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The Nature of Error in Human Perception

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The Nature of Errors in Human Perception
Everyday individuals try to make sense of the environment that they are presented with. What we perceive can be significantly different from objective reality, this is because people’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not reality itself. Perception is the process by which individuals organize and interpret their impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. The process of perceiving and interpreting the behavior of other individuals takes time. Consequently, techniques have been developed to speed up this task. These techniques can be used to make accurate perceptions quickly and provide validity for making predictions. One of these techniques is Attribution Theory: the theory that when we observe what seems like atypical behavior by an individual, we try to determine whether it is internally or externally caused. Internally meaning the individual is responsible for the behavior, externally meaning something outside of the individual caused the behavior. Attribution theory can be a great tool; however, it is not always accurate and can distort the perception process. Individuals tend to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgements of others. This is known as the fundamental attribution error. This leads to perceptual errors. We can try to make accurate perceptions about other individuals but we will always come across flaws. From observing individual behavior we can make an interpretation then proceed to attribute the behaviour to be internal or external. This is a useful shortcut for making quick assessments which can be a useful tool in the workplace. Attribution theory relies on three rules about behavior being distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency. Distinctiveness is a behavioral rule that considers

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