Enhancing Perception and Communication Skills for Better Understanding

1. Chapter 3 Perception and Communication

2. Topics covered • The Process of Human Perception • Influences on Perception • Social Media and Perception • Guidelines for Improving Perception and Communication

3. After 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 perceptionsand social media.

4. In everyday communication, our wordsaffect how we perceive others, situations, events, behaviors, and ourselves. • At the same time, our perceptions shape what things mean to us and hencethe labels we use to name them. • We communicate with others according tohow we perceive and define them, and we may miss opportunities when ourlabels limit what we perceive.

5. The Process of Human Perception • Perception: the active process of creating meaning by selecting, organizing,andinterpreting people, objects, events, situations and other phenomena • Note that perception is defined as an active process. We do not passively receive what is “outthere” in the external world.

6. They are; • continuous, so they blend into one another. • also interactive,so each of them affects the other two. For example, what we select to perceive in a particular situation affects how we organize and interpret the situation.At the same time, how we organize and interpret a situation affects our subsequentselections of what to perceive in the situation.

7. Selection • 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

9. Which of the following is most distracting to drivers? • a. Listening to an audiotape • b. Talking on a hand-held phone • c. Using a speech-to-text system • d. Talking on a hands-free phone When drivers need to concentrate on a task such as posting on Facebook,they are prone to inattention blindness, which is the tendency notto see what is right in front of them.

10. Organization • Constructivism – we organize and interpret experience by applying cognitive structures called schemata • Prototype • Personal construct • Stereotype • Script

11. Interpretation • The subjective process of explaining our perceptions in ways that make sense to us • Attributions • Locus • Stability • Specificity • Responsibility

12. Interpretation • Attributional Errors • Self-serving bias • Fundamental attribution error

13. Influences On Perception • Physiology • Age • Expectations • Culture • Social location • Roles

14. Influences On Perception Continued • Cognitive abilities • Cognitive complexity • Person-centeredness • Self

15. Implicit Personality Theory • A collection of unspoken and sometimes unconscious assumptions about how various qualities fit together in human personalities

16. Guidelines for Improving Perception And Communication • 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