Perceptivity is in psychology...

October 10, 2018
Psychological terms
Sergey Kostyuchenko Zhelyazkov

Perceptivity is a reflection of reality situations, in which much depends on the individual. Such a display is necessary to form an image of objects. As for psychology, this phenomenon allows us to understand how a person sees a problem and what conclusions he draws as a result of communicating with people around him.

Basic Concepts

Perceptivity is a basic biological process of the human psyche. This function is acquired through the senses, which take part in the formation of a complete image of objects. Perception influences the analyzers through a series of sensations caused by perception.

It is also worth saying that perceptivity is a popular subject of study among psychologists. After all, such a reflection of reality allows us to form a full-fledged image of a certain phenomenon in the human mind.

Characteristics and properties of perception

This process has the following main indicators:

determination of individual parameters;
tactful data absorption;
formation of an accurate sensory image of perception.

Perception is in close collaboration with logic, thinking, attention and memory. It is determined by the stimulation of the individual and has an emotional coloring of a specific type.

Note 1

The main characteristics of perception are: structure, apperception, materiality, contextuality, rationality, awareness.

Varieties of perception

Psychologists classify perception depending on the sensory organ involved as follows:

Visual perceptivity is a type of perception in which the eyes make saccadic movements - this is how people process the information they have received. When eye movement stops, visual perception begins. This type of perception is influenced by previously developed stereotypes. For example, when a person is used to skimming a text, it will be difficult for him to fully process the material being studied. He may not notice large paragraphs, and if asked, he will say that they were not in the book.
Auditory perceptivity in psychology is a method of perception in which the melodic and phonemic system plays an important role. In this case, motor components are involved (they are separated into a separate full-fledged system - for example, singing a melody allows you to develop an ear for music).

There are also the following types of perception, in which information is reflected through understanding rather than through the senses. This is the perception of direction and distance of objects that are located at a distance, and the perception of time, that is, the sequence and speed of events.

The essence of the perception of time is that all people have different internal clocks. Often they do not coincide with circadian rhythms. To perceive such rhythms, a person uses additional analyzers.

Perceptual factors

Perceptual factors are divided into two types:

internal;
external.

External factors include: saturation, size, novelty, contrast, cyclicity, movement, discernibility, definability

Internal perception factors include:

stimulation, consisting of a visual examination by the individual of everything important and significant for her, of what she needs;
settings of personal perception, when a person’s expectations are reduced to seeing what was considered earlier in an identical situation;
experience that opens up the possibility of perceiving what is already familiar, studied during life, both by the individual himself and by other people;
specific character of a person, reflecting the individual specifics of perception. Each person has a different character, has a different temperament, which leads to different views on the same things, their different perceptions;
perception of one's own personality. Each person has his own prism of perception, reflecting his own perceiving mechanism.

Finished works on a similar topic

Course work Perception in psychology 460 ₽ Essay Perception in psychology 220 ₽ Test paper Perception in psychology 210 ₽

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Social perception

The development and emergence of human interaction is possible subject to mutual understanding. It is important that people understand not only those around them, but also their own personality. This is possible due to the processes of communication and relationships formed between people during the conversation. It is also important to consider the methods used to implement collaborative activities.

A mandatory component of communication is the process of cognition. This component is the perceptual aspect of communication. Scientists consider social perception to be an important and serious phenomenon in psychology. For the first time such a definition was introduced by D. Bruner (he formed a different view on human perception of various subjects).

The concept of perception in psychology

Definition 1
Perception is a cognitive process of direct active reflection by a person of various phenomena, objects, events, situations. If this cognition is aimed at social objects, then the phenomenon is called social perception.

The mechanisms of social perception can be observed every day in our daily lives. Mention of perception was already found in the ancient world. Philosophers, physiologists, artists, and physicists made a huge contribution to the development of this concept. But psychology attaches the greatest importance to this concept.

Perception is an important mental function of cognition, which manifests itself as a complex process of transforming and receiving sensory information. Through perception, the individual forms a complete image of the object, which affects the analyzers.

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Thus, perception is a unique form of sensory mapping.

Mechanisms of perception

Social perceptivity is the determination of the feelings of the interlocutor. The mechanism is simple: a person interacts with the interlocutor as a person (this is how his interlocutors perceive him).

Communication is an important mechanism. Its essence is that the interlocutors are trying to understand each other. Communication is mediated not only by the presence of a system for understanding information, but also by the characteristics of the interlocutor’s perception.

Communication implies the presence of interpersonal perception, that is, the development of first impressions about the interlocutor. Therefore, psychologists identify several mechanisms of perception, which are specific methods that involve assessing and analyzing the behavior of the interlocutor. The most common mechanisms are identification, causal attribution and social reflection.

As for casual attribution, its essence is in analyzing the reaction to the behavior of the interlocutor, that is, a person makes assumptions about why his interlocutor behaves this way and not otherwise. In this case, a person is based on the similarity of the interlocutor’s behavior with people with whom he communicated before, or uses his own experience.

Causal attribution uses the principle of analogy. It depends on how the person assessing the interlocutor’s behavior perceives himself. The essence of identification is that a person tries to understand the interlocutor, making an assumption about what his state of mind is, trying to put himself in the place of the one with whom he is communicating.

Identification allows you to understand the interlocutor’s values, behavior and habits. It has a special meaning in adolescence and youth, because during this period the relationship between the teenager (youth) and society is created.

Social reflection refers to the process and result of a person’s self-perception. The main tool of social reflection is a person’s understanding of his personal characteristics. He tries to understand how they are expressed in reaction to the behavior of the interlocutor, and how others perceive them.

The essence of empathy is that a person empathizes with the interlocutor and tries to understand his internal state. Empathy is based on understanding the experiences of the interlocutor, as well as understanding how he evaluates what is happening. Empathy is an important professional trait of a teacher or psychologist.

World of Psychology

A person cannot live in isolation. Throughout our lives, we come into contact with the people around us, form interpersonal relationships, entire groups of people form connections with each other, and thus each of us becomes the subject of countless and diverse relationships. How we treat our interlocutor, what kind of relationship we form with him, most often depends on how we perceive and evaluate our communication partner. When a person comes into contact, he evaluates each interlocutor, both in appearance and behavior. As a result of the assessment made, a certain attitude towards the interlocutor is formed, and certain conclusions are drawn about his internal psychological properties. This mechanism of perception by one person of another is an indispensable component of communication and relates to social perception. The concept of social perception was first introduced by J. Bruner in 1947, when a new view of the perception of a person by a person was developed. Social perception is a process that occurs when people interact with each other and includes the perception, study, understanding and evaluation of social objects by people: other people, themselves, groups or social communities. The process of social perception is a complex and branched system of forming images of social objects in the human mind as a result of such methods of people understanding each other as perception, cognition, understanding and study. The term “perception” is not the most accurate in defining the formation of an observer’s idea of his interlocutor, since this is a more specific process. In social psychology, such a formulation as “cognition of another person” (A.A. Bodalev) is sometimes used as a more precise concept to characterize the process of human perception by a person. The specificity of a person’s cognition of another person lies in the fact that the subject and object of perception perceive not only the physical characteristics of each other, but also behavioral ones, and also in the process of interaction, judgments are formed about the intentions, abilities, emotions and thoughts of the interlocutor. In addition, an idea is created of the relationships that connect the subject and object of perception. This gives even greater meaning to a sequence of additional factors that do not play such an important role in the perception of physical objects. If the subject of perception actively participates in communication, then this means the person’s intention to establish coordinated actions with a partner, taking into account his desires, intentions, expectations and past experience. Thus, social perception depends on emotions, intentions, opinions, attitudes, biases and prejudices.

Social perception is defined as the perception of a person’s external signs, comparing them with his personal characteristics, interpreting and predicting his actions and actions on this basis. Thus, in social perception there is certainly an assessment of another person, and the development, depending on this assessment and the impression made by the object, of a certain attitude in the emotional and behavioral aspects. This process of one person knowing another, evaluating him and forming a certain attitude is an integral part of human communication and can be conditionally called the perceptual side of communication.

There are basic functions of social perception, namely: knowing oneself, knowing one’s communication partner, organizing joint activities based on mutual understanding and establishing certain emotional relationships. Mutual understanding is a socio-psychological phenomenon, the center of which is empathy. Empathy is the ability to empathize, the desire to put oneself in the place of another person and accurately determine his emotional state based on actions, facial reactions, and gestures.

The process of social perception involves the relationship between the subject of perception and the object of perception. The subject of perception is an individual or group that carries out cognition and transformation of reality. When the subject of perception is an individual, he can perceive and cognize his own group, an outside group, another individual who is a member of either his own or another group. When the subject of perception is a group, then the process of social perception becomes even more confusing and complex, since the group carries out cognition of both itself and its members, and can also evaluate the members of another group and the other group itself as a whole.

There are the following social - perceptual mechanisms, that is, the ways in which people understand, interpret and evaluate other people:

Perception of the external appearance and behavioral reactions of an object
Perception of the internal appearance of an object, that is, a set of its socio-psychological characteristics. This is carried out through the mechanisms of empathy, reflection, attribution, identification and stereotyping.

Knowing other people also depends on the level of development of a person’s idea of himself (I am a concept), about a communication partner (You are a concept) and about the group to which the individual belongs or thinks that he belongs (We are a concept). Knowing oneself through another is possible through comparing oneself with another individual or through reflection. Reflection is the process of understanding how the interlocutor understands him. As a result, a certain level of mutual understanding is achieved between the participants in communication.

Social perception deals with the study of the content and procedural components of the communication process. In the first case, attributions (attributions) of various characteristics to the subject and object of perception are studied. In the second, the mechanisms and effects of perception are analyzed (halo effect, primacy, projection and others).

In general, the process of social perception is a complex mechanism of interaction of social objects in an interpersonal context and is influenced by many factors and features, such as age characteristics, perception effects, past experiences and personality traits.

Structure and mechanisms of social perception.

“Identification” (from the Late Latin identifico – to identify) is a process of intuitive identification, a subject’s comparison of himself with another person (group of people), in the process of interpersonal perception. The term “identification” is a way of recognizing an object of perception, in the process of assimilation to it. This, of course, is not the only way of perception, but in real situations of communication and interaction, people often use this technique when, in the process of communication, an assumption about the internal psychological state of a partner is built on the basis of an attempt to put oneself in his place. There are many results of experimental studies of identification - as a mechanism of social perception, based on which the relationship between identification and another phenomenon similar in content - empathy - has been identified.

“Empathy” is understanding another person by emotionally feeling their experience. This is a way of understanding another person, based not on the real perception of the problems of another person, but on the desire for emotional support of the object of perception. Empathy is an affective “understanding” based on the feelings and emotions of the subject of perception. The process of empathy is in general terms similar to the identification mechanism; in both cases there is the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to look at problems from his point of view. It is known that empathy is higher the more a person is able to imagine the same situation from the point of view of different people, and therefore understand the behavior of each of these people.

“Attraction” (from Latin attrahere - to attract, attract) is considered as a special form of perception of one person by another, based on a stable positive attitude towards a person. In the process of attraction, people not only understand each other, but form certain emotional relationships among themselves. Based on various emotional assessments, a diverse range of feelings is formed: from rejection, a feeling of disgust towards this or that person, to sympathy, and even love for him. Attraction also seems to be a mechanism for the formation of sympathy between people in the process of communication. The presence of attraction in the process of interpersonal perception indicates the fact that communication is always the implementation of certain relationships (both social and interpersonal), and generally attraction is more manifested in interpersonal relationships. Psychologists have identified different levels of attraction: sympathy, friendship, love. Friendship is presented as a type of stable, interpersonal relationship, characterized by stable mutual affection of its participants; in the process of friendship, affiliation (the desire to be in society, with a friend, friends) and the expectation of mutual sympathy intensifies.

Sympathy (from the Greek Sympatheia - attraction, internal disposition) is a stable, positive, emotional attitude of a person towards other people or groups of people, manifested in goodwill, friendliness, attention, admiration. Sympathy encourages people to have a simplified mutual understanding, to strive to get to know the interlocutor in the process of communication. Love, the highest degree of emotional-positive attitude, influencing the subject of perception, love displaces all other interests of the subject, and the attitude towards the object of perception is brought to the fore, the object becomes the center of attention of the subject.

Social reflection is understanding another person by thinking for him. This is the internal representation of another in the inner world of a person. Understanding what others think of me is an important aspect of social cognition. This is both knowing another through what he (as I think) thinks about me, and knowing myself through the hypothetical eyes of another. The wider the circle of communication, the more diverse ideas about how he is perceived by others, the more a person ultimately knows about himself and others. Including your partner in your inner world is the most effective source of self-knowledge in the process of communication.

Causal attribution is the interpretation of the behavior of an interaction partner through hypotheses about his emotions, motives, intentions, personality traits, reasons for behavior with their further attribution to this partner. Causal attribution determines social perception the more, the greater the lack of information about the interaction partner. The most daring and interesting theory of constructing the process of causal attribution was put forward by psychologist G. Kelly; he revealed how a person searches for reasons to explain the behavior of another person. Attribution results can become the basis for the creation of social stereotypes.

"Stereotyping" . A stereotype is a stable image or psychological perception of a phenomenon or person, characteristic of members of a particular social group. Stereotyping is the perception and evaluation of another person by extending to him the characteristics of a social group. This is the process of forming an impression of a perceived person based on stereotypes developed by a group. The most common are ethnic stereotypes, in other words, images of typical representatives of a certain nation, endowed with national appearance and character traits. For example, there are stereotypical ideas about the pedantry of the British, the punctuality of the Germans, the eccentricity of the Italians, and the hard work of the Japanese. Stereotypes are tools of preliminary perception that allow a person to facilitate the process of perception, and each stereotype has its own social sphere of application. Stereotypes are actively used to evaluate a person based on social, national, or professional characteristics.

Stereotypic perception arises on the basis of insufficient experience in recognizing a person, as a result of which conclusions are drawn on the basis of limited information. A stereotype arises in relation to a person’s group affiliation, for example, according to his belonging to a profession, then the pronounced professional traits of representatives of this profession encountered in the past are considered as traits inherent in every representative of this profession (all accountants are pedantic, all politicians are charismatic). In these cases, a predisposition manifests itself to extract information from previous experience, to draw conclusions based on similarities with this experience, without paying attention to its limitations. Stereotyping in the process of social perception can lead to two different consequences: to simplify the process of one person’s knowledge of another and to the emergence of prejudice.

Making a first impression

Psychologists identify the following factors that determine what impression is formed about a person:

Superiority is usually observed when a person who is superior to his interlocutor is also highly rated on other characteristics. The result is a revision of the person being assessed. This factor primarily depends on the insecure behavior of the observer. So in extreme situations, many people trust those whom they would not have dared to approach before.
Attractiveness explains the properties of perception for an interlocutor whose external characteristics are attractive. The main error of perception in this case is that people often overestimate the psychological properties of a person who looks attractive.
The “attitude” factor implies that a person perceives the interlocutor depending on how he treats him. The main mistake here is the tendency to overestimate the interlocutor who agrees with an opinion or is friendly.

Apperception

What is apperception in psychology? The term apperception was introduced into science by the researcher G. Leibniz.

He was the first to prove that perception is simply the perception of reality, and apperception is already conscious .

If we return to what has already been said, we can add that apperception, the highest level of perception, the maximum degree of which belongs to man.

The founder of experimental psychology W. Wund , based on this, proved that the main participation in this process is attention, as part of consciousness.

If attention is not focused on a particular object, awareness of it does not occur . But once the concentration of attention occurs, the process of apperception begins, which is the basis of conscious thinking.

According to Wund's theory of apperception, it was the ability to such perception that made a person human.

Perception inevitably depends on previous experience . Let's say that we generally consider many objects briefly, in passing, because we encounter them every day.

For example, in the morning we will not closely examine the kitchen table at which we have breakfast, or the scrambled eggs that are served for breakfast.

But if we try, say, an avocado for the first time, we will perceive this item differently .

Apperception refers to the dependence of perception on a person’s previous experience.

Moreover, this dependence can be expressed in completely different ways in relation to the same subject .

A child , seeing a circle, will only perceive it as a circle. A student will inevitably remember his geometry lessons. A motorist will immediately think of a wheel, and a circus lover will immediately think of an arena.

Professional skills are of great importance in the perception of the environment.

Let's say, a landscape designer, appearing in an unfamiliar garden or park, will immediately determine the components of this design, a gardener will note the well-groomed nature of the site and the moisture of the soil, and a child will look for places where they can play or hide.

Apperception is largely determined by a person's age and knowledge .

With age, the senses, which are the basis of perception, change, and not always in the direction of development. Hearing , for example, often gets worse with old age. But the child is born with good hearing.

Another thing is vision . It develops throughout a person’s life:

babies have poor eye movement control and have black-and-white vision,
at 2 months they consciously perceive depth and distance,
visual acuity during this period in children is already adequate to these indicators in adults,
at 3 months they acquire color vision,

Gradually, the child develops perceptual abilities, means that form an idea of the world around him, when its individual manifestations affect the human senses.

The following qualities can be considered the main indicators of such abilities at different stages of a child’s development:

volume of perception, it is measured by a certain number of objects that the subject can perceive, say, within one minute,
accuracy of perception, which means the correspondence between the image of an object formed in the mind and the object itself in reality,
completeness is the degree of such correspondence,
speed of perception, here the time of final formation of the image of the object in the mind is determined,
emotional reaction to the subject being studied.

Development of perceptual skills

According to psychologists, a simple smile is enough for friendly communication and mutual sympathy. To develop perceptual skills, psychologists recommend learning to smile. Facial expressions provide information about a person’s feelings, so if you learn to control them, you can improve your perceptual skills.

Ekman's technique will allow you to learn to distinguish manifestations of emotions and improve perception skills. Its essence is that three zones can be distinguished on the face (forehead and eyes, mouth and chin, and nose). It is in these zones that the manifestation of basic emotions (sadness, joy, fear, and so on) is noted.

Levels of the perceptual psyche

There are 2 levels of the perceptual psyche , lower and higher.

The lowest level is characteristic of arthropods and mollusks.

They have objective perception, dividing objects into useful ones and those that should be treated with indifference.

reach the highest level of the psyche. They have a highly developed nervous system, with much more diverse movement functions.

New properties and skills appear in their mental perception

manipulation of objects
generalization based on visual perception,
activity with the help of these objects, based on the generalization of all these factors.

During a child’s cognition of the world around him, perceptual actions go through several main stages:

The first stage involves getting to know the surrounding objects.
At the second stage, a certain restructuring of the sensory processes that occur in the sense organs occurs, children begin to learn the spatial properties of objects.
At the third stage, actions in the process of perception no longer play a major role, there are fewer of them, and recognition and comprehension of what is perceived takes on the main role.

A few words about role principles of behavior

Separately, it is worth mentioning the role principles of behavior. Thus, the role principle of perceptivity is that a person’s role should be positively perceived by his interlocutors, and he, in turn, should positively perceive their interests.

The principle of interactivity is that the fulfillment of a certain role by a person in society should simplify the regulation of the behavior of his interlocutors by influencing his goals and motives. Just like the role principle of perceptivity, it implies that the interests of the interlocutor must be taken into account.