Question

2)

a)Psychological influences on P.I. a. Context – explain how it influences perception

b. Expectations or schemas – explain what they are.

Describe an example of how they are involved in perception.

c. Motivations – given an example of how our motivations can influence P.I.

Answer 1

Perceptual interpretation is the process of processing meaning from raw sensory stimuli. It is determined by our perceptual set, which is a mental predisposition to percieve one thing and not the other. Our experiences, assumptions and expectations give us a perceptual set, which greatly influences what we percieve. We often percieve what we expect to percieve.

Schemas are the mental frameworks which contain information pertaining to certain situations or events that help us interpret nature of and happenings in those situations. It is a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. These are the expectations that we keep in regard to different situations or events. We act and percieve in various situations according to these schemas and expectations. Schemas hold all information together and are used to recignire new experiences - new events are identified by comparing them to existing schemas. They affect perception, encoding, memory recall and become self perpetuating.

Example of schema includes stereotypes, and social roles. For instance, stereotypes or social assumptions about Southerners that they are racists might make people percieve them as cruel and rude.

Motivation can influence our perception. Motivated reasoning refers to our judgements that are biased by self- serving motivations. Thus we are biased towards conclusions that confirm our existing beliefs or enhance our self- esteem.

For example, a person who is hungry is motivated to eat. Hence, his perception would become sensitive to food, that is, he will percieve food in his surroundings more often than he usually does. Another example would be of a researcher who is studying the non-verbal aggressive gestures in conversations. She is motivated to get good results in her research and collect a lot of data for it. So, she will start noticing even the slightest of signs of gestures in communication of people and can biasly label them as being aggressive signs.