Back to our example (for those of you who really dislike Britney, my apologies): what we see happening is mother and son perceiving the stimuli in the manner in which it will best satisfy her or his own needs. Each recognizes her or his needs, interests, cultural values, and background in the stimuli at hand- all the stimuli at hand, not just Britney. Each responds, or does not respond, according to how well the stimuli makes it through the four phases of processing. The process of choosing what will make it through these four phases is selective perception. We even utilize selective perception when we choose what we will selectively perceive!

From a purely biological standpoint our senses are utilized to perceive the world around us and to help us learn about it (Kerby, 1975). We take in stimuli from this world by tasting, touching, smelling, hearing and seeing what's going on around us. Since stimulation comes at us from several directions at once, we have the biological capability to physically 'tune out' most of what we do not need for the task at hand.

Selective perception from a psychological standpoint is how we view our world to create or justify our own reality (Sherif & Cantril, 1945). It means, for example, that what we wish to see in this world we will see in this world. Information we receive will be processed in a manner that harmonizes with and supports our current beliefs. In other words, as Nietzsche put so well, there really are no facts, only interpretations.

What makes selective perception different from other types of perception is the way it's used. In general, selective perception is used to protect us. The type of selective perception we engage in when we drive protects us from getting into an accident. In this way, we don't attend to all stimuli coming our way at one time. We ignore much of what is not needed for the task at hand (Burgoon, Burgoon & Miller, 1981). Selective perception utilized in this manner is what Sherif and Cantril call "selectivity of perception" and refers to an individual's investigation of the "objective world to which the individual is actually paying attention" (Petty, Ostrom & Brock, 1981, p. 11).

Sherif and Cantril call the type of selective perception we engage in when we strive for internal consistency "frame of reference" (Petty, et.al., 1981, p. 11). Frame of reference protects us by confirming our beliefs and interpretations. Such confirmation allows us to operate in the world via categories we've set up to keep us from becoming cognitively overwhelmed. Miller, in his classic work, "The Magical Number 7, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information," proposes that we extend our capacity for information processing by creating categories into which stimuli are organized (1956). But, this capacity, like the raw data we can process, has its limits.

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