Week 2 - Seeing & Perception

What is perception?

Perception is defined as “process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.” (Robbins & Judge, 2009, p.32). According to Barry (2002, p.91-92), perception also defined as the process where human uses the information of external sensory and combine it with other internal conscious and unconscious workings of the brains so that a person could make sense of the world.

Why is it different from seeing?

“Seeing” is considered as the mental picture viewed within the sight range, appear visually in our eyes and the person must be aware of what he/she is seeing.(Baker, 1955, p.379-380). The term of “seeing” involves the usage of the eyes for the sight sense. This shows that perceiving is different from seeing. Perception also different from seeing because a person is able to see something with their own eyes but it doesn't mean that he/she is able understand and identified on what he/she is seeing. In addition, perception can also occur even without using the sight sense. For example of the picture below:

The three persons thinks differently while they touching the elephant. The first one touches the elephant's nose and perceived it as a snake. The second person touches the elephant's body and perceived it as a wall. The third person touches the elephant's tail and perceived it as a rope. Therefore, perception can occur through different senses; touch, smell, sight, hear and taste.

The way we see also affected by what we perceive, as quoted "The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe." (Berger et al., 1972, p.8). As example, the picture below shows that how people appearance also may led to false perception. Therefore, perception occur in many ways depends on how a person perceive on something or someone on what he/she is seeing. Here we can see clearly how perception is different from seeing.

References

Robbins, S.P. & Judge, T.A. (2009). Essentials of Organizational Behavior. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Barry, A.M. (2002). Perception and Visual Communication Theory. Journal of Visual Literacy, 22 (1), 91-106

Baker, M. J. (1955). Seeing. International Phenomenological Society, 15, 379-380.

Berger, J., Blomberg, S., Fox, C., Dibb, M., Hollis, R. (1972). Ways Of Seeing. London and New York: Penguin Books