Chapter 2 Outline

What to Expect

Chapter Outline

  1. Perception is a cognitive process through which we interpret our experiences and come to our own unique understandings.
    1. Those thoughts and cognitions influence how and what we communicate to others and simultaneously influence the way that we interpret the behaviors and messages that others send to us.

    Ask Yourself:

    • How does perception influence our communication with others?
  2. Communication processing is the means by which you gather, organize, and evaluate the information you receive.
    1. When perceiving stimuli, we must sift through a great deal of information to determine what is important.
    2. Schemas are mental structures that put together related bits of information to form patterns to create meaning and make sense of the world around us.
      1. Communicators retrieve schemas from memory and interpret new information, people, and situations in accordance with those schemas.
      2. The interaction appearance theory helps explain how we change our perceptions of people, particularly their physical attractiveness, as we engage in more communication with them. This is a way in which a schema can change.
      3. Schemas present four key challenges to competent communication.
        1. Mindlessness is characterized by processing information passively and is signaled by reduced cognitive activity, inaccurate recall, and uncritical evaluation of information.
          1. Mindfulness is characterized by active, focused treatment of the task at hand.
        2. Selective perception is succumbing to the biased nature of perception by actively choosing which stimuli to focus on.
        3. Distorted perception is being influenced by previous perceptions or vivid information.
        4. Undue influence is giving greater credibility or importance to something than is deserved.
    3. Attributions are judgments made to explain other people’s behavior.
      1. The fundamental attribution error explains our tendency to overemphasize the internal causes and underestimate the external causes of behaviors we see in others.
      2. The self-serving bias holds that we usually attribute our own successes to internal factors and our failures to situational or external effects.
    4. Accurate perceptions can be difficult to make, but there are three strategies that can help improve perceptions and lead to better communication.
      1. Be thoughtful when seeking explanations.
      2. Look beyond first impressions.
      3. Question assumptions.

    Ask Yourself:

    • What might contribute to mindlessness in a conversation with a close friend?
    • What attributions do you make of yourself when you receive an A on an exam? What causes do you assign to failing an exam?
  3. Our perceptions of others are inextricably linked to the wide diversity we encounter in the world.
    1. The cultural context affects how communication is perceived as we communicate with people from different cultures.
    2. In a diverse world, perceptual challenges create potential barriers to competent communication.
      1. Cultural myopia is a form of nearsightedness grounded in the belief that one’s own culture is appropriate and relevant in all situations and to all people.
      2. Stereotyping is applying a type of group schema to people that is fixed or set, so that when you meet an individual from this group, you apply your set of perceptions of the entire group to that individual.
      3. Prejudice is a deep-seated feeling of unkindness and ill will toward particular groups, usually based on negative stereotypes and feelings of superiority over those groups.

    Ask Yourself:

    • Think about your current knowledge of stereotypes. What stereotypes might someone make about you when meeting you for the first time?
  4. Three important influences on our cognition affect how we perceive ourselves.
    1. Self-concept is our awareness and understanding of who we are, as interpreted and influenced by our thoughts, actions, abilities, values, goals, and ideals.
      1. Your self-concept strongly influences how and when you communicate with others.
      2. When you interact with other people, you get impressions from them that reveal how they evaluate you as a person and as a communicator.
        1. Direct evidence includes compliments, insults, support, and negative remarks.
        2. Indirect evidence includes innuendo, gossip, subtle nonverbal cues, and a lack of communication.
      3. Social comparison theory describes our tendency to compare ourselves to others as we develop ideas about ourselves.
    2. Self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves in a particular situation or context.
    3. Self-efficacy is the ability to predict our actual success from self-concept and self-esteem; it is our perception of the likelihood of us achieving effective outcomes in our communication.
      1. Self-efficacy affects our ability to cope with failure and stress.
      2. Self-fulfilling prophecies are predictions that cause people to alter their behavior in a way that makes the prediction more likely to occur.
    4. Our assessments of self are important because they influence our communication before, during, and after it occurs. These perceptions are evaluated in three ways.
      1. Self-actualization encompasses the feelings and thoughts we get when we know that we have negotiated a communication situation as well as we possibly could have.
      2. Self-adequacy involves assessing our communication competence as sufficient or acceptable, resulting in either feelings of contentment or a desire for self-improvement.
      3. Self-denigration occurs when we criticize or attack ourselves by placing undue importance on weaknesses or shortcomings.

    Ask Yourself:

    • How might your self-concept and self-esteem differ in a given situation?
    • Are there particular situations in which you find yourself being self-critical?
  5. We manage our identities through our behavior.
    1. Self-presentation is intentional communication designed to show elements of self for strategic purposes.
      1. Self-monitoring is the ability to watch our environment and others in it for cues about how to present ourselves in various situations.
        1. High self-monitors watch others for hints on how to be successful in social situations and try to demonstrate the verbal and nonverbal behaviors that seem most appropriate.
        2. Low self-monitors do not see the need to adapt to situations or people, and communicate according to their deep-seated values or their feelings of the moment.
    2. Through self-disclosure, we reveal ourselves to others by sharing personal information.
    3. People can control the personal information they convey to a greater degree through various media (telephone, letters, e-mail, Facebook) than in face-to-face interactions.

    Ask Yourself:

    • Can you think of a time when you felt you self-disclosed too much? What happened as a result? What might have led you to feel that way?
    • How does your activity on a social networking site, such as Facebook, help or hinder your positive self-perceptions? How does such activity affect other people’s impressions of you?