The Perceptual Process

The perceptual process is something we engage in on a daily basis. It allows us to experience the world around us and also gain information about core properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival. The perceptual process involves  four stages which includes; Sensation, organization, interpretation  and, evaluation. The process is done with a speed so fast, its often not noticeable to us, and by the time we get to the evaluation stage, we pass judgement on what we perceive. 

There are several influences that could impact our perceptual process and of the several, there are three that stands out the most to me. The implicit personality theory, self fulfilling theory and the most effective of them all, stereotype are influences that I personally believe has more of an impact in my life. 

The implicit personality theory is the common expectations that we generate about a person after something of their central traits are known to us. The most common example would be the notion that happy people are also friendly. We are all guilty of this, as we all engage in similar assumptions. I often assume intelligent people are arrogant, quiet people are timid and aggressive people are stupid. with the implicit personality theory, it is very easy for one's assumption to end up being a fallacy.

Self fulfilling prophecy is mainly driven by expectation -which could be positive or negative- about a situation or event that affects our behavior in such a manner that it causes that expectation to be fulfilled. A classic example will be, if we start our day with the thought of having a bad day, such thinking may refine our actions, which could end up fulfilling our predictions. I recently had a Soccer game on Friday and prior to the game, I had this positive attitude towards it -I truly believed we could win- and being the captain of the team, I gave a wonderful motivational speech to my teammate which in my own opinion boosted the morale of my team and we ended up winning the game. 

Stereotype simply put, is to believe unfairly that all people or things with particular characteristic are the same. In my own opinion, this is the most influential when it comes to the perceptual process. We tend to classify people into various groups with race, gender, sex , and culture being the most common. Stereotypes could come across as being positive or negative. For instance saying black people are good at sports, men are strong and do all the work, women aren't as smart as men, girls are not good at sports, all Jews are greedy, French people are the best lovers etc are all stereotypes. I am African however, I have lived in England for a reasonable amount of years. I observed that most English and American people has this false picture of what Africa truly is. Just like Marshall Tebu revealed in his blog post, they seem to think we Africans, are a bunch of poor, unkempt, and Illiterate group of people that lives in the jungle, all of which is very wrong and untrue.

Writing this blog post has been very interesting as it shows how active we are in regards to the perceptual process. The Perceptual process is continuous and I believe It is something that we are inevitably going to do for the rest of our lives