Perceptual actions: definition, types, properties, characteristics, stages of formation and development

Formation mechanism

Mechanisms:

1. Identification. Comparison of the subject with images that were perceived before. It is built on personal experience, which can be practical and theoretical.
2. Stereotyping. The image, the idea of ​​a person, his behavior, actions is built on stereotypes.
3. Empathy. This mechanism is expressed in people who know how to worry about others, sympathize, and express sincere emotions regarding the problems of other people.
4. Attraction. The mechanism of attracting people to each other. These are friendships or love relationships between individuals who communicate frequently with each other. Gradually they become attracted and begin to work together. The attraction consists of common interests, topics, and frequent meetings.
5. Reflection. A mechanism of self-immersion to focus on one’s own interests, thoughts, behavior, and actions.

The mechanisms can manifest themselves singly or in complexes.

Perceptual component

This component of perception helps to correctly assess the appearance and behavior of the interlocutor. The information obtained allows us to study his character, motives, and reasons for his actions. Without the perceptual side of communication, it will not be possible to draw such conclusions. And even if they do, they will be superficial. You will see the “picture”, but you will not be able to understand its content.

The development of social perception is the opportunity to see what a person thinks, why he acted this way and not otherwise, what he is worried about and worried about. The main thing is not to rush. Give time for a reliable assessment to form.

Interestingly, the perceptual component helps to change the first impression, the prevailing opinion about a person. Imagine that you met an old acquaintance and immediately noticed how much he had changed. The perceptual side of communication in this case will help you change your mind and abandon the initial assessment. You will now consider your opponent based on his changes, how he is at the current moment in time.

Characteristics and properties

Indicators:

• tactful data absorption;
• determination of individual parameters;
• creating a sensory image of perception.

Properties:

1. Constancy. The same perception of the distal object even if the proximal stimulus changes.
2. Apperception. The content of the human psyche influences perception.
3. Objectivity. Objects are a set of images that make up a specific object, and not a set of incoherent sensations.
4. Meaningfulness. Any object is called mentally and is perceived consciously.
5. Selectivity. From the variety of subjects, only one is selected.

Perception is closely related to memory, attention, thinking, and logic. Characteristics:

• materiality;
• apperception;
• structure;
• rationality;
• contextuality;
• awareness.

Apperceptive distortion

Apperception in psychology is a complex process that requires careful study.

To make the tests as effective as possible, experts use the following forms of distortion:

Apperceptive distortions can lead to the appearance of hallucinations that are distinguishable from each other. This is explained by the fact that a person makes volitional efforts. He unknowingly provokes them, and at the same time receives great pleasure.

Types and levels

Perception in psychology is most closely associated with perception. Perceptual actions are actions that are necessary for sensory knowledge of the world around us. They depend on perception. The world around us is learned through:

• touch;
• hearing;
• vision.

Visual perception is considered the most significant. There are few people in the world who have well-developed all types of perception. More often than not, one of the varieties predominates over the others.

Visual

People with heightened visual perception react sharply to visual stimuli, visual stimuli, and bright colors. More often they are interested in paintings and paintings. They differ from others with good visual memory. When they see another person's face, they remember it for a long time.

Auditory

People with heightened auditory perception have absolute pitch. They can reproduce any intonation. More often such individuals become musicians. The main disadvantage of heightened auditory perception is high sensitivity to loud or disharmonious sounds.

Tactile

Some individuals need to touch them to better remember objects. It can be said about such individuals that they have a heightened tactile perception. Scientists have been able to prove that it is most developed in early childhood. During this period, you need to work more with the child in developing fine motor skills.

Social

Social perception is the ability to perceive other people through the prism of stereotypes and social attitudes. They are not always adequate. A developed social perception is needed by a teacher, psychologist, and sociologist.

Social perception

Social perceptivity is the perception of another person through the prism of specific social attitudes and stereotypes. It is not always adequate. Perceptual actions are a broad concept, which, in particular, includes the assessment of others, focusing on existing norms in society.

Perceptual skills in social terms are skills that allow you to correctly perceive others. They will be useful for teachers, social workers, and psychological service workers. Mastering the essence of these skills is very important. To do this you need:

• be attentive to others;
• try to notice important details;
• perceive the external and internal world of a person as one whole.

All this will help create a correct understanding of other people and the composition of their psyche.

Intensive communication will help you understand another person.

Mechanisms of social perception

The main mechanisms of social perception are:

• thinking using stereotypes:
• reflexive mechanisms;
• empathy (projective ability to transfer the feelings of others);
• identification of a person with any type of personality.

With the help of these mechanisms, the individual sees others in one light or another.

Effects of social perception

Social perception, unlike physical perception, can be characterized by a person’s attitude towards the world around him and other people. The significance of this effect cannot be underestimated, since the simple or complex social adaptation of an individual largely depends on correct perception. Also, this phenomenon directly affects a person’s character and his level of sociability and openness.

Laws and factors

Types of factors:

• external;
• internal.

Internal:

1. Settings of personal perception. Human expectations often come down to assessing the future based on past identical situations.
2. Stimulation. A person’s visual examination of objects that are important to him at a certain period.
3. Personal experience. Allows you to perceive already studied objects.
4. Self-perception. Each individual perceives himself differently. Takes into account the personal characteristics that make him unique.
5. Character specifics. This is an individual specificity of perception, determined by the predominance of different character traits.

External factors - novelty, size, saturation, cyclicity, definability, discernibility, movement, opposition.

Perception in psychology

In addition to combining sensations into a certain integral image that a person recognizes, it is understood and comprehended. All actions are carried out thanks to past knowledge. Thus, we can highlight the special properties of consciousness:

1. Categorization. Any object is perceived as a member of a generalized class. The specific properties of the group are transferred to the object itself.
2. Verbal mediation. Due to this property, the individual properties of objects are abstracted and generalized.
3. Influence of attitudes. We can say that this is an almost unconscious ability to feel, react and perceive as experience and motives suggest.
4. Subjectivity. Depending on their individual factors, different people perceive the same object differently.
5. Apperception. The perception of any content is determined by past impressions and knowledge.

One of the founders of Gestalt psychology, M. Wertheimer, derived six laws of perception. These include:

1. Proximity effect (merging nearby figures).
2. Similarity effect (objects similar in color, shape, etc. are grouped).
3. Factor of “common fate” (objects are united according to the changes that occur in them).
4. Closedness factor (better perception of figures that are closed).
5. Grouping factor without remainder (they try to group a number of objects so that there are no separate figures).
6. “Good continuation” factor (choosing the less curved line from two intersecting or touching ones).

Psychology of color perception and the effects of color

Colors not only make our existence brighter, but also determine our mood and influence our thoughts and actions. By distinguishing colors, we better recognize objects in the surrounding world and cope better with vital tasks. Colors also carry information important for communication. Research on the psychology of color perception clearly describes the effects of color in different life situations.

“The theory is dry, my friend, but the tree of life grows lushly green.” In a good Russian translation of Faust, this textbook phrase sounds exactly like this, but Goethe’s original text still looks somewhat different. In the original, this phrase sounds like this: “Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, und griln des Lebens goldener Baum” (J.V. Goethe, “Faust” part I, scene IV). The great poet calls the theory not dry, but gray, and his green tree of life is also golden. Goethe attributes a specific meaning to each color.

What the brilliant poet and color researcher expressed in poetry is still relevant today: colors play a very important role in our lives. Colors not only make our existence brighter, but also determine our mood and influence our thoughts and actions. By distinguishing colors, we better recognize objects in the surrounding world and cope better with vital tasks. Colors also carry information important for communication. Numerous studies on the psychology of color perception clearly and in detail describe the effects of color in different life situations. This knowledge is also applicable in the development and implementation of retail concepts.

In our study, we will first consider the neurophysiological aspects of color perception.

How we perceive colors

Color is a sensory impression that occurs when wavelengths of light stimuli (electromagnetic radiation in the range of approximately 180 to 780 nm, the so-called light spectrum) strike the pupillary receptors. From there, this impulse is transmitted through neural networks to the brain and begins to be perceived as color. The perception of the color of surrounding objects is always subjective, since it arises only in the brain of the beholder. In the physical sense, objects do not have color, we just perceive them that way.

The physiological aspect of color perception is that during the process of evolution, photoreceptors appeared on the back of the human pupil. When exposed to electromagnetic waves with a length of 380 to 780 nm, they are capable of generating a physiological (nervous) signal. There are two types of photoreceptors: rods and cones. The rods recognize only the contrast of black and white, are very photosensitive and make vision possible in twilight and darkness. Cones are responsible for the perception of color. There are three types of cones that perceive short (blue), medium (green) and long wavelengths (red) of color radiation. Each combination of light rays falling on the retina excites these three types of cones in a certain way and gives a corresponding impression of color. Nerve impulses that originate at photoreceptors are transmitted through neural networks to the brain (transduction), where colors are eventually perceived consciously.

Psychology of color perception

Numerous psychological and sociological studies on this topic give a generally uniform picture. On the one hand, the emotional impact of colors is determined by the properties of universal objects (blue sky, red blood, yellow sun, green grass, etc.), on the other hand, by the influence of culture, and it does not matter whether we are aware of its influence or not. In everyday life, not only painters, designers, graphic artists and other representatives of artistic professions deal with the symbolism of flowers. The emotional impact of flowers is reflected, for example, in language - everyone is familiar with the expressions “like a red rag for a bull”, “people in white coats”, “turn black with anger” and many others. The table gives options for the symbolism of flowers and the nature of their impact on humans.

Description of the study

When studying color perception, we conducted two experiments. In the first of them, subjects (10 men and 10 women) were shown differently colored slides and recorded neural activity when perceiving one color or another.

In the second experiment, participants were shown 30 photographs of couples kissing. Among these photographs were both monochrome (painted in different colors - red, yellow, blue, green, black) and color. Each picture appeared in six color variations (in random order, for one second). The subjects received the instructions: “You will be shown photographs of kissing couples. Some of the photographs are portraits of ordinary people, some are stills from films. Please rate how strong you think the feelings of the people in the photo are (on a scale of 1 to 5).”

When conducting the experiment, we specifically asked to “evaluate the feelings” of the people in the photographs, so that the attention of the experiment participants was not directed either to the color or to their subjective attitude towards it. It was studied how different shades of colors affect the emotional assessment of a particular photograph.

Research results

1. Color and transduction. The process of transduction (“translation” of a color stimulus into the language of the brain) when perceiving different colors takes a different amount of time and causes neural activity of varying intensity in the corresponding areas of the brain, depending on which color is being processed.

Before the onset of conscious perception (approximately 200-300 ms), green and blue produce stronger neural excitation in the frontal lobe of the brain than red. Red, in turn, during the same time period activates neural activity in the occipital and temporal zones, which indicates the strong emotional impact of this color. It has been scientifically proven that impulses from visual stimuli, having passed through the occipital and temporal zones, immediately enter the limbic system (the location of emotions). The truth of the saying “Blue is the color of reason, red is the color of passion” has now been proven from the point of view of neurophysiology.

2. Colors and emotions. The influence of colors on the emotional perception of the surrounding world is also explained by the fact that the peak of neural activity during color perception occurs 50-150 ms from the moment the stimulus begins (the period of subconscious perception). Thus, colors have a huge impact on cognitive (consciously experienced) processes, since during the period of their subconscious processing they cause a peak in neural activity.

3. The effect of colors on conscious perception. During conscious perception (which begins after 300 ms), colors affect neural activity in very different ways. In other words, the experience gained in the process of sociologizing the subject, as well as his individual color preferences, personal qualities and motivation structure have a very large influence on the perception of colors.

Exposure to certain colors causes similar reactions in different cultures. Thus, red color affects more intensely than blue and green, a bright contrasting combination of colors has a stronger effect than a dim one. If, for example, facial expressions (a biological reaction to a stimulus) are global, it is incorrect to talk about the existence of uniform reactions to different colors: the influence of cultural and social associations is too strong.

4. Color and gender. It would be interesting to conduct a detailed study and comparison of neurophysiological reactions in a time period up to 200 ms (subconscious perception) in men and women. It turned out that neural activity during color perception is higher in women than in men. Since this phenomenon was observed during the period of subconscious perception, it can be assumed that women react more emotionally to colors in general. On the contrary, men are more strongly influenced by black and white images.

Arndt Traindl, CEO of Retail Branding AG. The material is published in an adapted translation from English