Selective perception is the tendency to notice less, and to more quickly forget, information that causes emotional discomfort or contradicts a person's prior beliefs, a process psychologists believe occurs automatically rather than deliberately. It shows up, for example, when a teacher who favors one student overlooks that student's poor performance while failing to notice the progress of a less-favored student, and it also shapes how people consume mass media, letting them attend to facts and opinions that fit their existing views while screening out ones that do not. Selective perception is closely related to confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, both already live on this atlas, and its effects extend beyond individual psychology into marketing, politics and the study of biases in mental health.
Facts
Core ClaimSelective perception is the tendency to notice and remember information that fits a person's existing beliefs while overlooking or quickly forgetting information that causes emotional discomfort or contradicts those beliefs. 1 Classification
Type of Phenomenon Connections
Associated With
Source Wikipedia: Selective perception
Source Wikipedia: Selective perception
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia: Selective perception
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Selective perception
Wikimedia FoundationWikipedia: Selective perception, lead paragraph
Selective perception is the tendency to not notice and more quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional discomfort and contradict prior beliefs.
lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
Selective perception is the tendency to not notice and more quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional discomfort and contradict prior beliefs.
Associated With: Confirmation Bias, Wikipedia: Selective perception, para 2 (related concepts)
It is closely related to concepts like confirmation bias-favoring information that aligns with one's beliefs-and cognitive dissonance, the discomfort of holding conflicting thoughts, both of which shape perception.
Associated With: Cognitive Dissonance, Wikipedia: Selective perception, para 2 (related concepts)
It is closely related to concepts like confirmation bias-favoring information that aligns with one's beliefs-and cognitive dissonance, the discomfort of holding conflicting thoughts, both of which shape perception.
View the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
In what year was selective perception first identified or named as a distinct concept in psychology?
The cited Wikipedia article traces the concept only to Gestalt psychology in the early 20th century and says it attracted more scholarly attention in the mid 20th century, naming Leon Festinger 1957 cognitive dissonance theory as a later explanatory milestone, but it gives no specific year for when selective perception itself was first described or named.
What would resolve this A citable primary source, textbook, or history-of-psychology reference naming the specific year or publication that first used or defined the term selective perception.
Wikipedia: Selective perception
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