Which of the following is not a part of gestalt theory of perception?
D. Gestalt principle of perception is a theory of sensory information processing. Initially, any figure must be separated from its background. This is called the figure ground principle. The actual perception of the figure as a whole usually follows the principles of grouping. These are proximity, similarity, continuity, simplicity, common fate, and closure. The gestalt principle is based on the top-down processing of perception, that is a whole picture makes more sense and is easier to understand than parts of the same picture. In a similar sense, presenting letters one by one in random order of R, O, K, W, is more difficult to process than presenting the word WORK. The opposite, bottom-up processing, refers to a progression from individual elements to the whole. For example, bottom-up processing occurs when children initially learn to spell words. They initially identify each letter and then go on to learn to the whole word. A perceptual constancy is the tendency to experience an object as the same thing in spite of continually changing sensory input, for example we recognize an open door and a closed door as a door, irrespective of the differing geometry. Perceptual constancy includes concepts of size constancy, shape constancy, etc.
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Mark’s neighbours were robbed when they were on holiday. On hearing the news, he said to his wife, “They are such a careless lot. They must have left their doors unlocked. This will never happen to us”. He blamed the neighbours to minimize the apparent likelihood of a similar mishap to himself.
This is best explained by:
A. Defensive attribution is a tendency to blame victims for their misfortune, so that one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar way. It also helps people to maintain their belief that they live in a just world. For example assuming that victims of a burglary were careless. Attributions are inferences that people draw about causes of events and behaviours – both their own and other person’s behaviours. Internal attribution attributes the cause to personal disposition. External attributions ascribe the cause to situational demands and environmental reasons. Fundamental attribution error refers to the process where an observer attributes others’ negative behaviour to their internal attributes. The systematic bias in attribution, when one’s own behaviour is assessed favourably compared to others’ behaviours, is called the actor–observer bias.
Dave attributed his success in the Part 1 exam to his hard work and extensive knowledge of the subject. But when he fails his Part 2 he blames it on the examination system being poorly standardized. This is an example of:
D. Self-serving bias is said to occur when a person attributes his success to personal factors, while attributing his failures to external factors. It is a type of fundamental attribution error. Illusory correlation occurs when people estimate that they have encountered more confirmations of an association than they have actually seen, for example after meeting one dishonest lawyer, a person makes a statement ‘I have never seen an honest lawyer’. Stereotypes are widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership in certain groups, for example lawyers are dishonest. Individualism is the process of defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group membership. Collectivism is when one’s identity is defined in terms of group membership. Fundamental attribution error is seen less in collectivist cultures. Self-serving bias is seen more in individualistic Western culture. Naïve psychology, or common sense psychology, refers to certain propositional beliefs we hold about the actions and intentions of others in every-day life. These beliefs are socially conditioned and are necessary for human interaction. For example when someone waits in a queue to buy a train ticket, we infer that the person is travelling somewhere. These propositional ascriptions are not experimentally tested but heuristic and, in some cases, probabilistic assumptions.
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Holiday makers who pay hundreds of pounds for a trip to a water theme park will rate the park favourably even if it was boring and mundane.
This can be explained using which one of the following?
D. This is an example of postdecisional cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when there is discord among a person’s different beliefs or behaviours. When a person experiences cognitive dissonance he/she changes his/her thinking or behaviour to lessen the disharmony. For example the owner of an expensive Porsche experiences a cognitive dissonance when the car breaks down on the motorway. He always believed that ‘Porsches do not break down’. Now he looks for alternative explanations. As a result of this dissonance he may change his belief as follows: ‘This is just a one-off event; this cannot happen again’.
A depressed person who failed his recent maths exam says ‘I am stupid; I get everything wrong and will never pass any test’.
The style of attribution in the above statement is:
B. According to Seligman’s modified theory of learned helplessness, depressed patients usually have attribution styles that are internal, stable, and global. It is ‘internal’ as they make causal attributions to internal personal traits rather than external events. These attributions are called stable as they are fixed and held in spite of evidence to the contrary. They are global as they encompass all areas of functioning, for example in the scenario in Question 45, the person attributes to himself being stupid (negative and internal), will never pass a test (stable), and gets everything wrong (global).
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