IGNOU : M.COM : MCO 1 : UNIT 6 : Q - 3. What are the barriers to accurate perception? How those barriers can be removed?

 

Ans. BARRIERS TO ACCURATE PERCEPTION

The perceiver’s own mindset and tendency to use shortcuts in judging others may become the barriers to accurate perception. Barriers to accurate perception create wider gap between ‘what things actually are’, and ‘what you think the things are’. Hence you should be vigilant about such barriers. Some of the important barriers to accurate perception are following:

• Stereotyping: It is judging someone on the basis of one’s perception of the group to which that person belongs. Though such generalisations help to simplify complex world, its overuse mostly leads to wrong conclusion.

• Halo Effect: This perceptual bias means, drawing a general impression about an individual on the basis of single characteristics.

• Similar-to-me Effect or Projection: It is another common type of perceptual bias, which involves the tendency for people to perceive more favourably others who are like themselves than those who are dissimilar.

• Selective Perceptions: It explains that people selectively interpret what they see on the basis of their interests, background, experience and attitudes.

• Distortion: It is distorting what we see (or even totally avoid seeing what actually exists) if we encounter data, which is threatening or incongruent to our self-concept.

• Contrast Effects: It is evaluations of a person’s characteristics that are affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.