ARSI UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

ASSIGNMENT ON TOPIC;-CULTURE AND PERCEPTION

BY ID. NO-

1. ADEM BEKARA GS/ R/0229/15

SUBMITTED TO : Usleyman Gemechu ( BA, BA, MA, MA, PhD candidate)

SUBMISSION DATE Appril 15/2024

ARSI ASELLA

ETHIOPIA

1
introduction

Culture

Culture is in it's wide ethnographic sense,is that complex whole which includes, knowledge,
beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as
members of society E.B.Tylor 1871.Culture consists of patterns,explicit and implicit and other
behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of
human group. Culture is a complex whole that consists of all the ways we think and do and
everything we have as members of society (Robert Bierstad, 1974). It is the sum total of
knowledge, attitudes,and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of
particular society's Relph Cinton's(1940). Culture is the frame work of beliefs and values interms
of which individuals define their feelings and make their judgements (Greetz1957, American
Anthropologists 59:32-57). "Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning,
that form and guide the beliefs and behaviour of the people exposed to them, cultural traditions
includes custom and opinions developed over generation about proper and improper behaviour "
(Kottack 2006). The collective programming of a minds that distinguished the members of one
category of people from another ((Geart Hofsede).

Culture is not only the way we do things, it is also our attitudes, thoughts, expression, goals and
values.It is the value of our society - the norm that tells us what is and what is not acceptable in
society. Culture is way of life that includes material objects, ideas, attitudes, values and
behaviours." It is everything that people have, think and do as members of society"
(Ferraro,2006). Culture Is not only way we do things, it is also our attitudes, thought and
expression, goals and values,it is rule of our society.The norm that tell us. Culture is beliefs and
behaviours of society Culture consists of abstract ideas, values and perceptions of the World that
inform and reflected in people's behaviors.Culture is lens through which we view our world, it
invents our reality.

2
Culture refers to the beliefs, values, behavior and material objects that, together, form a people's
way of life.

Culture determines how we view the world around us

Culture includes the traditions we inherit and pass on to the next generation

Culture: totality of our shared language, knowledge, material objects, and behavior
Cultural Influences on Visual Perception

Cultural Influences on Visual Perception

 Masuda & Nisbett (2001)

 When asked to recall objects in a scene, Americans and Japanese both recalled focal
object of scene; Japanese remembered more background objects.
 Japanese were more influenced by changes in background information in other
recognition tasks as well.
 These differences may be due to differences in environment
.
culture and Categorization

 Universal: Process of categorization

 Universal categories: facial expressions, colors, stereotypes, and shapes
 Cultural differences: the way in which people categorize things
 Western adults categorize by function whereas African adults categorize by color.
 American children categorize by shared function, whereas Chinese children
categorize by shared contextual relationships.

Cultural conditioning effects on perception and cognition

Shavitt et al. (2008, p. 1103) assert that culture includes “shared elements that provide standards
for perceiving, believing, evaluating, communicating, and acting among those who share a
language, a historical period, and a geographical location.” Markus and Kitayama (2010, p. 422)
further contend that “the word culture is a stand-in for a similarly untidy and expansive set of
3
material and symbolic concepts … that give form and direction to behavior [and that] culture is
located in the world, in patterns of ideas, practices, institutions, products, and artifacts.” These
widely accepted definitions incorporate factors that are both external to people, such as societal
values or similar cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1991, 2001; Schwartz, 1992; Soares,
Farhangmehr, & Shoham, 2006), social practices (Nisbett & Masuda, 2003), and artifacts (Craig
& Douglas, 2006), and internal, such as an independent/ interdependent self-construal or other
traits (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), including the overlooked aspect of language (Ambady &
Bharucha, 2009; Ross, Xun, & Wilson, 2002; Sen, Burmeister, & Ghosh, 2004). Society- and
individual-level perspectives about culture are used as a conceptual framework (see Fig. 1) to
review an extensive but fragmented literature from fields as diverse as psychology, sociology,
anthropology, linguistics, medicine, marketing, and business. The conceptual framework and
associated literature review assists understanding of how culture conditions perception and
cognition. Specifically, use of proxies of culture demonstrate how cultural elements, including
norms and values conveyed by individualist and collectivist societies, dominant modes of
independent and interdependent self-construal, and language, affect individual perception and
cognition and eventually result in behavioral differences (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).

Research supports the idea that culture conditions individual perception and cognition by
providing sets of values, life expectations, and needs (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), which affect
people’s basic sensory perceptions. Culture serves as a source of lay theories about the world and
shapes how people attend, think, and react, crafting their life views and philosophies

For example, people in Western cultures perceive an advertisement showing a woman wearing a
white dress (in which white is traditionally associated with purity) differently than people in
Eastern cultures (in which white signifies death). Hence, perception and cognition are dependent
on sensory inputs at an individual level, but they also involve various top-down processes that
are automatically recruited to construct a conscious percept from the input (Kitayama, Duffy,
Kawamura, & Larsen, 2003); these basic exogenous sensory inputs (e.g., colors, shapes, sounds)
cannot fully account for the emerging percept, which can be modified by factors that are
endogenous to the perceiver, such as cultural expectations, internalized values, emotions, and

4
needs (Bruner, 1957). Culture affects perception and subsequently cognition at both the society
and individual level.

Culture, self-perception and perception of others

Cultural differences in perception, or the process by which people become aware of their
environment (Weiner, Healy, & Proctor, 2003), emerge in the ways Westerners or Easterners
perceive the self versus others alongside other key areas of perception (Simonson, Carmon,
Dhar, & Drolet, 2001) such as the perception of emotions, the environment and sensory
perceptions.

Culture shapes the way people perceive their self and others, as well as the relationship between
the two (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1989). People in Western cultures hold a dominant
independent self-contractual, which “involves a conception of the self as an autonomous,
independent person” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 226). Westerners focus mainly on self-
related goals and needs, and their self-perception primarily comprises unique personal traits and
attributes, with others die-emphasized. Conversely, people in Eastern cultures possess a
dominant interdependent self-contractual and perceive the individual “not as separate from the
social context but as more connected and less differentiated from others” (Markus & Kitayama,
1991, p. 227).

Perception

Is a process through which people select,organize, interpret and respond information.

Perception differ from person to person

Each individual perceive the same situation differently.

Individual organize and interpret things based on their past experiences and important values
they consider important.

Employees tend to behave and act on certain things on the basis on the basis of their perception.

Stephen Robin

5
Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret the sensory impression in
order to give meaning to their environment.

Fred Luthans

Perception is important meditating process through which person make interpretation the
stimulus or situation they are forced with. Perception of emotions Culture influences the
prevalence of two types of primary emotions through self contractual:

ego-focused and other-focused emotions. Ego-focused emotions are “emotions, such as anger,
frustration, and pride”, which “have the individual’s internal attributes (his or her own needs,
goals, desires, or abilities) as the primary referent” (Markus and Kitayama, 1991, p. 235);

Other-focused “emotions, such as sympathy, feelings of interpersonal communion, and shame,

have another person … as the primary referent” (Markus and Kitayama, 1991, p. 235) Ego-
focused emotions dominate individualist cultures, whereas other-focused emotions are more
prevalent in collectivist cultures. The accurate perception of the emotions of others is culturally
bound (Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Izard, 1971). The perception of others’ emotions
correspondingly differs across cultures.

Sensory perception Studies on cross-cultural differences in sensory perception concentrate in

the areas of visual, olfactory, and auditory perceptions, mostly ignoring actual and taste
perceptions. The specificity of different cultural environments affects familiarity with and
perception of various other stimuli. Ayabe-Kanamura, Schicker, Laska, Hudson, Distel,
Kobayakawa, and Saito (1998) analyze cross-cultural differences between Japanese and
Germans in their perception of smell: each group recognized its own familiar “cultural” smells
better. Similarly, Curtis and Bharucha (2009) investigate cross-cultural differences in music
perceptions demonstrating that Westerners find it easier to comprehend their own, culturally
familiar melodies, as opposed to Eastern, hence culturally unfamiliar, ones. Overall, people are
prone to culture-specific recall and recognition of stimuli before the information enters the
attitude formation, decision-making, and judgment stage of consumption processes. Segall,
Campbell, and Herskovits (1963)

6
.Nature of perception Perception is the process by which an individual give meaning to the
environment.

It is cognitive and psychological process.

People's action, emotions thought and feeling are triggered by perception.

Since perception is acquisitions of specific knowledge about object and event at any particular
moment.

It occurs whenever stimuli activates the seense organs.

It involves creation of gestalts

It is unique interpretation of situations

Perception is broader then sensation.

Importance Of Perception

Perception can shape personality of individuals

Perception is central in interpreting the world around us.

Perception affects the out come of our behavior because we act on the basis of what we see.

Manager should be able to distinguished perceived world and reality.

Factor affecting perception

Characteristics of perciever

Characteristics of setting

Characteristics of the perceived

Characteristics of perciever

Past experiences

7
Needs or motives

Personality , values and attitudes

Characteristics of percieved

Contrast, intensity

Figure ground separation

Size , motion

Repetition or novelty.

Factors influence perception

Factor in perciever _ attitude, motives, interest, experience, expectations

Factors in the situation

Time,work settings, social settings

Factors in the percieved

Motion, sounds,size,back ground, proximity, similarities

Perceptual process

Stimuli _Recieving_ selecting _organizing _ interpreting _ action

Perceptual inputs:- objects, events and people

Perceptual mechanism:-evolves elements viz selection of stimuli,interpret of stimuli

Perceptual Out put :- attitudes, opinion, feelings and values _ the results is base on behaviour.

8
6.5 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

DEVELOPING PERCEPTUAL SKILLS

Strategies for Improving Perceptual Skills: 7 StrategiesThe strategy to develop perceptal skills,
i.e, (1) Knowing Oneself Accurately, (2) Emphatize with Others, (3) Having a Positive Attitude,
(4) Positive Impression Formation, (5) Communicating Openly, (6) Comparing One’s Perception
with that of Others, and (7) Improving Diversity Management Programmes.

1. Knowing Oneself Accurately:

9
One of the powerful ways to minimize perceptual distortions is to know yourself. One should be
aware of his or her values, beliefs and prejudices. People normally misperceive others because
they fail to perceive themselves accurately. The more accurately a person understands himself,
the more accurately he can perceive others. The concept of Johari window must be applied by
people so as to increase awareness about self and others.

2. Emphatize with Others:

Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings of others.
Empathy is a natural phenomenon and develops within an individual by itself. However,
empathy skills can also be developed over a passage of time by proper feedback system and by
close interaction and working. By emphasizing with other person, one can perceive the other
individual more aptly.

3. Have a Positive Attitude:

Attitudes have a strong and long lasting effect on perception. If one holds a negative attitude
towards someone or something, our perception is undoubtedly going to be distorted. We should
make effort to have a positive attitude and should not let our personal biases to crop in and
hinder the perceptual powers.

4. Postpone Impression Formation:

It is a natural tendency of the human beings to form impression about something or someone
very quickly. Just in a meeting or two we draw conclusion about someone. Forming judgments
with such limited information is very wrong. A much better strategy is to postpone the
impression formation until more information about the individual and the situation is collected.

5. Communicating Openly:

Much of misperception in an organisation arises due to inadequate communication or one way

communication. Utmost care should be taken, so that the message reaches the right person, at the
right time and in the right manner. Proper transmission of information followed by appropriate
feedback can help minimize perceptual distortions.

10
6. Comparing One’s Perceptions with that of Others:

Another useful strategy to reduce perceptual errors is to compare one’s own perception with the
perception of the other person about the same object. By sharing perceptions we come across
different point of views and potentially gain a much better understanding of the situation and the
object.

7. Introducing Diversity Management Programs

If we talk of today’s organisations, they are very much diverse and heterogeneous. The
workforce is so diverse with language differences, religious differences and cultural differences
that it becomes really hard to make the employees work together in an effective manner. The
biggest challenge in front of the management in to minimize perceptual bias and benefit from
such diversity.

For this purpose, an important strategy it to use training programs which may help in
communicating the value of diversity on one hand and help the participants acquaint with one
another and provide them room to mix with one another with different backgrounds. These
training programs mainly increase the employees, awareness of difference and thus help in
minimizing perceptual biases and distortions.

To include we can say that successful managers understand the importance of perception on
behaviour and they act accordingly. They are aware of perceptual distortions and they know that
perceptual differences are likely to exist in any situation. As a result they try to make decisions
and take action with a true understanding of the work situation as it is viewed by all persons
concerned.

11
summary

Culture is in it's wide ethnographic sense,is that complex whole which includes, knowledge,
beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as
members of society E.B.Tylor 1871. Culture is not only the way we do things, it is also our
attitudes, thoughts, expression, goals and values.It is the value of our society - the norm that tells
us what is and what is not acceptable in society. Culture is way of life that includes material
objects, ideas, attitudes, values and behaviours Culture consists of abstract ideas, values and
perceptions of the World that inform and reflected in people's behaviors.Culture is lens through
which we view our world, it invents our reality . Perception can shape personality of individuals

The importance of includes Perception is central in interpreting the world around us.

Perception affects the out come of our behavior because we act on the basis of what we see.

Manager should be able to distinguished perceived world and reality

Perception Is a process through which people select,organize, interpret and respond information.
Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret the sensory impression in
order to give meaning to their environment, Factor affecting perception jncludes
Characteristics of perceiver,Characteristics of settingand Characteristics of the perceived

12
References

Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans:
Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49–74.

Alloy, L. B., Abramson, L. Y., & Francis, E. L. (1999). Do negative cognitive styles confer
vulnerability to depression? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(4), 128–132.

Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to
noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(4), 405–417.

Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence
predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention.
Child Development, 78(1), 246–263.

Blascovich, J., & Mendes, W. B. (2000). Challenge and threat appraisals: The role of affective
cues. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in social cognition (pp. 59–
82). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 42, 116–131.

Dornbusch, S. M., Hastorf, A. H., Richardson, S. A., Muzzy, R. E., & Vreeland, R. S. (1965).
The perceiver and the perceived: Their relative influence on the categories of interpersonal
cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1(5), 434–440.Fletcher, G. J. O.,
Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson, D., & Reeder, G. D. (1986). Attributional complexity:
An individual differences measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(4), 875–
884.

Henry, P. C. (2005). Life stress, explanatory style, hopelessness, and occupational stress.
International Journal of Stress Management, 12, 241–256.

13
Hirt, E. R., Deppe, R. K., & Gordon, L. J. (1991). Self-reported versus behavioral self-
handicapping: Empirical evidence for a theoretical distinction. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 61(6), 981–991.

Hong, Y.-Y., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C.-Y., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2000). Multicultural minds: A
dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American Psychologist, 55(7), 709–
720.Ji, L.-J., Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (2000). Culture, control, and perception of relationships
in the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 943–955.

Kim, H., & Markus, H. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural
analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(4), 785–800.

Lawrence, J. W., Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2002). Velocity toward goal attainment in
immediate experience as a determinant of affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4),
788–802. doi: 10.1111/j.1559–1816.2002.tb00242.x.

Lewis, R. S., Goto, S. G., & Kong, L. L. (2008). Culture and context: East Asian American and
European American differences in P3 event-related potentials and self-construal. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 623–634.

Maddux, W. W., & Yuki, M. (2006). The “ripple effect”: Cultural differences in perceptions of
the consequences of events. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(5), 669–683.

Malle, B. F., Knobe, J., O’Laughlin, M. J., Pearce, G. E., & Nelson, S. E. (2000). Conceptual
structure and social functions of behavior explanations: Beyond person-situation attributions.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(3), 309–326.

Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the
context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
81(5), 922–934.

14
Metalsky, G. I., Joiner, T. E., Hardin, T. S., & Abramson, L. Y. (1993). Depressive reactions to
failure in a naturalistic setting: A test of the hopelessness and self-esteem theories of depression.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 102(1), 101–109.

Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 46(5), 961–978.

Molden, D. C., Plaks, J. E., & Dweck, C. S. (2006). “Meaningful” social inferences: Effects of
implicit theories on inferential processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(6),
738–752.

Park, B. (1986). A method for studying the development of impressions of real people. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 907–917.

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1984). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression:
Theory and evidence. Psychological Review, 91, 347–374.

Plaks, J. E., Levy, S. R., & Dweck, C. S. (2009). Lay theories of personality: Cornerstones of
meaning in social cognition. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3(6), 1069–1081. doi:
10.1111/j.1751–9004.2009.00222.x.

Sargent, M. (2004). Less thought, more punishment: Need for cognition predicts support for
punitive responses to crime. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(11), 1485–1493.
doi: 10.1177/0146167204264481.

Seligman, M. E. (1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco,

CA: W. H. Freeman.Taylor, S. E., & Armor, D. A. (1996). Positive illusions and coping with
adversity. Journal of Personality, 64, 873–898.

Weinstein, N. D., & Klein, W. M. (1996). Unrealistic optimism: Present and future. Journal of
Social and Clinical Psychology, 15(1), 1–8.

Zuckerman, M., & Tsai, F.-F. (2005). Costs of self-handicapping. Journal of Personality, 73(2),
411–442.

15