Here is a compilation of term papers on ‘Perception’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short term papers on ‘Perception’ especially written for school and college students.
Term Paper on Perception
Term Paper Contents:
- Term Paper on the Definition of Perception
- Term Paper on the Elements of Perception
- Term Paper on the Principles of Perceptual Selection
- Term Paper on the Factors Influencing Perception
- Term Paper on the Other Aspects of Perception
- Term Paper on the Features of Perceiver
- Term Paper on Individual Perception
- Term Paper on the Advantages of Perception
Term Paper # 1. Definition of Perception:
Perceptual process is of utmost significance in understanding human behaviour. This is another important element of workplace behaviour. People behave on the basis of what is perceived rather than what actually is. This way, everybody is having his distinct set of thought process which perceives differently.
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Managers must learn to expect perceptual differences among their employees, accept people as emotional beings and manage them is individual ways. The study of divergence between the perceptual world and the real world is of great significance for human relations and organisational behaviour.
“It is the process of receiving, selecting, organizing, interpreting, checking and reacting to sensory stimuli or data”.
Perception is a process “by which individuals organise and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environments.” Kolasa has defined perception as the selection and organisation of material which stems from the outside environment at one time or the other to provide meaningful entity we experience.
This definition has two basic elements:
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(1) Perception is a process of selection or screening which prevents us from processing irrelevant or disruptive information.
(2) There is organisation implying that the information which is processed has to be ordered and classified in some logical manner which permits us to assign meaning to the stimulus situations.
Every individual in an organisation tends to recognize the information, assemble it and compare it with earlier experience. He depends on the entire history of events which have taken place in his life span. It is the organisation of inputs through a dynamic inner process and it is influenced by external environment.
The main point of difference between sensation and perception is that sensation is primarily concerned with basic elementary behaviour basically determined by psychological operations, but perception is a highly complex and comprehensive process.
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It involves a complicated interaction of selection, organization and interpretation of data. Though it relies upon the senses for obtaining raw data, the process tends to amalgamate, improve and entirely change these data due to its complexity of interaction. It adds as well as deducts from the sensory world.
Term Paper # 2. Elements of Perception:
Perception has five elements.
They are:
1. Stimulus,
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2. Registration,
3. Interpretation,
4. Feedback and
5. Reaction.
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(1) Stimulus:
Perception initiates with the presence of a stimulus situation. In all organisations the supervisor is providing the stimulus situation for the worker’s perception.
(2) Registration:
This involves psychological mechanism which includes sensory and neural. The physiological capabilities of individual to hear and see, determines his perception.
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(3) Interpretation:
This is a highly crucial element in perception. Other psychological processes assist in perceptual interpretation like work environment, motivation, personality and learning determine an individual’s interpretation of a stimulus situation.
(4) Feed Back:
This is important for interpreting the perceptual event data. In work environment the psychological feed-back is likely to affect a subordinate’s perception, may be in the form of a variation the superior’s behaviour.
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(5) Reaction:
The last element in perception is reaction or response which may be in the overt or covert form.
Perception of an individual is responsible for rapid functioning or slow functioning of an employee based on the work setting and the opinion of an employee.
These elements indicate the complexity of perception of these elements, interpretation forms the core of perception.
Term Paper # 3. Principles of Perceptual Selection:
Every individual is subject to many stimuli which demand attention of the individual but they can sense only a limited amount of stimuli at a time. In responding to the stimuli the human beings are selective. They select from among those physical stimuli and tend to open their channels of absorption to others.
Thus, they set themselves to respond to a particular stimulus or a group of stimuli. Further some events may creep into an individual’s perceptual life and distract his attention. So in perception there are two important concepts.
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They are:
(a) Attention
(b) Set.
These two are to be discussed.
The term attention encompass all aspects of the selective process. The term set means specific factors or processes within the individual himself which has a bearing on what he attends to. These two terms are to be differentiated for better understanding.
The differences are:
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(a) Attention is a term of wider input whereas set is of lesser input.
(b) Attention is external while set in internal.
(c) Attention is readiness to perceive but set is related to readiness to respond in some way.
Term Paper # 4. Factors Influencing Perception:
External Factors:
The factors which influence attention and set are classified into two groups known as external and internal.
The external factors which attract the attention are:
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(a) Intensity
(b) Size
(c) Contrast
(d) Repetition
(e) Motion and
(f) Novelty ant familiarity.
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(a) Intensity:
The intensity of stimulus implies that more intense the stimulus the more is the likelihood it will be perceived. Examples- A strong odour, a bright colour, a loud noise, a thick smoke with attract the attention compared to a light odour, a light colour, a soft sound.
(b) Size:
Any odd size attracts attention. A taller dog as well as a smaller dog will attract attention because of their size. There may not be any positive correlation between the size and the quantum of attention.
(c) Contrast:
In contrast principle, the external stimuli will receive more attention. This can be explained with the following illustration. In silk sarees, generally, the colour of the body and that of the border are of contrasting dark colours will be preferred by the purchasers. Further any change in the existing environment to the liking of the customers will definitely attract attention.
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(d) Repetition:
According to this principle that a repeated external stimulus attracts more attention than the one that occurs only once. Example- Advertisements in T.V. and radio.
(e) Motion:
Any object in motion will attract more attention than an object which remains stationary, that is why the advertisers make use of moving objects in their campaigns.
(f) Novelty and Familiarity:
For attracting attention of individuals it is always advisable to use a novel object in a familiar situation or a familiar object in a novel situation. In organisations that is why they make use of job rotation. This not only increases the attention but also improves the potentials of the employees.
Internal Factors:
The internal factors which affect the individual are called as internal set factors.
The internal set factors are:
(a) Habit
(b) Motivation and interest
(c) Learning
(d) Role of organization and specialisation.
(a) Habit:
Habits die hard. From cradle to grave individuals are influenced by habits. This may be in relation to one’s eating, dress, behaviour and interaction. This is something which crones from within. There are several instances in life settings where individuals tend to react with the right response even to wrong signals.
(b) Motivation and Interest:
Motivational factors are more enduring than the situational factors. They increase the individual’s sensitivity to those stimuli which he considers as relevant to the satisfaction of his needs because of his past experience with them.
There are stimulus factors which cause a set to perceive provided motivational factors are constant. The best examples for motivational factors are hunger and thirst. An individual who is thirsty will try to quench it. An individual with a strong need for affiliation will try to be in the company of his co-workers whenever possible.
(c) Learning:
Learning may play a crucial role in the development of a perceptual set. Authorities have used a wide variety of commonly used illustrations to clearly demonstrate the impact of learning on perception. An individual is first shown a clear, unambiguous picture of a beautiful young woman and then a similar pose of an old woman in ambiguity will always report about what he has seen first.
(d) Role of Organisation or Specialisation:
Organisation gives the design for organisation structure as the bones give to the human beings. It creates organisational structures and relationships between people who occupy different roles.
This results in specialisation of performance by employees. All organisations value specialisation. The specialty of the individual is identified by his capacity to perform his functions with effortless ease. This will further result in the individual focusing on his area only. So his perception is tuned to the area he is concentrating.
Term Paper # 5. Other Aspects of Perception:
Divergence of perception between employees and management is a major cause of industrial conflicts. So to minimise the divergence the management should try to have an effective perceptual set in organisations.
So the organisation is to consider the following aspects:
(1) The personality of the perceiving person is to be taken care of as individuals may tend to perceive the same stimulus situation in a different way.
(2) The central nervous system of human beings does not simply register raw sensory in a passive form. It does something to them by creating definitive organisation. Illusions, false interpretation or misleading organisation of sensory events are the best examples of the active role of central nervous system.
(3) There are several kinds of primitive perceptual organisations which include grouping, closure, figure-ground effect, constancy phenomena.
(4) Perceptual grouping means the tendency to group several stimuli together into a recognizable pattern. This principle is basic and inborn.
(5) The closure principle is that a person will sometimes perceive a whole when one does not exist. The individual’s perceptual processes will close the gaps that are unfilled from the sensory inputs.
(6) The figure ground principle means simply that perceived objects stand out separately from their general background. For example, in reading books the reader perceptually organizes these stimuli into recognizable patterns, namely, words and numbers.
(7) The principle of perceptual constancy gives a person a sense of stability in a changing world. This enables an individual to have constant behaviour in a tremendously variable world. In the absence of constancy, work becomes chaotic and disorganised. Without perceptual constancy the shape, sizes, colours of the objects would keep on changing making the job almost impossible for the employees.
(8) Perceptual Defense:
The perceptual defence may an influential role in the understanding of employee management relations. The term perceptual defense means a mental block or refusal to recognise a stimuli or situational events in the context of the fact it is culturally unacceptable or threatening. Studies conducted by researchers have concluded that people learn to avoid perceiving certain conflicting, threatening or un-expectable aspects.
(9) Social Perception:
Social perception is directly concerned with how one individual perceives other individuals and how one gets to know others. This aspect plays an important role in organisation behaviour.
The characteristics of the perceiver and perceived is given by research findings reveal the profiles of both perceiver and perceived.
Term Paper # 6. Features of Perceiver:
(a) Self realisation makes it easier to assess others accurately.
(b) One’s own characteristics affect the characteristics one is likely to see in others.
(c) Human beings who accept themselves are likely to be able to see in others.
(d) Accuracy in perceiving others is not a single skill.
The features given above greatly influence how a person perceives others in the environmental situation.
Characteristics of the person being perceived are:
(a) The status of the person perceived will greatly influence other’s perception of the person.
(b) Visible traits of a person perceived will greatly influence other’s perception of the person.
(c) Person being perceived is placed into two common categories known as status and role.
These characteristics of the perceiver and perceived suggest the extreme complexity of social perception. Organisational perceptions must realise that the perception of an individual is influenced by their own characteristics and by the characteristics of others as well. These attributions that people make of others play a vital role in their social perceptions and resulting behaviour.
Term Paper # 7. Individual Perception:
Every individual interacts with other individuals and establishes relationship with others. The maintenance of these relationships necessitates knowledge of social behaviour which involves constant judgement about other individual’s needs, emotions and dunking. Research has identified that there are three important factors which influence perception. They are perceiver, person perceived and the situation.
The perceiver’s features which are crucial in understanding an individual’s perception of others are:
(a) An individual’s own social and personality features which cause a divergence.
(b) The complexity of an individual’s perception of other individuals is also important.
The features of the person perceived is influenced by the person with whom one interacts and the interpersonal situations and features like physical, social, historical and personal. Physical features include gestures, posture, facial expressions, colour of the skin. The social features are voice and appearance. Historical features like sex, age, occupation, religion, race, etc. largely influence individual’s evaluation of others. Personality features also affect an individual’s evaluation and interaction.
Individuals tend to differ in their description about others. The way in which people interact increases or decreases the complexity of the situation. Some people are tricky, ruthless. Some are friendly, aggressive, charming, etc. Based on these complexity increases or decreases. Further the performance of the group and the situation which is confronted by them also influence one’s behaviour.
In short, the features with which an individual’s perception associated with are:
(a) Situations confronted or to which individuals are exposed.
(b) Individual’s perception about others.
(c) Personality of individual.
(d) Culture and learning exert a wide impact on judgments regarding current needs and feelings with physical, social and environmental factors. The study of perception facilitates in providing a right insight as to why individuals behave and interact in a particular way.
Term Paper # 8. Advantages of Perception:
Perception is an interpretation of human behaviour. Every individual while perceiving the world provides a picture which expresses his own individual view of reality. The study of divergence between perceptual world and the real world is of great significance for human relations and organisational behaviour.
Its study results in the following merits:
(a) Perception is a product of environmental factors, as such, it facilitates to identify situations which improve the behaviour of employees.
(b) Managers assume that subordinates are always keen for promotions but all employees are not keen on promotions. Though there is divergence, management should by to achieve unanimity to achieve the desired results. So it facilitates performance.
(c) The main reason for industrial conflict arise from divergence between the perceptual world of the parties involved. So management is to take efforts to minimise the magnitude of the conflicts by proper assessment of perceptions and their degree of divergence. So it facilitates resolving of conflicts.
(d) Proper assessment of perception will promote better understanding between employees and management.