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Chapter 3: Perception and Communication

Key Concepts

Attribution mind reading

cognitive complexity Müller-Lyer illusion

constructivism perception

culture personal construct

empathy prototype

fundamental attribution error script

implicit personality theory self-serving bias

inattention blindness standpoint

interpretation stereotype

Chapter Outline

I. Perception is an active process of creating meaning by selecting, organizing, and interpreting

people, objects, events, situations, and other phenomena.

A. Selection - We consciously select which of the infinite number of stimuli around us is

most relevant at any point in time.

1. We select stimuli that stand out above the others.

2. We influence what we select by noticing things we had not noticed before.

3. Who we are, what we need, why we need it, and where we are at a moment in
time influences what we select.

4. The culture in which we grow up also influences what we select to perceive.

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B. Organization - Constructivism is a theory that states that we organize and interpret
experience by applying cognitive structures called schemata. We use four schemata to
make sense of interpersonal phenomena:

1. Prototypes represent the clearest or most representative example of some

category, such as a particular group of people, places, objects, activities,
relationships, or events.

2. Personal constructs are “mental yardsticks” that we use to measure a person or

situation along a bipolar dimension of judgment.

3. Stereotypes are generalizations about people and situations that allow us to

predict another person’s likely behavior.

4. Scripts are guides for action. They consist of sequences of activities that are
expected of us and others in particular situations.

C. Interpretation is the process of attaching meaning or explanations to phenomena we

have noticed and organized.

1. Attributions are explanations for why things happen or why people act the way
they do.

2. Attributional errors occur when we attach distorted meanings to what happens

around us.

a. A self-serving bias occurs when we take excessive personal credit for our
successes and assume someone or something else is responsible for our
poor performances.

b. A fundamental attribution error occurs when we overestimate the

internal causes and underestimate the external causes of others’
undesirable behaviors or when we overestimate the external causes and
underestimate the internal causes of our undesirable behaviors.

II. Influences on Perception – Individuals differ in how they perceive situations and people At
least six factors affect our perception process.

A. Physiology - people differ in their sensory abilities, which can also be impacted by
biorhythms or medical conditions.
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B. Expectations - our expectations affect what we notice. This explains the self-fulfilling
prophecy.

C. Age and the number and complexity of life experiences alter our views or
interpretations of particular communication situations.

D. Our culture provides each of us with a particular set of beliefs, values,

understandings, practices that influence our perception.

1. Social Location - The social groups to which we belong in a particular culture

shape our standpoints, or points of view that grow out of political awareness of
the social location of the groups to which we belong.

2. Roles - The training we receive to fulfill a role and the actual demands of the
role affect what we notice and how we interpret and evaluate the role.

E. Our Cognitive abilities influence the number of different interpretations we can

create for a situation.

1. People who have more schemata for organizing and interpreting situations are
considered to be more cognitively complex than those who rely on few personal
constructs and focus more on concrete categories than abstract ones.

2. Person-centeredness is the ability to interact with another individual as a

unique human being.

3. When we empathize with another person, we do our best to feel what that
person is feeling in a particular situation.

F. Self - We have implicit personality theories, which are collections of assumptions

about how various qualities fit together in human personalities.

III. Social Media and Perception

A. Our choices of social media shape our perceptions of events, issues, and people.

B. Cultural memberships influence the content of digital and online communication.

C. Social media have altered how we perceive time and space.

IV. Guidelines for improving perception and communication. Seven guidelines can help us
improve the accuracy of our perceptions.
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A. Recognize that all perceptions are partial and subjective. We need to understand that
all of our perceptions occur at a single point in time, represent only a portion of the
stimuli we could notice, and cannot be determined to be true or false.

B. Avoid mind reading, assuming we understand what another person thinks, feels, or
perceives. We need to avoid assuming that we know what another person thinks or how
she or he perceives a particular situation.

C. Check perceptions with others by asking others to what extent our perceptions are
accurate. This will help us arrive at mutual understandings of each other, the situation,
and our relationship.

D. We need to distinguish between facts (those things we can verify based on

observation) and inferences (those things we create by interpreting what we have
observed).

E. Guard against the self-serving bias because it can distort our perceptions.

F. Avoid the fundamental attribution error by looking for external reasons for others’
actions and internal motivations for your own.

G. Monitor labels. We need to remember that the labels we attach to particular

interactions affect not only how we perceive situations, but also how we will behave in
future interactions.