Attention, Perception and Decision-Making

Usman Athar

CUNY York College

Attention, decision-making and perception will be the cognitive processes studied. The combination of cognitive processes to be studied is attention and how it can affect decision-making or perception, after visualizing something for a certain amount of time. The study is socially relevant because it’s interesting to know if people’s perception changes after sitting down for just 4-5 minutes and simply looking at each other. Also, will it cause them to make decisions in terms of whether or not they should initiate conversation? Will it cause people to ultimately lose their preconceived notions about other people, based on what they see? Ultimately, will it destroy racism? This project is primarily directed at understanding the cognitive processes of attention and how it affects perception. Racism is and will forever be unsolved, but if human beings can find ways to reduce it then it would be impactful. This project can possibly find a way to help people break their preconceived notions about certain people. Although it is definitely difficult to make an innovative contribution to a field that you are learning about, it is definitely worth it and will certainly be moving a milestone, whether it may be big or small. Looking at studies that have been done before can provide great examples of studies that are yet to be done. That is a great start to this research project. Also the textbook can provide examples of studies that have been done and so that might give you ideas on what to do. As a victim of racism, this certainly does interest me, as I receive it on a daily basis. Maybe this research project can prove to be beneficial after all. Quality work will come from quality data, thus the research needs to be of quality. As it is something I personally face, I will be more than intrigued to study this cognitive process in hopes to maybe come up with a societal solution.