value can be perceived.
 Though workers and managers may speak the same language
within and outside the organization, the words and actions used
may have different meaning in the context of the organization.
 For example, if a manager pats the back of his two year old son,
his gesture conveys love and affection. But if he pats the back of
an employee in the organization, it implies his appreciation of the
employee for doing a good job.
 A verbal order, a memo, a policy, a suggestion, shrugging of
shoulders, a raised eyebrow, etc. have different meaning and
value, when associated with the context of work organization.

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Perceptual Defense
 A person may establish a defense against some stimuli or
situational events because they may be clashing with his personal
values or culture or may be threatening, in nature.
 People attempt to avoid registering those stimuli that conflict,
threaten, or are unacceptable to them.
 People resist perceiving information which they believe would
disturb their emotions.
 People substitute their original perceptions (caused by disturbing
stimuli and information) with favorable perceptions to cope with
the situation.
 For example, a manager may perceive that his workers are happy
and satisfied though actually there may be discontent among the
workers.
 Although some information may actually arouse emotions in an
individual, he may distort and direct the emotion elsewhere. For
example, if a person is angry with his superior, he tries to vent
out his anger on his wife or his son or a machine. 23
 SOCIAL PERCEPTION
 Social perception deals with how an individual perceives other
individuals.
• If an individual understands his own personality well, it becomes
easier for him or her to understand others accurately.

• Personal characteristics of an individual may affect the way he

perceives others. For instance, a person who is scheming and
manipulative will perceive everyone else as being scheming and
manipulative too.

• An individual who has a high self-esteem is more likely to perceive

favorable aspects in others as well.

• How accurately an individual perceives others is based on not just

a single skill but involves many other skills.
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 Two of these aspects that help categorize the persons being
perceived are status of the individual and the role played by
the individual in the organization or in the society.

 An understanding of the characteristics of both, the perceiver and

the perceived, helps managers to understand the vital role these
characteristics play in determining the social perception of
individuals as well as their resulting behavior both within and
outside organizations.

 The primary factors that affect social perception are related to

psychological processes, such as attributions made by people,
stereotyping and the halo effect.

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Attribution
 The way in which people explain the cause for their own or
other’s behavior is referred to as attribution.

 There are two types of attributions made by people –

dispositional attributions and situational attributions.

 In dispositional attribution, a person’s behavior is attributed

to the internal factors that characterize the person such as the
personality traits of the individual, his motivation or his ability.

 In situational attribution a person’s behavior is attributed to

factors external to the person such as the equipment that he
may be handling, or the social influence he may be subject to.

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 Attribution is a process of searching for casual factors or
attributes that help in interpretation of one’s own as well as
others’ behavior.

 It helps determine the manner in which supervisors behave

towards their subordinates.

 Attribution also helps determine one’s attitude towards work

and personal satisfaction with one’s work.

 Perceptions and the consequent behavior of an individual

depends on whether a person makes dispositional attributions
or situational attributions.

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Stereotyping

 The term, stereotype, refers to tendency of generalizing the

characteristics of all the members of a group.
 When a perceiver judges some person based on his perception
about the group to which the person belongs, it is known as
stereotyping.
 A person resorts to stereotyping to simplify the process of
managing innumerable and complex stimuli that are encountered
on a continual basis.
 Stereotyping may attribute favorable or unfavorable traits to the
person being perceived.
 In organizations, stereotypes are based on gender, race,
ethnicity.

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The Halo Effect
 At times people draw a general impression about an individual
based on a single characteristic, such as intelligence,
sociability, aggressiveness.
 In the halo effect perceptions are formed on the basis of a
certain (dominant) trait.
 Halo effect is more likely to occur under conditions such as (a)
the perceiver is not familiar with the traits or doesn’t
frequently encounter these traits (b) the traits are ambiguous
and cannot be clearly expressed in behavioral terms and (c)
and the traits have moral implications.

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
 It is the process by which people try to manage or control the
perceptions formed by other people about themselves.
 People like to present themselves in a socially desirable way
and impress others.
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The Process of Impression Management

 Behavioral scientists have recently identified two new

components of impression management – impression motivation
and impression construction.
 Impression motivation is particularly applicable in
organizations where employees try to control the perceptions of
their superiors about them.
 Impression construction refers to the methods adopted by a
person to create the specific impression that he wants.
 The impression may be related to various factors such as
personal characteristics, attitudes, interests and values.
 There are five factors that are particularly relevant to the type of
impression people want create – the self-concept, desired and
undesired identity images, role constraints, the value of the
target and current social image of the individual.
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 Impression Management strategies
used by employees
Demotion-preventative strategy
 The characteristics of demotion-preventative strategies are:

Accounts
 The employee attempts to justify the occurrence of a negative
outcome giving excuses.

Apologies
 When an employee is unable to come up with any excuse to
support his action, he will seek to apologize to his superior.

Disassociation
 When employees are not directly responsible for a negative
outcome, they may try to disassociate themselves from those
who were responsible for the outcome and thus from the
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responsibility for the problem.
Promotion-enhancing strategy
 The characteristics of promotion-enhancing strategies are:

Entitlements
 Sometimes employees may perceive that due credit has not been
given to them for the positive outcome and may try to make this
known to their boss through formal or informal channels.

Enhancements
 Sometimes, the efforts of an employee may result in an outcome
that delivers much more profits than were expected. Apart from
this, the outcome may also have scope for improved profits in the
future. Although an employee may have been rewarded for a
positive outcome, he may perceive that his achievement deserved
more than what he received.

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Obstacle disclosures

 Employees try to impress upon the boss by making him aware

of the personal (ill-health or family) and organizational (lack of
cooperation or scarcity of resources) obstacles they had to
overcome, to achieve the outcome. They try to make their boss
perceive that they deserve more credit because they achieved
a positive outcome despite facing many obstacles.

Association

 An employee tries to be seen with the right people at the right

time. By doing so, he tries to convey the impression that he
has contacts and that he is associated with successful projects.

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