1. PERCEPTION
IN HUMAN
COMMUNICATION

4. Human perception concerns how we make sense of the
world and what happens in it.
Perception has been defined as the process by which we
interpret sensory data (Lahlry,1991).
George A. Miller, the psychologist, said, “most of our
failures in understanding one another have less to do with
what is heard than with what is intended and what is
inferred.”

5. Process of selecting, organizing, and
interpreting, objects, events, situations,
and activities.
Our perceptions are built on how we
interpret different sensations (touch, sight,
taste smell and taste)
Using preceding experiences to help filter
and organize the information we receive.

6. PERCEPTION PROCESS
 Is a sequence of steps that begins with stimuli in the
environment and leads to our perception of a stimulus and an
action in response to the stimulus.
 This process is continual and unconscious and it happens
many times a day.
• Stimulation • Organizing • Interpretation

7. SELECTING INFORMATION
 Take in information through all five of our senses.
 Depending on the environment and individuals, the focus
might be different .
 Pay attention to the information that we same with our
needs or interests.
 Focus on information that interests us.
 Expectations. Since we expect something to happen, we
may be extra tuned in to clues that it is coming to happen.

8. ORGANIZING
Using proximity, similarity, and difference to sort and
categorize information .
Proximity
 We incline to think that things that are close together go
together.
Similarity
 Group things together based on common aspect.
For example- three females, around the same age, race,
with long hair and glasses.
Differences
 Assume item that looks different from the other doesn’t
belong with the group.

9. INTERPRETATION
 Using our existing information to interpret.
 We consign meaning to our experiences using mental
structures known as schemata.
 Schemata are like a store of databases, relate the
information that we use to interpret new experiences.
 These interpretations are influence by values
,experiences, needs, beliefs, and others.

10. THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEPTION
Culture
 People’s background, their religious, ethnicity, nationality and
political beliefs.
Physiological needs
 Immediate needs and motives that will influence how we feel
about certain situations.
Expectations
 If we expect something to happen, we will perceive that things
will happen, whether it has really happened or not.
Personality
 Person’s general way of thinking, feeling, and behaving based
on underlying motivations and impulses. (extraversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness).

11. ATTRIBUTION
Examines the ways that people determine retrospective
causes for their own and for others’ behavioral outcomes.
Internal Attribution
 Connect to the cause of behaviors to personal aspects
such as personality traits.
External attributions
 Connected with the cause of behaviors to situational
factors.

12. PERCEPTUAL ERRORS
Fundamental attribution error
 Personality-based explanations and under-valuing situational
explanations.
Stereotype
 Prior assumption(judge people withouth knowing them)
 Such as racial remarks and gender remarks.
Horns and halo effect
 Judgement to a person which is unfavourable(horns) or favourable.
(halo)
 "The halo affect assumes that if a person has one trait we like, that all
traits must be good“ Edward thorndike (1874 ).
 Depend on the first impression .
Self-serving bias
 Personal credit for success while blaming outside sources for our
failures for enhance the self-esteem.
 For example, unemployed workers are more likely to find work if
they exhibit the self-serving bias, and avoid attributing their failure to
obtain a job to their incompetence or lack of skill." (Eysenck, 2000).

13. PERCEPTION THEORIES
3 perception theories
Implicit Personality Theory
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Perceptual accentuation

14. Implicit Personality Theory
 Expressed the specific patterns or a person makes and
biases an individual uses when form an impressions
based on a limited quantity of initial information about
an stranger person.
 The theories are “implicit” because they are not of
academic but of experience based as starting point, we
use past experience to guess other people’s personality
traits.
 Advantage-our evaluation and consequent assumptions
makes us feel like we “know the person,” which reduces
vagueness.
 Disadvantage-not always correct.

15. Self-fulfilling prophecy
 The term “self-fulfilling prophecy” (SFP) was coined in
1948 by Robert Merton.
 In the beginning, a false definition of the situation
evoking a new behavior which makes the original false
conception come ‘true’.
Three steps in Self-fulfilling prophecy
 Firstly, one people hold a false belief about another
people.
 Second, the people hold the false belief must treat the
other person in a manner that is constant with it.
 Third, the person about whom the false belief is held
must, in reply to the treatment he receive, confirm the
originally false belief.

16. PERCEPTUAL ACCENTUATION
 Guide us to identify what we expect to perceive instead
of what is really there.
 When we really want to believe something, you can
actually imagine it or we expect and want to see.
 Example, people who are really thirsty can imagine an
oasis in the desert.
 Perceptual accentuation also construct when we want
something. In the same way, the people we like may
appear as better looking than those we do not like.

17. IMPROVING PERCEPTION
 i. ) Improving self-perception.
 Make slower changes to our self-perceptions with
concern through self-monitoring and reflection.
 Be alert to the thoughts we associate with feelings of
concern, far, hurt, anxiety or judgment.
 Identify negative and positive aspects of self-perceptions
as well as discuss common barriers to forming accurate
and positive self-perceptions.

18.  ii.) Develop empathetic listening skills.
 Expand our self and social awareness by learning from
other people’s experiences and taking on different
perspectives.
o iii.) Beware of stereotypes and prejudice
 Since stereotypes due to lack of information, we must
exposure our self to new kinds of information and
people, which we will likely require us to get out of our
comfort zones.

19.  Iv.) Checking perception
 Monitor our responds to react and perceptions
about peoples.
 Perception checking is a message we create to check our
understanding of someone’s words or behavior to obtain
the facts and asking what's wrong and change our habit if
needed.
 V.) Engage in self-reflection
 Increase our cultural awareness. Listening to people who
are different culture from us can help to develop self-knowledge.
 Recount and think again what we done is wrong or
correct.

20.  The goal of perception is to take in information about the
world and make sense of it.
 But selective perception can cause the different
interpretation from the different people although is the
same message.
 So we need to become subjective in our judgements of
people and situations.