Ch 4: Perceiving Others

Question 1

first-order realities (109)

Answer 1

the physically observable qualities of a thing or situation

ie, gma wraps me up in a big hug; a friend calls me a “bonehead”

“…we create our reality with others through communication (DeCapua, 2007; O’Brien, 2005)” (109).

Question 2

second-order realities (109)

Answer 2

perceptions that arise from attaching meaning to first-order things or situations

“Second-order realities don’t reside in objects or events, but rather in our minds” (109).

Question 3

Steps in the Perception Process (111-115)

Answer 3

Selection, Organization, Interpretation, Negotiation

Question 4

[step 1:] selection (111)

Answer 4

a phase of the perception process in which a communicator attends to a stimulus from the environment. Also, a way communicators manage dialectical tensions by responding to one end of the dialectical spectrum and ignoring the other

things that stand out: intense stimuli, repetitious stimuli, contrast or change in stimulation

Question 5

[step 2:] organization (111)

Answer 5

the stage in the perception process that involves arranging data in a meaningful way

Question 6

perceptual schema (111)

Answer 6

cognitive frameworks that allow us to give order to the information we have selected (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001)

Question 7

four types of schema (111-112)

Answer 7

• Physical constructs classify people according to their appearance: beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, young or old, and so on
• Role constructs use social position, such as student, attorney, wife.
• Interaction constructs focus on social behavior: friendly, helpful, aloof, or sarcastic, for example.
• Psychological constructs refer to internal states of mind and dispositions: confident, insecure, happy, neurotic, and so on.

Question 8

punctuation (112)

Answer 8

the process of determining the causal order of events (Watzlawick et al., 1967; Wood, 2010)

ie, “who started it?”

Question 9

[step 3:] interpretation (112)

Answer 9

the process of attaching meaning to sense data. Synonymous with decoding.

Question 10

factors that cause us to interpret in one way or another (113)

Answer 10

• Relational satisfaction: the behavior that seems positive when you are happy with a partner might seem completely different when the relationship isn’t satisfying (Luo et al., 2010)
• Expectation (Burgoon & Burgoon, 2001)
• Personal experience (ie, being taken advantage of in the past)
• Assumptions about human behavior (Neuliep, 1996; Sager, 2008).

Question 11

[step 4:] negotiation (114)

Answer 11

a process in which two or more people discuss specific proposals in order to find a mutually acceptable agreement

Question 12

narratives (Allan et al., 2002; Langellier & Peterson, 2006) (114)

Answer 12

the stories we use to describe our personal worlds

Judy Pearson (2000) says, “One key to a long happy marriage is to tell yourself and others that you have one and then to behave as though you do!” (115)

Question 13

Influences on perception (116-124)

Answer 13

• physiological influences (the senses, age, health & fatigue, hunger, biological cycles, neurobehavioral challenges)
• psychological influences (mood, self-concept)
• social influences (sex and gender roles, occupational roles, relational roles)
• cultural influences

Question 14

standpoint theory (119)

Answer 14

a body of scholarship that explores how one’s position in a society shapes one’s view of society in general and of specific individuals (Litwin & Hallstein, 2007; Wood, 2005a)

“…most often applied to the difference between the perspectives of privileged social groups and people who have less power, and to the perspectives of women and men (Dougherty, 2001)” (119).

Question 15

psychological sex types (120)

Answer 15

when a person, regardless of her or his biological sex, can act in a masculine manner or a feminine manner or can exhibit strongly both types of characteristics (androgynous) or neither (undifferentiated); the word gender is a shorthand term for psychological sex type

Question 16

androgynous (120)

Answer 16

possessing both masculine and feminine traits

Question 17

gender (120)

Answer 17

psychological sex-type

Question 18

four psychological sex-types (120)

Answer 18

• masculine
• feminine
• androgynous
• undifferentiated (neither masculine or feminine)

(early theorizing by Sandra Bem (1974))

Question 19

Standford psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s study (1971, 2007) (121)

Answer 19

• impact of occupational roles

- “It seems that what we are is determined largely by society’s designation of who we are” (121).

Question 20

cultural influences on perception (122)

Answer 20

“…when making judgments of emotion, Japanese tend to focus more on vocal cues, whereas Dutch tend to focus more on facial expressions (Tanaka et al., 2010)” (122).

“To Asians, a talkative person is often considered a show-off or a fake” (123).

Question 21

Common tendencies in perception (124-130)

Answer 21

• We make snap judgments (125).
• We cling to first impressions (126).
• We judge ourselves more charitably than we do others (127).
• We are influenced by our expectations (128).
• We are influenced by the obvious (128).
• We assume others are like us (129).

Question 22

attribution (124)

Answer 22

the process of attaching meaning to another person’s behavior

Question 23

John Gottman (1994) (124)

Answer 23

-can watch a couple talking for 12 minutes and predict with 90 percent accuracy whether they will still be married in 15 years

Question 24

stereotyping (125)

Answer 24

exaggerated beliefs associated with a categorizing system

• people “automatically make on “primitive categories” like race, sex, and age (Nelson, 2005)” (125)
• avoid problems by “decategorizing” others (126)

Question 25

characteristics of stereotyping (125)

Answer 25

1. categorizing others on the basis of easily recognized but not necessarily significant characteristics (what you see first)
2. ascribing a set of characteristics to most or all members of a group (“all old people…”)
3. applying the generalization to a particular person

Question 26

halo effect (126)

Answer 26

the tendency to form an overall positive impression of a person on the basis of one positive characteristic

Question 27

confirmation bias (126)

Answer 27

the tendency to seek out and organize data that supports already existing options

ie. leading questions
- old adage: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” (126).

Question 28

self-serving bias (127)

Answer 28

the tendency to judge oneself in the most generous terms possible while being more critical of others

ie. “When she lashes out angrily, we say she’s being moody or too sensitive; when we blow off steam, it’s because of the pressure we’ve been under” (127).

Question 29

HBH / Zhang’s research (127)

Answer 29

honest but hurtful

-“we do often hurt the people we care most about–and that a self-serving bias prevents us from recognizing the effect of our words” (127).

Question 30

Perception checking (130)

Answer 30

a 3-part method for verifying the accuracy of interpretations, including:

1. a description of the sense data (the behavior you noticed)
2. two possible interpretations
3. a request for confirmation/clarification of the interpretations