Transcript Inhaling Perception

By: Cara Giovinazzo
 Defined
as a social and cognitive process in
which people assign meaning to sensory cues.
 Sensory
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Cues
Seeing
Hearing
Touching
Tasting
Smelling
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies,
2012. Print.
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“Seeing is believing”
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People are often looking for the “truth” in what they
are experiencing
“Perception takes a picture through a lens, not
through a window.”
Perception is active, not passive
“If an individual thinks something is so, it is so (at
least to that individual). Our ‘definition of a
situation,’ whether accurate or inaccurate, is real to
us and determines our behavior.”
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Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies,
2012. Print.
Luna Lucero, Myra. "Perceptions and Nonverbal Communication Featuring "Eat Shoes You Cat!." Conference Papers -National Communication Association (2007): 1. Communication & Mass Media Complete.
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Is perception reality?
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For leaders, remembering that experience influences the
interpretation of reality is critical for success. This is
especially true for situations that require the leader to relay
information to stakeholders with a role in the realization of
the leader's organizational vision.
No two people will look at things the same. It doesn't make
one or the other wrong, it just means that each person has
differing opinions and ideas. A leader must know how to use all
ideas in a positive way to motivate the team to achieve
success.
Brainstorming ideas becomes an excellent tool to use in
leadership.
You do not know how others perceive situations, so talking to
them about it is the best way to understand someone else and
to come to a shared perception
Perception can be used to come to an agreement on something
that is not factual.
Perception has now fallen into the category of a fantasy realm.
 Perception
is the process by which people
select, organize and interpret... sensations.
The study of perception, then, focuses on
what we add to these raw sensations in order
to give them meaning.
 We
view everything with which we come into
contact through perceptual lenses affected
by our cultural backgrounds and previous
experiences among other factors.
Ming-Yi, Wu, and Anastacia Kurylo. "Proverb Activity: Understanding How Perception and Gender Stereotypes are
Formed."Communication Teacher 24.2 (2010): 69-73. Communication & Mass Media Complete.
 Different
cultures answer questions
differently
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What is the value of the individual versus the
value of the group?
How do people advance in life, by heritage or
achievement?
How should society be organized?
Is the nature of a human being good or evil?
How do humans relate to each other?
Where does meaning lie, explicitly in the
language or hidden in the context?
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies,
2012. Print.
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...One's own culture provides the "lens" through
which we view the world; the "logic"... by which we
order it; the "grammar" ... by which it makes sense.
Communication styles
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Attitudes towards conflict
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Words and phrases having different meanings, volume of
voice has different meanings
Americans are encouraged to confront problems
Eastern countries conflict is embarrassing and shameful
Approaches to completing tasks
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Asian and Hispanic cultures focus on building a
relationship first v. European and American cultures that
focus on task completion
http://www.pbs.org/ampu/crosscult.html
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Decision-making
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Attitudes towards disclosure
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Americans- delegate decision making v. Southern Europe
and Latin America- being able to make decisions is
powerful and they do not delegate
American majority rules v. Japanese consensus
How much personal information is appropriate? Is it
acceptable to be frank about feelings?
Approaches to knowing
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European cultures gather information through cognitive
means i.e. counting and measuring
African cultures use affective ways of knowing such as
symbolic imagery and rhythm
Asian cultures emphasize knowledge gained through
striving for transcendence
http://www.pbs.org/ampu/crosscult.html
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Women and men in North America interpret the same
action differently (According to Malz and Borker, 1982)
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Men perceive head nodding while listening as a sign of
agreement while women perceive it as a signal that the person
is listening
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Frontal lobe in men and women differ
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This could be the root of the problem that women think men never
listen or don’t offer emotional support and women are unreliable
because women always just agree with what men say
Frontal lobe is responsible for emotional reasoning
Corpus callosum is larger in women
This is a mass of fibers connecting the two halves of the brain
 Helps integrate the language and emotional centers better
resulting in women being able to verbalize feelings better than
men
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Socialization can affect how men and women communicate
regardless of the brain
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
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Why did you remember these particular
proverbs?
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Are there commonalities between the proverbs
you remembered?
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Organizing
What do the proverbs mean?
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Selecting
Inferring
What are gender-specific proverbs?
What factors might influence how we interpret
information?
 How might perception adversely affect
communication?
 How might a person avoid problems caused by
perception?
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What are gender-specific proverbs?
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What factors might influence how we interpret
information?
How might perception adversely affect
communication?
How might a person avoid problems caused by
perception?
Where do we learn proverbs?
What role does culture play in our ability to
understand proverbs?
What value do proverbs have for a culture?
What implications do these proverbs have for the way
in which men and women are viewed in a culture?
Ming-Yi, Wu, and Anastacia Kurylo. "Proverb Activity: Understanding How Perception and Gender Stereotypes are
Formed."Communication Teacher 24.2 (2010): 69-73. Communication & Mass Media Complete.
 Mental
guidelines that help process incoming
cues
 Frederic Bartlett (1932) originated the
Schema Theory
 All remembering is constructive
 We do not store all stimuli in memory, rather
the brain uses schemata to provide an
impression of the whole
 Schemata for people, relationships, actions
and emotions
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
 Perceptions
are formed through
communication with other people.
 Perceptions are the way in which an
individual gives meaning to an object.
 “As we encounter worldviews that differ
from our own, we have two major choices:
We can engage in communication that
isolates and protects us from those
perspectives, or we can embrace challenges
to our thinking as opportunities for growth
and change.”
Luna Lucero, Myra. "Perceptions and Nonverbal Communication Featuring "Eat Shoes You Cat!." Conference
Papers -- National Communication Association (2007): 1. Communication & Mass Media Complete.
 Person
prototypes are generalized
representations of certain types of people
 Based on experience and repeated
interactions with people
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Professor? Lawyer? Student? Car salesmen?
 Person
prototypes help us orient with the
world, meet people we would be
comfortable with and help avoid dangerous
situations
 Omit specific information so they can be
misleading and create stereotypes
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
 Structures
that deal with certain sequences
of action
 Helps us to know what to do and expect in
common situations
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Going to a restaurant, wedding, the doctor’s
office, etc.
 This
helps us make automatic actions instead
of having to make constant decisions
 Person prototypes and scripts influence how
people organize sensory cues
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
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Impression Formation
Integrating or synthesizing a variety of sometimes
contradictory observations into a coherent overall “picture”
 The impression formed is a combination of traits that are
similar and fit together
 Implicit Personality Theory
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What the person’s personality must be based on qualities or
characteristics implied by their behavior
 Someone is outgoing, talkative, and ________ (funny or not
funny)
People who generalize or categorize are position centered
because it focuses on social roles and norms as opposed to
unique characteristics of individuals and have impersonal
communication
Person centered communicators are more aware of
perceptual features and have more interpersonal
communication
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies,
2012. Print.
 When
people devise theories or explanations
about other’s behaviors to make sense of the
situation
 Assigns a cause or intention to behavior
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A student is late to class and the instructor
thinks, “The student is lazy.” Or they could
think, “There must be bad traffic today.”
 Allows
a person to believe that they can
predict how someone will act in the future
 This helps understand what is going on and
how one should operate in future
interactions with a person
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
 Internal
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Factors vs. External Factors
The student is lazy- it is the student’s fault they
are late
The student got stuck in traffic- it is not the
student’s fault they are late
When others make mistakes, people tend to use
internal factors to explain behavior
When people make mistakes themselves, they
contribute it to external factors
 Attributions
can help understand a person,
but can also interfere with considering other
reasons for their actions
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
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According to the Oxford English Dictionary
stereotyping is a “preconceived and oversimplified
idea of the characteristics which typify a person,
situation, etc.; an attitude based on such a
preconception. Also, a person who appears to
conform closely to the idea of a type.”
Stereotypes can be positive or negative
Stereotypes vary in intensity
Racism and sexism continue with the help of
stereotypes
Stereotyping is impersonal
Stereotyping is unavoidable and can sometimes be
helpful
Studies show that while stereotyping is influential,
what happens during a conversation is more
important
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
 Selection
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Fast Thinking
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People speak from 115 to 130 words per minute, but
people can listen to upwards of 500 words per minute
Avoiding Overload
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Problems
Tuning out distractions and deciding to let the wrong
things go
The Entertainment Factor
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We want information to be communicated in a lively,
attractive and stimulating way
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill
Companies, 2012. Print.
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Person Perception
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Snap Judgments
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Inferences that are usually rather immediate and do not
involve complex cognitive processes
Most limited kind of stereotype people make of others
Snap judgments are mostly based on physical appearance
Snap judgments are liable to distort you understanding of
what a person is saying
Attributional Errors
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Fundamental attribution error
 People mistakenly attribute behaviors to internal
causes, instead of external causes
Ultimate attribution error
 Negative behavior is an internal cause and positive
behavior is an external cause
Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.
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Each unique view will make for a more creative outcome if
the leader knows how to channel the different
perspectives.
A leader can use perception to his or her advantage.
Knowing that perception is assigning meaning to the senses
and it is individual, then the leader could use the senses of
the group to discuss the project they are working on.
Showing others that you support them and believe in them
will essentially effect how they perceive themselves and,
in this case, in a positive way benefiting themselves and
the organization too.
A leader should never try to make organizational
perception changes on their own or against the well
wishings of the stakeholders of the organization
A leader of an organization can apply perception to his or
her organization through the mission statement of the
company.
 Are
there any new ideas/thoughts about
perception in organizations?
 As a leader, should you self-monitor?
 As a leader, should you encourage selfmonitoring of your organizational members?
 How can you help your organization
understand the implications of perception?
 Can a person ever truly be objective?