P ERCEPTION AND C OMMUNICATION Chapter 2

T OPICS The process of human perception Influences on perception Social media and perception Guidelines for improving perception and communication

A FTER STUDYING Recognize how perception is made up of means of selecting, organizing, and interpreting the world to create meaning. Identify factors that affect individuals’ perceptions. List examples of the reciprocal relationship between your perceptions and social media.

focuses on meaning, which is the heart of communication we need to understand the reciprocal relationship between perception and communication. as we will see, perception shapes the meaning we assign to others’ communication and how we ourselves communicate. At the same time, communication influences how we perceive people and situations.

T HE P ROCESS OF H UMAN P ERCEPTION Perception: the active process of creating meaning by selecting, organizing, and interpreting people, objects, events, situations and other phenomena Note that perception is defined as an active process. We do not passively receive what is “out there” in the external world. Instead, we actively work to make sense of ourselves, others, and interactions.

we select only certain things to notice, we organize interpret what we have selectively noticed.

S ELECTION We select to attend to certain stimuli based on a number of factors: The qualities of the phenomena Self-indication Our motives and needs Culture

O RGANIZATION Constructivism – we organize and interpret experience by applying cognitive structures called schemata Prototype Personal construct Stereotype Script

I NTERPRETATION The subjective process of explaining our perceptions in ways that make sense to us Attributions Locus Stability Specificity Responsibility

I NTERPRETATION C ONTINUED Attributional Errors Self-serving bias Fundamental attribution error

I NFLUENCES O N P ERCEPTION Physiology Age Expectations Culture Social location Roles

I NFLUENCES O N P ERCEPTION C ONTINUED Cognitive abilities Cognitive complexity Person-centeredness Self

I MPLICIT P ERSONALITY T HEORY A collection of unspoken and sometimes unconscious assumptions about how various qualities fit together in human personalities

G UIDELINES FOR I MPROVING P ERCEPTION A ND C OMMUNICATION Recognize that all perceptions are partial and subjective Avoid mind reading Check perceptions with others Distinguish between facts and inferences Guard against the self-serving bias Guard against the fundamental attribution error Monitor labels

T HE L ADDER OF A BSTRACTION