Page 107CHAPTER PREVIEW1. 1 The Process of Perception2. 2 Fundamental Forces in Interpersonal Perception3. 3 Explaining What We Perceive4. 4 Improving Your Perceptual AbilitiesMAKING SENSE OF OUR SOCIAL WORLDMoments into her speech accepting the 2009 MTV Video Music Award for best female video, country singer Taylor Swift—along with her audience—was stunned when rapper Kanye West suddenly appeared onstage, grabbed the microphone from her hands, and declared that a video from pop singer Beyoncé should have won the award instead. “Taylor, I'm really happy for you,” West said. “I'll let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!” Visibly shaken, Swift walked offstage moments after West's outburst, leaving viewers to wonder why he had so rudely interrupted her acceptance speech.Page 108When we encounter social behavior, especially behavior we find surprising, our nearly automatic reaction is to try to make sense of it. We need to understand what is happening if we are to know how to react to it properly. Therefore, getting along in our social world depends a great deal on our ability to make meaning out of other people's behaviors. When we talk about making meaning, we're talking about the process of perception. Our minds and senses help us understand the world, but they canalso lead us to make mistakes, such as misinterpreting other people's behaviors. The more we learn about our perception-making abilities, the better we know ourselves, one another, and our world. We can all learn to perceive behavior more accurately, and this chapter focuses on how.1 The Process of PerceptionDespite being one of the most productive marketing managers at her publishing company, Gisele has a hard time earning favor from her supervisor Dale. Gisele enthusiastically presents new products and innovative marketing plans at her weekly meetings with Dale, but he seems interested only in the bottom line. Instead of sharing Gisele's excitement about fresh ideas, his concerns always center on how much a new product will cost and how much profit it will generate. Gisele has come to perceive Dale as an uninspired manager who is simply biding his time until retirement. Dale concedes that Gisele is energetic and smart, but he perceives her as naïve concerning the way business works.Part of what makes Gisele and Dale's relationship so challenging is the differences in their interpersonal perceptions. In this section, we will examine the process of perception by defining interpersonal perception, identifying the stages of perception making, and probing factors that influence the accuracy of our perceptions of others.Interpersonal Perception DefinedGisele and Dale clearly have quite different perceptions of each other, but what does that mean, exactly? Perception is the process of making meaning from the things we experience in our environment, and when we apply this process to people and relationships, we engage ininterpersonal perception.1 We are involved in interpersonal perception constantly. Gisele experiences Dale's repeated references to costs and profits, for instance, and she makes meaning from them (“he has no enthusiasm for anything except the bottom line”). You notice what your friends, colleagues, relatives, and co-workers do and say, and their words and actions have meaning to you based on the way you interpret them.Three Stages of the Perception ProcessYour mind usually selects, organizes, and interprets information so quickly and so subconsciously that you may think your perceptions are objective, factual reflections of the world. You might say you perceivedthat Kanye West was being rude to Taylor Swift because he was being rude to her. In fact, you created that perception on the basis of the information you selected for attention (he interrupted her speech), the way you organized that information (interruption is an inconsiderate behavior), and the way you interpreted it (“he's being rude”).2Page 109Selection, organization, and interpretation are the three basic stages of the perception process. Let's examine each one.SELECTION. The process of perception begins when one or more of your senses are stimulated. You pass a construction site and hear two workers talking about the foundation they're pouring. You see one of your classmates smile at you. A co-worker bumps you on the shoulder as he walks past. If you notice these sensory experiences of hearing, seeing, and being bumped, then they can initiate your process of forming perceptions.In truth, your senses are constantly stimulated by objects and events in your environment. It's simply impossible, though, to pay attention to everything you're seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling at any given moment.3 When you're walking past the construction site, for instance, you're probably no longer hearing the sounds of traffic going by.Rather than paying attention to all the stimuli in your environment, you engage in selection, the process in which your mind and body help you choose certain stimuli to attend to. For example, you notice your classmate smiling at you without paying attention to what others in the classroom are saying or doing. Younotice that your spouse failed to bring home dinner, but you ignore the fact that he got the car washed andpicked up your dry cleaning. Clearly, the information you attend to influences the perceptions you form.Importantly, we don't necessarily make conscious decisions about which stimuli to notice and which to ignore. Rather, as research indicates, three characteristics especially make a particular stimulus more likely to be selected for attention.First, being unusual or unexpected makes a stimulus stand out.4 For instance, you might not pay attention to people talking loudly while walking across campus, but hearing the same conversation in the library would probably spark your attention, because it would be unusual in that environment. Or perhaps you're walking back to your car after a night class and you don't take particular notice of other students walking along the same sidewalk, but you do notice an older, poorly dressed man pushing a shopping cart. His presence stands out to you because you aren't used to seeing people on campus who look like him.Second, repetition, or how frequently you're exposed to a stimulus, makes it stand out.5 For example, you're more likely to remember radio ads you've heard repeatedly than