Cultural Perception and Values
THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION
Since the way we behave is dictated by the way we perceive the world, it is important for us to understand the nature of perception and how our perception depends on our culture experiences. This section defines perception, describes the process of perceiving, and delineates some cultural influences on perception.
Perception Defined
Human perception is an active process by which we sue our sensory organs to sense the world. Using the nervous system and our brains, the process allows us to recognize and identify the existence of all kinds of stimuli and then evaluate and interpret what we identify. In other word, perception is a process by which we make what we sense into a meaningful experience by selecting, categorizing, and interpreting internal and external stimuli to form our view of world. Internal stimuli include our nervous system, desires, interests, and motivations, External stimuli are the sensations that come from the way we see, smell, touch, hear, and taste.
Stages of the Perception Process
The process of perception is thus composed of three stages: selection, categorization, and interpretation.
Selection
Selection is a major part of the process of converting the environment stimuli into meaningful experience. As we face a large variety of stimuli every day, we are only capable of perceiving part of them through a selective process. For example, simply ask yourself what you see when you enter the classroom every day? You may see John or Mary are there, you may see the board, the chairs, and the light. But do you see other things such as the dress your classmates wear, the hair style they have, and those different kinds of posters on the wall? Do you see that your classmate is of African or of European lineage? Obviously, we can only perceive parts of the things that surround us. The partiality of our perception is the origin of misunderstanding in interactions, especially when people are from different cultural backgrounds with diverse perception systems.
Selective perception involves three steps: selective exposure, selective attention, and selective retention (Klopf, 1995).
First, we usually selectively expose ourselves to certain kinds of information that will reinforce the decision we are making. Of course, selective exposure also refers to our avoidance of other kinds of information that is not consistent with our intention. For example, when plan to buy a car, we naturally expose ourselves to the automobile section when we open the morning newspaper.
Second, selective attention dictates that we can only pay attention to one piece of our environment. If our budget and preference only allow us to purchase an American-made car, when we examine the automobile section in the newspaper, we do not pay attention to cars made by Sweden or Yugoslavia. As students, if we are worried about our grade and an exam, we will be inclined to read those materials relating to the subject area that will be tested in class. Selective exposure and attention are influenced by our needs, training, expectations, and attitudes. For example, a hungry person will seek exposure and pay attention to food-related messages to satisfy his or her need. A communication major will be exposed and pay more attention to information about media. If we expect human nature is good, we will focus on the positive attributes of our acquaintances. Or, if we believe in social Darvinism (the “survival of the fittest”), we will try to find ways to gain
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advantage over others. Moreover, we tend to focus on events that reinforce our existing attitudes.
Third, because of selective retention, we can only retain some of the stimuli we perceive. Most of them are perceived, processed, and then forgotten. Basically, we tend to remember messages that are pleasant and favorable to our own image; that are consistent with our beliefs, attitudes, and values; and that are likely to be used in the future.
Categorization
When we selectively perceive stimuli from the external environment, we must arrange them into meaningful patterns. In the categorization stage of perception the social and physical events or objects we encounter immediately have shape, color, texture, size, and intensity. For example, when people are asked what a human being is, some may describe it from the perspective of skin color, others from that of race or nationality. If we close our eyes and think what our university library is like, we experience an organized environment with an internal and external structure. Two characteristics of human perception emerge at this stage. First, the categorization process gives human perception structure. We always translate the raw stimuli of the external world into structured experiences. Second, the process shows that human perception is stable. After we organize the stimuli into patterns they become durable. For example, the height of a person will not shrink two or three feet because