Perception

Perception

As human beings we always tend to make quick judgments every time. But sometimes those judgments might not right always. For an example, when we meet a person or a group of people for the first time, we have a tendency to judge their qualities or personalities based on their behavior and talk. In other words, we can identify this based on the “first impression”. And once we made our decision, at times it is hard to change what we decided even though we can see the truth. It does not take too much time to form the first impression. It takes place most probably on first few minutes, which is approximating four to five minutes of the first meeting.

Our text book, “An Experimental Approach To Organizational Development” by Donald R. Brown, includes a key word called “Perception”. According to the book the definition of perception is “the process individuals use to give a meaning to their environment by interpreting and organizing sensory impressions; however, what one perceives can be substantially different from reality.” The book also indicates, an individual’s past experiences, position, rewarding systems, degree of stress, amount of group pressure and type of role are the key factors that involves in forming perceptions. Perception is made up of Selective perception, interpretation and closure. Selective perception means, most of the time we likely to agree the ideas or facts that please or fulfill our thoughts. And also we do not pay attention to the facts that we don’t want to pick up. Next is interpretation which refers, we try to give a meaning or an explanation to a situation based on our past experience. The final factor is closure. Closure defines; we tend to conclude the perception by filling the any missing figures.

A past experience of mine, reminds me an example for perception. When I used to word before, my manager wanted to hire a new employee for our team. After interviewing several candidates,