Perception = Organizational Behaviour

Perception: The one-sided truth

The basic gist of my learnings in class was to work on unlearning the basic instinct to quickly judge another person. I had always thought of myself to be a fairly “self-aware” individual but I realized that I was unknowingly biased and lenient towards this assessment. Like everyone else, I have been through the continuous process of cognitive and sub conscious learning, and the session on perceptual processes manages to invoke a question that makes me want to question myself.

Coming from the Sherlock Holmes fan club I was reminded of a story “The Sign of the Four” in which the genius detective says to his partner in crime, Dr. Watson, “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”. While this definition almost absolutely defines the “definition” of truth, I realized the huge problems in the simplicity of the statement. If we look at this statement after applying the theories and the knowledge accrued in class, almost everything moves from the objective plane to the subjective plane. While theoretically, “eliminating all impossible” does leave us with the truth, the question that comes to mind now is, who decides what can be impossible and what can’t be? Something which may seem impossible to me may not seem impossible to someone else. Similarly, for the sake of quantitative argument, even if I did end up listing down all possible options, the process of elimination will need judgement, and as I now know, judgement is dynamic and subjective in nature. While this statement worked for Sherlock Holmes in the highly mathematical (black and white, right and wrong) and fictional world, in the real world we need to step out of the Boolean thought process and embrace the art of adding a perceptual flavour to everyday life. So, my first learning in the class was to add the dimension of perception to every situation I come across.

As an extension to the basic need to step out of the comfort zone of judging every person and every situation from behind the invisible goggles that we all wear due to our environmental learnings since childhood, we need to be more open to the possibility of another interpretation. I have realized that this topic of perceptual processes is not an absolute science that needs to be learned but a hard journey of trying to “open up” to the innumerable possibilities. I am once again reminded of a piece of literature that was used in the “Incredible India” advertisement. While this advertisement is trying to entice people from all across the globe to come and discover their inner self in India, I was struck with the plea of the creator/writer of the ad who calls for self-awakening. Excerpts from the poem read as “Every step forward is a step inward”, “Open your inner doors, so I can see within me the endless soulscapes”,