h. Thoughts
The author gives the reader a clue by direct knowledge of what a person. i.
Mannerism The author describes a person’s mannerisms habits or idiosyncrasies, which
may also tell reader something about the man’s character.
3. Perception
The purpose of this thesis is to find out Marguerite’s perception about life as a black woman. Therefore, the theory of perception is important to support the
analysis.
a. Definition
Reymert, Carlson, and Miller 4 state that emotion and value system are factors that influence someone to perceive something. According to them,
emotion is someone’s reaction and nothing else but reaction. It will effect our behaviors, attitudes, and of course our perception toward something. When we
experience a bad emotion or negative emotion, such as anger, jealousy, and another bad emotion toward something, we will perceive anger, jealousy as bad
and negative. Meanwhile, when we have a good or positive emotion, such as gladness, happiness, we will perceive those as positive and good. Value system is
a behavior standard that takes place in a certain environment. Perception according to Mozkowitz and Orgel 158 is a global wide-range
response to a stimulus or set of stimuli, a response that utilizes and integrates information beyond that contains in the stimulus itself. According to Borger and
Seaborne perception is an awareness of the environment, through which a person processes incoming sensory data in some way in order to arrive at useful
impressions of his surroundings 105. So there are processes happening in the mind before someone can get an image of something in hisher surroundings.
Meanwhile, Stone and Nielsen 193-194 divide perception into two parts. First part is the type I perception. It is the stage when the sensations are structured
into a figure-ground relationship. Second is the type II perception. It is when the sensations that are structured and are called concepts, eventually become
organized into “schemata” and will be structured into “ideas”. It means, when the sensations are structured they will be organized into elements that are arranged
well and they will be continued by arranging them into ideas.
b. Factor Causing Someone’s Perception
Some factors may cause someone to have a certain perception. According to Gibson, Donnelly, and Ivancevich 138-141 there are three factors that
influence someone to have a perception of something. They are stereotype, characteristics, and needs.
1. Stereotype
Stereotype is a subjective statement. When people tend to have this stereotype on particular thing, they tend to have attention to the thing that suits to
their stereotype and neglect others that do not match with their perception. They make classification based in their expectation. This stereotype often reflects the
wrong perception. 2.
Characteristic
The characteristic of the people will effect their perception on an object. It is also a mental process having perceptions that happen in our mind when we
perceive an object. We will perceive based on our characteristic. 3. Need
Need and expectations influence perception. It seems suitable with the reality in which we often do something based on our need.
In addition, according to Bootzin, Loftus, and Zajonc 122, culture and motivation are other aspects that influence someone’s perception. They state that
experiences of a culture may lead its members to develop perceptual biases, a phenomenon called cultural relativism. Motivation is affected by fulfillment of
people’s need. The more important the need is, the more people are motivated to do something. It is a psychological process, which reflects the interaction among
attitude, need, perception, and decision of the person.
4. Racism
