PERCEPTION AND INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOUR:Three concepts of personality, Bias in Perception

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Human Relations MGMT611

Lesson 04

PERCEPTION AND INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOUR

"Perception is a process through which people select, organize, interpret, retrieve and respond to

information."

Perception is word which means "a process of knowing." How do you know a reality, how you see things

and interpret them. It may be related to reality or may not.

Three concepts of personality:

Communication has many forms. Everyone who communicates through a picture, verbal design or with a

landscape has its three meanings.

(1) Intended meanings, the meanings which I want to convey to the audience.

(2) The second meaning is dictionary meaning e.g. communication material, words I have used.

(3) Most important is "perceived meanings" the meanings that you are getting .your meanings will b

based on meanings that you are getting from the other person's speech.

So perceived meanings are critically important, e.g. during a lecture many a time what I say you don't take it

the way I said and this leads to misunderstanding. The difference between intended and perceived

meanings is called misunderstanding.

Life World

In sociology there is a concept "life world". Every person has a different life world. What are his life

experiences? Due to different experiences a person views different things in different way, e.g. I was an

M.A student. The psychology professor brought a vague painting and placed it on the wall. Then he asked

the student to write a story on it. There were 20 students and all of them write a different story. The idea is

actually depicted differently by all the students because everybody interpreted a same piece of information

according to his/her own experiences, although the source of information was same. "Truth and False"

may be very important but in terms of determining the behaviors of the individuals "perception" is

important but not the truth, e.g. a young boy and man came home late at night and thought that if I will

knock at door my dad will be angry so he climbed the gate and went in just to avoid his dad's anger. Dad

thought he is a thief, he picked up the gun and he shot him dead. Now what is important more is "truth or

perception". In this case it is clear that perception played a role but truth was son but his action was due to

perception. So, it is perception which determines individual's behavior not the truth.

Perception of individual is reality for that individual. If you understand this thing you would know that

source of major conflicts among people is due to different perception of different individuals.

Whenever you get a message you try to understand that this message has some intended meanings and

these meanings came from culture or from your own socialization, e.g. a delegation from china went to

Canada, during lunch some Chinese took a burp at the lunch, the Canadians felt a disgust and thought that

Chinese are ill mannered and don't know how to behave in a meeting. But someone other may understand

a different meaning by that burp and may thought that Chinese are appreciating food by taking burp.

Chinese are conveying it good about to their host but the Canadians are taking it negatively. This is a

difference between intended and perceived meaning. Source of misunderstanding is the gap between

intended and perceived meaning.

The gateway arch in mono Louis height and width are same 192 m but it is just a vertical, horizontal

illusion that which cause people to see vertical lines longer as compare to horizontal lines. I took this slide

from encyclopedia. It shows that the height is taller than the width. It is just an illusion. As it is illusionary

to see such a thing and you get a different message.

Human Relations MGMT611

In this illusion you look on left the length of lines A, B, C, D. you will notice that lines A, B will look

longer than the line C, D although they are same in length. On right there is a "PONZO" illusion in which

you see red lines. The top red lines look larger than lower red lines, but all are same in real. These are

illusion. This is communication in the form of picture. You are going to make judgment on the basis of

truth or perception. As earlier a father shot his son because he perceived him to be a thief.

Any message or letter through which you communicate, you have to put yourself in others shoes to

understand the meaning others want to convey you.

How you develop perception: you develop perception through your experiences, circumstances and action.

All these things influence the process of perception development. Perception is a process of giving the

meaning, the things influence it. And which are the things that forces people to perceive the things in a

way, which are the factors that influence the process of perception. How it influences the way you look on

different things.

Bias in Perception

(Development of Perception)

Following are main factors that influence the process of perception development.

(1) Stereotype images

(2) Expectations

(3) Projection

(4) Interest

(5) Selective exposure

(6) Frame of reference

If you look on one by one, you can realize that how each one of them influence the process of perception

development. Now as I am a professor of sociology. If you ask that is there any structural flaw in this

building. I can not look at those flaws. I can look on people's behavior, communication pattern. I can look

and describe what is going on in society, but I can not look on the design of the building because the focus

of my knowledge is toward another direction. Structural engineer can look on these. This bias is due to my

education, my interest. I look on things from my own point of view. A structural engineer can not look on

human relations. The bias comes through your education, interest and life experiences. My experiences are

due to the teaching of sociology, by practicing of sociology. So I am so confident to look on the things in

term of social dynamics, human relationship, personal and interpersonal relationship. On the other hand a

technical man, an engineer who is in the lab all the time handling with the instruments may not know many

human dynamics as a person like me. We as a sociologist better understand the behavior of mobs, crowds

as compare to those who are working with instruments/ equipments.

Human Relations MGMT611

Therefore the meaning I am trying to deliver is that the perceptions vary because life experiences are

different. How this bias of different individual develops and how different perception of particular things

occurs.

(1) Stereotype Images

We have certain images about different things i.e. about caste. We ask about someone's caste because we

have certain image about that caste i.e. Sheikh, Rajput, Kashmiri etc. These images are stereotype images.

So that we have some knowledge or some information about that person. If some one came in contact

with us we want to know about that person's sex, age just to have a view that what type of life experiences

that person could have. Society tells us about those images. Different individuals with different age, sex can

have different life experiences, i.e. education, occupation, age and sex all create different type of images.

We make guess about peoples after knowing their qualification.

So stereotype images are very important in term of developing your biases about different peoples

according to your own perception.

(2) Frame of Reference

It looks on things with narrow focus. An individual works in an organization. That organization wants

more work from that individual for efficiency but the individual think that organization wants extra work

for that amount. Now that organization and individual both have different focus. Organization is looking

for efficiency. On the other hand if there is a union in that organization, it may be look on different things

like being exploited. Individual look on the things from there narrow frame of reference, narrow in the

sense that they have limited focus. They never look beyond; they only look within their frame of interest.

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