The Role Of Perception In Interpersonal Communication

Intro

(Solomon, Theiss, 2012) states that “perception is the process by which a person filters and interprets information to create a meaningful picture of the world.” (im still going off Solomon, do I have to reference here still?) Our perception is influenced by our personal traits which shapes the way we react and identify others. There are three stages of the perception process we go through to help us create meaning. (Lane 2009) We first select stimuli (Solomon how we focus our attention), then we organise (Solomon prioritise) it according to relevance which we then interpret. “We perceive, in part, through communication.” According to (Lane 2009) people perceive things differently and we all assume our perception is true and realistic,

This is when perceptual distortions come in. I will be talking about how once I was in presence of a couple gang members I immediately started to form an impression of them. My impressions were built on verbal and nonverbal cues I perceived from these men and the knowledge I had already been brainwashed by mass media. Which at first was a negative impression because of the perceptual distortions turned out to be a positive relationship. The three perceptual distortions I will be touching upon are implicit personality theory, stereotyping and primacy and recency. (Solomon, Theiss 2012) “When you engage in interpersonal communication you become linked together. Interpersonal communication involves paying attention to the characteristics and circumstances that make the participants unique individuals.”(check if this is actual quote and do I put book here or before quote. Also should this be at start of intro) You and the people your communicating with are constantly changing which means we have to adapt to these changes to become better communicators. (de vito but kind made it up too) Through perception check and critical thinking etc. we are able to improve our perception process to be more accurate and open minded.

Once we notice specific traits in a person we are observing, we automatically assume that the other traits associated with them in our implicit personality theory will be present in the person’s characteristics also. This is a distortion in our perception because once again we all perceive things differently so we have individual implicit personality theory. (reference?) I selected the most vivid stimuli to me, which was the patch, and automatically assumed the worst. Due to me social and cultural conditioning, I attached traits like violence and intimidation. Since I only gathered and held negative traits to the gang members, this was called reverse halo effect (reference?). I was uneducated and naïve when I started to form impressions of these men. I made an extreme judgement because I was inexperienced. Through my mistake, I now see that it not all traits you think are paired together is correct. My view and ideas on their traits I perceived have changed. I learnt that I need to think ethically and mindfully when evaluating an impression, perceiving on a new person because everyone is different.