Factors Influencing Perception

4 Key excerpts on "Factors Influencing Perception"

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  eBook - ePub

  Einstein, Tagore and the Nature of Reality

  • Partha Ghose(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  There are four general factors that together influence the perceptual set: expectation, motivation, emotion and culture. The role of expectation takes place within the context of memory, which is a field vast enough to be outside the scope of this chapter. The remaining factors are briefly taken up in this section. There is a large body of literature on the many fascinating ways in which our perceptual experience can be affected by each of these factors. Motivation Let us make an assumption to start our discussion. The reader of this chapter is carefully attending to all that is written here. In other words, attention is focused specifically on the stimulus (visual) to apprehend the material. But why? What is it that is driving the attentional system in this situation? This very question illustrates how an internal cognitive force compels us to behave in certain ways that in turn drives our actions, such as the purposeful allocation of attention to a stimulus or how much effort we are willing to exert toward an outcome. The process that guides our actions in this regard is referred to as motivation. Psychologists have known for decades that a wide range of motivational effects can influence perception. One is the effect of bodily needs such as hunger on how food products are perceived, where certain foods appear to be brighter in colour. 28 The upshot here is that an internal state (hunger) drives the motivation to eat something and in turn makes the food appear brighter or more alluring. Another finding comes from a classic study on how poor and rich children perceive the size of money. 29 When presented with images of coins, children from poor families significantly overestimated the size of every coin compared to children from well-to-do families. It has been argued that these results show that motivation can affect the perception of size when it comes to money

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  Perception and Perspective

  • Maher Asaad Baker(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • tredition

    (Publisher)

  Nurturing alignment between one's inner perceptual/perspectival orientations and the challenges of outer reality through continual refinement protects against defensiveness while promoting adaptability, resilience, and well-groundedness in changeable times. A balanced interplay fortifies psychological flexibility and existential health.

  Perception can be understood as the mental process through which we interpret and make sense of sensory information. It is our unique lens through which we perceive and understand the world. Our perceptions are influenced by a multitude of factors, including our upbringing, cultural background, personal experiences, and cognitive biases.

  Perceptions not only shape our understanding of the external world but also influence our internal landscape. They can color our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs, shaping our attitudes and behaviors. However, it is important to recognize that perceptions are not universal truths but rather subjective interpretations of reality.

  Perspective: The Power to Shift Our View

  Perspective, on the other hand, refers to the particular vantage point from which we view the world. It encompasses our beliefs, values, and assumptions, which in turn shape our perceptions. Our perspectives act as filters through which we process information, determining what we pay attention to and how we interpret it.

  While our perspectives are influenced by various external and internal factors, they are not fixed or immutable. We can expand our perspectives, to challenge our preconceived notions, and to adopt new ways of seeing. This ability to change perspectives is a powerful tool that can lead to personal growth and a more nuanced understanding of the world.

  When we open ourselves up to changing perspectives, we embark on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. By questioning our deeply ingrained beliefs and assumptions, we create space for new ideas and experiences to shape our understanding.

  Changing perspectives allows us to break free from the confines of our comfort zones and explore new horizons. It encourages us to engage in critical thinking, to seek out diverse perspectives, and to challenge our own biases. Through this process, we expand our intellectual and emotional capacities, fostering empathy, compassion, and open-mindedness.

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  eBook - ePub

  Consumer Behaviour and the Arts

  A Marketing Perspective

  • François Colbert, Alain d'Astous, Alain d’Astous(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Consumers are exposed to a considerable number of stimuli of all kinds. It is logically impossible for them to take everything into account, so they must be selective. The process of selecting information in the environment is either voluntary (e.g., a given person may choose to mute the ad appearing on her smartphone before the broadcast of a news report) or involuntary (e.g., when we hear a fire alarm being triggered). Beyond these two obvious conditions of selective perception, there also exists a process of automatic selection, that is, selection based on a person’s objectives, motivations, or psychic state. For example, a consumer who likes a particular brand will tend to perceive (and no doubt also remember) more positive information in that brand’s advertising than will a different person who is resistant to it. From this perspective, it becomes clear that perception is a fundamentally individual process.

  In this context, it is useful to distinguish between two types of factors that influence selective perception: structural and motivational (Krech and Crutchfield, 1972 ). Structural factors, the first type, refer to the physical nature of stimuli present in the environment in such great variety—for example, their size, intensity, colour, position in the field of view, order of presentation, degree of difference from surrounding stimuli (contrast), level of ambiguity, negativity, and concrete character. Their effects on selective perception are well documented in the literature on consumer behaviour (e.g., d’Astous et al., 2018 ). These effects are often predictable (e.g., the greater the stimulus, the more likely it is to be perceived), but sometimes unexpected (e.g., negative information has more impact than positive information).

  Motivational factors, the second type, refer not to the physical environment but to the characteristics of the consumer—more precisely, to their needs, preferences, and emotional state. For example, consumers who are in a good mood have a more positive perception of service quality (Chebat et al., 1995 ). The effects of motivational factors on consumer perceptions are also well documented in the literature (d’Astous et al., 2018 ).

  Perceptual organization

  The stimuli which surround consumers are not only numerous but are unorganized a priori as well. Anyone who has had the experience of arriving in a foreign country where the writing system and native language are unknown to them will certainly know the disorienting feeling of not being able to even distinguish or read, let alone understand, the written characters on signs and billboards. They are incomprehensible for that person, of course, but not for the local people. Individual written characters (i.e., graphemes) are grouped in our minds to form words, phrases, and ideas through the process of perceptual organization. It is also through the process of perceptual organization that successive sounds become melodies, or strokes of paint form an image conveying a personal meaning. Therefore, to understand perception, it is necessary to understand how the minds of consumers organize stimuli from their environment in a coherent way. One key to this understanding is a fundamental mental process called categorization

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  Understanding Customers

  • Chris Rice(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2    ‘There’s more to this than meets the eye…!’

  Perception

  Introduction

  As we saw at the end of the previous chapter, the perceived value and the perceived probability of satisfaction may be viewed as the key factors in determining customer behaviour. Implicit in this view of consumers is the importance of their perceptions and the fact that it is fundamental to much of what we call marketing practice and anything which might be titled ‘understanding customers’.

  Perception is the term used to cover those processes which give coherence, unity and meaning to a person’s sensory input. It involves all those processes that we use to select, sort, organize and interpret sensory data to make a meaningful and coherent picture of ‘our world’.

  Here is a very old sensory input: Figure 2.1 This immediately raises an important point. Although subject to the same sensory input, different people may perceive quite different things.

  As individuals we are continually subject to stimuli from our environment. These stimuli impinge on us via our senses, and it is the way that we interpret these sensory signals that determines the way we see our world. It is generally accepted that our perception of the world is not an absolute, determined by the physical stimulation received, but is both organized and dependent on a variety of other factors.

  Clearly, we need to consider the sensory channels, as they are the source of perception. We are all aware of the five senses:

  •  Hearing •  Sight •  Smell •  Taste •  Touch

  but it is usual for physiologists to point out that we do, in fact, possess a number of other senses, with pain being an obvious one, while other internal senses identify variations in temperature and the state of some of our internal organs (e.g. heartbeat). Another is our sense of balance, which is sometimes referred to as the vestibular sense, stemming from the position of the head and determined by the operation of the inner ear.

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