Perception and Communication

To prevent misunderstandings or misinterpretations of perceptions requires what?

cooperation and willingness to communicate and being open minded about the communication received.

Name three different ways that we organize our perceptions.

1. Closure 2. Proximity 3. Similarity

What are the perception process steps.

1. Selection. 2. Organization. 3. Interpretation.

What is cultural myopia?

A form of ethnocentrism which not only refers to perceiving one's own culture as superior to other cultures but also means a very narrow or short-sighted view of other cultures. Like ethnocentrism, cultural myopia is not usually a conscious act; it is usually learned at the subconscious level.

What is ethnocentrism?

A learned belief that our own culture is superior to all others.

What is culture?

A set of interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, and social practices, which affect behaviors of a relatively large group of people.

What is a fact?

A statement put forth as objectively real that can be verified.

Conviction

A strong belief or opinion.

What is an inference?

An interpretation that goes beyond what we know to be factual. An opinion or conclusion that is reached that is based on facts.

How does a competent communicator organize their perceptions?

Competent communicators remain aware of what they are doing and remember to distinguish between what they know and what they don't. Otherwise they increase their chances of forming a wrong and inaccurate perception of the person. Inaccurate perceptions can adversely affect communication and can cost you a relationship, a job, or a new experience. For example, you decide, without complete information and based on a casual comment, that the person doesn't share your religious views, and so you lose interest. It may be that you just don't know enough about the person's views.

superficial

Existing or occurring at or on the surface

What is selective attention?

Focusing on a specific message while ignoring or downplaying other stimuli happening at the same time. That is, you concentrate on something or someone of interest, and you eliminate or reduce the effects of all extraneous messages. For example, you focus on the accent and ignore the message. Selective attention is where you block out all extraneous stimuli to retain concentration.

Decisive

Having or showing the ability to make decisions quickly.

Myopia

Lack of imagination, foresight, or intellectual insight.

What is perception?

Selecting, organizing, and interpreting information to give meaning to the communication we receive.

Stimuli

Something that causes a physiological response in a body part or organism.

What is attribution?

The act of saying or thinking that something is the result or cause of a particular person. It is a complex process through which we attempt to understand the reasons behind others' behaviors. We are always trying to explain why people behave the way they do; to seek an explanation, we tend to make assumptions by attributing cause.

What is selective exposure?

The deliberate choices we make to expose ourselves to certain stimuli and not to others. This is especially true when we expose ourselves to stimuli that reinforces our preexisting views and avoid stimuli that contradicts them. Also known as "congeniality bias" or "confirmation bias."

What are the two factors that influence our assumptions about our own and others' behavior?

The situation (environment) and the disposition (traits of a person).

Competent communicators understand perception how?

They understand its influence on communication and vice versa. They also know that their perception of a single communication, event, or situation may be only part of the story and that they often need more information before drawing final conclusions. They are not afraid to seek out more information or to ask questions before coming to any conclusions.

Culture evolves through ___________________.

communication

Perception is at the heart of ______________________.

communication.

Attending to something usually requires a ___________ effort, but even the best attempts to concentrate can be interrupted by ______________.

decisive/distractions

Research shows that we are more likely to overestimate ______________causes and underestimate ________________ causes of others' actions. What is this called and describe it.

dispositional/situational/Fundamental attribution error. This error occurs when we perceive others acting as they do because they are "that kind of person" rather than because of any external factors that may have influenced their behavior.

Appease

to relieve or satisfy

What things influence peoples perceptions?

1. Past experiences/perceptual sets and stereotyping 2. Physical makeup 3. Cultural background 4. Psychological state 5. Gender 6. Media

People with high levels of cognitive complexity often are effective communicators because why?

Because they are able to understand and process multiple perspectives about people at the same time. They can perceive more characteristics about people at once such as their values, beliefs, appearance, and emotional needs, and incorporate them into their messages.

Appreciable

Large or important enough to be noticed.

Describe closure as a concept in organizing perceptions.

One way to organize the stimuli around us is to fill in missing pieces and to extend lines in order to finish or complete a figure. This completion process is called closure. We are always trying to make meaningless material meaningful. Filling in the blank spaces or missing information helps us categorize, label, and make sense of the things we see and hear. We sometimes do the same thing as we try to understand people. Unfortunately, what we fill in may be based on bias and ignorance.

Describe similarity as a concept in organizing perceptions.

Organization based on similarity involves the grouping of stimuli that resemble one another in size, shape, color, or other traits. Just because two people are similar in one attribute doesn't automatically mean they will be similar in another.

How does media influence perception?

Sometimes other people influence our perceptions deliberately. Advertisers, government leaders, political advocates, and many others attempt to shape our views through the media. It is important to keep an open mind and evaluate as critically as possible all info we are absorbing from various media before coming to a conclusion about something. It is also important to recognize that our selection of certain sites may be based on our biases and our desire to reinforce our own beliefs and convictions. Competent communicators will attempt to evaluate info they are receiving even if it does not reinforce their views.

What is gender?

The state of being male or female and the socially constructed roles each are expected to have that are learned.

Our perceptions, whether complete or incomplete accurate or inaccurate, influence our _________________ and ________________.

communication/decisions

We are creatures of _________, and when we perceive others behaving in routine or predictable ways, we are more likely to gloss over or ignore other important details, which can lead to what?

Misunderstandings, misinterpretations.

Describe Selection as a perception process step.

Selection occurs when we mentally sort one thing from another, based on our previous experiences. The environment has far too much information to absorb at once, so the brain ignores much of it. It accepts a certain amount of info and organizes it into meaningful patterns. All these connections happen in milliseconds. Competent communicators are aware of what is happening when we perceive things so that they make good choices about what to ignore and what to attend to. Because it is impossible to attend to, perceive, retain, and give meaning to every stimulus or message we encounter, we must select the relevant information and narrow our focus. We must make sure we select to focus on the important details though especially when people seem to behave in routine or predictable ways.

Is ethnocentrism a bad thing when perceiving others?

Not necessarily. But it does alter our perceptions and often colors how we regard others who are different from us. We learn to behave through culture, and the way we behave, most of us believe, is the way everyone else should behave. We use our culture and our cultural behaviors as a yardstick by which to judge all other cultures and people. The difference between a person's own culture and other cultures is often judged on a superiority-inferiority scale. The greater the differences seen between cultures, the greater the degree of inferiority.

Describe proximity as a concept in organizing perceptions.

Proximity is the grouping of two or more stimuli that are close to one another, based on the assumption that because objects or people appear together, they are similar. This, of course, is not always true.

How can cultural background influence our perception?

Culture identifies us as members of a particular group and shapes individual characteristics such as our values and biases. Your cultural beliefs influence how you perceive the world and how you communicate with others. In fact, because of culture, we learn to communicate. Much cultural influences occurs without our realizing it: Typically we are not conscious of how much of our behavior is conditioned by culture. The way we greet others, the way we use language, our opinions about what and when to eat, and many of our personal preferences are culturally conditioned. When cultural differences are apparent, sensitivity, patience, and tolerance are required to avoid or reduce misunderstandings that can create barriers to effective communication and to relationship development.

Describe interpretation as a perception process step.

Interpretation is the assigning of meaning to stimuli. We use our: 1) Past experiences, 2) Present experience and 3) Opinions of others to help interpret the meaning of stimuli. When we think of perception, most of us associate the term with what we see, but we also form perceptions based on the sound of individuals' speech patterns, which include voice, grammar, and word choices. A person's voice or use of language influences your perception of that person's credibility, competency, intelligence, age, or gender.

How can physical characteristics influence our perception?

Our weight, height, body shape, health, strength, and ability to use our five senses can account for differences in what we perceive. For example, if you are visually impaired, you likely experience the world in ways that a sighted person finds difficult to comprehend or even imagine. It is not unusual that when we meet someone for the first time, we react to a variety of factors, no matter how superficial, resulting in emotional reactions that lead to a positive or negative image of that person. One such factor is the clothing that person is wearing. So a persons wardrobe can significantly effect our perceptions of them.

How can stereotyping negatively effect communication?

Through stereotyping, we profile people and their behaviors. This tendency may hamper our communication by causing us to overlook individual characteristics and differences. Stereotypes ultimately perpetuate inaccuracies about people and thus impede communication.

What is a perceptual set?

Fixed, previously determined views of events, objects, and people that we use to interpret new information. A perceptual set allows our past experiences to control or focus our perceptions so that we ignore information that is different or has changed about an event, object, or person. It is a form of stereotyping. Perceptual set may prevent us from seeing things that differ from what we expect to see and hear or from noticing changes in people and things. A competent communicator avoids the assumption that perceptual sets or stereotypes will always be complete or accurate. Many communication scholars believe that the greatest single problem with human communication is the assumption that our perceptions are always correct.

Although many stereotypes are negative, ___________ stereotypes can be found as well.

positive

Our perception of reality may not be the same as what?

someone elses

Selection is of what three types?

1. Selective exposure 2. Selective Attention 3. Selective retention

Tentative

Not certain or fixed; provisional

What is stereotyping?

The categorizing of events, objects, and people without regard to unique individual characteristics and qualities. Stereotyping is pervasive because of the human psychological need to categorize and classify information.

Why is the fundamental attribution error made?

The error is made because we have no other frame of reference except the observable behavior of the person in question. Thus, we are likely to make a judgement about the person to appease ourselves. It is easier to "assume" rather than "determine" what actually causes someone to behave the way he or she does. As competent communicators, we need to learn how to avoid making fundamental attribution errors.

What is cultural relativism?

When people take on a broader worldview and open their minds to different cultures as merely being different, rather than judging them as inferior because they are different.

What is selective retention?

When we choose to process and store specific information we want to eventually retrieve and use again. We are more likely to remember for a longer time any info that agrees with our views and to selectively forget info that does not. In addition, after perceiving and selecting certain stimuli, we may retain only a portion of them. We cannot possibly remember all the info that we encounter, so we are selective in what we retain.

Our perceptions, based on our experiences, give ____________ to our communication, and also influence how we do what?

meaning/communicate with others.

Partial

not complete or total; tending to treat one person or thing better than another.

Our perceptions of people, situations, events, objects and how they communicate represent what?

our own reality

What are ways to improve your perception competency?

To be competent communicators, we must understand the impact that our perceptions have on us, how we communicate with others, and what we accept as reality through the communication we receive. We tend to take the validity of our perceptions for granted and fail to look beneath the surface. You must realize your perceptions are partial and subjective and could be wrong. To avoid misperceptions, you must: 1. Become and active perceiver: Be willing to seek out as much info as you can about a person, event, or thing. We must question our perceptions realizing that they could be wrong. In this way, we prompt ourselves to confirm facts before we draw conclusions. 2. Recognize that each person's frame of reference is unique: We must realize that our perception is one of many. 3. Distinguish facts from inferences: We must be tentative to addressing what the facts are and what inferences are. 4. Become aware of the role of perceptions in communication: Take others' perceptions into account and avoid the tendency to assume too much about what we perceive. 5. Keep an open mind: Be willing to check our perceptions because they might not be complete or accurate. 6. Check our perceptions: 1)Describe the observed behavior, 2)Think of at least two interpretations of the behavior, and 3) Verify your interpretation.

How does gender influence perception?

Women and men learn about their world around them in differing ways, resulting in different ways of communicating. Our view of gender not only communicates who we believe ourselves to be but also helps to construct a sense of who we want to be. Our understanding of masculinity and femininity changes continually.

What is cognitive complexity?

A term used by psychologists to measure and explain our ability to process, interpret, and store simple to intricate information. The more cognitively complex we are, the more sophisticated our perceptions because the more information we notice about something or someone. For example, as a cognitively complex person, you will notice several attributes about a person at the same time. A person who is less cognitively complex may notice only a few of these attributes. At an abstract psychological level, you might infer that the behaviors of the person you observe reflect an extroverted, sincere, and self-confident personality. This level of assessment is a sophisticated explanation because it involves perceptions of why the person acts as he or she does, and it is based solely on concrete observations.

How can psychological state influence our perception?

All information coming to us passes through various filters and screens that sort and color what we receive and how we perceive it. When things are going our way, we view things much more positively than when our mind-set is negative. For example, when we are under a great deal of stress or if we have a poor self-image, these conditions will influence how we perceive the world around us. Sometimes this distortion is small and temporary and has no appreciable effect on communication. At other times, our state of mind can actually reverse the meaning or alter a message, changing how we select, organize, and interpret it.

How does a competent communicator view interpretation?

The competent communicator knows that info, regardless of its source or form, must always be interpreted in order to have meaning. However, he or she also knows that interpretation is based on the experiences of the person receiving the info, which means that different people receiving the same information may disagree on what it signifies, what it entails, or what conclusions can be drawn from it. Each of us perceives the world through a personal set of "lenses" or "filters", or how we view ourselves. Therefore, we can never see things in exactly the same way as others. ********Our interpretations of stimuli depend on our past experiences, but we must be careful not to let them keep us from finding fresh meanings in new situations or events.

Describe organization as a perception process step.

The way our minds organize and sort info has a profound effect on how we perceive others, how we talk to them, and how they respond to us. We organize our perceptions of people, objects, and things based on who we are, our backgrounds and experiences, and how we see ourselves. We are also likely to focus on concrete aspects, such as a person's height, attractiveness, age, or race, rather than on abstract psychological aspects, such as sincerity, honesty, and so on.