Chapter 3- Decoding Messages: Perception and Listening

Goal: To help students understand how people assign meaning to messages; to show that both senders and receivers have responsibilities during communication: senders should design messages that are clear and organized; receivers should listen carefully.

I. The process by which people decode messages is active, creative, and highly selective.

A. Perception is a general process whereby the human mind assigns meaning to sense data.
- 1. Perception is both social and cognitive.
  - a. It is social because the categories we use during perception are shared with others and imposed by culture.
  - b. It is cognitive because it is a mental process.
- 2. Perception is an active process whereby we impose order and meaning on our worlds.
  - a. We structure sounds and images by identifying them.
  - b. We impose stability on constantly changing stimuli.
  - c. We assign meaning by interpreting stimuli and relating them to each other.
- 3. During person perception we rely on three kinds of internal representations or schemata to interpret stimuli.
  - a. Person prototypes help us identify types of people by representing typical traits, behavior patterns, and role relations.
  - b. Personal constructs are characteristics we tend to notice in others.
    - (1). Those we use frequently are called chronically accessible constructs and they can color and bias our judgments.
    - (2) The more rich and varied our constructs, the more cognitively complex and the better communicators we are.
  - c. Scripts are mental representations of action sequences.
- 4. We often rely on existing schemata to process the world mindlessly.
  - a. Mindless processing frees us to attend only to novel stimuli.
  - b. Mindless processing can rob us of control and creativity.

II. Despite the subjective nature of perception, it is possible for senders to design messages that receivers will attend to, understand, and remember.

A. To design clear messages, senders should understand that message decoding involves three steps: attention, interpretation, and retention.
- 1. Not all messages capture receivers' attention: receivers filter out or dismiss message elements that are not well designed.
- 2. In designing messages, senders should take into account two kinds of attention:
  - a. Voluntary attention is guided by personal goals and can be increased by relating message elements to receivers' needs.
  - b. Involuntary attention occurs when we are spontaneously attracted to stimuli because of their nature; this kind of attention can be increased by creating intense, novel, vivid, or surprising message elements.
- 3. Receivers will shut down processing if they cannot comprehend a message or if message content is unacceptable.
  - a. Messages can be made easier to comprehend if senders relate new information to old, if they adapt messages to the learning level of receivers, and if opportunities for feedback are provided.
  - b. Unless messages are attractive or acceptable, receivers will refuse to process them fully; messages are more acceptable if message content seems valuable and there is opportunity to make positive cognitive responses.
- 4. Over time, messages will be forgotten unless special effort is given to enhancing storage and retention.
  - a. By repeating a message and by encouraging receivers to rehearse message elements, senders can increase the possibility that messages will be retained.
  - b. Information related to the self is well-remembered.
  - c. Simple and vivid summaries increase retention.
  - d. Relating messages to triggers increases the likelihood that a message will be retrieved at the appropriate time.

III. Ensuring accurate information processing is not only the responsibility of senders: Receivers can work to become better listeners.

A. Americans are very poor listeners.
- 1. Our culture places a low value on listening
- 2. We are not trained to listen.
B. Listening is a process whereby orally communicated messages are attended to, recognized, interpreted and stored for future use.
- 1. Hearing and listening are not identical; listening involves labeling, organizing, and assigning meaning to what is heard.
- 2. Listening takes skill and mental effort to overcome the gap between our listening ability and our actual performance.
C. We listen for different purposes and in different ways.
- 1. Listening for understanding occurs when we process, store, and retrieve messages as intended by the sender.
- 2. Evaluative listening occurs when we think critically about messages, judging whether content is accurate, complete, or fair.
- 3. Appreciative listening involves being able to respond to or enjoy a stimulus creatively.
- 4. Empathic listening is used when we help or comfort others by listening.
D. With practice, listening can be improved.
- 1 . Attention can be improved if receivers do a number of things:
  - a. Receivers should stay focused and avoid extraneous detail.
  - b. Receivers should understand their purpose in listening.
  - c. Receivers should use the time differential between speaking (150 wpm) and processing (up to 300 wpm) to think about and organize message content and structure.
- 2. Interpretation can be improved in several ways:
  - a. Receivers should control emotions, whether negative or positive.
  - b. Receivers should be aware of bias and should delay final evaluations.
  - c. Receivers should not rely on peripheral cues.
  - d. Receivers should question the accuracy of schemata and separate
  - inference from fact.
  - e. Receivers should prepare by learning about a topic prior to listening to a message.
- 3. Retention can also be increased:
  - a. Receivers should try to store main ideas, not extraneous detail
  - b. Receivers should mentally rehearse and review ideas.
  - c. Mnemonic devices may help.
  - d. Receivers should seek out feedback.