Checking Your Perception

Another way to improve your perception is through perception-checking, a five-step process in which you apply all that you’ve learned in this chapter to your perception of others.

  1. Check your punctuation. People punctuate encounters in different ways, often disagreeing on “who/what started it” or “who/what ended it.” This kind of disagreement is common during interpersonal conflicts. When you experience a conflict, be aware of your own punctuation and keep in mind that other people may see things differently. Remember to ask others to share their punctuation with you.
  2. Check your knowledge. Your perception of others is only as accurate as the information you have in your schemata. Never presume that you know the “truth” about what others “really” mean or what they’re “really” like. When in doubt, ask others to explain their meaning to you.
  3. Check your attributions. Avoid the common temptation to attribute others’ communication and behavior exclusively to internal causes such as character or personality. Question any internal attributions you make. Remember that all behavior—including interpersonal communication—stems from a complex combination of internal and external forces.
  4. Check perceptual influences. Reflect on how culture, gender, and personality are shaping your perception of others. Are you perceiving others as ingroupers or outgroupers? If so, on what basis? How is this perception affecting your communication? Your relationships?
  5. Check your impressions. Reflect on your impressions as you’re forming them. If you find yourself making Gestalts, realize that your Gestalts may bias your perception of subsequent information you learn about a person. Resist stereotyping but also realize that it’s difficult to avoid, given the natural human tendency to categorize people into groups upon first meeting. Strive to create flexible impressions, thoughtfully weighing new information you learn about a person and reshaping your overall impression based on new data.

Perception-checking is an intense mental exercise. Mastering it takes time and effort, but the ability to critically check your own perception goes, as Malcolm X wrote, “hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth,” whether the truth is personal, interpersonal, or universal. When you routinely perception-check, errors are corrected and perception becomes more accurate, balanced, and objective. As a result, you will make fewer communication blunders, you will be able to tailor your communication to people as they really are, and others will likely see you as a competent communicator.

LearningCurve

Chapter 3

Postscript

We began this chapter with an account of a football game marked by brutality and accusations of unfair play and an examination of its perceptual aftermath. Following the Dartmouth-Princeton game, fans from both sides felt the opposition had played dirty and that their own team had behaved honorably. Although there was only one game, fans perceived two radically different contests.

When you observe the “game film” of your own life, how often do you perceive others as instigating all of the rough play and penalties you’ve suffered while seeing yourself as blameless? Do you widen the perceptual gulf between yourself and those who see things differently? Or do you seek to bridge that divide by practicing and communicating empathy?

More than 60 years ago, two teams met on a field of play. Decades later, that game—and people’s reactions to it—reminds us of our own perceptual limitations and the importance of overcoming them. Although we’ll never agree with everyone about everything that goes on around us, we can strive to understand one another’s viewpoints much of the time. In doing so, we build lives that connect us to others rather than divide us from them.