My colleague's column today talked about how the world's perception of a country like Malaysia can be shaped by the newsflow that appears in the global media. In the present age and technology, the flow of news quickens much faster than the good ol' days. Sometimes, too fast to even leave a mark bcos' both the producer of news and the readers start looking for the next headline as soon as the latest news is broken. It's a pity really, cos' the mind needs a bit of time to digest and comprehend the information before another new stream of data arrives.
In the group research that I'm involved in for the postgraduate thesis, there is a section that discusses consumer's perception of investment products and associated risk. We used Freud's pyschoanalysis that the mind is divided into three parts - the conscious, sub-conscious and the combination of both. We argued that irrationality happens often in purchasing behaviour because consumer's perception of goods and services is influenced by many external factors, and not just a matter of needs.
Too often in conversations, I was told of certain trends and perceptions, and when I asked further if there was evidence to their views, many times the answers were vague and indirect. Many also attributed it to: "Oh, the newspaper/tv/radio said so ..." Haven't we learned well enough that the media is manipulative and tends to only tell only one side of the story? The media is never neutral, no matter how much it wants/strives to claim to be. There are too many forces at play to influence the role of media. It's not a perception, it's a fact.
I'm not saying that perception is not the truth; sometimes it can be but most of the time, it's a disillusionment to what we want to believe to be the truth. In some circumstances, it doesn't hurt to just rely on the perception, but in more crucial decision-making, sole perceptions can be deadly. It's not easy to constantly check on our perceptions/view points of things/people, but it will save us a lot of trouble if we do. Perhaps when we test and find out that the perception turns out to be fact, it could be even more satisfying ;)
