Communications 3-5
you-language
attributes intentions and motives onto another person
perception
active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting people, objects, events, situations, and activities
static evaluation
an assessment that suggests that something is unchanging
mind reading
assuming we understand what another person thinks or feels (bad)
empathy
ability to feel with another person
inference
deduction that goes beyond what you know or assume to be a fact
reappropriation
a group reclaims a term used by others to degrade its members and treats that term as a positive self-description
stereotypes
a predictive generalization about a person or situation
indexing
a technique to remind us that our evaluations apply only to specific times and circumstances
constructivism
a theory that holds that we organize and interpret experience by applying cognitive structures called cognitive schemata
person-centeredness
ability to perceive another as a unique individual
attributions
act of explaining why something happens or why a person acts a particular way
judgment
belief or opinion that is based on observations, feelings, assumptions, or other phenomena (not facts)
constitutive rules
define what a particular communication means or stands for
I-language
identifies the speaker's or perceiver's thoughts and feelings
prototypes
knowledge structures that define the clearest or ideal examples of some category
verbal communication
language
ambiguous
language doesn't have clear-cut, precise meanings
institutional facts
meanings of brute facts based on human interpretations
personal constructs
mental yardstick that allows us to measure aperson or situation along a bipolar dimension of judgment (intelligent-not intelligent, kind-not kind)
cognitive complexity
number of personal constructs used, how abstract they are, and how elaborately they interact to shape perceptions
brute facts
objective, concrete phenomena and activities
influences on perception
physiological factors, expectations, cognitive abilities, membership in cultures and social communities, social roles
monitoring
process of calling behaviors or other phenomena to our attention so that we can observe and regulate them
four schematas
prototypes, personal constructs, stereotypes, scripts
regulative rules
regulate interaction by specifying when, how, where, and with whom to communicate about certain things
symbols
representations of people or things
totalizing
responding to a person as if one label totally represents that person
scripts
sequence of activities that spells out how we and others are expected to act in a specific situation
communication rules
shared understandings among members of a particular culture or social group about what communication means and what behaviors are appropriate in various situations
nonverbal communication
symbols that aren't words (facial expressions, posture, tone)
interpretation
the subjective process of creating explanations for what we observe and experience
selection
the things we naturally pay more attention to
hypthetical thought
thinking about experiences and ideas that are not part of your concrete, daily reality
arbitrary
verbal symbols are not intrinsically connected to what they represent
self-serving bias
we tend to construct attributions that serve our personal interests
abstract
words are not the concrete or tangible phenomena to which they refer
loaded language
words that slant perception and meanings exceedingly