Why don’t you take a moment to think about all the things you perceive in your daily life? In any moment, you might see objects that are familiar in your environment, smell the aroma of your home and the sound of music playing as you go to school. All of these experiences allow us to interact with objects and the people around us. In this article we will be learning more on the psychology of perception. We will also find out how we find stimuli within the environment, further executing our actions based on that information.

The way we view the world is different for each individual. The definition of perception is the ability to hear, see or be aware of something through the use of sensors. However in psychology, this definition goes beyond. Perception can be defined as the analysis of sensory information within the brain.

As we function and move around the world, we are constantly surrounded by the spur of modern life, therefore depending on our sight to notify us on where we are in the world. By using perception we gain a description of our surroundings and what they mean.

In order to prove something as factual, we highly depend on our sensory perception – for example when we perceive something we take it as either objective or real. Taking the law system as an example, an eye witness has “seen with their naked eyes” therefore the attendees, jury and judge take the reports of these precepts as concrete evidence or even facts. This is done regardless of the biasing processes on the basis of perception and memory. The assumed link between perception and physical reality is certainly strong for the visual sense. Moreover, we scrutinize it only when sight conditions have been unfortunate: when people have bad vision or when we know that the eyewitness was under stress or was lacking mentally.

When people need more evidence of reality besides the use of sight, they naturally touch the object of – let us say crime – in order to examine widely. In order for humans to speak of physical evidence, feeling something by touch seems to be the eventual perceptual experience.

Our perceptions impact the way we function and see the world. Many perceive the earth to be a spheroid, while others neither perceive the earth to be as spherical or similar to that. One of the reasons for this is because life contexts the illusion of a plane and works well as a guide for us in the planning and execution of our actions.