Perceptual Process, a sequence starts with stimuli

The perceptual process is a sequence of steps that starts with the stimuli that happen in our surroundings and leads through nerve transmission through peripheral and central nerves and the brain and results to our perception of what is going on. It also includes our resulting action to the original stimulus. So, the perceptual process involved when we go outside a room on a rainy day is that the stimulus from the environment – the fat that it is raining and cold and we are getting we – is recognized by our senses. Our eyes, ears, cold receptors and touch receptors all send signals to the brain, which works out that it is raining. The perceptual process consists of following components.

Perceptual Process

1. Environmental Stimuli

Perception initiates with the presence of the stimulus situation. In other words, the first stage in the process of perception is the presence of a stimulus or situation which confronts the human being. This confrontation may be with the immediate sensual stimulation or with the total physical and socio-cultural environment. Strictly speaking, the presence of a stimulus is not the start of perception process; however it cannot start in the absence of it.

2. Sensations

Sensation is the second step of perception process. It may be described as the response of a physical sensory organ. The physical senses are vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. These sense are bombarded by stimuli continuously, both internal and external to human body and reactions to these sense take place because of these. In other words, sensation is the immediate and direct response of the sensory organs to stimuli. Human sensitivity refers to the experience of sensation. Sensitivity to stimuli varies with the quality of an individual’s sensory receptors (e.g. eye sight or hearing) and the amount of intensity of the stimuli to which he is exposed. For example, a blind person may have more highly developed sense of hearing than the average sighted person and may be able to hear sounds that the average person cannot. These examples show that sensation deals with a elementary behavior that is determined by physiological functioning.

3. Attention

Although we are capable of sensing many environmental stimuli, we attend to only a very small portion of them and ignore the rest. Numerous following factors influence the attention process.

• Size: The larger the size of a physical object, the more likely it is to be perceived.
• Intensity: The greater the intensity of a stimulus, the more likely it is to be noticed. A loud noise, such as shouting, is more likely to get attention than a quiet-voice.
• Frequency: The greater the frequency with which a stimulus is presented, the greater the chances we will attend to it. This principle of repetition is used extensively in advertising to attract the attention of buyers.
• Contrast: Stimuli which contrast with the surrounding environment are more likely to be selected for attention than stimuli which blend with the environment. The contrast can be created by color, size or any other factor that distinguishes on stimulus from others.
• Motion: Since movement tends to be perceived than a stationery object, an animated sign, for example, attracts more attention than a fixed bill board.
• Change: Objects are more likely to be noticed if they display some form of change. An object with lights blinking on and off, such as a Christmas tree or sign, attracts more attention than one without blinking lights.
• Novelty: A stimulus that is new and unique will often be perceived more readily than stimuli that have been observed on a regular basis. Advertisers use the impact of novelty by creating original packaging or advertising messages.

4. Perception

Perception is the last step of its process. The process of perceptions involves organizing and interpreting the sensations we attend to visual images, sounds, orders and other sensations which do not simply enter our consciousness as pure, unpolluted sensations. Perception is an important mediating cognitive process through which persons make interpretation of the stimulus or situation they are faced with. As we attend to them, we consciously try to organize or categorize the information into a meaningful perception that will somehow make sense to use.

Although we would like to think of ourselves as open-minded unbiased, and non-judgmental in our perceptions, the situation make it impossible, we are forced to draw quick inferences based upon very sparse information.

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Meaning of Sensation, Emotion and Cognitive Dissonance

Meaning of Sensation

Sensation can be defined as individual capacity to sense the world. Each and every motivated individual senses the world, interprets it, responds to it and reacts to the results of his own responses. Every individual has capacity to sense cold and hot, pressure etc. But how he/she senses these things or in which way he senses these things affect his behavior. As for example, if an individual senses too cold, his behavior is wants of warmth cloths. Similarly inside the organization, now the employee senses the environment and mould the behavior of the employee. Sensation has three factors to work. They are:

• Stimulus 
• Receptor 
• Nervous system 

Stimulus are the inputs that are sensed and received by the receptor organ and transmitted to the nervous system for further processing to draw out the meaningful result.

Sensation may be described as the response of a physical sensory organ. The physical senses are vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. These senses are bombarded by stimuli continuously, both internal and external to human body and reactions particular sense organ take place because of these. In other words, sensation is the immediate and direct response of the sensory organs to stimuli. Human sensitivity refers to the experience of sensation. Sensitivity to stimuli varies with the quality of an individual’s sensory receptors (e.g., eye sight or hearing) and the amount of intensity of the stimuli to which he is exposed. For example, a blind person may have a more highly developed sense of hearing than the average sighted person and may be able to hear sounds that the average person cannot. These examples show that sensation deals very elementary behavior that is determine by physiological functioning. Sometimes, confusion arises between sensation and perception as both are the cognitive processes and both are beads of the same string. Sensation involves detecting the presence of a stimulus whereas perception involves understanding what the stimulus means. For example, when we see something, the visual stimulus is the light energy reflected from the external world and the eye becomes the sensor. The visual image of the external thing becomes perception when it is interpreted in the visual cortex of the brain. Thus, visual perception refers to interpreting the image of the external world projected on the retina of the eye and constructing a model of the three dimensional world. Sensation itself depends on energy change or differentiation of input. Regardless of the strength of the sensory input, provides little or no sensation at all.

The distinction between sensation and perception may be made as follows:

1. The person is comparatively inactive in sensation whereas he becomes more active in perception because he tries to know the meaning of sensation in this process.
2. Sensation is a simple mental process whereas perception is comparatively a complex mental phenomenon. Perception is a complex process because it is affected by a number of variables.
3. Sensation may be considered as a part of perception because the former is the first stage of the latter. The first experience of stimulation is sensation. Only our organs and nerves are active in sensation but all our body becomes active in perception.
4. By sensation, the person just becomes cautious of the quality of stimulus; he just becomes aware of the stimulus like color, form, shape, smell, and meaning of the stimulus. By perception, he derives meaning of these.

Meaning of Emotion

Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. They are object specific. In other words, emotions are reactions to an object. It is a neural impulse that moves an organism to action. Emotions have three components:

1. Cognitive Component

Cognitive component includes the conscious experience of emotions, and the way we ‘label’ our emotions.

2. Physiological Component

Physiological component includes emotional arousal. Different emotions have different arousal. For example, fear, anger and sadness increase heart rate, anger raises blood pressure etc.

3. Expressive Component

Expression component includes body language (gaze, gestures, posture and walk) and para-language (intonation, fakes smile versus genuine smile, etc.)

There are four related terms (affect, emotion, feeling and mood) that need to be differentiated from each other. ‘affect’ is a generic term that covers a broad range of feeling that people experience. It covers emotions, feelings and moods. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed to someone or something. In other words, emotions are specific and intense, and are a reaction to a particular event. Feelings are personal and biographical factors that arouses from any event or from any object. Finally moods are feelings that tend to be less intense that emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus. In other words, moods are diffused and unfocused. It is useful to understand the concept of primary and secondary emotions.

1. Primary Emotions

Primary emotions are those that we feel first, as a first response to a situation. Thus, if we are threatened, we may feel fear. When we hear of a death, we may feel sad. They are our instinctive responses. Typical primary emotions include fear, anger, sadness, and happiness (although these can also be felt as secondary emotions). The problem sometimes with primary emotions is that they disappear as fast as they appear.

2. Secondary Emotions

Secondary emotions appear after primary emotions. They may be caused directly by them for example, where the fear of a threat turns to anger that fuels the body for a fight reaction. They may also come from more complex chains of thought. The secondary emotions give a picture of the person’s mental processing of the primary emotion.

Meaning of Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the state experienced by individuals when they discover inconsistency between two attitudes they hold or between their attitudes and their behavior. Here, dissonance means an inconsistency. It occurs most often in situations where an individual must choose between two incompatible beliefs or actions. In other words, cognitive dissonance refers to any incompatibility that an individual might perceive between two or more of his/her attitudes or between his/her behavior and attitudes. The greatest dissonance is created when the two alternatives are equally attractive.

The concept or theory of cognitive dissonance was first developed by Leon Festinger in 1957. According to this theory, individuals tend seek consistency among their cognition (i.e. opinions, knowledge and beliefs). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors, something must change to eliminate the dissonance. There are three ways to eliminate dissonance.

1. Change the dissonant beliefs so that they are no longer inconsistent.
2. Reduce the importance of dissonant beliefs.
3. Add more consonant beliefs that outweigh the dissonant beliefs.

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Sensation differ from Perception

Concept of Attribution Theory

The perception of people differs from our perceptions because we make inferences about the actions of people that we don't make about inanimate objects.

Attributions theory has been proposed to develop explanations of the ways in which we judge people differently, depending on what meaning we attribute to a given behavior. Basically, the theory suggests that we observe an individual's behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused.

Sensation differ from Perception

People usually mean sensation and perception the same. But, there is a clear cut distinction between the two. In simple words, sensation may be described as the response of a physical sensory organ to some stimuli. Our physical senses i.e. vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste are continuously bombarded by numerous stimuli that are both inside and outside of our body. Our physical sensory organs often react to these stimuli. The reaction of our eye to color, ear to sound, nose to odour and so on are the examples of our every day sensations. What these examples indicate is that sensation activates the perception. In this way, sensation serves as a raw input to be processed so as to make sense out of them to perceive the environment or stimuli around us.

Perception is much more than sensation. Perception depends upon the sensory raw data, yet it involves a cognitive process that includes filtering, modifying or even changing these sensation raw data to make sense out of them. In other words, the perceptual process adds to or/ and subtracts from the sensory world. A simple instruction may be looking at an object. We see by means of our eyes. Remember, it is not our eyes but what we see and tend to see in its totality, with a figure and form against a background. Thus, we find that eyes activates to see an object i.e. sensation and what is being seen i.e. perception. In this seeing process, though both sensation and perception are involved, yet perception process overcomes sensation process to make what is being seen. Following example will help to understand the difference between sensation and perception more clearly.

1. You buy a  two wheeler that you think is the best, but not one the engineer says is the best.
2. A subordinate's answer to a question is based on what he heard his boss says, but not on what the boss actually said.
3. The same professor may be viewed by on student as a very goods professor and by another student of the same semester as a poor professor.
4. The same item may be viewed by the manufacturing engineer to be of high quality and by a customer to be of low quality.