Distorted Perceptions

1972 Words4 Pages

No two people see the world in exactly the same way because of differences in their fields of experience. The way people see the world, also known as a person’s world view, represents the perceptions of an individual which depict how the world works, particularly in regard to value orientations. An individual’s field of experience, or past experience, varies to great lengths from person to person, as many of factors, ranging from age to education to beliefs, comprises a person’s field of experience. This essay will discuss how culture has a significant influence on the way people think, and the importance of an individual’s close personal relationships, especially throughout childhood and adolescence, in the development of their unique view …show more content…

According to Kossen et. al (2013), ‘personal views allows us make sense of world’ (p.133), while also distorting it because people are predisposed to interpreting the world in accordance with the perceptual biases that reside within the ICMs. Due to these mental models being so resistant to change, this enhances their flexibility for the accommodation of contradictory information (Kossen et. al 2013). Both the interactive and transactional models of communication show the intended message from the person they are communicating with can be changed and manipulated (DeVito 2013), contributing to distorted perceptions. The encoding of a message, where the receiver negotiates it by bringing their own perspective, can be subjected to ‘noise’, most relevant to this situation, psychological noise; expectations, attitudes and biases, which we have learnt and are accustomed to. Physical noise and semantic noise also contribute to the distortion of a message (Owuamalam, Zagefka 2013). In terms of the way people view others in the world, DeVito (2013) puts forward ways in which a person’s interpretation of another can be false, including the halo effect theory, which implies if a person believes someone possesses positive qualities, then they must possess a range of other positive qualities. The reverse halo effect is opposite of this, instead considering their negative qualities (DeVito 2013; Kossen et. al 2013). Similar to the halo effect, perceptual accentuation leads people to see what they expect to see, (DeVito 2013; Owuamalam 2013) for example, we see people we like as more attractive and more intelligent than people we don’t like. Other common, but usually implicit tendencies in perception include: people are influenced by the obvious, cling to first impressions, people assume others are like them, favour negative impressions, and blame the innocent (Adler et. al,

Open Document