PERCEPTION:How They Work Together, Gestalt Laws of Grouping, Closure

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Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

LESSON 12

PERCEPTION

Perception may be defined as the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory

information. The word perception comes from the Latin capere, meaning "to take," the prefix per meaning

"completely." Methods of studying perception range from essentially biological or physiological approaches,

through psychological approaches through the philosophy of mind.

In short, perception is a very complex cognitive process that yields a unique picture of the world, a picture

that may be quite different from reality. In terms or organizational psychology, perception plays the role of

creating a picture for the employee based on his or her own thinking. Therefore, the same situations/stimuli

may produce very different reactions and behaviours from different employees. Understanding the

difference between this perceived image and the real image is imperative to understand behaviour of

employees. The perceptual image of the manager may be quite different from the perceptual image of the

employee, and both may be very different from reality.

Sensations and Perceptions

Sensations can be defined as the passive process of bringing information from the outside world into the

body and to the brain. The process is passive in the sense that we do not have to be consciously engaging in

a "sensing" process.

Perception can be defined as the active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting the information

brought to the brain by the senses.

How They Work Together

Sensation occurs when:

a) Sensory organs absorb energy from a physical stimulus in the environment.

b) Sensory receptors convert this energy into neural impulses and send them to the brain.

Perception follows:

a) The brain organizes the information and translates it into something meaningful.

You may look at a painting and not really understand the message the artist is trying to convey. But, if

someone tells you about it, you might begin to see things in the painting that you were unable to see before.

All of this is called Psychophysics

Psychophysics can be defined as, the study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological

experience. In order to measure these events, psychologists use Thresholds. Threshold is a dividing line

between what has detectable energy and what does not. For example - many classrooms have automatic

light sensors. When people have not been in a room for a while, the lights go out. However, once someone

walks into the room, the lights go back on. For this to happen, the sensor has a threshold for motion that

must be crossed before it turns the lights back on. So, dust floating in the room should not make the lights

go on, but a person walking in should.

Perceptual Organization

Organizing raw sensory stimuli into meaningful experiences involves cognition, a set of mental activities

that includes thinking, knowing, and remembering. Knowledge and experience are extremely important to

perception, because they help us make sense of the input to our sensory systems.

Gestalt Laws of Grouping

How people perceive a well-organized pattern or whole, instead of many separate parts, is a topic of interest

in Gestalt psychology. According to Gestalt psychologists, the whole is different than the sum of its parts.

Gestalt is a German word meaning configuration or pattern.

A major goal of Gestalt theory in the 20th century was to specify the brain processes that might account for

the organization of perception. Gestalt theorists, chief among them the German-U.S. psychologist and

philosopher, the founder of Gestalt theory, Max Wertheimer and the German-U.S. psychologists Kurt

Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, rejected the earlier assumption that perceptual organization was the product

of learned relationships (associations), the constituent elements of which were called simple sensations.

Although Gestaltists agreed that simple sensations logically could be understood to comprise organized

percepts, they argued that percepts themselves were basic to experience. One does not perceive so many

discrete dots (as simple sensations), for example; the percept is that of a dotted line.

Without denying that learning can play some role in perception, many theorists took the position that

perceptual organization reflects innate properties of the brain itself. Indeed, perception and brain functions

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

were held by Gestaltists to be formally identical (or isomorphic), so much so that to study perception is to

study the brain. Much contemporary research in perception is directed toward inferring specific features of

brain function from such behavior as the reports (introspections) people give of their sensory experiences.

More and more such inferences are gratifyingly being matched with physiological observations of the brain

itself.

Many investigators relied heavily on introspective reports, treating them as though they were objective

descriptions of public events. Serious doubts were raised in the 1920s about this use of introspection by the

U.S. psychologist John B. Watson and others, who argued that it yielded only subjective accounts and that

percepts are inevitably private experiences and lack the objectivity commonly required of scientific

disciplines. In response to objections about subjectivism, there arose an approach known as behaviorisms

that restricts its data to objective descriptions or measurements of the overt behavior of organisms other

than the experimenter himself.

Wertheimer (1923) studied some factors which influence grouping in images, the so called Gestalt Principles of

Perceptual Organization. He identified the following grouping factors

Figure and Background

Not only does perception involve organization and grouping, it also involves distinguishing an object from

its surroundings. Notice that once you perceive an object, the area around that object becomes the

background. Gestalt psychologists have devised ambiguous figure-ground relationships - that is, drawings in

which the figure and ground can be reversed - to illustrate their point that the whole is different from the

sum of its parts. The "figure and ground" illusion is commonly experienced when one gazes at the

illustration of a black vase the outline of which is created by two white profiles. At any moment one will be

able to see either the black vase (in the centre area) as "figure" or the white profiles on each side (in which

case the black is seen as "ground"). The fluctuations of figure and ground may occur even when one fails

deliberately to shift attention, appearing without conscious effort. Seeing one aspect apparently excludes

seeing the other.

Although such illustrations may fool our visual systems, people are rarely confused about what they see. In

real world, vases do not change into faces as we look at them. Instead, our perceptions are remarkably

stable. The Gestaltist's concept is "figure-ground segregation" is not only referring to foreground-

background, but also covers situations, e.g., in which you look through a window outside at a tree. The

frame of the window is then the ground the tree the "figure", although it is behind the "ground."

Proximity

Objects that are close to each other in physical space are often perceived as belonging together. This is the

law of proximity or closeness. In the figure below, proximity results in a grouping containing pairs of dots.

Similarity

This law states that objects that are similar are perceived as going together. For example, if I ask you to

group the following objects: (* * # * # # #) into groups, you would probably place the asterisks and the

pound signs into distinct groups.

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

Continuity of Direction

There is a tendency in our perception to follow a direction, to connect the elements in a way that makes

them seem contiguous or flowing in a particular direction We follow whatever direction we are led.

. Dots in a smooth curve appear to go together more than jagged angles. This principle really gets at just

how lazy humans are when it comes to perception.

Closure

There is a tendency in our perception to complete incomplete figures, to fill in gaps. And units forming a

closed figure tend to be perceived together. We actually tend to complete a form when it has gaps.

Simplicity/Pragnanze

We group elements that make a good form. However, the idea of "good form" is a little vague and

subjective. Most psychologists think good form is what ever is easiest or most simple. For example, what do

you see here: : > ) do you see a smiling face? There are simply 3 elements from my keyboard next to each

other, but it is "easy" to organize the elements into a shape that we are familiar with or which is meaningful.

Perceptual Selection

From a purely biological standpoint our senses are utilized to perceive the world around us and to help us

learn about it (Kerby, 1975). We take in stimuli from this world by tasting, touching, smelling, hearing and

seeing what's going on around us. Since stimulation comes at us from several directions at once, we have

the biological capability to physically 'tune out' most of what we do not need for the task at hand.

The human body receive a number of stimuli. The noise of the environment, the sound of the home

appliances etc. are a few of the stimuli affecting the senses plus the impact of the total environmental

situation. Sometimes the stimuli are below the person's conscious threshold, a process called subliminal

perception. Despite the presence of all these stimuli, only few are registered by the body. Why it happens

can be explained as follows:

The principles of perceptual selection involve two types of factors:

· Objective Factors

Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

· Subjective Factors

Objective Factors

Intensity

According to this principle, the more intense the stimulus, more its chances of being perceived. A loud

noise is more likely to be perceived as compared to a softer one.

Size

According to this principle, the larger the object, the more likely it will be perceived. The tallest building in a

bird-eye view of a city is more likely to be perceived than a smaller one.

Contrast

This principle states that external stimuli that stand out against the background will receive greater attention.

For example, warning signs on road with black colour on yellow background are based on the principle of

contrast.

Repetition

Repeated external stimulus is more attention getting than a single one. Advertisement efforts are often

based on same principle.

Motion Vs stationary

The motion principle says that people pay more attention to moving objects in the field of vision than they

will to stationary objects.

Novelty/familiarity

The novelty familiarity principle states that either a novel or a familiar external situation can serve as

attention getter

Subjective factors

Motivation and Habits

Motivation and habits play a vital role in determining the perceptions of individuals in an organization. In

most cases, however, learning motivation and personality lead to extreme individual difference s because of

the way the individual is set to perceive. People may make wrong perceptions or perceive the same stimulus

or stimulation in entirely different ways.

REFERENCES

· Ehrenstein, W. (1930). Untersuchungen über Figur-Grund-Fragen. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 117, 339-412.

· History of study of perception.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception#History_of_the_study_of_perception#History_of_the_stud

y_of_perception

FURTHER READING

· Theory of figure and ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure-ground

· Study of optical illusions and its principles:

http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/optical_illusions/intro_principles.html#gestalt_laws#gestalt

_laws

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