Inhaling: perception

INHALING: PERCEPTION

By: Cara Giovinazzo

WHAT IS PERCEPTION? Defined as a social and cognitive process in

which people assign meaning to sensory cues.

Sensory Cues Seeing Hearing Touching Tasting Smelling

Stewart, John. Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication. New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, 2012. Print.

WHAT IS PERCEPTION? “Seeing is believing”

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.”

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.

BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER Is perception reality?

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.

HOW ARE PERCEPTIONS FORMED? 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.

CULTURE Different cultures answer questions

differentlyWhat 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.

CULTURE ...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 Words and phrases having different meanings, volume

of voice has different meanings Attitudes towards conflict

Americans are encouraged to confront problems Eastern countries conflict is embarrassing and shameful

Approaches to completing tasks 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

CULTURE Decision-making

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 Attitudes towards disclosure

How much personal information is appropriate? Is it acceptable to be frank about feelings?

Approaches to knowing 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 transcendencehttp://www.pbs.org/ampu/crosscult.html

GENDER Women and men in North America interpret the same action

differently (According to Malz and Borker, 1982) Men perceive head nodding while listening as a sign of agreement

while women perceive it as a signal that the person is listening 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 in men and women differ 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

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.

PROVERB ACTIVITY: UNDERSTANDING HOW PERCEPTION AND GENDER STEREOTYPES ARE FORMED Why did you remember these particular proverbs?

Selecting Are there commonalities between the proverbs

you remembered? Organizing

What do the proverbs mean? 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?

PROVERB ACTIVITY: UNDERSTANDING HOW PERCEPTION AND GENDER STEREOTYPES ARE FORMED 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? 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.

COGNITIVE SCHEMATA 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.

EAT SHOES YOU CAT! 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 AND SCRIPTS Person prototypes are generalized

representations of certain types of people Based on experience and repeated

interactions with people 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.

PERSON PROTOTYPES AND SCRIPTS Structures that deal with certain

sequences of action Helps us to know what to do and expect in

common situations 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.

INTERPRETATION 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 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.

ATTRIBUTION When people devise theories or explanations

about other’s behaviors to make sense of the situation

Assigns a cause or intention to behavior 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.

ATTRIBUTION Internal 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.

STEREOTYPING 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.

PRACTICAL PERCEPTION PROBLEMS Selection Problems

Fast Thinking People speak from 115 to 130 words per minute, but

people can listen to upwards of 500 words per minuteAvoiding Overload

Tuning out distractions and deciding to let the wrong things go

The Entertainment Factor 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.

PRACTICAL PERCEPTION PROBLEMS Person Perception

Snap Judgments 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

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.

APPLYING YOUR KNOWLEDGE 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.

PERCEPTION IN ORGANIZATIONS Are there any new ideas/thoughts about

perception in organizations? As a leader, should you self-monitor? As a leader, should you encourage self-

monitoring of your organizational members?

How can you help your organization understand the implications of perception?

Can a person ever truly be objective?

CALVIN AND HOBBES