Factor that influence perception

Answer 1

per·cep·tion

n. # The process, act, or faculty of perceiving. # The effect or product of perceiving. # Psychology. ## Recognition and interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory. ## The neurological processes by which such recognition and interpretation are effected. # ## Insight, intuition, or knowledge gained by perceiving. ## The capacity for such insight. Above taken from Answers.com Viper1

Answer 2

Factors that influence perception include past experiences, emotions, cultural background, personal beliefs, and current mood. These factors can shape how individuals interpret and make sense of the information they receive from their environment.

Answer 3

Here's a copy of an article I've written about this topic:

Projects need decisive management, which places emphasis on a project manager's decision-making. Consistent decision-making can make a project successful, but each human has unconscious mental heuristics (mental disposition) and biases (personal inclinations) that obscure rational conclusions. Since good decision-making supports good leadership, project managers need to know how heuristics and biases influence decisions, along with firmly commanding traditional decision-making techniques. Therefore, successful project management training addresses the natural human variables along with project management science to teach effective decision-making.

Heuristics are natural cognitive functions with risky implications for project managers. Namely, what appears as common sense is actually irrational decision-making, which can happen daily in a project manager's life and limit his success. One such unconscious distortion is anchoring, which occurs when a project manager adjusts an estimate closer to a number he previously heard or saw. For example, he may not schedule the necessary 2 months for a task because the technician said, "2 weeks should do it!" Even if the project manager disbelieves the two-week estimate, he would unlikely stick to his two-month plan. Vice versa, if the technician had said, "we will need at least 4 months", the project manager would likely schedule more than two months. The availability heuristic is another irrational intuition, which implies that easily remembered information is most important. For example, if the project manager saw a car crash in the morning, he may later decide to pay for better insurance coverage for his team, even though the statistical likelihood of a car crash has not changed. Finally, the representativeness heuristic can also affect projects. This occurs when people use representative association rather than factual analysis. For example, a project manager may not hire a genius who interviewed in a hoody, because he often sees a group of skateboarders in hoodies playing during working hours. The hoody unconsciously represents bad work habits, leading the project manager to not hire the candidate, even though he would have hired the candidate, if he only evaluated the candidate's test results and qualifications. Sophisticated project management training lets learners recognize the benefits of objective project management techniques. The project management trainer can role-play to illustrate how objective techniques mitigate the heuristic pitfalls. For example, the trainer could assign stakeholder roles and secret objectives to students who then complete a tense price negotiation. Afterwards, in a second exercise, students conduct a rigorous stakeholder analysis mitigates and realize that the tension was the result of anchoring heuristics.

State-of-the-art project management training must also address naturally-occurring biases, because they substitute logic in decision-making. For example, the framing bias leads to seemingly intelligent decisions that, on second look, simply reacted to the choice of words that described the problem. For example, humans are more averse to losses than they inclined to windfalls, and a project manager who must decide whether to spend $700 to avoid a 10% chance of an $8,000 loss or a 15% chance of a $9,000 profit should choose the profit option, even though it "just doesn't feel right" to most people. (The savings investment is likely to yield a $1350 benefit, whereas the other yields an $800 benefit.) The confirmation bias is another concern, since most people involuntarily rely on data that supports their prior decisions. For instance, a project manager may search data to substantiate a new report that the project is succeeding because past reports were positive, even though earned value analysis may question the conclusion. Project managers should also learn to recognize the belief bias; people accept and reject facts by matching their belief rather than objective reflection. For instance, a project manager may believe that some good engineers are extroverts, but that extroverts cannot be good engineers; if even one good engineer is an extrovert, the statement that extroverts can be good engineers must be true. Believing one and disbelieving the other would be evidence of an irrational belief bias. High-quality project management training can show students to mitigate biases with objective tools and techniques, e.g. a proper cost-benefit analysis that diffuses the project manager's framing and confirmation biases. Advanced project management training includes scenarios that demonstrate how biases can become failures.

Humans are normally unaware of biases and heuristics, and awareness requires training, skill, and experience. Project managers are particularly susceptible to consequences, because projects must succeed the first time and offer limited learning opportunity that does not end in failure. Hence, advanced project management training should create a safe environment to experience the benefits and perils through simulation and exercises. For example, the project management trainer could demonstrate the framing bias with a procurement drill that has different pricing anchors, or discuss the duration variances from two distinctly-framed schedule instructions. This advanced form of project training would convey formal procurement practices and schedule management concepts, but also exemplify the results of human nature. The result would instantly create experience and benefit real-world project scenarios.

Ultimately, project managers need awareness of heuristics and biases can affect decisions and behavior. The goal is not that Project Managers question every action and every thought, since no project would ever finish. However, the idea is to avoid human shortcomings in important decisions. Technical know-how alone will not assure sound decisions, so sophisticated project management training must address both: objective project management decision-making tools and knowledge about ever-present, subjective heuristics and biases. Without the allowance of unconscious mistakes, a project manager may wrongly consider a decision sound if it is made by the book. As Lao Tzu reasoned, "To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty."

You can read more about advanced training techniques on this page:

http://www.conseho.com/project-management-training-andragogy/