misperceive

Misperceive is to perceive something inaccurately, so that sensory input or its interpretation does not match reality. The term applies to errors across senses—visual, auditory, tactile, and others—and to incorrect judgments based on those perceptions. Misperception is not limited to mistaken beliefs about a situation; it denotes the perceptual input stage and the initial processing that precedes deliberate reasoning. The word is formed from mis- (wrong) and perceive.

Causes and mechanisms: both bottom-up sensory factors and top-down cognitive processes influence misperception. Sensory limitations, noise, ambiguity, and rapid presentation can distort input. Expectations, prior experience, attention, mood, fatigue, intoxication, and cultural context bias interpretation. Illusions are a subset of misperceptions: structured perceptual distortions produced by the brain's processing of sensory data.

Examples: pareidolia—the tendency to see faces in clouds or shadows; mishearing a word; misjudging the distance of an oncoming vehicle; mistaking a reflection for a real object. Misperceptions can occur in everyday life and in professional settings such as eyewitness accounts, driving, design of interfaces, and experimental psychology.

Mitigation and correction: seeking corroborating information across senses, slowing down to recheck input, using objective measurements, and training to recognize perceptual biases. Clear lighting, reduced distractions, and structured decision protocols can help reduce error in critical tasks.

See also: illusions, misinterpretation, hallucination.