In the process of Perception, perceivers motivation, expectation, cultural knowledge, memories as well as values, beliefs and attitudes play an important role. People want to fulfill their needs and desires through various means. Experiments were conducted to examine the influence of hunger on perception. When hungry persons were shown ambiguous pictures, they were found to perceive them as pictures of food objects more often than satiated (non-hungry) persons.
Expectations or Perceptual Sets:
The expectations about what we might perceive in a given situation also influence our perception. This phenomenon of perceptual set, perceptual familiarization or perceptual generalization reflects a strong tendency to see what we expect to see even when the result do not accurately reflect external reality. For example, if your father return home from his office about 6.30PM., any knocking at the door around that time is likely to be perceived as the presence of father even if it is someone else.
Cognitive Styles:
- Cognitive style refers to a consistent way of dealing with our environment.
- It significantly affects the way we perceive the environment.
- There are several cognitive styles that people use in perceiving their environment.
- Field dependent: Field dependent people perceive the external world in its totality, i.e. in a global or holistic manner.
- Field independent: Field independent people perceive the external world by breaking it into smaller units, i.e. in an analytic or differentiated manner.
Cultural Background and Experiences: Learning experiences, exposure and cultural background influence our perception significantly.
- According to studies Eskimos have been found to make fine distinction among a variety of snow that we may be unable to notice e.g. Groups of Siberian region have been found to differentiate among dozens of skin colours of reindeers, which we would not be able to do.
- These studies indicate that the perceiver plays a key role in the process of perception. People process and interpret stimuli in their own ways depending on their personal, social and cultural conditions.