Perception Management - Psychology

Psychology

The objective of this seedling project is to investigate the feasibility of enhancing the quality of human decision-making in complex and uncertain situations and under time pressure. The specific focus is to characterize the principles underlying the augmented cognition systems and to develop techniques that alleviate natural human attentional limitations in the management of uncertainty using dynamic visualization techniques.

A newly emerging section of psychology known as positive psychology has to do with controlling one's perception of the world. Positive psychology says that in order to be most successful a person must perceive the world in a positive light. This means controlling your thoughts, feelings, and outlook on life so that they are all positive. In a way this is like perception management of self. It means controlling the way you perceive things in order to make it appear as reality to you. This field of psychology is causing a lot of controversy as it is not accepted by traditional psychologists.

Psychology is a major part of the idea of perception management. Perception management uses psychology as it manipulates a person’s views and understanding of situations. Being in the psychology field, I have realized how perception management affects all individuals in their everyday life. Many people may not realize it, but managing perception occurs in the services we experience. Through psychology studies, managers and organizations have realized how to make a customer’s service experience satisfactory and to create a better perception of their company. For example, in hotels where there are often complaints about the wait time for the elevators, it was found by placing mirrors near where the guests wait caused their increased satisfaction and perception of the hotel as they were spent more time checking their personal appearance. Also, in restaurants, the staff will frequently overestimate the wait time for a group of customers to be seated because when they are seated quicker, they experience increased satisfaction and perceive the restaurant in a more favorable manner. These are just a couple examples of how companies use perception management to give a greater satisfaction to their customers. Psychology is important in for perception management to be effective, because knowing the way the human mind functions and thinks is necessary to give the customers the satisfaction they want and expect.