The Perceiver

Human beings are not simply mechanical, passive recipients of whatever stimuli happen to reach them from the external world. We are creative beings who actively try to understand and make sense of the world in our own particular ways. In this active process of meaning-making, a perceiver's own motivations and expectations, cultural knowledge, past experiences and memories, and personal values, beliefs, and attitudes all play an important role in shaping the meaning given to the external world. The subsections below describe some of the mos …