Different types of perception and ways to improve your interaction skills

Perception affects the way we view everything around us, but how does it actually work? What makes us see things differently from others? How does perception affect our behavioral processes? 

Perception is very important in understanding human behaviour, because every person perceives the world and approaches the situations differently. When we buy something, it is not because it is the best, but because we take it to be the best for us. The word perception comes from the latin capere, meaning “to take”, the prefix per- meaning “completely”.

Perception can be defined as our recognition and interpretation of sensory information. Perception as a process where we take in sensory information from our environment and use that information in order to interact with our environment. Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment. 

In simple words we can say that perception is the act of seeing what is there to be seen. But what is seen is influenced by the perceiver, the object and its environment. The meaning of perception emphasises all these three points.

Perception includes all those processes by which an individual receives information about his environment—seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling. 

The study of these perceptual processes shows that their functioning is affected by three classes of variables:

– the objects or events being perceived;

– the environment in which perception occurs;

– the individual, doing the perceiving.

1.1 How does perception actually happen, works?

The process of perception is a sequence of steps that begins with the environment and leads to our perception of a stimulus and action in response to the stimulus. It occurs continuously, but you do not spend a great deal of time thinking about the actual process that occurs when you perceive the many stimuli that surround you at any given moment.

For example, the process of transforming the light that falls on your retinas into an actual visual image happens unconsciously and automatically. The subtle changes in pressure against your skin that allow you to feel objects occur without a single thought.

The perceptual process allows you to experience the world around you and interact with it in ways that are both appropriate and meaningful.

Perception is not a single process that happens spontaneously. Instead, it is a series of phases that take place in order for the correct appreciation of stimuli to occur. It is an active process, where we have to select, organize and interpret the information from the sensory systems sent to the brain:

• Selection: The number of stimuli we are exposed daily exceeds our capacity. For this reason, we need to filter and choose the information we want to perceive. This selection is done through our attention, experiences, necessities and preferences.
• Organization: Once we know what to perceive, we need to gather the stimuli in groups in order to give them meaning. In perception, there is synergy, since it is an overall recognition of what is perceived and it can’t be reduced to separate stimuli characteristics. According to Gestalt principles, stimuli organization is not random but instead it follows specific criteria.

Interpretation: When we have organized all the selected stimuli, we then proceed to give them meaning, completing the perception process. The interpretation process is modulated by our experience and expectations.

Perception is the cognitive process by which the brain interprets information collected by the sensory organs. Your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands don’t draw conclusions about the senses they experience – they collect data and send it to the brain to process and interpret the data.

Visual perception: It is the brain’s ability to interpret what is seen. This encompasses everything from spatial orientation to texture, color, and subject matter. Visual perception is necessary for reading, writing, movement, and much more.

Visual perception does not have anything to do with the function of the eyesight, such as how clearly a person sees. It refers to the brain’s ability to create conclusions from the information absorbed through the eyes.

Hearing perception: or also known as auditory perception (or auditory perceptual skills) is the brain’s ability to interpret sound that is heard through the ears. It is about attaching meaning to the sound.

Tactile perception: also called touch perception, is the brain’s ability to understand (perceive) information coming from the skin, particularly the skin on the hands. The hands are being used to register sensory information and then the brain uses this information to guide the hands during an activity.

Olfactory perception: is the type of perception that we use to differentiate smells from our environment and give them specific meaning by using our olfactory system. Have you ever noticed that, if you have a cold and your nose is blocked, food all seems to have much the same taste? It refers to the olfactory perception.

Gustatory perception: taste (formally known as gustation) is the ability to perceive the flavor of substances, including, but not limited to food. Humans receive tastes through sensory organs concentrated on the upper surface of the tongue, called taste buds. Traditionally, there have been four primary tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and saltiness.

There are also other senses that allow us to perceive things such as balance, time, body position, acceleration, and the perception of internal states. Many of these are multimodal and involve more than one sensory modality. 

Social perception: is another important type of perception or the ability to identify and use social interactions about people and relations. It is a way of how people form impressions and opinions for other people’s unique personalities, thus, it is an element of social cognition.

Social perception is one important component of social competence and social success including peer acceptance and friendship). In addition to social perception, socially competent people must have knowledge of social rules, roles, routines, and scripts in their social lives.

Social perception includes lots of processes, combinations of various perception types, actions/reactions, senses aimed at successful interaction and building social relations with other people in the social environment.

Many factors influence the way in which we perceive the world and the people in it. Our different cultural backgrounds, life experiences, and personal values, all affect our interactions and relations with others, as do our personalities, our social skills, and our styles and approaches to dealing with people and challenges.

• The perception creates our experience for the world around us and  it allows us to act within our environment. 
• Perception is very important in understanding human behavior because every person perceives the world, reacts and creates opinions differently. 

• This important cognitive ability is essential to our daily lives because it makes it possible to understand our surroundings. 
• Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us, it allows us to act within our environment.
• Perception is important because it keeps us connected to the world. 
• Perception helps to keep us alive. We are able to sense danger by a constant key mediator between stimulus and response. Perception allows us to see danger from a far, helps us discriminate and identify objects we encounter everyday.
• Our knowledge of the world is derived from our perceptions, and an individual’s ability to navigate his/her surroundings or engage in activities of daily living such as walking, reading, watching TV, and driving, naturally relies on his/her ability to process sensory information.
• The more developed your social perception skills, the better you are at putting yourself in other’s shoes, helping you to communicate with them effectively. 
  Take a moment to think of all the things you perceive on a daily basis. At any given moment, you might see familiar objects in your environment, feel the touch of objects and people against your skin, smell the aroma of a home-cooked meal, and hear the sound of music playing in your next-door neighbor’s apartment. All of these things help make up your conscious experience and allow you to interact with the people and objects around you.
  

4.1 Use of different perception strategies

This important cognitive ability is essential to our daily lives and It’s possible to train and improve perception with cognitive stimulation and by using different strategies:

– Knowing oneself accurately
One of the powerful ways to minimize perceptual distortions is to know yourself. One should be aware of his or her values, beliefs and prejudices. 
The more accurately a person understands himself, the more accurately he can perceive others. 
– Empathize with others
Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings of others. Empathy is a natural phenomenon and develops within an individual by itself. By emphasizing with another person, one can perceive the other individual more aptly.
– Have a positive attitude
Attitudes have a strong and long lasting effect on perception. If one holds a negative attitude towards someone or something, our perception is undoubtedly going to be distorted. We should make an effort to have a positive attitude and should not let our personal biases crop in and hinder the perceptual powers.
– Postpone impression formation
It is a natural tendency of the human beings to form impression about something or someone very quickly. Just in a meeting or two we draw conclusions about someone. Forming judgments with such limited information is very wrong. A much better strategy is to postpone the impression formation until more information about the individual and the situation is collected.
– Communicating openly
Much of misperception in an organisation arises due to inadequate communication or one way communication. Utmost care should be taken, so that the message reaches the right person, at the right time and in the right manner. Proper transmission of information followed by appropriate feedback can help minimize perceptual distortions.
– Comparing one’s perception with that of others
Another useful strategy to reduce perceptual errors is to compare one’s own perception with the perception of the other person about the same object. By sharing perceptions we come across different points of views and potentially gain a much better understanding of the situation and the object.
– Introducing diversity management programs
If we talk of today’s organisations, they are very much diverse and heterogeneous. The workforce is so diverse with language differences, religious differences and cultural differences that it becomes really hard to make the employees work together in an effective manner. 
For this purpose, an important strategy is to use training programs which may help in communicating the value of diversity on one hand and help the participants become acquainted with one another and provide them room to mix with one another with different backgrounds.
You can learn to improve perception if you actively question the accuracy of your perceptions, seek more information to verify perceptions, talk with the people about whom you a forming perceptions, realize that perceptions of people need to change over time, and check perceptions verbally before you react.

4.2 Tips and Tricks to improve perception skills

“Think it over”

Think about a time when you failed to notice something around you because your attention was focused elsewhere. If someone pointed it out, were you surprised that you hadn’t noticed it right away?

There are some things that you can do that might help you perceive more in the world around you—or at least focus on the things that are important:

Pay attention. Perception requires you to attend to the world around you. This might include anything that can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. It might also involve the sense of proprioception, such as the movements of the arms and legs or the change in position of the body in relation to objects in the environment.

Make meaning of what you perceive. The recognition stage is an essential part of perception since it allows you to make sense of the world around you. By placing objects in meaningful categories, you are able to understand and react appropriately.

Take action. The final step of the perceptual process involves some sort of action in response to the environmental stimulus. This could involve a variety of actions, such as turning your head for a closer look or turning away to look at something else.