Intro to Human Communication: Perception and Attribution

Perception

  • Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information to understand messages and signals.
  • It's essentially how we make sense of our environment.
  • Perception is an iterative process that occurs in a constant cycle with three parts: selection, organization, and interpretation.

The Perception Cycle

  • Selection: Focusing attention on specific sensory information in our environment.
    • Example: Noticing a busted fender on a car.
  • Organization: Brain sorts and categorizes sensory information based on existing cognitive patterns (templates for reasoning and problem-solving).
    • Example: Categorizing the damaged fender as the result of a car collision based on past experiences.
  • Interpretation: Assigning meaning to new experiences using information stored from prior ones.
    • Example: Interpreting the busted fender as a sign that the driver is reckless, based on previous experiences with fender benders caused by reckless drivers.

Misperceptions

  • Errors in perception.
  • Arise from differences in perceptual filters (values, attitudes, personal preferences, and life experiences).
  • Different cultures have practices and values and our cultural experiences can cause us to misinterpret people actions.

Factors Contributing to Misperceptions:

  • Stereotypes: Generalized beliefs about a group of people that often result in misperceptions.
  • Primacy Effect: Placing more value on the first information we receive about a person, leading to potentially inaccurate opinions.
  • Recency Effect: Placing a higher value on the most recent information we have about a person, which can alter our perceptions.
  • Perceptual Sets: Frameworks that influence us to perceive certain things over others in a given situation.
    • Example: Being more aware of things that might harm you while driving (like a busted fender) due to a perceptual set for safety.

Attributions

  • Explanations we come up with to understand the behaviors of ourselves and others; answers to "why" questions.
  • Example: Wondering why a professor is late to class and considering possible reasons.
  • Attempts to explain other people’s behaviors are often inaccurate

Attribution Errors

  • Systematic biases in how we explain the causes of behavior.
  • Two main types: self-serving bias and fundamental attribution error.
Self-Serving Bias
  • Tendency to attribute our personal successes to stable internal causes (character, personality).
  • Attribute our personal failures to unstable external causes (weather, illness, injury).
Fundamental Attribution Error
  • Tendency to attribute someone else's success to external factors.
  • Attribute someone else's failure to internal causes.

Impact of Attribution Errors

  • Influence how we perceive positive and negative situations.
  • Can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and reinforce social inequities.

Combating Attribution Errors

  • Brainstorming other explanations for people's actions.
  • Strive for more accurate perceptions to keep an open mind.

Conclusion

  • Perception is shaped by many factors including life experiences.
  • While it's designed to create specific conclusions, it can often be inaccurate.
  • Being more thoughtful of how we select, organize, and interpret what we see in the world can help us have more accurate perceptions.