 Sometimes we think of computers or cars as one big thing. We see these huge machines. We just think of them as a single entity. But really, as we know, they're made up of lots of different parts that work together, right? All these things combined together to make the machine work, do what it does. The same thing is true in perception. When we think about where influences come from a perception, it's easy to think, well, it's just one thing or another. The truth is they come from a lot of different areas. Our perception is built from a lot of different influences. So let's take a look at what some of those influences are. So we can better understand that and better understand how our perceptions are built, where they're coming from. So some of the influences and perception include access to information. When you're exposed to different things, you have information about them that affects your worldview. In fact, the way you see things, the way you perceive things and interact with things. I remember my first Shabbat college, I was in a big city and I'd grown up in a very small city and had two interesting experiences there with access to information in terms of one of my roommates was from the city. He was from this big city and I went with him one time, one weekend, and was just so nervous. I didn't know anything about the city or anything how to behave in the city or whether I should talk to people or look at people or where to go. It was just so overwhelming, but he was just so at home there because that's where he'd grown up. It was literally his home. So he had access to all the information that he needed as for how to behave in that area and how to be successful. But then we went back one weekend to my house. He came with me to my house and it was really interesting because we went to a farm, a dairy farm, and he had no idea how to behave around the animals. He was terrified of the cows and had no idea what to do with him. He thought they were going to stampede at any moment. Cows are big dumb docile animals for the most part, but he also worried about whether a possum was going to jump in the car while we were on the interstate. He wanted to put the windows up so that a possum couldn't jump in the car and I had to explain to him that doesn't really happen. That's not a thing, but he didn't know that he'd never experienced a country living before, so he didn't know any of that. So I mean just access to information when we have access to different things. We know how to behave in those worlds. We know how to what to expect and it just helps us tremendously when we have access to those things. So another way that we are influenced is through physiological influences. Our body is a massive influence in perceptions, in a variety of different ways. First, our body influences perception through the senses, just with the way and the ability that we have to see, smell, touch, taste, and hear. Whether or not we have all of those faculties and which ones work better than others and which ones we rely on more than others, which are more sensitive. Our body influences the way that we perceive the world by influencing through our senses and by coordinating and mastering those senses. Age is another physiological influence. Your attitude changes as you get older and your worldview and all these different things like access to information. You have access to more information typically. It's an older person than you do as a younger person, but you also don't necessarily have the physical abilities that you did before. So it influences the way you perceive things. Parenting is another massive influence in perception. Your world, you change this tremendously in becoming a parent. You see danger where it never existed before and you just see the world in such a different way. So age and the experiences that come along with that age will influence your perception a great deal. Your health and fatigue. When you're not feeling well, your world shrinks, right? You don't see as much. You're not as aware of much usually other than what's right in front of you. You get tunnel vision in some ways and when you're tired, it's the same thing. You tend not to be as observant and your perception suffers as a result of being tired. So health and fatigue can absolutely influence your perception. Biological cycles. Are you a morning person or are you an evening person? If you're a night owl and you wake up in the morning and this is what you look like and picture, you know, you're dead to the world, then that's going to influence your perception of things earlier in the day, right? As opposed to if you're a morning person, then as the day wears on, your perception is going to be different than it is when you're more awake during those morning hours. Hunger, for example, is another physiological influence on perception. When you're hungry, again, your world shrinks, right? If you remember this classical old Snickers commercials where you're not yourself when you're hungry and they had Betty White playing football and stuff. That was a great commercial and a great demonstration of that because our world really isn't the same. Our attitudes are different. That's why we have the idea of hangry, right? Because hunger really does influence our perception of the world and how we see things, how we engage with things. The neuro behavioral challenges will influence your perception as well. If you're if you're somebody who has ADD or ADHD, then that will affect you the way that you perceive the world, the way you interact with the world and the way that you see things and you see them differently. Things like ADHD, ADD, autism, things that are those neuro behavioral challenges and just present things in a different light. In addition, we have psychological influences. So physiological had to do with the body, psychological, of course, then it's going to have to do with with your mind and the way you're processing psychologically. First of all, your mood will affect your perception. Talk to an earlier video about the difference between emotion and mood or another video between the difference in motion and mood. Mood is just something that kind of settles on you, right? Well, it's kind of inexplicable. We don't really understand specifically where mood comes from, but it certainly affects when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak, it affects your entire perception of the world and the way you see things, the way you engage with things. Your self concept, obviously will influence your perception as well. If you have a high self concept, that's going to be different in a situation than if you have a lower self concept in a particular situation. So self concept is a massive influence on perception as well. Social influences are another category of things that influence perception. Things like sex and gender roles. And as we know, those are viewed differently over time. Those can change over time. Setting aside the idea of transgender and things like that, but just traditional male and female gender roles or masculine and feminine gender roles, I should say, from the 50s and 60s and 70s and on through time, we can see these massive changes in the way that we perceive sex and gender roles. And then between, in turn, how the sex and genders perceive the world and how they see the world, what opportunities are available to them. Occupational roles have a massive influence on your perception. There's a classic thought exercise where you're asked to picture several people walking through the woods and how they might experience that differently. So, for example, one of my brothers is an educator, is a principal, high school principal. Another one of my brothers is a pastor and I'm a communication person. That's my area of expertise. So, if the three of us were walking through the woods, our occupational roles, because we spend so much time in these roles and they're such an important part of our lives, they do affect our perception in great ways. So, if the three of us were walking through the woods, you know, my brother's an educator, might be thinking about how, you know, what kind of field trip could we work out of this woods and, you know, how could this be an educational opportunity? My brother, the pastor, might be thinking of, you know, the presence of God and how this might, you know, translate into an example or illustration for a sermon or that, you know, things like that. It might be perceiving things in a more theological way. And as a communication person, specifically an organizational communication person, is my background, I'm going to be thinking about systems. I think about systems theory a lot. I'm going to think about the interconnectedness of this ecology here and how it all works together and what that, the lessons we can take from that and bring into the realm of improved communication by thinking about systems in that way. So our occupational roles are just going to seep into everything that we do and influence the way that we see the world. And our relational roles as well. I mentioned before how much of an impact parenting has on your perception. I mean, you get your world just changes almost overnight when you become a parent. You start seeing things in a different way. Again, there are dangers where they never were dangerous before. You didn't worry about whether the, you know, if you have young kids, you don't worry about well, if you don't have any kids, you don't worry about whether the wall sockets are exposed or if somebody's going to stick their finger in them or if somebody's running with a knife or somebody's, you know, then whatever they just don't worry about things like that. But your relational role will influence how you perceive the world and how we see things. And it's not just parenting. It's also, you know, your relational roles as, as a sibling, as a friend and so forth that will influence our perception of an event and then cultural influences. You know, I have a major impact on our perception. For example, is it, you know, what's the correct way to greet somebody? Is it with a handshake or with a bow, right? Or as I mentioned before, you know, in a different sense. So is this, is this, is this a sacred animal that could potentially contain, you know, the spirit of an, of an ancestor in an elevated sense or is this dinner? You know, is this a good source of protein and a good dinner for you when you cook it up? So, and just, you know, again, as I mentioned before with my friend, when we see this, I think, okay, those are cows. Let's get them in the barn. Let's get them fed. Let's do whatever we're doing. Somebody else may think, oh my gosh, they're coming after me. Look at these big animals. You know, so your culture, depending on where you grew up, is going to influence how you view things like that as well. So it just has a massive, all these things influence perception. So, again, coming back to what we talked about just when I mentioned at the beginning, all of these things, it's not just one of these things, but all of these things are what drive our perceptions. They all have an influence, potentially, on any given circumstance. So it's not a matter of, is my perception based on this or on that. It's a matter of all these things. You stick them all in a blender and really, that's what comes out as your perception. So it's a matter of not just one big thing, but it's lots of little things that influence the way we perceive the world. You have questions about the influence on perception, perception in general or anything else. Please feel free to email me. I'd be happy to chat with you via email about any of these topics. In the meantime, I hope that you will be getting to see the world differently and understand why you see the world that way and where that comes from for you. And that will inform how you can understand better how it may be different for somebody else then because their influencers are going to be totally different than yours. But the one thing we know is that perception is influenced by a lot of different things and it's critical for us to get to know all the ways that our perception is built.