Perception, Stereotype and Empathy

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Table of Contents

Introduction
From Stereotype to Empathy
Perception and Art
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Perception is defined as the process through which various organisms sense what is going on in the environment in which they live. As a result, they are able to interpret what is perceived thus developing meaningful interpretation. In other words it is the process by which human beings give an understanding of the information that they sense such as what they see, hear, feel, taste or smell (Lindsay & Norman 7). Perception is amongst the oldest concepts in psychology and its study resulted in the formation of Gestalt School of Psychology. Past experiences that a given individual went through such as cultural issues greatly determine such an individual’s perception.

Perception can be accurate or not. For example, in some cases it has resulted in stereotyping. In this paper two activities are conducted. The first activity is from stereotype to empathy whose purpose is to brainstorm various ways to build empathy based on personal experiences with stereotyping. The second activity will relate to perception and art. The purpose of this activity is to illustrate that people have different perceptions. An explanation of the reasons that result into this will be given.

From Stereotype to Empathy

The purpose of this activity is to brainstorm ways to build empathy based on my own personal experiences with stereotyping. This arises from the fact that people hold different beliefs about certain social groups of people or different individuals. For example, some people are believed to be wise, others smart, while others are believed to be thieves amongst others. These public beliefs about people are what we refer to as stereotypes and can either be positive or negative but in most cases they are negative. This process of categorising and making assumptions about members of a particular group of people because they belong to that group is called stereotyping. As an individual, I have had some stereotype concerning black (Africans) Americans.

African Americans’ stereotype

Some of my stereotypes relating to Africans-Americans include believing that black people are dumb. This means that they are not able to express their needs in addition to being lazy. The resultant effect is that black African Americans are poor. In addition, these individuals are uncivilised, smelly and unchristian or un-devoted Christian who went to church just to sing gospel music (Charles 13). I also hold believe that black people are slaves and that they practice witchcraft. These stereotypes resulted from different sources as discussed below.

Sources of Africans Americans stereotype

Most of the stereotypes about African-Americans resulted from the media owned by white colonialists. For instance, in many televisions programmes, most of the characters who act as dumb and lazy are Africans.As a result, most of the people have believed that this is the case. In addition, Africans Americans are presented in scenes where they are engaging themselves in witchcraft in these television programmes. As a result, they are believed to be witches. Moreover, these stereotypes came from the colonizers.The fact that African-Americans are black make many people believe that they are dull even in their mind as their colour.

Lastly, the source of stereotype arises from the fact that most of the Africans-Americans who settled in U.S first were slaves.Therefore, all the other that came after them are believed to posses the same attributes. Most of my friends and relatives hold these stereotypes concerning Africans-Americans since we have all been made to believe this. However, I no longer hold these stereotypes I had concerning the Africans-Americans though a few of my friends still hold some of them. There are so many reasons that led me to do away with the above stereotypes.

What happened that made me change my perception concerning the Africans-Americans

To start with, since the media it is the one that had made us develop these stereotypes by portraying Africans as the best art performers such as singers, dancers and great athletes, I did away with some beliefs I held about them. In addition, some televisions and films presented them as very kind and honest people and since these qualities are mostly possessed by Christians, I stopped stereotyping them as un-Christians. Additionally, I have read so many interesting and inspiring books written by Africans-American.This show that they are very intelligent people. The most classic example is the case of Barrack Obama who is the current President of US. He is an African American who has managed to rise to power in the most powerful country in the world. This show that we are not different or superior to the Whites.What differentiates us is only skin colour and this does not contribute a lot to our attributes except when negative stereotypes are used and one believes them to be gospel true and start acting as stated by these stereotypes.

Perception and Art

The purpose of this activity is to illustrate that we all have different perceptions and explore the reasons associated with this. This is very important since most individuals assume that all people view the world in the same way. This is due to the fact that these people who make these assumptions do not have a chance of comparing what they see with those of other individuals (Mosher 2).However, this kind of assumption is not accurate as discussed here. For example, we may have the same drawings but we view it differently.

During the discussion regarding our perception and feelings about different pieces of artwork, we were with three of my friends. These include Ann, Jane and John. Ann came from a united family full of love. Jane has so much interested in art though she was not performing while John was a young boy who was only 13 years old. On the provided artwork, we all perceived different things even though we viewed the same piece of artwork. For example, when we looked at the Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe painting done by Edourd Manet, Ann saw a family sat together either on an outing or just relaxing. On the other hand, John saw a baby that was put aside and felt sorry for the baby while I saw a group of people who are in the forest resting either after a long toil such as hunting. However, though some of us saw the same things when we continued with the discussion we realised they were not talking of the same things.

Our feelings concerning the art were also different. For example, on looking at the Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe painting some of us felt so bad and humiliated because of the nakedness of the people while some did not feel anything bad about this. To them, these people might have been brought up in a culture whose nakedness to them is not a big issue. In addition, our interests and likes were also different. For instance, one of my friends could not even like to see some of the artwork as they believed they were immoral and others could not even remove their eyes from them. However, even where we liked the same artwork, the reasons that we gave as to why we liked the particular piece of artwork was also different. The reason for this is that we perceived the paintings differently meaning that after looking at the same pictures our interpretation of the same were very different.

Factors that made us perceive the artwork differently

There are many reasons as to why we perceived the paintings differently though we were seeing the same things. Firstly, the process of perception does not only depend on sensation but also involve the mind interpreting what is sensed. With regard to mental work, we all have different genes that determine our intellectual Quotient.This explains why we had different perception of the paintings. Moreover, we were all brought up differently in different cultural backgrounds where to some of us some of the paintings were not found in our areas and other paintings we were told have different influence on us when we look at them.

The fact that we belonged to different races and ethnic groups that held different cultures also contributed towards our differences in perceiving similar things differently. Moreover, we were all going through different issues of life, for example some of us were experiencing separation and others unity in their families.This is why when it came to the second painting some of us could talk of a family that are on an outing while others felt so bad remembering what is happening in their families. Lastly, we were not of the same age since some of us were younger and others older.

Individual’s favourite and least favourite work

After looking at the provided piece of artwork with my friends Ann, Jane, John and I, we gave each person’s favourite and least favourite piece of artwork. My favourite piece of artwork was the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon painting by Pablo Picasso. This resulted from the fact that the artist used different colours and communicate many things using one painting.My least favourite was Rokeby Venus paintings done by Diego Velazguez because of seeing the naked people as I have been brought up knowing that nakedness is associated with immorality. On the other hand, John’s favourite artwork was La Fourchette photograph done by Andre Kertesz as he was young and liked eating so much and seeing the photograph could associate it with food. On the other hand, his least favourite was Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe painting done by Edourd Manet as he saw as if there is a baby who is left to sleep and nobody was concerned about it.

Ann who came from a family full of love and unity said that her favourite piece of work was Dejeiner Sur L’Herbe painting by Edourd Manet. The reason she gave was that after looking at the painting she associated it with a family that have gone for an outing together. On the other hand, her least favourite was Rokeby Venus painting that was done by Diego Velazguez since after seeing the naked people she remembered the way she was beaten when she was young the day she had removed her clothes and walked naked in the rain.Lastly,Jane favourite piece of artwork was Composition 2 in Red Blue and Yellow paintings done by Piet Mondrian as these were her favourite colours.However, the Unique Forms of Continuity in Space sculpture by Umburto Buccioni was her least favourite. This arose from the fact that after looking the sculpture she remembered the punishment she was given during an art lesson when she failed to make a good sculpture as she had been told by her teacher.

Perception of the artist based on these artworks

After analysing the artwork carefully, we gave different perceptions concerning the artists and later came to a conclusion that artists are talented people who can communicate many things using different pieces of artwork. In addition, we perceived artists as people who are very social and able to relate very well with people of different backgrounds and learn many things from them which they put in their artwork. Lastly, we associated artists with sharp minded people who are able to learn information very fast and put it into paintings.

Lessons I learnt about perception as a result of this activity

After engaging myself in the above activity, I learnt that perception is a continuous process which involves first sensing what surrounds us and then mind interpreting whatever we sense. As a result, we may all see the same things but our interpretation may be different. This is due to the fact that our level of Intelligent Quotient is different. In addition, we may have come from different backgrounds where we were exposed to different cultures and beliefs. Differences in ages also affect the way people perceive things.

Conclusion

After engaging in the two activities, the first one from stereotype to empathy and the second one on perception and art , it is my belief that perception goes hand in hand with sensation.In addition, perception involves mental work where people may sense the same things but interpret them differently leading to different perceptions. Perception is an important topic as it helps us to develop different ideas from the way people perceive things. However, perception can lead to stereotyping which can in turn lead to different kinds of discrimination such as race and gender discrimination. Therefore, understanding the concept of perception better could lead to avoiding stereotypes thus reducing instances of discrimination and result to a better world.

Works Cited

Charles, Hurst. Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences. 6. Boston: Pearson Education Incorporation, 2007.Print.
Lindsay, Peter and Norman, Donald. Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology. USA: Rational Island Publishers, 1977.Print.
Mosher, Rachel. Model for Perception. Serendip.1998. Web.

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