Lessons in Communication

The perception process is something that really stuck with me from the other days lesson.  We unknowingly do this every day of our lives, by choosing what clothes we wear, what events we go to, what information we decide to share with people etc.  We also do this online by composing our Facebook profiles of relevant information and choosing what pictures to put on our Instagrams.  In class we defined perception as, "The active process of creating meaning by selecting, organizing and interpreting by people, objects, events, situations and other phenomena."  Perception begs these two questions:

1. What do you know about me? 

2. What are things you can infer?

It seems easy to make assumptions of people; just like when we took Professor Jackson's quiz in class.  These assumptions can sometimes turn out to be true, but shouldn't be used to completely rationalize a person's personality.

Everyday we make assumptions about people and the situations they get themselves into.  It's interesting that we base our thoughts on people off of things that happen with them, and expect certain characteristics of them because of how they respond to certain circumstances.  I feel that we learned a valuable life lesson in class when talking about the external and internal attributions that effect our perceptions of people.  It is better to think of people being effected by outside forces than their own internal faults.

Having assumptions can lead to conflict and learning how to deal with conflict starts with being better communicators. Using "I" language is the easiest way to turn any full on blow-out into a civilized conversation.  "I feel that..." is the best way to say something - do not blame the other person but tell them how you feel.  Being open, being kind, and being flexible will make sure that arguments aren't the end of a relationship but way to make them stronger.

This is especially so because females and males communicate/do things differently (but are mostly similar).  Learning about the expressions of affection, control, and inclusion was very interesting to me because I don’t think we normally realize it outright.  There are different social norms for each gender, although there is no behavior that is only men or women, and knowing what they are can help us to better understand each other as opposite genders.  It doesn’t have to be that men are from Mars and women are from Venus!

What it comes down to is that communication is always happening.  It’s an on going process – a personal process.  Getting an in depth look at how this interpersonal process works really opened my eyes.  I felt like maybe I had been a little blind to some of this stuff just because it’s a daily routine.  Seeing and understanding how I communicate and the way others communicate will hopefully help with interpersonal experiences in the future.  I hope people don’t blow off what we learn in class because you never know if one day it might come in handy!