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.

Principles of Learning

Learning principles are the proving guidelines in the learning process. The application of these principles assists managers, training instructors and individuals working in the organization to gain knowledge of how to learn and get its benefits to influence behavior. The major principles of learning are as follows:

1. Principles of Reinforcement: Reinforcement is the attempt to develop or strengthen desirable behavior by either bestowing positive consequences or withholding negative consequences. Positive reinforcement results from the application of a positive consequence following a desirable behavior. Bonuses paid at the end of successful business years are an example of positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement results from withholding a threatened negative consequence when a desirable behavior occurs. For example, if the boss imposes a penalty on an employee for coming late is an example of negative reinforcement. 
2. Principles of Punishment: Punishment is yet another way of changing human behavior. It is inverse of the reward. The purpose of punishment is to eliminate or weaken an undesirable behavior. It is done in two ways. One way to punish a person is through the application of a negative consequence following an undesirable behavior. For example, a football player who is excessively offensive to the referee in the football ground (undesirable behavior) may be rejected from the game (negative consequence). The second way to be used to punish the person is through the withholding of a positive consequence following in undesirable behavior. For example, a sales representative who makes few visits to companies and in turn, make sales below quota (undesirable behavior) is given less commission (positive consequence).
3. Principles of motivation: Whether it is learning in the classroom or workplace, if people themselves are not sufficiently motivated to learn for goal achievement and development, there will be no productivity, career development and other forms of development. However, one can not be forced to learn. Learning needs motivation on the part of the learner in order to exert a high level of effort.
4. Principles of practice: The most useful way to learn is implicit learning i.e. the experiential way we acquires information about relationships in the environment without any conscious attempt to do so. Implicit learning occurs when we directly interact with the environmental forces, competitors, customers, supervisors and so on. One popular form of practice learning is action learning.
5. Principles of feedback: There is a set of feedback rules to enhance learning. Examples are, be specific, non judgmental, express your own feelings etc and so forth. With the application of these sets of effective feedback, one can learn in the organization too.
6. Principle of Generalization: The principle states that the learned behavior should be generalized i.e. to respond of two different stimuli in a uniform manner. Learners must transfer what they have learned to actual working environment if not such learning would be useless for the individual as well as for the organization. For example: the skill learned by an employee in training workshop has to be generalized at actual work floor.
7. Principle of Learning Practice: The principle states that learning beings rapidly then plateaus. It states that at the beginning phase of learning, the learning is at faster rate, then as the time increases, the rate of learning will decline until a plateau is reached.

Learning principles are the guidelines that help a manager to gain maximum efficiency in a learning situation. These guidelines are to be applied in content of the task and the level of the person. These principles are:

Principles of Learning

1. Knowledge of Results

The knowledge regarding one’s own performances is an essential condition for learning. This feedback of performance enables the learner to know where he stands and to initiate corrective action if any deviation from the expected goals has taken place. In practice a trainee without information will usually try to generation his own knowledge of results that is select a goal he thinks is, correct and adjust his performance accordingly.

2. Meaningfulness of the Subject

A definite relationship has been established between learning and meaningfulness of the subject learnt. More meaningful the material, better would be the learning. Acquisition of nonsense syllabus proceeds more slowly than that of prose or poetry. On a broader scale, a programme of learning where each task makes meaning, trainers do have a certain techniques that are meaningfulness for trainees.

3. Schedules of Learning

Schedules of Learning seem to be true both for simple laboratory task and for highly complex tasks. Actually, schedules of learning can be manipulated in following three different ways as:

• Duration of practice session,
• Duration of rest session, and
• Positioning of rest session

4. Motivation

Motivation is something that moves a person to action, and continues him in the course of action initiated. Motivation is related in several ways to learning. The extent to which valued rewards follow high performance, for example, will affect an employees’ willingness to work hard in the future, and the cause and effect linkage needs to be clear. That is, employees should recognize that certain behaviors (such as hard work) cause certain outcomes (desired rewards). Similarly, if rewards do not follow performance, the employees may be less inclined to work had in future.

5. Reinforcement

Reinforcement is the fundamental condition of learning. Without it, no measurable modification of behavior takes place. The term reinforcement is very closely related to the psychological process of motivation. It may be defined as anything that increases the strength of response. Reinforcement strategies can be employed by managers to influence the behavior of employees viz,

• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement
• Extinction, and
• Punishment

6. Learning Curve

Learning is a continuous process. The principle of learning curve involves the time factor and the repeated efforts in order to gradually increase the strength of the response. This especially true when the behaviors to be learnt are comparatively complex such as skills that are learnt and improved by practice. For example, a person who wants to learn typing would execute awkward strokes in the beginning, but under guided supervision, time and conscious repeated efforts, the skill is improved and as the person gains confidence, the rate of typing speed increases until a maximum rate possible for him is reached. The limiting factor may depend upon motivation, co-ordination or other physical constraints. This means that as the practice time increases, the degree of skill also increases. However, the rate of increase in the degree of skill is higher in the beginning but decreases with time until it reaches zero and the person has obtained the maximum skill.

You may also like this:

• Meaning of Learning
• Significant of Learning in Organization
• Concept of Human Resource Development
• Scientific Management Theory
• Bureaucracy: Theoretical Perspective

Effects of Perception on Individual Decision Making

Individual can perceive differently for the same subject in different manner, which lead to the best solution. Every decision requires interpretation and evaluation of information. Data are typically received from multiple sources and they need to be screened, processed and interpreted, which data, for instance, are relevant to the decision and which are not? The perceptions of the decision maker will be the solution for that question.

Since, individual decision making is a crucial part of organization behavior. For instance, top managers determine their organization's goals and about the launching of product or services, the middle level managers on the other hand determine production schedules, select new employees and decide how pay raises are to be allocated and so on. Similarly, even non-managerial employees have to make a lot of decisions which decide the future of the organization. It affects the organization's long-term plans, its quality performance and day-to-day operation. These all show that perception plays a vital role in individual's decision process.

Alternative Decision Making Models
The main approaches to decision making may be studies in the following three dimensions:
1. Classical approach: This is also known as prescriptive, rational or normative model. It specifies how decision should be made to achieve the desired outcome. Under this approach, decisions are made rationally and are directed toward a single and stable goal. It is applied in certainty condition in which the decision maker has full information relating to the problem and also knows all the alternative solutions. It is an ideal way in making a decision. It is rational in the sense that it is scientific, systematic and a step-by-step process. This model assumes the manager as a rational economic man who makes decisions to meet the economic interest of the organization. This model is based on the following assumptions:

• The decision maker has a clear, well-defined goal to be achieved.
• All the problems are precisely defined.
• All alternative courses of action and their potential consequences are known.
• The decision maker can rank the entire alternatives on the basis of their preferred consequences.
• The decision maker can select the alternative that maximizes outcome.

The classical model is supposed to be idealistic and rational but it is rarely found in practice. Therefore, this approach has many criticisms. It is known by normative theory rather than descriptive theory. Generally, managers operate under the condition of risk and uncertainty rather than the certainty condition. In many situations complete goal stability can never be realized due to continuous environmental changes. IT is applied only in the close system and not practicable in real life situations where environment is changing rapidly.

2. Behavioral approach: This approach is also known as descriptive approach and administrative model. The theory is proposed by Herbert A. Simon, a well-known economist, in which he attempts to explain how decisions are made in real life situations. Managers have limited and simplified view of problems because they do not have full information about the problems, do not possess knowledge of all possible alternative solutions, do not have the ability to process environmental and technological information and do not have sufficient time and resources to conduct an exhaustive search for alternative solutions to the problems. Therefore, this model is based on two concepts:

• Bounded Rationality: Simon believed that managers are bound by limited mental capacity and emotion as well as by environmental factors over which they have no control. Real life challenges, time and resource limitations, political pressure and other internal and external factors force the manager to work under the condition of bounded rationality. Therefore, the manager cannot take a perfectly rational decision. 
• Satisfying: It is the selection of a course of action whose consequences are good enough. Bounded rationality forces managers to accept decisions that are only 'good enough', rather than ideal. Such managerial decisions become rational but within the limits of managers' ability and availability of information. Managers make decisions based on alternatives that are satisfactory. The examples of satisfying decisions are fair price, reasonable profit, adequate market share, proper quality products etc.

3. Implicit Favorite model/Retrospective approach: This approach is applicable in non-programmed decisions. In this approach, the manager first chooses an alternative solution to the problem and highlights its strength, and compare with other alternatives and then identifies its drawbacks. This is done with a view of proving that the alternative selected by him is the best solution to the given problem. However, another alternative which seems to be similar to the implicit favorite is short listed and is taken as second confirmation candidate. This approach can be observed in the purchase of various favorite items in which a customer gives arguments in favor of his choice on the basis of norms such as price, quality, appearance, easily availability, after-sales service etc. to reject other items of same utility.

Internal Factors Affecting Perceptual Selectivity

The internal factors affecting perceptual selectivity are mentioned below:

1. Needs and Desires: An individual's perception about stimuli is influenced by, inter alia, his needs and desires at that time. Perception varies depending upon variations in his/her needs and desires from time to time. 
2. Personality: Closely related to the needs and desires is the personality of the perceiver, which affects what is attended or perceived in the given situation. As mentioned earlier, research studies suggest that secure individuals tend to understand or perceive others as warm and self accepting individuals perceive themselves as liked, wanted and accepted by others.
3. Experience: Experience and knowledge serve as basis for perception. While one's successful experience enhances his/her perceptive ability, failure erodes his/her self-confidence. Successful experience also helps perceiver understand stimuli with more accuracy.

If you want the detail about the External Factors Affecting Perceptual Selectivity, >> Click Here>>