1. Perceptual Processes
Doran Rocks
A Brief Overview

2. Doran Rocks!

3. A story

4. The Perceptual Process
When we attend to, organize, and interpret the information that we receive through our senses.

5. Two Types of Cognitive Processing
Automatic processing
Fast, subconscious
Heuristics: we rely rules of thumb for how something is to be viewed based on experience
Conscious processing
Slow, deliberative approach
We examine and think about the stimuli

6. Step One: Attention and Selection
Becoming aware of objects and events from the senses
Passive: We simply record stimuli
Active: We purposely select, organize, and interpret what we pay attention to.
Don’t end a sentence with a preposition!
We purposely select, organize, and interpret for what we pay attention.

7. Step One: Attention and Selection
Needs are those things we consciously or unconsciously feel we require to sustain us biologically or psychologically.

8. Step One: Attention and Selection
Interests are those things that prompt our curiosity but are not essential to sustain us biologically or psychologically.

9. Step One: Attention and Selection
Expectations are those things we notice because we have grown accustomed to noticing them.
Finished files
are the result
of years of scientific
Study combined with the experience of years

10. Fooling our Senses: Automatic Processing
Brain Games

11. The Organization Process: We Organize
By Simplicity: the brain reduces complex stimuli into recognized forms
By Pattern Recognition: the brain organizes information into recognizable patterns or systems of interrelated parts
Context: We cannot separate the input we receive from the surrounding messages.

13. Methods for Organizing Inputs
Figure (the focal point of your attention) and Ground (the background)

14. The Spinning Dancer

15. Methods of Organization (cont.)
Closure
Proximity
Similarity

16. By Perspective

19. Image Memory: After Image

20. Magic Video

21. Interpretation
The process of assigning meaning to the information that has been selected and organized

22. Duel Processing in Perception
Our social realities are determined by a combination of our automatic and cognitive processing.
Just like with automatic processing, we are sometimes wrong in our initial assessments.
Primacy Effect
Recency Effect
Uncertainty Reduction Theory
We want to reduce uncertainty to relieve tensions
This allows us to evaluate, predict, and control interactions.

23. Impression Formation: How we form impressions of others
Physical Appearance
Age
Sex
Height
Skin Color
Dress
Attractiveness
Implicit Personality Theory
We assume that certain character traits go with others.
Assumed Similarity
We assume that because someone shares a similar characteristic as us, they must also share others.

24. Making Attributions
Attributions are the reasons we give for our own and other’s behaviors.
We attribute behaviors as internally or externally motivated
Has to do with the perception of control
Situational
Dispositional

25. Perceptual Processing Errors
Stereotyping – associating your beliefs about a group to a person who you identify as a member of that group
Race, religious affiliation, sex, age, political party affiliation, etc.
Prejudice – not paying attention to how an individual may vary from that of the group.
Discrimination – acting differently towards a person based on prejudice
Selective Perception – inaccurately paying attention only to what we expect to see or hear and ignoring what we don’t expect
Halo effects – thinking a person has a whole set of related personality traits when only one trait has actually been observed

26. Perceptual Processing Errors
Forced consistency – interpreting conflicting different perceptions of another person so our interpretation of what we see remains consistent
Projection – thinking that someone who is like us in one respect will share other characteristics and attitudes
Fundamental attribution error – ascribing others’ negative behavior to their dispositions while ascribing our negative behavior to the situation 26

27. Improving Social Perceptions
Question the accuracy of perceptions.
Seek more information.
Use conscious processing.
Realize that perceptions change.
Use perception checking.