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Perception and How People Perceive the Same Thing Differently

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Perception refers to the process by which our senses gather information from the environment and our brains make sense of that information. It can also be defined as the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information in order to make sense of the world around us (Bratton et al, 2010, p129). Another definition is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to environment. (Robbins & Judge, 2009)

Perception does not just happen; it can be characterized as inherently selective, subjective and largely automatic rather than conscious. These are the features of the perception process which is the dynamics of receiving, organizing and interpreting external stimuli.

Perception begins when environmental stimuli are received through our senses that are the hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing and feeling. In all instances, these stimuli are too much for the brain to store and so most of the stimuli are screened out, selective attention is given to the rest based on the part of environment to which we want to attend which are organized and interpreted based on various information and because this process is automatic rather than conscious, we are usually not too aware that we have been selective. People do perceive the same situation differently because they might select different things to focus their attention on in a situation and since the brains function on what is being focused on, the same situation would be perceived differently. The resulting perceptions influence our emotions and behavior towards those objects, people and events.

In addition to the selective attention, another fundamental feature of perception is that the interpretation or meaning we attach to the external information we receive is strongly influenced by our existing knowledge; our ideas, experiences and backgrounds

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