It’s easy to make mistakes in perception. We stereotype, we rely on perceptual sets, we commit attribution errors, and more. The first step to improving our perceptual abilities is to be mindful of our perceptions. We must be aware of our perceptual tendencies, and conscious of how those tendencies might affect accurate perception. The first thing we can do is to know yourself: Recognize your own tendencies toward bias. The second thing we can do is to focus on other people’s characteristics. We might recognize their group memberships, but it’s important to treat each person as an individual. Third, we should check the accuracy of our perceptions. In part, this means separating interpretations from facts. This also means generating alternative perception s. We can test our perceptions for accuracy, sometimes by simply asking the other person if our perception is correct. Lastly, we should revise our perceptions as necessary. Sometimes our perceptions are accurate from the start, and other times they simply are wrong. It’s important to recognize and admit this.
From cognitive psychology, I understand perception is an active process of assessing information in your surroundings. It involves becoming aware of our environment in a way that is unique to the individual and is strongly influenced by communication. How can we improve from what we learned in visual perception and communication? Perhaps, we can take a bottom up process, we can re-learn from children and let visual perception be part of the curriculum. Since the communication started from face-to-face interaction, we need to understand nonverbal communication. It is important and rich information to understand each other.