Rabu, 29 Oktober 2008

Back 2 Camp


Back to Campus, Bisa dibilang seperti coz Almost six years I Have Leaved the Campus. Now, Masuk kampus lagi n duduk di semester tujuh

Sabtu, 25 Oktober 2008

Kuliah TOC With Ibu Tiur

The importance of Human Communication

Many of us would like to be able to communicate effectively across several different situations. According to numerous research studies, for your entire life you have spent about 75 percent of each day engaged in communication. Therefore, you may be wondering why you need to study communication in the first place. There is a good reason: Quantity is no guarantee of quality. Given the number of divorces, unhappy workers, and ruptured parent-to-offspring relationships, quantity and frequency of communication are clearly no measure of how effectively people communicate with each other.

Among other things, communication has been linked to physical well-being. Stewart (1986) indicates that socially isolated people are more likely to die prematurely; divorced men die at double the normal rate from cancer, heart disease, and strokes, five times the normal rate from hypertension, five times the normal rate from suicide, seven times the normal rate from cirrhosis of the liver, and ten times the normal rate from tuberculosis. Cancer occurs five times more often in divorced men and women than in single men and women. Also, poor communication skills have been found to contribute to coronary heart disease, and the likelihood of death increases when a marriage partner dies.

Communication is also closely associated with one’s definition of self. Rosenberg (1979) relates the story of the “wild boy of Aveyron” who was raised by wolves. He developed no identity as a human being until he began to interact with humans. Individuals gain a sense of self-identity by being paid attention to and getting feedback from others. Also, a sense of identity and worth develops from comparing ourselves with others.

Social needs are also satisfied through interaction with others. Haslett (1984) found that infants and children have a strong motivation to communicate, and an innate capacity to understand interpersonal interaction, because they recognize that communicating is a means of establishing relationships. The child learns primarily from the mother how to interact and to adapt.

On-the-job communication is constantly cited as one of the most important skills in “getting ahead.” Muchmore and Galviri (1983) found that in a wide range of organizations, specific aspects of communication were indicated as having greatest importance. In the area of “speaking skills” they were: using words understood by others, pronunciation and grammar that do not alienate listeners; phrasing questions so as to obtain accurate information; explaining requirements to others; and organizing messages so others can understand them. In the area of listening skills they were: understanding directions; obtaining factual information; identifying important points when given oral instructions; understanding questions; and distinguishing facts from opinions. And in the area of “human relations” they were: working cooperatively in groups; resolving conflicts; recognizing others’ feelings; maintaining friendly relationships; and asking questions to obtain cooperation.

WHAT IS HUMAN COMMUNICATION?

Communication has been broadly defined as “the sharing of experience,” and to some extent all living organisms can be said to share experience. Let us say that human communication is the process of creating a meaning between two or more people.

MODEL OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Since human communication is an intangible ever-changing process, many people find it helpful to use a tangible model to describe that process.



Communicator 1
According to Tubbs and Moss, communicator one and two are simultaneously sending and receiving all the time. Communicator’s 1 senses are continually bombarded by a wealth of stimuli from both inside and outside the body. All that he/she knows are experiences. It is like a raw data input which means all the stimuli both past and present, that give us our information about the world.

Messages
- Verbal Messages is any type of spoken communication that uses one or more words. Most of the communicative stimuli we are conscious of fall within the category of intentional verbal messages; these are the conscious attempts we make to communicate with others through speech. Undoubtedly, the most unique aspect of human communication is the use of verbal symbols. It is somewhat a miracle that we can look at ink marks on a piece of paper or listen to sounds carried on air waves and be able to create images in each other’s brains. In fact, the process works so well that we often are surprised when problems occur. Unintentional verbal messages are the things we say without meaning to. Freud argued that all the apparently unintentional stimuli we transmit¬ both verbal and nonverbal-are unconsciously motivated.
- Nonverbal messages cannot be described as easily as verbal messages, probably because the category is so broad. They include all the nonverbal aspects of our behavior: facial expression, posture, tone of voice, hand movements, manner of dress, and so on. In short, they are all the messages we transmit without words or over and above the words we use. Let us first consider intentional nonverbal messages, the nonverbal mes¬sages we want to transmit. Sometimes we rely exclusively on nonverbal messages, sometimes we use them to reinforce verbal messages. For example, you can greet someone by smiling and nodding your head, or you can say “Hello” and also smile or wave. At times we deliberately use nonverbal messages to cancel out a polite verbal response and indicate our true feelings: The verbal message may be positive, but the tone of voice and facial expression indicate that we mean something negative. Much of what we are as a person “communicates” itself every time we behave. Much of this behavior is unintentional. Some writers on the subject go so far as to assert that what we communicate is what we are. Unintentional nonverbal messages are all those nonverbal aspects of our behavior transmitted without our control. For example, one of the authors once told a student speaker to relax. “I am relaxed,” the student replied in a tight voice, trembling, and speaking over the rattling of a paper he was holding Controlling nonverbal messages is a very difficult task. Facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, hand gestures-what some writers have called “body language”-often give us away.

Channel : Sensory Organs. hearing, sight and touch Organizational Communication: company newsletters, bulletin boards, and memoranda. In Mass communication: newspaper, film, radio and television.

Interference or noise that is anything that distorts the information transmitted to the receiver or distracts him or her from receiving it. There are two kinds of interference: technical which refers to the factors that cause the receiver to perceive distortion in the intended information or stimuli. Semantic interference occurs when the receiver does not attribute the same meaning to the signal that the sender does.

Communicator 2:
Another critical aspect of message reception is listening. Listening covers attention, hearing, understanding and remembering.

Feedback
It is the return to you the behavior you have generated (Luft,1969). It is an essential characteristic of relationship as well as an important source of information about yourself.

Time
The time of interaction is represented by a circle.

(Taken from: Human Communication by Tubbs and Moss)



PERSON PERCEPTION (Taken from Human Communication by Tubbs and Moss)

Read this following dialogue:

Karen: What did you think of your first meeting?

Sandra: It went well-we got a lot accomplished. I think I’ll get to know everyone before too long. Who is the heavy-set one again? You know, the sloppy-looking one.

Karen: Mike-Mike Wilson. He asks good questions.

Sandra: So does Joan. The only one who makes me uncomfortable is Paula

Green. There’s something brusque about her. Karen: Do you think so?

Sandra: Yes. She speaks so quickly-and she doesn’t really look you in the eye.

Karen: I know what you mean. She looks down a lot.

Sandra: She seems so dogmatic-as though only her opinion counts. She really seems aggressive. And she only talks to the people from her district.

Karen: Well, mostly. But she has made some excellent proposals … Do you know what?

Sandra: What­

Karen: I think she might be shy. She was the same way last year.

Sandra: Really? Shy? It would never have occurred to me. You might be right. I wonder why I was feeling so threatened by her. Maybe it has to do with my being the newest member of the committee.

In exchanging impressions of others, there are times it is difficult to believe we are talking about the same person. Yet as communicators we depend on these perceptions in almost every aspect of daily life. And the way we perceive another person determines the kind and quality of the communication that will take place between us. Consider the dialogue above for a moment. If Sandra continues to regard Paula Green as dogmatic and aggressive, there is a strong possibility she’ll resist whatever proposals Paula makes at future committee meetings.

Our perceptions of other people, like our perceptions of objects, are fallible-subject to error. Still, they form the basis for numerous decisions:

choosing one professor’s course over another, selecting a roommate, buying a car from the salesman you consider most reliable. The list is endless. In

the following pages we are going to examine the initial process by which all such impressions of other human beings are formed.

Essentially, this chapter is a three-part study of person perception. First, person perception is set within the larger context of object perception. Thus we look at the similarities and differences between how you perceive people and how you perceive objects. We also examine the selective nature of

perceiving, organizing, and interpreting all sensory data.

The next section explores in detail how you go about forming impressions of others. This process, of course, has multiple aspects including how you look at yourself, perceived personality traits, physical attractiveness, gen­eralizations and stereotypes, and various social roles.


PERCEIVING PEOPLE AND OBJECTS: A COMPARISON

Our total awareness of the world comes to us through our senses. Thus all our perceptions-whether they be of drawings, household objects, or other people-have a common basis. Yet as we’ve seen countless times, two people often disagree sharply in their judgments about a third. Have you ever been “fixed up” with someone described to you as just your type only to be thoroughly disappointed from the very beginning of the evening? You might have even asked yourself whether the person who arranged the date perceived you or the other party with any accuracy. The reasons for such varying perceptions should become apparent as we consider the similarities between interpersonal perception and perception in general. Bear in mind that the more skilled you can become in person perception, the more effective you will be in adapting your messages to others (Clark and Delia, 1977).

TWO KINDS OF FILTERS

Your capacity to register sensory stimuli is limited. You cannot take in everything. or do you always want to. You choose certain aspects of your environment over others. What you aware of at any time is determined in part by what you as a receiver select out of the total input. “You hear what you want to hear,” mutters the irritated father to his teen-age son. “This is the third time this afternoon I’ve asked you when you’re going to get around to washing the car.” Later that day the same man may sit at the dinner table reading the Sunday paper, oblivious to a family quarrel that is taking place across the room. The ability to process certain of the stimuli available to us while filtering out others is called selective attention.

The American philosopher and psychologist William James has explained the particular process of selection that is at work here in terms of interest: “Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind-without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos” (James, 1950, p. 402).

Each of us, then, perceives only part of the available stimuli while filtering out other stimuli. There are two kinds of filters through which all input or sensation will pass: physiological and psychological.

Perceptual Filters

Among the inherent structures of our sense organs are our perceptual filters:

physiological limitations that are built into human beings and cannot be reversed. Such limitations on our capacity to perceive exist whether we are experiencing an object or a person. And they vary considerably from one individual to another so that we differ in the degree to which our various senses are accurate.

To the human communicator one extremely troublesome perceptual filter is the limit on one’s ability to hear. Sometimes we think we hear a person say one thing when actually he or she said another. We then act on the basis of what we think that person said. Or we may act without hearing what a person said at all. Many communication difficulties are rooted in this kind of misunderstanding. For example, one woman found out through a third party that she had antagonized her next-door neighbor by “cutting her dead.” It turned out that the neighbor had walked by and said hello while the woman was standing at her front door anxiously awaiting her young son. This was the first day she had allowed him to walk home by himself from his first-grade class, and the boy was late. She was staring in the direction of the school and never even heard the neighbor’s greeting. The neighbor, who was new to the community, interpreted the woman’s unresponsiveness as a snub.


Psychological Sets

The other kinds of filters influencing our perceptions are psychological. Do you see the white birds flying over the darkened half of the landscape in Figure 2.1? What about the black birds flying over the lighter part of the landscape? You may have to look harder to distinguish these darkened shapes-and you will not be able to see both black and white birds at the same time. Our psychological sets-that is, our expectancies or predispositions to respond-have a profound effect on our perception of objects.

Similarly, psychological set affects your perception of other people. If asked, for example, to interpret what is happening between the man and woman in Figure 2.2, what would be your answer? And what are the people like? Is the seated woman attracted to the pipe-smoking man behind the sofa-or is she being aloof, or just indifferent? Is the man a reassuring figure or is his presence somehow threatening? And what is the relationship between the two people? Are they friends, relatives, lovers-or possibly business associates? An infinite number of interpretations can be evoked by an ambiguous illustration such as this one. Each of us has a story for this picture; with a little prodding, each of us could elaborate on it.

Whatever the story, it reveals much about our own expectations and past experiences. If we are defensive, for example, we are more likely to perceive at least one of the people in Figure 2.2 as hostile, or critical, or menacing, because we have come to expect and anticipate such behavior-perhaps out of past experience. As you read on, you will see that past experience is a strong influence on what you select from all the available stimuli; and often you are judging another person, at least initially, by the group or context in which he or she is first seen. This will certainly be apparent when we discuss stereotyping.


CULTURE AND PERCEPTION

One of the most powerful determinants of psychological set is culture. Consider the two parallel straight lines in Figure 2.3. Which would you say is longer? Chances are that if you live in a Western culture, you will perceive the bottom line as being the longer of the two. If you measure them, though, you will see that they are actually the same length. This is a well-known phenomenon called the Muller-Lyer illusion. It is an illusion in visual perception that Western peoples are particularly likely to experience, and one to which certain non-Western peoples are much less susceptible.

One explanation for the Muller-Lyer illusion is that people who live in a visual environment in which straight lines and right angles prevail-a “carpentered world” constructed with tools such as the saw, the plane, and the plumb bob-learn to make certain visual inferences. For example, they tend to interpret acute and obtuse angles as right angles that are extended in space. This is what happens when Westerners look at Figure 2.3. From


We have sets not only about objects and words but about other human beings-what they should look like, how they should act, and what they will say. In our culture a businessperson expects people to be on time for appointments, and in turn those people do not expect to be kept waiting for long periods of time. When such expectancies are shared by all involved, they are often useful in facilitating communication. Other sets interfere with our ability to perceive accurately and respond appropriately. For example, some people-especially in telephone conversations-are so accustomed to being asked how they are that after saying “Hi” or “Hello” they answer “fine” to whatever the other party has just said.

A great deal of interpersonal conflict stems from people’s unawareness of the limits on their perceptual capacities. If they do realize the fallibility of their senses, they may be too defensive to acknowledge their mistakes. There is now convincing evidence that in some situations, if such a person is pressed, opposition to our point is likely to be reinforced instead of reversed, even though the person appears to be agreeing with us.

As two people communicate, each formulates ideas that become the content of the communication event. How accurately a message is received depends on the other person’s perceptual filters and sets. Remember that psychological and physiological characteristics will influence which stimuli are selected and how they are perceived.

SELECTIVE PERCEPTION, ORGANIZATION, AND INTERPRETATION

Today we don’t believe as early philosophers did that the human mind is a blank tablet on which impressions are imprinted. We know that perception is not a passive state in which stimuli are received and automatically registered. Quite the opposite. Perception is an active process: each of you selectively perceives, organizes, and interprets what you experience.


In general, you perceive stimuli that are intense, repetitious, or in the process of changing. Nonetheless, each person actively chooses what to attend to depending on personal interests, motivations, desires, and expec­tations. Entranced by a young woman’s appearance, a man sitting next to her at a party may notice what great legs she has and pay little attention to what she’s saying. Someone else in the group may be more interested in her remarks about working in the personnel department of a large company because he is looking for a job.

In addition to the selective perception of stimuli, we tend to organize stimuli selectively-that is, we order the stimuli with which we are presented into a “whole,” a complete, sensible picture. The test from which the ambiguous picture in Figure 2.2 derives is based on this notion. Take a very simple example of how people organize stimuli. Dan Williams goes into an office supply store to buy cartridges for an electric typewriter:





Dan: Do you have two cartridges for the Smith Corona? I need a correctable film ribbon.

Clerk: What number is that?

Dan: I think it’s seventy twenty.

Clerk: (from the back of the store) No. That’s not right. But I’ve got what you need. ,

Dan: I’m pretty sure that was the number, seventy twenty. See-there it is on the box. I was right.

Clerk: No. This order number is seven zero two zero.


As this brief dialogue should make clear, even a sirriple array of numbers­7020-must be organized by the individual perceiver. And it’s very unsettling to consider someone else’s method of organization simultaneously with your own, just as it’s hard to see both the black and white birds in Figure 2.1 at the same time. People organize stimuli according to different schema and expectations: they attribute cause and effect uniquely. A quarrel between husband and wife in which he claims to withdraw because she nags while she claims to nag because he withdraws is such an example: the differences in organizing the sequence are at the heart of their different perceptions. Asked to explain, the husband maintains his withdrawal is his sole defense against his wife’s nagging. She, in turn, sees his explanation as a deliberate distortion of “what `really’ happens”-that the reason for her critical attitude is the husband’s passivity (Watzlawick, et al., 1967, pp. 56-57).

After stimuli are selectively perceived and selectively organized, they are selectively interpreted-that is, the stimuli are assigned meanings unique to the perceiver. Personal interpretations are based on the perceiver’s past experiences, assumptions about human behavior, knowledge of the other’s circumstances, present moods/wants/desires, and expectations. For example, consider the wife who nags because she feels that her husband withdraws. Suppose she had a cold and unaffectionate father. Her husband’s withdrawal might then be interpreted as a further rejection, a form of emotional abandonment. On the other hand, if she knows that her husband withdraws whenever he has problems at the office, she may be inclined to see and respond to his behavior differently.

PERCEIVER/OBJECT/CONTEXT

Like perceiving objects, perceiving other people may be thought of in terms of three elements: the perceiver, the object of perception (in this instance, another human being), and the context within which the object is viewed. As the perceiver, you are of course influenced by your own attributes. For example, people seem to have predispositions to make generally negative or positive evaluations of others; certainly we have all met people who feel that “people are no damn good” or, at the other end of the spectrum, those who would say that there’s good to be found in all of us (Kaplan, 1976). It is through the eyes of the perceiver that all the attributes of that second person (the object, if you will) are filtered. Remember though that because person perception is a transactional process, those attributes do not always

remain constant. If early in our first conversation you act as if I’m a terrible bore, you might find that my behavior changes from mildly friendly to downright obnoxious. As for the third element, the context or setting within which the process of interpersonal perception occurs is both physical and psychological, as we shall see.

How far can we go in saying that the perception of people resembles the perception of objects? Theorists don’t agree.


Tagiuri and Petrullo (1958) point out an important respect in which the two acts of observation differ:

Person perception is special … in that the similarity between perceiver and perceived is greater than in any other instance. Banal as this may seem, it

has far-reaching consequences. The most obvious one of these is that the perceiver is probably maximally inclined and able to use his own experience

in perceiving or judging or inferring another’s state or intentions. Perceived and perceiver, in general, react similarly to events. This may be viewed as empathy or projection or whatnot. (p. xi)

In other words, to some degree, however slight, we assume that the other person shares some of our characteristics, that we resemble each other in some ways. We are-or so we think-familiar with some of the other person’s experience. Such assumptions may help us perceive more accurately. For example, if I know that you have just returned from a funeral, on the basis of my own experience I will probably interpret your silence as depression rather than indifference. On the other hand, we often misinterpret what we perceive precisely because we assume other people are like us. If I assume that your taste in music is like mine, when I offer to play some hard rock, I may interpret your remark “Oh, great!” as genuinely enthusiastic though it is clear to most people from your facial expression that your reply was sarcastic.

Another way in which perceiving people differs from perceiving objects is that our perceptions and misperceptions influence and keep on influencing our interactions with others-because they keep responding to these percep­tions. Sometimes people correct our misperceptions. But occasionally one misinterpretation leads to another, and we get further and further afield. Even if an initial misperception is corrected, it may persist because of the psychological sets we have about other people. Vine Deloria, an American Indian who was director of the National Congress of Americans, recalls his visit to the home of a congressman whose wife wanted to meet some Indians. With him were Helen Schierback (a Lumbee) and Imelda Schreiner (a Cheyenne River Sioux). Throughout the afternoon, the congressman’s wife repeatedly asked them their names when she addressed them. When they left, she asked them again for their names so that she could say goodbye. “As we went out the door,” writes Deloria, “she thanked us for coming and profusely apologized for not remembering our names. ‘Indian names,’ she said, `are so peculiar and hard to remember.’ It had completely escaped her

that we all had European names” (Deloria, 1970, p. 27).

Person perception then is a special form of perception. As we go on to examine how impressions of others are formed, we will also give some attention to how members of other cultures tend to be perceived.

FORMING IMPRESSIONS

Our concern with the process of forming impressions involves the discussion of many variables, but it begins with you, the perceiver, and how you view yourself.

LOOKING AT YOURSELF

“I always do this-mess up at the end of the term. Let’s face it,” says Greg to his parents, “I’m not smart.” “That is me,” says Stacey, staring at several photographs in Vogue of a stunning brunette modeling ski clothes. Both of these statements are, to some degree, indications of self-concept. Your self­concept, your relatively stable impressions of yourself, develops partly out of the feedback you receive from the people around you. In fact, some psychi­atrists believe that you evaluate yourself primarily on the basis of how you think others evaluate you. If Liz’s parents, relatives and school friends all come to think of her as “the good student,” she may learn to regard herself the same way and strive even harder to do well in classes. Academic performance may become an essential aspect of the way she thinks of herself. Conversely, if Ralph is viewed by his parents, relatives, and neighbors as “the black sheep,” he may come to perceive himself in this light.

Feedback often has a direct effect on level of self-esteem, one of the chief measures of self-concept. Thus, when people are asked to predict their own performance on a test-whether it be social, intellectual, or physical com­petence-and are later given feedback on how well they scored, they revise their predictions for the next experimental task in the direction of that feedback. This is true regardless of whether the feedback is accurate or not.

A survey of over fifty studies of speech communication feedback suggests that our commonsense hunch is correct-when you get negative feedback it can make you more flustered; when you get positive feedback, you gain in self-confidence. Negative feedback can also cause disruptions in your delivery, whether this is indicated by the loudness of your voice, rate of speech, fluency, nervousness, stage fright, eye contact, or body movement (Gardiner, 1971).

Still, there is a major difference between the way you perceive yourself and the way you perceive other people. A series of studies on behavior attribution suggests that you see your own behavior as a sequence of responses to the demands of a given situation, but you view the same behavior in

others as generated by their disposition, that is, their stable traits or needs. Lee, for example, sees himself as cutting down on his expenses and living more economically because he’s saving up for a’car; but he tends to think of Adam, his roommate, as cheap. Or “She is arrogant,” but “I was provoked.”

Even when we know others well, we seem to interpret their motivations in different terms. In one experiment male college students were asked to write a brief explanation of why they liked the girl they dated most regularly and another of why they had chosen their major. Each also wrote explanations of his best friend’s choices of girl friend and college major. While subjects tended to explain their own choices in terms of situation (”She’s a relaxing person”; “Chemistry is a high-paying field”), they frequently saw the behavior of their friends in terms of personality traits or needs. For example, “He needs someone he can relax with”; “He wants to make a lot of money” (Nisbett et al., 1973).

Two reasons for these perceptual differences have been proposed. First, the information available to the actor (the one who performs the action) and the observer may be different. The observer sees the actor at a particular point in time. Generally, he or she does not-cannot-know firsthand the actor’s history, experiences, motives, or present emotional state; these can only be inferred. Thus if we see a person overreact to a mildly critical remark, as observers we may not know what events preceding this episode made it the straw that broke the camel’s back. A second possibility is that even when the same information is available to both actor and observer, they process it differently because different aspects of it are salient to each of them.

Storms (1973) suggests that these information differences may exist in actor and observer because their points of view are literally quite different. You do not see yourself acting; under ordinary circumstances you cannot be an observer of your own behavior. And while as an actor you watch the situation in which you find yourself, the other person spends most of his or her time observing you, not the situation.

But suppose we reverse the viewpoints of actor and observer. Storms found that he could change the orientation of actor and observer by showing them videotapes of their own interaction. Videotape offered the actor a new perspective, that of an observer, and often changed his or her inferences about why he or she had behaved in a particular way. After seeing ourselves on tape, we are much more likely to explain our behavior as a reflection of personal disposition than as a response to the environment.

While a change in visual orientation seems to heighten self-awareness, the prospect of viewing videotapes of all our behavior is neither appealing nor feasible. Nor is it perhaps desirable. Storms mentions, for example, that when videotape is used in therapy, patients sometimes take undue respon­sibility on themselves for their behavior, overlooking genuine elements in the environment that have influenced their actions. Videotape is not the answer. What is needed is a more balanced view of oneself and of others, a view that enables us to interpret behavior in terms of both disposition and environment.

Research on behavior attribution has several implications. The most important for our purposes is that by combining information about ourselves that is available only to us with an awareness of how other human beings perceive us, we may begin to see ourselves in sharper perspective.

LOOKING AT OTHERS

In many situations we find ourselves making several judgments about others-and all at once. For example, Matt Philips was at a Christmas party. Mixed in with the old crowd were four people he didn’t know: But by the end of the evening he had, at least to his own satisfaction, sized up all the newcomers. The young woman in the red dress was lively and pleasant; he liked her right away. But her husband was a terrible snob-and so self­involved. The tall blonde was too nervous, but the older man seated next to her was easy-going with a great sense of humor. And Matt noticed how confident he was-they spent quite a bit of time talking.

Like Matt, most people form impressions of others quite easily; yet they find it difficult to explain the process. In fact, many feel that they make their judgments intuitively. “Regardless of the degree of skill an adult may have in appraising others, he engages in the process most of the time without paying much attention to how he does it” (Tagiuri and Petrullo, 1958, p. ix).

“Impression” is a word we use about our judgments. We speak of being “under the impression,” or of someone making a “lasting impression,” a “false impression,” or a “good impression.” Even our legal system reflects the degree to which we rely on snap judgments. Before a trial begins prospective jurors are screened by the defense and the prosecution. In addition to raising specific objections to certain candidates for the jury, both the defense and the prosecuting attorneys are allowed to reject a certain number of would-be jurors without stating their reasons. Attorneys often make their decisions rapidly, though they are complex ones and are probably based on several considerations. They will probably take into account their perception of the potential juror and the client, and the impression they feel that the client will make upon that juror. And, of course, the attorney for one side might be more than willing to accept a juror whom opposing counsel found objectionable.

Attorneys usually seem to be rather skilled perceivers, accustomed to formulating judgments about others very quickly. But think of the members of the jury. They will be meeting and evaluating many people for the first time-and presumably doing this entirely on their own. In a short time each juror will probably have formed an impression of most if not all of those involved in the case-including the witnesses, the defense attorney, the prosecuting attorney, and even the judge.

Because a juror’s final judgment about the person on trial can have dramatic consequences, it is important to consider how he or she forms initial impressions and whether those impressions will have any effect on later perceptions. Our own evaluations of people also have important if less dramatic consequences, so we might all benefit from looking more closely at how an impression of another person is formed.



A PRIVATE THEORY OF PERSONALITY

As we have seen, the attributes of each communicator influence not only what he or she sees but how he or she interprets -what is seen. Many people

are quite confident of their perceptions about others, and some even like to think of themselves as amateur psychologists. Actually, each of us seems to

hold what has been described as a “private theory of personality”:

One factor that determines the content we tend to select (in order to fill in a sketchy impression) is our general notion of “what goes with what” in people. This notion in fact constitutes a private theory of personality that each of us has and that determines, to a considerable extent, how we judge others. This private theory is almost never stated or examined and is therefore referred to by psychologists as an “implicit theory of personality.” (Krech et al., 1982)

You can see private personality theory at work in many shorthand attempts to size up people. For example, you might be asked, Is a glass with water to its midpoint half-full or half-empty? This question is a layman’s way of finding out whether your view of life is optimistic (half-full glass) or pessimistic (half-empty glass). The layman is using your answer as a basis from which to generalize about your personality and to predict something about your future behavior.

THE FIRST IMPRESSION

One of the major uses of personality evaluation is to explain and predict behavior on the basis of very limited information. How do we put this information together and come up with a first impression? Suppose you are given the following list of words describing a man you have never met and are then asked to write a personality sketch of him:

Energetic ; ironical; assured ; inquisitive; talkative ; persuasive ; cold


In a classic experiment Solomon Asch (1946) used this list to learn more about how impressions of others are formed. He read the list to a group of students and asked them to write a full impression of the person described by these adjectives. There were two important findings.

First, all the students were able to organize the scanty information they received and create a consistent, unified impression, though there was a great deal of variation in their personality sketches, and they all went beyond the terms of the original description. Here are two samples:

He seems to be the kind of person who would make a great impression upon others at a first meeting. However as time went by, his acquaintances would

easily come to see through the mask. Underneath would be revealed his arrogance and selfishness.

Possibly he does not have any deep feeling. He would tend to be an opportunist. Likely to succeed in things he intends to do. He has perhaps

married a wife who would help him in his purpose. He tends to be skeptical. (p. 261)


Second, Asch found that certain traits are more central, more influential than others in forming impressions of personality. When one of the adjectives on the list was replaced by its opposite, the personality descriptions were radically different. Can you guess which of the seven adjectives was the crucial one? It was “cold.” Half the students were read the list with the trait “warm” substituted for “cold.” In another experiment Asch substituted the pair “polite-blunt” for “warm-cold,” but these traits were not central; they had relatively little effect on the way personality impressions were formed. To most subjects, whether a person is warm or cold was more important than whether he is blunt or polite.

Students in an economics course at M.I.T. were unwitting participants in a related study. Before the first class meeting they were all given a brief biographical note about a new lecturer on the pretext that they would later be asked to fill out forms about him. Half received the following information:

People who know him consider him to be a rather warm person, industrious, critical, practical and determined.



The other students received the same note but with a single word change:

People who know him consider him to be a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical and determined.



After the lecturer had finished speaking, the students were asked to describe him and to rate him on fifteen different characteristics. Those who had read the “warm” biographical note usually described the lecturer as social, popular, and informal. Those given the “cold” description felt he was

formal and self-centered (Kelley, 1950).


For a long time theorists believed that impressions of others were interpreted on the basis of the “halo effect,” _the tendency to extend a favorable or unfavorable impression of one trait to other traits. Thus you might think of Donna as honest and polite, just because you consider her intelligent. Or if you feel Paul is cheap, you might attribute several other undesirable traits to him. This explanation sounds reasonable, but we now know that the halo effect is too simple a concept to account completely for the way we interpret our perceptions.

Indirectly, experiments such as those of Asch and Kelley tell us that certain traits carry more weight and are clearly more decisive to our judgments than others. Somehow we manage to make all the information we have about a person-all those distinct verbal and nonverbal cues-fit together. If they don’t seem consistent, we build in an explanation. In looking at others we assume a certain stability in the traits we see. That’s why, for example, it is so difficult to think of the martinet in the office as a loving family man and doting father. It will take some doing, but most of us will find a way to reconcile those two kinds of behavior.

This need for consistency or balance is something we will be talking more about in Chapter 3. People seem more reliable, more knowable, when we can predict some aspects of their behavior. Perhaps that explains our need to perceive another human being as a “personality “-to see that personality quickly; to see it vividly, with certain dominant or central traits; and most important, to see it as a unity.

THE PRIMACY EFFECT

Time is one of the most significant variables in our communication model. Thus it seems natural to ask what effect the first impression you form will have on your future perceptions of another communicator. Ideally, as you learn more about someone, you continually revise or refine your impressions in the light of new information. But is this in fact so? Does a first impression enhance or interfere with later knowledge, or does it have no effect at all?

Among studies of impression formation, those of Luchins have been very influential. In one of his experiments, subjects read two paragraphs describing a young man named Jim. One paragraph described actions of Jim’s that were predominantly introverted, the other described actions that were predominantly extraverted. All subjects read the same paragraphs; it was only their order that varied. Luchins found that a primacy effect did exist­

that the first information we receive about a person is the most decisive in

forming our impression (Luchins, in Hovland et al., 1957). So first meetings­especially the very first minutes of those meetings-are important.

Primacy has a clear-cut effect on communication. If you look once more at the model in Figure 1.1, you see that each communicator should be receiving


input and feedback. The primacy effect blocks both. It is, in our terms, a source of technical interference, and this time the interference is within the communicator. If Sandra, after spending five minutes with her roommate’s brother Bill, is sure that he is overbearing and phony, she is not going to be very interested in getting any feedback about her impression of him. Most of you have been in Bill’s place at least once. It’s as though you suddenly had become invisible. No matter what you said or did, the other person no longer seemed to respond; you couldn’t change that first impression of you. The frustration of being in such a situation is summed up in the statement, “It’s like talking to a wall.”

Rightly or wrongly, most people feel quite confident about their judg­ments. For example, in Luchins’ experiment almost all the subjects were very willing to answer questions about Jim’s behavior that were totally unrelated to the information they had read about him. Given information about some of his behavior, they inferred several other things about him and confidently predicted how he would behave in other social situations. Only a few asked how they were expected to know such things (Brown, 1985). But as we will see in Chapter 4, all inferences involve some measure of risk, and this is certainly the case with inferences about personality.

We all know how often first impressions can be mistaken ones, and we also know how often decisions depend on first impressions. Imagine that you are being interviewed for your first job after graduation. You look very nervous and were ten minutes late for the interview. Then you make an obvious grammatical mistake in speaking. What is likely to be the outcome?

It’s disturbing to think that first impressions can have such dramatic effects on judgment. But the situation is not as alarming as it might seem. Luchins found that if people were warned not to make snap judgments, the primacy effect was reversed or eliminated completely. Several other studies of primacy confirm that the primacy effect is not inevitable.

PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS

In general, researchers tend to agree that the influence of physical beauty is most powerful early in a relationship. As we acquire more and more information about a person, the effects of physical appearance diminish considerably. It seems, after all, that “you can’t live on looks.”

PERSONAL GENERALIZATIONS AND STEREOTYPES

How we perceive other human beings also depends on generalizations derived from our shared experience as members of a given culture or society. In discussing the Muller-Lyer illusion (p. 35), we observed that culture was a determinant of visual perception. It is even more significant from the standpoint of human communication that culture can be a determinant of person perception.


Culture

The influence of a culture on the person perception of its members is most directly seen in its stereotypes. A stereotype is a generalization about a class of people, objects, or events that is widely held by a given culture. We cannot say categorically that all stereotypes are false. According to one hypothesis, there is a kernel of truth in all of them. Thus we can at least acknowledge that some are accurate enough to provide a very limited basis for making judgments about groups of people we hardly know. But when applied to a specific individual, most stereotypes are inappropriate and highly inaccu­rate-and many are false. Relying on stereotypes rather than on direct perceptions can result in embarrassing social situations.


There can be no doubt that race membership affects our perceptions ol others. For example, we are better at recognizing pictures of members of our own race than pictures of members of another (Malpass and Kravitz; 1969). A light-hearted illustration of this phenomenon is suggested by a popular cartoon. The setting is a Chinese restaurant in the United States All the waiters are Chinese; all the customers are Occidental. In the foreground a waiter holding a tray with a covered dish confers with several other waiters. “I can’t remember which customer ordered this,” he is saying “They all look alike.”

Physical Attributes

:Stereotypes also extend to physical attributes

Some Effects of Stereotyping

In each of these examples of stereotyping, a person is considered to have attributes generally ascribed to the group of which he or she is a member. That person is not perceived as a unique human being but as a member of a certain category of human beings, whether it be actresses, Japanese Americans, blondes, or college professors. In a sense, the person is judged in terms of context. Although some generalizations about categories are valuable to us in daily experience, generalizations about human beings­especially generalizations about how they think and how they are likely to behave-tend to distort our perceptions and to interfere with our ability to make accurate judgments.

Unlike the primacy effect, however, personal generalizations or stereo­types cannot be eliminated simply by alerting the perceiver to their dangers. For example, it is true that people who are authoritarian and close-minded seem to do more stereotyping than those who are not (Crockett and Meidinger, 1956). But you can’t simply tell a person to be less authoritarian, which is one reason that intercultural communication is so complex:

Unfortunately, we cannot “cure” the stereotype by demonstrating the “truth” in order to teach a lesson of tolerance or cultural relativity. Stereotypes persist because they sometimes rationalize prejudices or are firmly estab­lished as myths or truisms by one’s own national culture. They are also sustained and fed by the tendency to perceive selectively only those pieces of new information (even contrary evidence) corresponding with the image. (Barna, in Samovar and Porter, 1972, p. 243)

SOCIAL ROLES


Among the several social roles that influence how we perceive and are ourselves perceived by others are work roles, student roles, sex-linked, and marital roles.

A classic example of how our work roles may alter perception is Zimbardo’s so-called prison experiment (1971) in which students randomly assigned to be “guards” and others designated “prisoners” quickly came to see and respond to each other in stereotypical guard-prisoner fashion: the guards became cruel and unjust, the prisoners rebellious. Although planned for two weeks, the experiment was stopped after only six days. Students no longer thought like students, but like guards and prisoners. They truly lived their parts.

As for student roles, recent research on perceptions in the classroom finds that teachers perceive the model student as a compliant communicator­”well-behaved, patient, controlled, and polite. He or she waits before speaking, listens intently and politely, sits quietly while others talk, and contributes clear and germane comments” (Trenholm and Rose, 1981, p. 24). According to teachers, the model student willingly does all assignments, “never criticizes the teacher or gives “way to frustration, and accepts and even welcomes criticism” (p. 24). According to these findings, compliance rather than inquiring behavior would be rewarded. This expectation is also borne out by a study of beginning teachers, on both the elementary and secondary levels: they perceive classroom discipline, motivating students, and dealing with individual differences as among their greatest teaching problems (Veenman, 1984).

What a contrast with the way most students feel about unquestioning compliance. Years after he graduated from college, Peter Taylor could still recall the time a paper he wrote for comparative lit received an A, while Nazik, the Iranian grad student sitting next to him, received only a B - for hers. Peter knew he had only summarized and “played back” Dr. Kiernan’s views. Nazik had taken a more controversial stance, and in class Dr. Kiernan had questioned her about it. A published author in her own country, Nazik was having difficulty slipping back into the role of student. And Dr. Kiernan was more interested in compliance than originality. He was not at all pleased by a student who challenged his analysis, even if she was able to defend her point of view.

Another aspect of student-teacher roles is the perception of power in the classroom. Although teachers and students generally agree on power bases, some important differences exist. Both groups see most power stemming from the teacher’s ability to give rewards (e.g., high grades, approval), ability to make the student identify with the teacher, and the teacher’s perceived expertise. But again students, as you might expect, have a less positive view of the teacher’s use of power (McCroskey and Richmond, 1983).

That sex roles also influence perceptions is confirmed by several research summaries (Rosenthal and DePaulo, 1979; LaFrance and Mayo, 1979; and Pearson, 1985). The consensus is that women are perceived as more supportive than men, laughing more often, intruding less on others, and being more deferential. Men, on the other hand, are considered more dominant and achievement-and task-oriented. These descriptions reflect the more ster­eotypical views that women place a higher value on establishing and maintaining relationships while men tend to perceive the world more as a place to “win” or “achieve.” A twist on this view is the old joke, “Behind every great man is a woman saying `You’re wrong. You’re wrong.’ “

Perceptions of marital roles seem to have undergone considerable change in the last decades, particularly with the increased number of wives who have joined the work force. A study attempting to predict marital and career success among dual-working couples (Hiller and Philliber, 1982) identifies four major marital types: these are based on how the husband and wife perceive themselves.

In a traditional marriage relationship, the husband sees himself as masculine and the wife sees herself as feminine. For example, although both work outside the home, the husband is perceived as bringing home the proverbial bacon whereas the wife has sole responsibility for all the housework. Housework is her province, and he won’t help with any of it.

In a reluctant wife marriage relationship, the wife views herself as feminine and her husband sees himself as androgynous (having both masculine and feminine characteristics). If the wife in this relationship does not perceive herself as furnishing most of the emotional support, she may perceive her husband as “too feminine.” And if her husband helps with the housework, sharing these tasks because she is so busy as a result of her successful career, she may feel guilty-both because she neglects “her duties” at home and because her professional skills seem “unfeminine.”

On the other hand, in a reluctant husband marriage relationship, the husband sees himself as masculine and his wife sees herself as androgynous: he may feel threatened by her broad range of activities if he defines her role more narrowly. Suppose, for example, that she wants to split all the housework while he believes that if she hasn’t the time for all the domestic concerns, she should spend less time at the office.

In the androgynous marriage relationship, the fourth type, both spouses see themselves as androgynous: both engage in so-called masculine and feminine behaviors, making adaptation easier. He may even do most of the cooking, while she does most of the cleaning and laundry. As you might expect, problems may still arise based on social expectations of appropriate or “proper” husband/wife roles.

It might be interesting to try classifying the marriages of those you know-relatives, friends, neighbors-and see whether you can discern any pattern related to age, work, and psychological makeup of the spouses involved. Or ask yourself which type of marriage you have or expect to have.

We’ve looked at several factors influencing our impressions of others. In addition to their physical attractiveness and social roles, our own self­perceptions, our notions of personality, and the stereotypes we hold and our own generalizations also come into play. So we turn in the final section of this chapter to questions concerning the accuracy of these impressions(http://boru.simanjuntak.or.id/)