Perception: The process of interpreting the messages of our senses to provide order and meaning to the environment.

Component of perception: 3 components a perceiver, a target that is being perceived and some situational context in which the perception is occurring. Experience (from past), needs (perceive what we wish to perceive), emotions (anger, happiness, fear) affect perceptions. Perceptual defense: the tendency for the perceptual system to defend the perceiver against unpleasant emotions. Targets are ambiguous. Needs information to interpret, but perceiver cannot always use all the information provided by the target. Situational context affect what one perceives. Social Identity Theory Perception of themselves based on their characteristics and memberships in social categories. A model of Perceptual Process (Jerome Bruner) Perceiver seeks cues to resolve the ambiguity of the unfamiliar target. When Perceiver encounters some familiar cues (experience), she make crude categorization of the target (social identity theory). After categorization becomes stronger, the perceiver actively ignores or even distorts cues that violate initial perceptions. But this early categorization can be changed when these cues will be overcome the expectations that have been developed. Bruners model has 3 important characteristics of the perceptual process perception is selective: Perceiver do not use all the available cues Perceptual constancy (faithfulness): target is perceived in the same way over time or across situations. Perceptual consistency: tendency to ignore and distort cues in such a manner that they fit together to form a homogeneous picture of the target. We make the cues consistent to perceive the same image of that person. Basic Biases in Person Perception Primacy and recency effect: The tendency for a perceiver to rely on early cues or first impressions. The tendency for a perceiver to rely on recent cues or last impressions. Ex: signing a big contract today might be perceived as excusing a whole years bad sales performance. Reliance on central traits: Personal characteristics of a target person that are of particular interest to a perceiver. Tall , fat, attractive persons. Implicit personality theories: Personal theories that people have about which personality characteristics go together. Hardworking=honest, Projection: The tendency for perceivers to attribute their own thoughts and feelings to others. People from same background generally think similarly. Chairperson might think every member thinks the way he thinks, but when he takes votes, the result could be different.

Stereotyping: (race, age, gender, social class, religion, occupation) The tendency to generalize about people in a certain social category and ignore variations among them. But stereotype help us develop impressions of ambiguous targets, since we are usually pretty familiar with the people in our own groups. Ex: lawyers are not honest in Bangladesh. Businessman takes too much alcohol. But most stereotype is inaccurate. Attribution: perceiving causes and motives Attribution: the process by which causes or motives are assigned to explain peoples behavior. This is the process by which organization decide why the employee acted like that, and based on that they give punishments. Dispositional attributions: based on actors personality Situational attributions: based on environment Consistency cues: high consistency leads to dispositional attributions. When inconsistent its situational attribute. Consensus cues: attribution cues that reflect how a persons behavior compares with that of others. Distinctiveness cues: person engages in some behavior across a variety of situations. Professor not only stay in office hours but also attend student programs and functions. So he is generous about students and office hours. Attribution In action:

Fundamental attribution error Actor observer effect: Self serving bias: