Learning Goals
• Understand human perceptual processes and how people form impressions of others
• Describe types of perceptual error and their effects on information people get from their environment • Explain attribution processes and their effects on perception and attitudes
Learning Goals (Cont.)
• Discuss the nature of attitudes, how they form and how they change
• Explain the different views of human personality development
• Discuss some dimensions of personality and several personality types
• Recognize the effects of different cultures on perception, attitudes, and personality
Chapter Overview
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Introduction
Perception
Attitudes
Personality
International Aspects of Perception,
Attitudes, and Personality
• Ethical Issues in Perception, Attitudes, and
Personality
Perception, Attitudes, and Personality
Attitudes
Perception
Chapter 5
Personality
Perception
• A cognitive process: lets a person make sense of stimuli from the environment
• Affects all senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing • Includes inputs to person and choice of inputs to which the person attends
• Stimulus sources: people, events, physical objects, ideas
• Helps adaptation to a changing environment
Perception (Cont.)
• Perceptual process
– Target: object of the person’s perceptual process – Threshold: minimum information from target for the person to notice the target
• Detection threshold: point at which person notices something has changed in her or his environment
• Recognition threshold: point at which person can identify the target or change in the target
See text book Figure 5.1
Perception (Cont.)
• Perceptual process (cont.)
– Target emerges from its surrounding context sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly
– Quickly discriminate a high-contrast target from its background; an ambiguous target takes more time to see
– Contrast can come from the target's size, color, loudness, or smell
Perception (Cont.)
• Perceptual process (cont.)
– People attend more quickly to positively valued stimuli than to negatively valued stimuli
– Example: achievement-oriented employees notice announcements about promotion opportunities faster than an employee with less achievement motivation
Perception (Cont.)
• Perceptual defense: shield self from negatively valued stimuli
– Example: block out annoying sounds
– Organizational example: block some feedback from a supervisor or coworker when it is negative Perception (Cont.)
• Perceptual errors: mistakes in the perceptual process
– Perceptual set
• Beliefs about a target based on information about the target or previous experiences with it
• Information about the target from any source
• Beliefs act like instructions for processing stimuli from the target
Perception (Cont.)
• Perceptual errors (cont.)
– Stereotype: beliefs and perceived attributes about a target based on the target’s group
– Examples
• American university students: energetic and spontaneous • Russian university students: orderly and obedient
Self-Perception:
A View of Self
• Self-perception: process by which people develop a view of themselves
• Develops from social interaction within different groups, including groups encountered on the Internet
• Self-perception has three parts: selfconcept, self-esteem, self-presentation
Self-Perception:
A View of Self (Cont.)
• Self-concept:
– Set of beliefs people have about themselves
– View people hold of their personal qualities and attributes – Factors affecting a person's self-concept
• Observations of behavior
• Recall of past significant events
• Effect of the surrounding social context
Self-Perception:
A View of Self (Cont.)
• Self-concept (cont.)
– Observations of behavior
• People see their behavior, and their situation, in the same way they see the behavior of other people
• Person believes the behavior occurred voluntarily: concludes the behavior happened because of some personal quality or attribute
