Perceptual Barriers

Have you ever felt like you were treated differently because of how someone expected you to behave? Perhaps your education at a top-tier university made you a victim of a higher workload at the office. Or maybe a certain coworker thought you’d oppose their new project proposal because of an issue you raised with their last big idea.

More often than not, these kinds of preconceived notions lead to roadblocks in communication, workflow standstills, and a general dissonance from person to person.

While some barriers to communication are more obvious, like language differences and physical obstructions, perceptual barriers are harder to spot. They reflect an internal perception about something going on externally and can significantly affect how we communicate with others.¹

The way we carry ourselves, our body language and gestures, our socioeconomic backgrounds, personal beliefs and tendencies are all common sources of bias that create perceptual barriers which hinder our ability to relate to one another. With that in mind, it’s helpful to be aware of these kinds of hurdles to communication and to locate ways to overcome them.

Cognitive Bias: A subconscious, systematic deviation from rationality in judgment-making that arises from problems related to memory, attention, and other mental mistakes.²

Humanism: A movement in psychology that emphasizes studying the individual holistically and emphasizing their uniqueness. This perspective stresses concepts of free-will, self-actualization and self-efficacy.3,4

Halo Effect: A form of cognitive bias that happens when we transfer our feelings about one attribute of a person’s character to another, often unrelated, trait. This can happen when our initial impression of one trait (“she is pretty!”) is unduly projected onto our overall impression of a person (“she is friendly!”).5

Perceptual barriers are a result of a certain type of cognitive bias, a term used to describe our systematic but inconsistent patterns of responses to judgment and decision problems. The idea of cognitive bias was introduced by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s, and has since grown exponentially in use to encapsulate dozens of more specific forms of bias.⁹

The five cognitive biases that most contribute to perceptual barriers include: stereotypes, the halo effect, selective participation, projection, and expectations.

Selective participation entails paying attention to information that supports your ideas and ignoring the rest. If you’re having issues with your supervisor, selective participation might involve assessing only their negative personality traits and ignoring any good qualities that would be inconsistent with your preexisting beliefs about them. Selective participation can also reflect in perceptual defense, our mechanism of defense against ideas and conceptions that threaten our belief system. A smoker averting their attention away from the harmful effects warning on a cigarette package is an example of this tendency.10

The halo effect is another common impetus to perceptual barriers; it was first observed by American psychologist Edward Thorndike and described in his 1920 article, A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings.11 In his study of the US military’s ranking system, officers were asked to rank their subordinates based on character traits. Thorndike found that the subordinates’ physical appearance highly correlated with evaluation of traits like intelligence, competence, and skill.12

 Stereotyping can also create hindrances in perception; widely-held generalizations about people can influence us to assign attributes to individuals solely on the basis of the category in which we perceive them. Most likely to occur when we meet new people, stereotypes can skew our first impressions of someone’s character on the basis of unrelated attributes like sex, race, or age.13

A study on stereotyping of older employees in an organization found that they are assumed to be more defiant to organizational change, less creative or likely to take calculated risks, ranked worse in physical capacity, and both less interested and capable of learning new techniques.¹⁴ Tasked with making decisions regarding personnel assignments, business students participating in the study gave older people less consideration in promotional opportunities, and received less attention for training.

The halo effect can also conjure sizable obstructions to effective decision-making and communication; it can lead to unfair differences in how employees are treated, disparities in disciplinary violations, and can even take effect during the hiring process. If a candidate is favored because of it, it could result in a biased hiring process.¹⁵

The preconceived ideas mentioned above can have serious implications on the way we communicate with one another. By failing to competently perceive others based on such prejudices, we create filters to the ways we interpret information and relay it in conversation. 

Seeking clarity is one helpful tactic that can minimize the harms of perceptual barriers.If you are unclear about expectations or preferences of another person in an interaction, confusion can manifest and provoke our perceptual biases to kick in. The key to overcoming a lack of clarity is asking questions to ensure that you and the other person are on the same page.¹⁶

Perceptual barriers can present significant strife for minority individuals both in and out of the workplace. Individuals dealing with disabilities, for instance, are often posed with challenges when deciding whether to pursue opportunities more readily available to the public.

A study done in 2019 by Erin Ludwig of the Corcoran College of Art and Design explored how disabled people are swayed by stigma when deciding whether to patronize arts organizations. Ludwig sought to understand whether attitudinal barriers to participation, beyond the traditional structural and architectural barriers, affected how likely such individuals were to be interested and join art activities.¹⁷ The participant pool consisted of an array of 28 arts organizations throughout the state of New Jersey, who responded to the study’s initial survey, followed by 50 handicapped individuals responding to the second survey round.

While forms of basic accessibility are accessible at most organizations as necessitated (like ramps, sign language interpretations, wheel-chair friendly bathrooms), the study sought to determine whether these organizations are aware of the attitudinal barriers and social needs of their disabled patrons. Through the initial survey, respondent organizations were “highly optimistic about the lack of stigma in their organizations”, with 93% of respondents indicating that they have written policies on accessibility for disabled individuals in place.18

The second round of survey data reflected a different story; nearly half of disabled patrons stated they agreed or completely agreed with the idea that “stigma (in a participatory context) was sometimes harder to overcome than physical or program-related barriers.” 19 Ludwig found this stigma affects individuals even if they have not personally experienced some form of discrimination, implying that self-stigmatization occurs simply from the individuals’ recognition of being part of a stigmatized group. This in turn dissuades disabled patrons from engaging in situations where they feel there are potential stigmatizers, like arts organization staffers.

Ludwig suggests that promoting training on the causal effects of attitudinal barriers for people with disabilities can go a long way for participation in arts organizations. Moreover, learning about aspects of disability that staff may not be familiar with, like the fact that it is commonplace to be uncomfortable in initial interactions dealing with patrons with disabilities, can be a huge step to bridging the gap between stigma and reality.20

Self-Perception Theory

Part of being cognizant of perceptual barriers is reflecting on our own behavior. Self-Perception Theory explains how we become aware of certain predispositions and attitudes by observing our own behavior. 

The Halo Effect in Consumer Perception: Why Small Details Can Make a Big Difference

The Halo Effect is one of the prominent instigators to perceptual barriers in our everyday lives. In consumption, the Halo Effect plays a major role in how we perceive products, both at the brand and product level.

1. Herman, C. (2019, June 18). How to Eliminate Perceptual Barriers. Bizfluent. https://bizfluent.com/how-8483270-eliminate-perceptual-barriers.html
2. Ruhl, C. (2021, May 4). What is cognitive bias? Study Guides for Psychology Students – Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-bias.html
3. Cherry, K. (2020, July 20). How humanistic theories are used in psychology. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-humanistic-psychology-2795242
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6. Schunk, D. H. (2016). Learning theories: An educational perspective. Pearson.
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8. Rogers, C., & Roethlisberger, B. (1991, November 1). Barriers and gateways to communication. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1991/11/barriers-and-gateways-to-communication
9. Wilke, A., & Mata, R. (2012). Cognitive bias. In Encyclopedia of human behavior (pp. 531-535). Academic Press.
10. Dolan, S, & Lingham, T. (2021). Introduction to International Organizational Behavior (2nd ed.). MyEducator. 2.10
11. Perera, A. (2021, March 22). Halo effect: Definition and examples. Study Guides for Psychology Students – Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/halo-effect.html
12. Dolan, S, & Lingham, T. (2021). Introduction to International Organizational Behavior (2nd ed.). MyEducator. 2.10
13. Black, J. S., Bright, D. S., & Gardner, D. G. (2019). Organizational behavior. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/organizational-behavior/pages/3-2-barriers-to-accurate-social-perception
14. C. von Hippel, et al, “Age-based stereotype threat and work outcomes: Stress appraisals and ruminations as mediators,” Psychology and Aging, February 2019, pp. 68-84.
15. Miller, B. (2018, October 1). How the halo effect impacts your workplace. HR Daily Advisor. https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/10/02/how-the-halo-effect-impacts-your-workplace/
16. Dopico, A. (2019, September 24). How do you overcome perceptual barriers? JanetPanic.com – World History Portal. https://janetpanic.com/how-do-you-overcome-perceptual-barriers/
17. Ludwig, E. (2012). Stigma in the arts: How perceptual barriers influence individuals’ with disabilities participation in arts organizations. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 42(3), 142
18. Ludwig, E. (2012). Stigma in the arts: How perceptual barriers influence individuals’ with disabilities participation in arts organizations. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 42(3), 143
19. Ludwig, E. (2012). Stigma in the arts: How perceptual barriers influence individuals’ with disabilities participation in arts organizations. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 42(3), 145
20. Ludwig, E. (2012). Stigma in the arts: How perceptual barriers influence individuals’ with disabilities participation in arts organizations. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 42(3), 149