"The Picnic"A Perceptual Errors Exercise

Abstract

Courses in organizational behavior, communications, and personnel administration nearly always include an extended discussion of the topic of perception and perceptual error. In these discussions, the tendency toward grouping common stimuli and the desire of individuals to maintain a stable and consistent world of objects and people can be pointed out as leading toward the formation of stable social and perceptual sets or groupings. The process of establishing groups of common stimuli in a social sense, however, can be seen as causing two forms of perceptual error to become evident.