Learning from Perception- Session 1 and 2

Perception decides our point of view towards anything or anyone. In our first lesson we leant about
perception. People differ on the basis of their perception. The same thing can be perceived in
different manner and mean something different to the observer. In an experiment conducted in our
class, we were given a picture of a lady and we were asked to guess the age of the lady. The guesses
ranged from 15 to 90. After an unadulterated picture of the same was shown to us, we were able
to identify that both the upper and lower ranged guesses were correct. We were provided with
adulterated pictures to perceive the picture as they wanted us to perceive.

A discussion on the effect of motives, experience, and interests has on perception. In another
example, madam told us the story of 6 blind men trying to figure out how to control an elephant
of which none of them knew what an elephant looked like. They all touched different parts of the
elephant and perceived differently. The man who grabbed its tail, thought it to be as a rope like
animal: The man who toughed the legs, perceived it to as a pillar: The man who touched around
the trunk thought it to be something else and so on. According to their perception they strategized
on how to control it and all of them failed. This is a very fine example how individual perception
differs from a group. We learnt not to form opinion based on perception as it can deceive.

We learnt how we were brought up in the perception of the society which molds our thoughts
whenever we try to associate something with it. In an exercise we were asked to guess the surgeon
where most of the students failed to associate the surgeon to his mother. Most of the bias in our
thoughts are due to our perception which associates some of the activity to some things.

Perception play a very important role in decision making process. Their relevance can also be seen
in the workstation. In Hawthorne experiment, a group of people were kept in harsher environment
for experiment but still were more productive. Their perception of themselves being specially
selected made them more productive. Thus all attempts must be made to make the employees feel
special so as to improve their productivity. Employers must understand the needs of the employees.
If they start to walk in the shoes of the employees and do the requisite to make them feel relaxed
and special they can maximize the output and in process the productivity of the organization. One
should try to understand others perception to have a harmonious system.