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1. Perception
Human beings are equipped with several sense organs. Those organs are used to receive information from their surrounding. For instance, ears are to get
information by hearing and nose is to get information by smelling. Each organ has specific function to send the received information to the brain. The information
will be collected in the brain. By having the information, human can have a perception on the given situation.
Perception is the oldest topic discussed by psychologists. Research about perception has been developed since hundreds years ago. Researching perception
becomes important since perception is a foundation underlining others disciplines. Many psychologists and scientists have been trying to define what perception is
and research about it for hundreds years ago. Universally, perception is described as the process of attaining awareness
to understanding of sensory information. Based on Gibson, Ivancevich, and Donnely 1985: 60, perception is the cognitive process by which an individual
gives meaning to the environment. The meaning given to the surrounding is various. Each individual has different meaning on the same environment. Because
each person gives his or her own meaning toward the stimuli, he or she will ‘see’ what the others do not ‘see’. Everyone has different thought to the same thing.
According to Burner as cited by Shaw and Costanzo 1982: 186, perception is a process of categorization. The organism is stimulated by some
appropriate input external object, event, etc. and responds to it by relating it a category of objects or events. Burner adds perception is not merely the passive
12 perception and automatic interpretation of stimuli, but rather it is an active process
in which the incoming data are selectively related to the cognitive structure. Altman, Valenzi, and Hodgetts 1985: 85 state that perception is the way
stimuli are selected and grouped by a person so that they can be meaningfully interpreted. In other word, perception is a person’s view of reality.
Crow and Crow 1972: 93 state that a percept can be regarded as a meaningful sensation. Perception includes not only the sensitization of the sensory
nerve but also the immediate associative mental processes that follow. Crow and Crow 1972:95 add that perception is influenced by an individual’s feelings and
attitudes at the time of the perception. For example, if someone is hungry, the smell of frying fish will be pleasant, but if someone is full, it becomes an
annoying thing. According to Vernon 1962: 32, perception is never instantaneous. It means that the forming of perception takes time. If people see
one object for a very short time, people can not identify what it is. Huffman, Vernoy, and Vernoy 1996: 97 describe that perception refers
to the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory data into useful mental representation of the world. When people look something new, there will
be much information coming up in their mind but only selected information will be processed further.
According to Huffman et al. 1996:98, perception consists of three basic processes: selection, organization, and interpretation of incoming sensation. It is
supported by Gibson et al. 1985:61 say that perception involves receiving the
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