Self-Concept

When we communicate, we’re full of expectations, doubts, fears, and hopes. Where we place emphasis, what we focus on, and how we view our potential directly impacts our communication interactions. You gather a sense of self as you grow, age, and experience others and the world. At various times in your life, you’ve probably been praised for some of your abilities and talents, and criticized for doing some things poorly. These compliments and criticisms probably had a deep impact on you. Much of what we know about ourselves we’ve learned through interaction with others. Not everyone has had positive influences in their lives, and not every critic knows what they’re talking about, but criticism and praise still shape how and what we expect from ourselves.

Carol Dweck, a psychology researcher at Stanford University, states that “something that seems like a small intervention can have cascading effects on things we think of as stable or fixed, including extroversion, openness to new experience, and resilience.”^[3] Your personality and expressions of it, like oral and written communication, were long thought to have a genetic component. But, says Dweck, “More and more research is suggesting that, far from being simply encoded in the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing that changes over the life span and is shaped by experience.”^[4] If someone told you that you weren’t a good speaker, know this: You can change. You can shape your performance through experience, and a business communication course, a mentor at work, or even reading effective business communication authors can produce positive change.

Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values

When you consider what makes you you, the answers multiply as do the questions. As a baby, you learned to recognize that the face in the mirror was your face. But as an adult, you begin to wonder what and who you are. While we could discuss the concept of self endlessly—and philosophers have wrestled and will continue to wrestle with it—for our purposes, let’s focus on self, which is defined as one’s sense of individuality, motivations, and personal characteristics.^[5] We also need to keep in mind that this concept isn’t fixed or absolute; it changes as we grow and change across our lifetimes.

One useful point for our study about ourselves as communicators is to examine our attitudes, beliefs, and values. These are all interrelated, and researchers have varying theories about which comes first and which springs from another. We learn our values, beliefs, and attitudes through interaction with others. Table 3.1 “Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values” defines these terms and provides an example of each.

An attitude is your immediate disposition toward a concept or an object. Attitudes can change easily and frequently. You may prefer vanilla while someone else prefers peppermint, but if someone tries to persuade you of how delicious peppermint is, you may be willing to try it and find that you like it better than vanilla.

Beliefs are ideas based on our previous experiences and convictions and may not necessarily be based on logic or fact. You no doubt have beliefs on political, economic, and religious issues. These beliefs may not have been formed through rigorous study, but you nevertheless hold them as important aspects of self. Beliefs often serve as a frame of reference through which we interpret our world. Although they can change, it often takes time or strong evidence to persuade someone to change a belief.

Values are core concepts and ideas of what we consider good or bad, right or wrong, or what is worth the sacrifice. Our values are central to our self-image—what makes us who we are. Like beliefs, our values may not be based on empirical research or rational thinking, but they’re even more resistant to change than beliefs. To undergo a change in values, a person may need a transformative life experience.

For example, suppose you highly value the freedom to make personal decisions, including the freedom to choose whether or not to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle. This value of individual choice is central to how you think, and you’re unlikely to change it. However, if your brother was riding a motorcycle without a helmet and suffered an accident that fractured his skull and left him with permanent brain damage, you might reconsider. While you might still value freedom of choice in many areas of life, you might become an advocate for helmet laws—and perhaps also for other forms of highway safety, such as stiffer penalties for texting while driving.

Self-Image and Self-Esteem

Your self-concept is composed of two main elements: self-image and self-esteem.

Your self-image is how you see yourself—how you would describe yourself to others. It includes your physical characteristics: your eye color, hair length, height, and so forth. It also includes your knowledge, experience, interests, and relationships. If these sound familiar, go back and look at the first of the Note 3.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter. In creating the personal inventory in this exercise, you identified many characteristics that contribute to your self-image. Image involves not just how you look but also your expectations of yourself—what you can be.

What’s your image of yourself as a communicator? How do you feel about your ability to communicate? While the two responses may be similar, they indicate different things. Your self-esteem is how you feel about yourself—your feelings of self-worth, self-acceptance, and self-respect. Healthy self-esteem can be particularly important when you experience a setback or failure. Instead of blaming yourself or thinking, “I’m just no good,” high self-esteem will enable you to persevere and give yourself positive messages like “If I prepare well and try harder, I can do better next time.”

Putting your self-image and self-esteem together yields your self-concept: your central identity and set of beliefs about who you are and what you’re capable of accomplishing. When it comes to communicating, your self-concept can play an important part. You may find communicating a struggle, or the thought of communicating may make you feel talented and successful. Either way, if you view yourself as someone capable of learning new skills and improving as you go, you’ll have an easier time learning to be an effective communicator. Whether positive or negative, your self-concept influences your performance and the expression of that essential ability: communication.

Looking-Glass Self

In addition to how we view ourselves and feel about ourselves, we often consider the opinions and behavior of others. Charles Cooley’s looking-glass self reinforces how we look to others and how they view us, treat us, and interact with us to gain insight into our identity.^[6] We place extra emphasis on parents, supervisors, and those who have some degree of control over us when we look at others. Developing a sense of self as a communicator involves balancing constructive feedback from others with constructive self-affirmation. You judge yourself, as others do, and both views count.

The tricky part of the looking-glass self is that the mirror isn’t always accurate. You don’t see yourself directly through other people’s eyes—you see what you think they see. That’s a guess, and like any guess, it can be off. Someone might give you a flat look in a meeting because they’re thinking about their kid’s pediatrician appointment, and you might spend the rest of the day convinced you said something stupid. Cooley’s insight isn’t that other people’s opinions define us. It’s that our imagined version of their opinions shapes how we show up next.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Now, suppose you’re treated in an especially encouraging manner in one of your classes. Imagine that you have an instructor who continually “catches you doing something right” and praises you for your efforts and achievements. Would you be likely to do well in this class and perhaps go on to take more advanced courses in this subject?

In a psychology experiment that has become famous through repeated trials, several public school teachers were told that specific students in their classes were expected to do quite well because of their intelligence.^[7] These students were identified as having special potential that hadn’t yet “bloomed.” What the teachers didn’t know was that these “special potential” students were randomly selected. That’s right: as a group, they had no more special potential than any other students.

Can you anticipate the outcome? As you may guess, the students lived up to their teachers’ expectations. Even though the teachers were supposed to give appropriate attention and encouragement to all students, they unconsciously communicated special encouragement—verbally and nonverbally—to the special potential students. And these students, who were actually no more gifted than their peers, showed significant improvement by the end of the school year. This phenomenon came to be called the “Pygmalion effect” after the myth of a Greek sculptor named Pygmalion, who carved a marble statue of a woman so lifelike that he fell in love with her—and in response to his love she actually came to life and married him.^{[8] [9]}

In more recent studies, researchers have observed that the opposite effect can also happen: when students are seen as lacking potential, teachers tend to discourage them or, at a minimum, fail to give them adequate encouragement. As a result, the students do poorly.^[10] Pygmalion in the Classroom was followed by many other school-based studies examining these mechanisms in detail from different perspectives. Prominent among the works on this subject conducted by U.S. scholars.^{[11] [12] [13] [14]}

When people encourage you, it affects how you see yourself and your potential. Seek encouragement for your writing and speaking. Actively choose positive reinforcement as you develop your communication skills. You will make mistakes, but what matters is learning from them. Keep in mind that criticism should be constructive, with specific points you can address, correct, and improve.

The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which someone’s behavior comes to match and mirror others’ expectations, isn’t new. Robert Rosenthal, a professor of social psychology at Harvard, has observed four principles while studying this interaction between expectations and performance:^[15]

1. We form certain expectations of people or events.
2. We communicate those expectations with various cues, verbal and nonverbal.
3. People tend to respond to these cues by adjusting their behavior to match the expectations.
4. The outcome is that the original expectation becomes true.

Rosenthal’s four principles are a loop. The loop can run in your favor—expect good things from people, communicate that expectation through small verbal and nonverbal cues, and watch them rise to meet you—or it can run against you, with the same mechanism producing the opposite result. The practical question for a communicator isn’t whether the loop exists. It’s which direction you’re spinning it, and whether you’d be willing to let someone else film you for a day and tell you the answer.

3.2 Perception

Look at the fourth of the Note 3.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter. If you deciphered the hidden message, how did you do it? You may have tried looking for words that were diagonal or backwards, using skills you learned solving similar puzzles in the past. While there are many ways to solve this puzzle, there’s only one right answer.^[16] Reading from right to left (not left to right), and bottom to top (not top to bottom), the hidden message reads: Your perspective influences how you perceive your world.

Where did you start reading on this page? The top left corner. Why not the bottom right corner, or the top right one? In English, we read left to right, from the top of the page to the bottom. But not everyone reads the same way. If you read and write Arabic or Hebrew, you’ll proceed from right to left. Neither way is right or wrong—they’re simply different. You may find it hard to drive on the other side of the road while visiting England, but for people in the United Kingdom, it’s normal and natural.

We can extend this concept in many ways. Imagine you’re doing a sales presentation to a group where the average age is much older or younger than you. In terms of words to communicate ideas, references to music or movies, even expectations for dating behaviors, their mental “road map” may be quite different from yours. Even though your sales message might focus on a product like a car, or a service like car washing, preconceived ideas about both will need to be addressed.

For example, how many ads have you seen on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok that feature songs from a specific period—maybe a 1990s hit or an early 2000s throwback? This music choice is a clear example of targeting a specific audience with something distinctive and nostalgic. When speaking or writing, your style, tone, and word choice all influence the reader or listener. The more you can tailor your message to their needs, the more effective it will be. These differences in perspective influence communication, and recognizing both your own point of view and theirs will help you become “other-oriented” and improve communication.

Look at the puzzle again and see if you can avoid seeing the solution. It’s hard because now that you know where it is, you have a mental road map that leads you to the solution. The mental state where you couldn’t see it, or perceive it, is gone. Your audience has a mental road map that includes values, experiences, beliefs, strategies to deal with challenges, even scripts for behavioral expectations. You need to read those maps as closely as possible to be able to communicate from common ground.

This discussion illustrates what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls preunderstanding—a set of expectations and assumptions from previous experience that we apply to a new problem or situation.^[17] We draw from our experiences to help guide us to our goal, even when the situations may be completely different. We “understand” before we experience because we predict or apply our mental template to what we think is coming.

Expectations affect our perceptions. If the teacher says, “I need to see you after class,” your perception might involve thoughts like, “What have I done? Why me? What does he or she want?” and you may even think back to other times in similar situations. This may create a negative perception of the meeting—and then you might be surprised to learn the teacher only wanted to tell you about a scholarship opportunity. The same idea applies to your audience. They’ll have certain expectations of you as a speaker.

“The customary forms and configurations (of communication) that members expect” are called conventions.^[18] You’ve probably heard the term “conventional,” perhaps in relation to a “conventional oven.” This use means a standard type of oven with a heat source, as opposed to a microwave oven. Who decided that a stove, for example, would have burners on top and a front-opening door to the oven? Why four burners and not three, or two? Many modern stoves have ceramic burners integrated into the top of the oven, or even into a counter separate from the oven. These new designs “stretch” the notion of what’s standard for a stove.

People use conventions to guide them every day. On which side of the plate will you find the spoon? In a formal place setting, the answer is “right.” If, however, you’re at a potluck supper, you may be handed a plate with all your utensils, including the spoon, just sitting on top. Or you might find a pile of spoons next to the plates and have to get one for yourself. In each case, there’s a set of conventions that guide behavior and establish expectations. At a formal dinner, eating with your fingers might be unconventional or even rude. The same actions at a potluck might be perfectly normal, as in everyone is doing it.

In business communication, conventions are always in place. Your audience will have a set of expectations you need to consider, and you need to keep an open mind about those expectations—but you also need to achieve your goal of informing, persuading, or motivating them. If you’re presenting a sales message and the result is zero sales, you’ll have to take a long look at what you presented and develop alternative strategies. Providing a different perspective to your audience while adapting to their expectations and finding common ground is a good first step in gaining and maintaining their attention.

We often make assumptions about what others are communicating and connect the dots in ways that weren’t intended by the speaker. As a business communicator, your goal is to help the audience connect the dots in the way you intend while limiting alternative interpretations that may confuse and divide the audience.

Taking care to make sure you understand before connecting your dots and creating false expectations is a positive way to prepare for the writing process. Do you know what the assignment is? Are the goals and results clear? Do you know your audience? All these points reinforce the central theme that clear and concise communication is critical in business and industry.

Organization

Organization is the process of sorting information into logical categories or series. We often take things we perceive and organize them into categories based on our past experiences. Think back to the Gatorade video. Suppose the speaker started out with an attention statement and quickly moved to highlight three main points in the introduction. While the attention statement got you, by the second main point you were already starting to think, “This is going to be just another speech on how great Gatorade is for my body.” You may think this because you’ve already heard other speakers present similar information, and you classify what you think this presentation is going to be in relation to your previous experiences.

But this speaker may have given some thought to the presentation and how to make it unique and interesting, and prepared their discussion on the nutritional aspects in more depth. As a result, the information may have been organized into categories like ingredients, how your body uses the ingredients, and the overall outcome. The conclusion might be that if you exercise and burn off the calories present in Gatorade, it might be a positive choice, but if you drink it just to drink it, then it will only provide you with empty calories, just like any other soft drink.

Organization Schemes

The organization scheme used to create three categories focuses on nutrition and the process by which Gatorade’s ingredients are used by the body. The conclusion creates two categories of consumers. This organization scheme can promote active listening and allow the audience to follow. Still, the speaker must take into account the possibility that an audience member might think, “Oh no, not again.” To set this presentation apart from others the audience might have heard, the speaker could include a phrase like, “Is Gatorade always for you? Not necessarily. Let’s look at…” which gains attention and penetrates a stereotype.

When you write a document or give a presentation, you may not be able to anticipate all the ways an audience might organize the information you present or how they might use it. Still, by investing time in seeing it from their perspective, you can improve your organization and be a more effective communicator.

For example, suppose you’re assigned the task of writing a cost-benefit analysis report on a specific product currently in development. Do you already know the essential points you need to include and the common industry standards for this type of report? You may not know, but you’ve written an essay before and appreciate the need for organization. Your ability to organize information—taking something that you know or have experienced and applying it to new information—helps you make sense of your world.

Gestalt Principles of Organization

In the early twentieth century, some psychologists thought we could examine parts of things, much as a scientist would examine an atom, and create a comprehensive understanding regardless of context. Their theory was that the setting and scene wouldn’t influence the picture or perspective. In response to this view, other psychologists developed what they called Gestalt principles—the German word “Gestalt” referring to the unified whole. According to Gestalt theory, context matters, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. What you see and how you see it matters, and you play a role in that perception of organization.

In the fifth of the Note 3.1 “Introductory Exercises” for this chapter, you were asked to connect nine dots with four straight lines, without retracing any line. Did you find a solution? (A common solution appears at the end of this chapter.) The key to solving this puzzle is finding a way to “think outside the box”—in this case, to take your pencil outside the implied square, or box, formed by the three rows of dots. The physical configuration of the dots created the illusion of a “box.” But in fact, there is no box, and our tendency to see one where one doesn’t exist creates barriers to solving the puzzle. Gestalt theory states that we’ll perceive the nine dots as belonging to a whole—a group or set having a certain shape—whether or not that whole actually exists.

Gestalt principles apply not only to images or objects, but also to ideas and concepts. You can associate two or more bits of information in predictable ways, but your perspective can influence your view of the overall idea. We don’t always have all the information we need to draw a conclusion—literally drawing a series of relationships to form a whole picture in our minds—so we often fill in the gaps. We guess and make logical leaps, even suspend disbelief, all in an effort to make sense of our experiences.

In your presentations, if you jump from topic to topic or go off on a tangent, what happens to the listener’s ability to listen and follow you effectively? Why make barriers for your audience when you’ve worked so hard to get their attention? How does this relate to Gestalt principles? By failing to recognize our natural tendency to want ideas, shapes, or words to make sense, the author confuses the reader. What happens when the reader is confused? They move on to something else, and leave your writing behind. The opposite of clear and concise, confused and poorly organized writing can distract and defeat even the most motivated readers. Table 3.2 “Gestalt Principles of Organization” lists some of the Gestalt organization principles.

Table 3.2 Gestalt Principles of Organization

Principle	Definition	Example
Proximity	Organization based on relationship of space to objects	Next to me on the beach, I see my daughter playing with her pail and shovel; in the middle distance, a trio of kayakers paddle by; farther away, I see several power boats, and in the far distance, the green shore of Long Island.
Continuity	Drawing connections between things that occur in sequence	I am beginning to notice a pattern in the absentee rate in our department. For the past year, more workers have been absent on the first Friday of the month than on other days. I expect we will again have many absences next Friday, as it is the first Friday of the month.
Similarity	Grouping things or concepts by properties they share	To make appliquéd candles, you will need the following:[20] Decorative material to appliqué: floral (fresh flowers, pine needles, or leaves), homey (dried beans or grains) or folksy (small nuts and bolts) Candle body: fat candles (at least 4” diameter to keep dried flowers away from flame), natural colored wax (sheets or chunks of beeswax or paraffin) Tools: a microwave flower press, a ½-inch paintbrush, a tin pie plate, a chip carving knife or v-tool
Uniformity/Homogeneity	Noting ways in which concepts or objects are alike	Armored personnel carriers include the Stryker, LAV, Pandur, M113 Armored Personnel Carrier, Amphibious Assault Vehicle, Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, Grizzly APC, Rhino Runner, Bison (armored personnel carrier), and Mamba APC.
Figure and Ground	Emphasis on a single item that stands out from its surroundings	On a rock in Copenhagen Harbor stands the small statue of The Little Mermaid, a memorial to one of Denmark’s most beloved citizens, Hans Christian Andersen.
Symmetry	Balancing objects or ideas equally from one side to the other	Representing the conservative viewpoint was Wall Street Journal correspondent John Emshwiller; the liberal viewpoint was argued by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
Closure	Tendency to use previous knowledge to fill in the gaps in an incomplete idea or picture	The wording of the memo was, “It is important for all employees to submit their health insurance enrollment selections no than November 1,” but everyone understood that it should have said, “no later than November 1.”

Let’s look at some of the commonly used Gestalt principles: proximity, continuation, similarity, and closure.

It makes sense that we’d focus first on things around us and the degree to which they’re close to us and to each other. Proximity is the perceptual organization of information based on the physical relationship of space to objects. In creating a scene for a play or movie, a stage designer knows that the audience will tend to pay attention to objects in the foreground, unless special emphasis is added to objects farther away. This principle extends to people and daily life. Just because someone is walking down the street next to someone else, this doesn’t necessarily mean they have a connection to each other—they’re simply in close proximity.

We also see a similar tendency in the principle of continuity. We like things to be orderly, and our brain will see lines and movement where none exist. Look at Figure 3.5 “Continuity.” What do you see? Do you perceive two lines crossing one another? Or an X? The principle of continuity predicts that you’d show a tendency to perceive continuous figures. The two lines cross one another, and you might even say from top to bottom or the reverse, when there’s no motion indicated.

Continuity can also lead to a well-known logical fallacy, or false belief, involving sequence and cause-effect relationships. If something happens after something else, does that mean the first event caused the second? You wish for rain and it rains. Connected? Logic and common sense would say no. You have a dream about a plane crash, and the next day there’s a major airline crash. Did your dream cause the crash? Obviously not.

When objects or events are similar, we tend to group them together in our minds, again making the assumption that they’re related by their common characteristics. Similarity is the perceptual organization of information based on perceived points of common characteristics across distinct items. For example, a horse, a mule, and a donkey are distinct, but we perceive them as being similar to one another.

The principle of closure underscores our tendency to use previous knowledge to fill in the gaps in an incomplete idea or picture. If you’re talking to a friend on your cell phone and the connection breaks up for a few seconds, you may miss some words, but you can grasp the main idea by automatically guessing what was said. You do this based on your previous history of communicating with your friend on similar topics. Do you always guess correctly? Of course not. Look at Figure 3.6.

When we say we see a star, we don’t really see one because there is no star. The five Pac-Man shapes in that arrangement, however, allow our mind to say, “If this was connected to this and that was connected to that, there would be a star.” Sometimes the sense we make doesn’t match reality, and we see a star where there is none.

Sometimes we “fill in the blanks” without even being aware of it. When we speak on a topic and fail to clearly articulate a point or substantiate an assertion, we leave a “hole” in our presentation that the listener may or may not notice, but will predictably fill. This tendency to jump to conclusions may seem like a disadvantage, but it’s only a disadvantage if you’re unaware of it. In fact, it’s a positive ability that allows us to infer and guess correctly, often in times of crisis when time is limited. But we don’t always guess correctly. If your goal is to communicate your message to the audience, then by definition you don’t want a “pothole” to interrupt, distract, or create a barrier that leads to misinterpretation.

Think-Pair-Share: Gestalt in Your Pocket

Think (3 minutes). Pull out your phone and open the home screen—or pick any ad, package, or web page nearby. Which Gestalt principles are at work in its layout? Proximity (what’s grouped close together)? Similarity (what looks alike and reads as one category)? Continuity (what your eye follows first)? Figure and ground (what pops out against the background)? Closure (what the design asks your brain to fill in)?

Pair (3 minutes). Show it to a partner and explain what you see. Your partner’s job is to ask, “Would a first-time user actually see it that way?”

Share (4 minutes). As a class, identify one design you looked at that used Gestalt principles well and one that used them against the audience—where proximity grouped the wrong things, or closure filled in a meaning the designer didn’t intend.

Interpretation

After selection and organization, interpretation is the third step in the perception process. From your past experiences combined with your current expectations, you assign meaning to the current stimuli. If the word “college” has meaning for you, then what comes to mind? If a high school student has to take the PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test) in the morning, what does that word mean to them? Will their state of anxiety and anticipation over the importance of the exam and the unknown world of college influence how they respond to that word? If their parents ask, “Where are you planning on going to college?” when they’re simply focused on the test that may influence their options, the word itself may take on a whole new meaning. It may invite issues of control (“Which college? You’re going to the college we went to, right?”) or of self-esteem (“Am I good enough to go to college?”) to become associated with the word “college.”

The word itself may shift in terms of meaning across time. Let’s say the high school student did well on the PSAT and went to the same college as their parents. Is it the same college, or just the same location and buildings? It may have a tradition, but it’s at the same time new and ever-changing, just like the students who arrive each year. Fast forward a couple of years and the college may represent a place where you studied, made friends, and came to know yourself. In a few more years, you may choose to become a member of the alumni association. The meaning of the word “college” can shift intrapersonally across time, and can mean different things to different groups.

Let’s rewind and look at a test gone bad, taken by a less than adequately prepared student from a household where there may not be sufficient resources to make the dream of college come true. The image of college may remain an image instead of a reality—a goal not attained. Structural barriers like socioeconomic status, parental and peer influences, and the need to work to support yourself or your family can all influence your decisions and perspective.

Interpretation is where the same facts land in different places for different people. One person hears “remote work” and interprets opportunity; another hears the same words and interprets isolation. One person sees a library logo on a folding table in a Grange Hall and interprets access; another sees an outsider who won’t be around long enough to matter. Neither interpretation is crazy. Each one is a perfectly reasonable conclusion drawn from a different stack of past experiences. As a communicator, your job isn’t to erase those stacks—you can’t—but to recognize that they exist and to build messages that work across more than one of them.

Key Takeaways

Perceptions are influenced by how we select, organize, and interpret words and ideas.

Exercises

1. Do a search on “M. C. Escher” or “tessellation art.” How does Escher’s work manipulate your perception? Share your opinions with your classmates.
2. Think of ways to describe something you know, such as what your home looks like. Organize the information using one of the Gestalt principles (e.g., proximity, similarity, continuity, or closure). Present the organized information to a classmate. Can your classmate tell which Gestalt principle you’ve used?
3. How does the process of perception limit our view, or expand it? Can we choose how to perceive things? Write a one- to two-page essay on this topic and discuss it with a classmate.
4. Think of a time when you jumped to a conclusion and later learned that it was incorrect. Write a brief summary of the experience. Share and compare with classmates.
5. Find one print or digital ad that uses the principle of closure. Describe what the audience is being asked to “fill in” and what work the designer is asking the audience’s brain to do.
6. Bring in a paragraph of writing that confused you the first time you read it. Diagnose the problem through the lens of selection, organization, or interpretation. Which step broke down, and why?

3.3 Differences in Perception

Learning Objectives

1. Explain why perception differs from person to person.
2. Identify individual differences—physical, psychological, cultural, and experiential—that shape perception.
3. Describe strategies for accounting for perceptual differences when communicating with an audience.

Someone may say what you consider to be a simple exclamatory sentence—”Earn college credit while studying abroad!”—but a thought may come to mind: “How will I fit in as an outsider in a foreign country?” What makes you a member of a group? How you distinguish between those who belong in your family, group, or community and those who don’t is central to our study of communication. Learning to see issues and experiences from multiple perspectives can be challenging, but the effort is worth it. Increased understanding about each other can positively impact our communication and improve how well we share and understand meaning across languages, cultures, and divergent perspectives.

Why Don’t We All See Eye to Eye?

People perceive things differently. We choose to select different aspects of a message to focus our attention based on what interests us, what’s familiar to us, or what we consider important. Often, our listening skills could use improvement. Listening and thinking are directly related. When you’re reading, what do you hear? When you’re talking with someone, what do you hear? If the sound of your thoughts or voice is at least one of your answers, then communication isn’t occurring. Try to read this paragraph again without interruption. Your tendency might be to skim over the words, or to focus on key vocabulary, but if you allow your thoughts to stray from the text you’re reading, even for a moment, you’re interrupting your processing of the written word, or reading. Interruptions will impair your ability to understand and retain information, and make studying even harder.

To better understand perception, we’ll examine how you choose to pay attention, remember, and interpret messages within the communication process.

Real-World Application: Perception in Healthcare Communication

Walk into a hospital room as a patient and “the doctor is running behind” means one thing. Walk into a hospital room as a doctor and that same phrase means something else entirely. The patient hears: I’m not important enough for their time. The doctor hears: I have twenty minutes to cover a forty-minute case and everyone’s day is about to get harder. Same six words. Different stacks of experience. Different perceptions.

This is why the healthcare field pours enormous energy into training clinicians to do what’s called “teach-back”—asking patients to repeat instructions in their own words before leaving the office. Teach-back doesn’t exist because clinicians can’t explain things. It exists because clinicians and patients walk into the same conversation with different mental road maps, and the only way to know whether the map you drew matches the one your audience is actually using is to ask them to show it to you. The principle scales well beyond medicine.

Individual Differences in Perception

Why do people perceive things in different ways? To answer this question, recall that we all engage in selection, or choosing some stimuli while ignoring others. We exist as individuals within a community, regardless of whether we’re conscious of it. Do you like 80s music? Prefer the Beatles? Nothing before 2025? Your tastes in music involve the senses, and what you choose to experience is influenced by your context and environment. Your habits, values, and outlook on life are influenced by where you come from and where you are.

The attributes that cause people to perceive things differently are known as individual differences. Let’s look at several of the most important ones.

Physical characteristics influence how we perceive and respond to information. You may be asked to design a sign that says, “Watch your head,” which will be placed next to a 6’6″ overhang above floor level. While a few very tall people will have to worry about hitting their heads on the overhang, most people in the world aren’t that tall. Tall and short individuals will perceive this sign differently.

Your psychological state can also influence what you read and listen to, and why you do so. The emergency procedures binder on the wall next to the first aid kit doesn’t mean much to you until a coworker falls and suffers some bad cuts and bruises. If you were asked to design the binder and its contents, could you anticipate a psychological state of anxiety that would likely be present when someone needed the information? If so, then you might use clear bullet lists, concise, declarative sentences, and diagrams to communicate clearly.

Your cultural background plays a significant role in what and how you perceive your world. You may be from a culture that values community. For example, the message across the advertisement reads: Stand out from the crowd. Given your cultural background, it may not be a very effective slogan to get your attention.

Our perceptual set involves our attitudes, beliefs, and values about the world. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “Looking at the world through rose-colored glasses” and can even think of someone as an example. We experience the world through mediated images and mass communication. We also come to know one another interpersonally in groups. All these experiences help form our mental expectations of what is happening and what will happen.

Think about your brand preferences, your choice of transportation, your self-expression through your clothing, haircut, and jewelry—all these external symbols represent in some way how you view yourself within your community and the world. We can extend this perspective in many ways, both positive and negative, and see that understanding the perspective of the audience takes on new levels of importance.

Case Connection: Doc Kirsch and the Carhartt Signal

Nandini sees three external signals in a single glance through the Grange Hall window: the Carhartts, the paper coffee cups, the way Doc Kirsch is holding her flyer. Individually, none of them means anything reliable. Plenty of people wear Carhartts to a library meeting because they’re warm. Paper cups are just paper cups. A flyer held up at the front of a room could go either way.

What trips her perception is the pattern. Her perceptual set—formed in a graduate program where “library audience” meant boardrooms, conference lanyards, and coffee in real mugs—doesn’t have a slot for this. So she perceives the signals as evidence of something new and possibly hostile. The signals themselves didn’t change. Her perceptual set was the variable. Doc Kirsch in a boardroom in a tie would have registered to her as a peer. Doc Kirsch in a barn jacket at a Grange Hall registers as a threat, and she hasn’t heard him say a single sentence yet.

The lesson isn’t that she’s wrong to read signals. She has to read signals; that’s her job. The lesson is that she should know which of her readings are based on the signal and which are based on her own perceptual set arriving five minutes before he said anything.

Concept Check: Match the Difference to the Example

Match each example below to the type of individual difference it illustrates: physical, psychological, cultural, or perceptual set.

1. Arjun reads a memo about layoffs and immediately flags every instance of the word “restructuring” as a threat, even in paragraphs where it refers to the seating chart.
2. Priya, who grew up in a household where interrupting was a sign of engagement, is frustrated that her American coworkers go silent when she jumps in during a team meeting.
3. Eulalia, who is five-foot-two, doesn’t see the “Watch Your Head” sign at the warehouse overhang until her six-foot-four coworker points it out.
4. Yusef spent ten years in the military and, even in his civilian job, reads every email through a lens of rank and chain of command.

Answers: 1. Psychological (his current state is anxiety about job security). 2. Cultural (overlapping speech is valued differently across cultures). 3. Physical. 4. Perceptual set (his frame of reference carried over from his earlier context).

Key Takeaways

Our perceptions are influenced by our individual differences and preconceived notions.

Exercises

1. When you watch a film with friends, make a point of talking about it afterward and listen to how each person perceived aspects of the film. Ask them each to describe it in ten words or less. Did they use the same words? Did you see it the same way, or differently? Did you catch all the points, frames of reference, values, or miss any information? What does this say about perception?
2. Think of a time when you misunderstood a message. What was your psychological state at the time? Do you think you would have understood the message differently if you’d been in a different psychological state?
3. Think of a time when someone misunderstood your message. What happened and why? Share and compare with classmates.
4. Identify one physical, one psychological, and one cultural factor that shapes the way you perceive messages in a classroom setting. How might a professor design a course differently if they knew those three factors about every student in the room?

3.4 Getting to Know Your Audience

Learning Objectives

1. Describe three ways to better understand and reach your audience.
2. Apply the iceberg model to identify surface and underlying audience characteristics.
3. Explain the four principles of reciprocity and how they promote fairness in communication.

Writing to your audience’s expectations is key to your success, but how do you get a sense of your readers? Research, time, and effort. At first glance, you may think you know your audience, but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll learn more about them and become a better speaker.

Look at Figure 3.7 “Iceberg Model,” often called the iceberg model. When you see an iceberg on the ocean, the great majority of its size and depth lies below your level of awareness. When you write a document or give a presentation, each person in your reading or listening audience is like the tip of an iceberg. You may perceive people of different ages, races, ethnicities, and genders, but those are only surface characteristics. This is your challenge. When you communicate with a diverse audience, you’re engaging in intercultural communication. The more you learn about the audience, the better you’ll be able to navigate the waters, and your communication interactions, safely and effectively.

Theodore Roosevelt pointed out that “the most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” Knowing your audience well before you speak is essential. Here are a few questions to help guide you in learning more about your audience:

• How big is the audience?
• What are their backgrounds, gender, age, jobs, education, and/or interests?
• Do they already know about your topic? If so, how much?
• Will other materials be presented or available? If so, what are they, what do they cover, and how do they relate to your message?
• How much time is allotted for your presentation, or how much space do you have for your written document? Will your document or presentation stand alone, or do you have the option of adding visuals, audio-visual aids, or links?

Pro Tip: The Ninety-Second Room Scan

Before you say a word, walk in ninety seconds early and read the room. You’re looking for four things, not twenty:

1. Who’s already talking to whom. Clusters tell you who knows each other and where the social gravity sits.
2. What’s on the tables. Notebooks, phones, laptops, coffee cups, kids. Each tells you something about how ready they are to focus and how long.
3. Where people are looking. Doors? The front? Each other? A room looking at the door is a room looking for a reason to leave.
4. The one person you weren’t expecting. There’s always one. Figure out who invited them. That’s the data you didn’t have yet.

The scan isn’t a substitute for audience research—it’s a sanity check on the research you already did. It’s the last chance you have to catch the gap between the audience you planned for and the audience you actually got.

Demographic Traits

Demographic traits refer to characteristics that make someone an individual but that they have in common with others. For example, if you were born female, then your view of the world may be different from that of a male, and may be similar to that of many other females. Being female means you share this “femaleness” trait with roughly half the world’s population.

How does this demographic trait of being female apply to communication? For example, we might find that women tend to be more aware than the typical male of what it means to be capable of becoming pregnant, or to go through menopause. If you were giving a presentation on nutrition to a female audience, you’d likely include more information about nutrition during pregnancy and during menopause than you would if your audience were male.

We can explore other traits by considering your audience’s age, level of education, employment or career status, and various other groups they may belong to. Imagine you’re writing a report on the health risks associated with smoking. To get your message across to an audience of twelve-year-olds, clearly you’d use different language and different examples than you would for an audience of adults age fifty-five and older. If you were writing for a highly educated audience—say, engineering school graduates—you’d use much more scholarly language and rigorous research documentation than if you were writing for first-year college students.

Writing for readers in the insurance industry, you’d likely choose examples of how insurance claims are affected by whether or not a policyholder smokes, whereas if you were writing for readers who are athletes, you’d focus on how the human body reacts to tobacco. Similarly, if you were writing for a community newsletter, you’d choose local examples, whereas if your venue was a parent-focused online community, you might choose examples that are more universal.

Audiences tend to be interested in messages that relate to their interests, needs, goals, and motivations. Demographic traits can give us insight into our audience and allow for an audience-centered approach to your assignment that will make you a more effective communicator.^[21]

Try It: Iceberg Mapping

Pick an upcoming communication situation you’ll actually face in the next two weeks: a class presentation, a job interview, a difficult text you need to send, a pitch, an email to a professor. Draw an iceberg on a piece of paper—a small tip above the waterline, a big mass below.

Above the waterline (the stuff you can see). List five things about your audience that would be obvious to anyone: role, age range, apparent background, setting, what they came there to do.

Below the waterline (the stuff you have to work for). List five things you can’t see but that will drive how they receive your message: their recent history with people like you, their current frustrations, their fears about this particular topic, their incentives, the things they already know and don’t want to have re-explained.

When you finish, look at which side of the waterline is easier to fill in. If the top is rich and the bottom is empty, you’ve found the research you still need to do before you open your mouth.

Improving Your Perceptions of Your Audience

The better you can understand your audience, the better you can tailor your communications to reach them. To understand them, a key step is to perceive clearly who they are, what they’re interested in, what they need, and what motivates them. This ability to perceive is important with audience members from distinct groups, generations, and even cultures. William Seiler and Melissa Beall offer us six ways to improve our perceptions, and therefore improve our communication, particularly in public speaking; they’re listed in Table 3.3 “Perceptual Strategies for Success.”^[22]

Table 3.3 Perceptual Strategies for Success

Perceptual Strategy	Explanation
Become an active perceiver	We need to actively seek out as much information as possible. Placing yourself in the new culture, group, or co-culture can often expand your understanding.
Recognize each person’s unique frame of reference	We all perceive the world differently. Recognize that even though you may interact with two people from the same culture, they are individuals with their own set of experiences, values, and interests.
Recognize that people, objects, and situations change	The world is changing and so are we. Recognizing that people and cultures, like the communication process itself, are dynamic and ever changing can improve your intercultural communication.
Become aware of the role perceptions play in communication	As we explored in Chapter 2, “Delivering Your Message,” perception is an important aspect of the communication process. By understanding that our perceptions are not the only ones possible, we can limit ethnocentrism and improve intercultural communication.
Keep an open mind	The adage “A mind is like a parachute—it works best when open” holds true. Being open to differences can improve intercultural communication.
Check your perceptions	By learning to observe, and acknowledging our own perceptions, we can avoid assumptions, expand our understanding, and improve our ability to communicate across cultures.

Fairness in Communication

Finally, consider that your audience has several expectations of you. No doubt you’ve sat through a speech or classroom lecture where you asked yourself, “Why should I listen?” You’ve probably been assigned to read a document or chapter and found yourself wondering, “What does this have to do with me?” These questions are normal and natural for audiences, but people seldom actually state these questions in so many words or say them out loud.

In a report on intercultural communication, the author offers us some insight into these audience expectations, which can be summarized as the need to be fair to your audience.^[23] One key fairness principle is reciprocity, or a relationship of mutual exchange and interdependence. Reciprocity has four main components: mutuality, nonjudgmentalism, honesty, and respect.

Mutuality means the speaker searches for common ground and understanding with their audience, establishing this space and building on it throughout the speech. This involves examining viewpoints other than your own and taking steps to ensure the speech integrates an inclusive, accessible format rather than an ethnocentric one.

Nonjudgmentalism involves a willingness to examine diverse ideas and viewpoints. A nonjudgmental communicator is open-minded and able to accept ideas that may be strongly opposed to their own beliefs and values.

Another aspect of fairness in communication is honesty: stating the truth as you perceive it. When you communicate honestly, you provide supporting and clarifying information and give credit to the sources where you obtained the information. In addition, if there’s significant evidence opposing your viewpoint, you acknowledge this and avoid concealing it from your audience.

Finally, fairness involves respect for the audience and individual members, recognizing that each person has basic rights and is worthy of courtesy. Consider these expectations of fairness when designing your message, and you’ll more thoroughly engage your audience.

Ethical Consideration: When Audience Analysis Becomes Manipulation

Everything in this section can be used for good or for ill. “Know your audience” is the same advice whether you’re a teacher trying to meet students where they are, a fundraiser trying to save a community hospital, or a scam caller trying to get a retiree’s bank account number.

The difference between audience analysis and manipulation isn’t the research. It’s what you do with it. Tailoring your message to your audience’s frame of reference so they can actually understand you is audience analysis. Using the same research to hide information from them, to exploit a fear you know they have, or to convince them to do something that serves your interests at the expense of theirs is manipulation.

A useful test: would you be comfortable if the audience found out, later, exactly how you designed the message and why? If the answer is yes, you’re on the right side of the line. If the answer is “please, God, don’t let them look,” you’re probably over it.

Key Takeaways

To better understand your audience, learn about their demographic traits, such as age, gender, and employment status, as these help determine their interests, needs, and goals. In addition, become aware of your perceptions and theirs, and practice fairness in your communications.

Exercises

1. List at least three demographic traits that apply to you. How does belonging to these demographic groups influence your perceptions and priorities? Share your thoughts with your classmates.
2. Think of two ways to learn more about your audience. Investigate them and share your findings with your classmates.
3. Think of a new group you’ve joined, or a new activity you’ve become involved in. Did the activity or group influence your perceptions? Explain the effects to your classmates.
4. When you started a new job or joined a new group, to some extent you learned a new language. Think of at least three words that outsiders wouldn’t know and share them with the class, providing examples.
5. Find a marketing message (an ad, a fundraising letter, a political flyer) and evaluate it against the four reciprocity principles: mutuality, nonjudgmentalism, honesty, and respect. On which principle does it score highest? Lowest?
6. Design a short (three-question) survey you could send to an audience before presenting to them. What would you ask—and, just as importantly, what would you deliberately not ask, so the audience doesn’t feel surveilled?

3.5 Listening and Reading for Understanding

Learning Objectives

1. Explain the importance of becoming an active listener and reader.
2. Apply active listening techniques in routine and difficult communication situations.
3. Distinguish between hearing and listening and between scanning and reading for understanding.

As the popular author and Hollywood entrepreneur Wilson Mizner said, “A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while, he knows something.” Learning to listen to your conversational partner, customer, supplier, or supervisor is an important part of business communication. Too often, instead of listening, we mentally rehearse what we want to say. Similarly, when we read, we’re often trying to multitask and therefore can’t read with full attention. Inattentive listening or reading can cause us to miss much of what the speaker is sharing with us.

Communication involves the sharing and understanding of meaning. To fully share and understand, practice active listening and reading so that you’re fully attentive, fully present in the moment of interaction. Pay attention to both the actual words and other clues to meaning, such as tone of voice or writing style. Look for opportunities for clarification and feedback when it’s your turn to respond, not before.

Case Connection: What Doc Said Before Nandini Spoke

Nandini’s instinct to walk in and ask instead of talk is, at its core, a listening instinct. The point is not that she has nothing to say. She’s spent three weeks preparing. The point is that she doesn’t yet know which parts of what she has to say will actually answer the questions the room is holding.

Here’s the trap active listening is designed to avoid: most of us, under pressure, go faster instead of slower. We talk more. We explain more. We pile on credentials and data and frameworks. And the harder we try, the further we get from the thing that would actually work, which is finding out what the person across from us already thinks before we tell them what we think. When Doc Kirsch held up that flyer, he was communicating. The question for Nandini—the question for any communicator—is whether she can make herself quiet enough, long enough, to find out what he was communicating before she starts arguing back.

Active Listening and Reading

You’ve probably experienced the odd sensation of driving somewhere and, having arrived, realized you don’t remember driving. Your mind may have been filled with other issues and you drove on autopilot. It’s dangerous when you drive like that, and it’s dangerous in communication. Choosing to listen or read attentively takes effort. People communicate with words, expressions, and even in silence, and your attention to them will make you a better communicator. From discussions on improving customer service to retaining customers in challenging economic times, the importance of listening comes up frequently as a success strategy.

Here are some tips to help with active listening and reading:

• Maintain eye contact with the speaker; if reading, keep your eyes on the page.
• Don’t interrupt; if reading, don’t multitask.
• Focus your attention on the message, not your internal monologue.
• Restate the message in your own words and ask if you understood correctly.
• Ask clarifying questions to communicate interest and gain insight.

Reflection Write: The Last Time Someone Actually Listened

Take five minutes and write, freehand, about the last time you felt someone really listened to you. Not tolerated you, not waited for their turn, not half-nodded while checking their phone—listened.

What did they do with their face? Their body? Their hands? What questions did they ask, and how were those questions different from questions someone asks when they’re just being polite? How did you feel afterward, about the problem you were describing and about the person who listened?

Now flip it. When was the last time you think you really listened to someone else in that same way? What did you do differently from your usual mode? What would it cost you to do more of it?

When the Going Gets Tough

Our previous tips will serve you well in daily interactions, but suppose you have an especially difficult subject to discuss, or you receive a written document delivering bad news. In a difficult situation like this, it’s worth taking extra effort to create an environment and context that will help positive communication.

Here are some tips that may help:

• Set aside a special time. To have a difficult conversation or read bad news, set aside a special time when you won’t be disturbed. Close the door and turn off the TV, music player, and instant messaging client.
• Don’t interrupt. Keep silent while you let the other person “speak their piece.” If you’re reading, make an effort to understand and digest the news without mental interruptions.
• Be nonjudgmental. Receive the message without judgment or criticism. Set aside your opinions, attitudes, and beliefs.
• Be accepting. Be open to the message being communicated, realizing that acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with what’s being said.
• Take turns. Wait until it’s your turn to respond, and then measure your response in proportion to the message that was delivered to you. Reciprocal turn-taking allows each person to have their say.
• Acknowledge. Let the other person know that you’ve listened to the message or read it attentively.
• Understand. Be certain that you understand what your partner is saying. If you don’t understand, ask for clarification. Restate the message in your own words.
• Keep your cool. Speak your truth without blaming. A calm tone will help prevent the conflict from escalating. Use “I” statements (e.g., “I felt concerned when I learned that my department is going to have a layoff”) rather than “you” statements (e.g., “you want to get rid of some of our best people”).

Finally, recognize that mutual respect and understanding are built one conversation at a time. Trust is difficult to gain and easy to lose. Be patient and keep the channels of communication open, as a solution may develop slowly throughout many small interactions. Recognize that it’s more valuable to maintain the relationship over the long term than to “win” in an individual transaction.

Key Takeaways

Part of being an effective communicator is learning to receive messages from others through active listening and reading.

Exercises

1. Pair up with a classmate and do a role-play exercise in which one person tries to deliver a message while the other person multitasks and interrupts. Then try it again while the listener practices active listening. How do the two communication experiences compare? Discuss your findings.
2. Select a news article and practice active reading by reading the article and summarizing each of its main points in your own words. Write a letter to the editor commenting on the article—you don’t have to send it, but you may if you wish.
3. In a half-hour period, see if you can count how many times you’re interrupted. Share and compare with your classmates.
4. Conduct a five-minute interview with someone you don’t know well. Your only goal is to learn three things about them that you couldn’t have guessed from looking at them. What questions got you there, and what questions failed?
5. Keep a “listening log” for one day. Every time you catch yourself rehearsing a response instead of listening, make a tally mark. What conditions tend to produce tally marks—topic, setting, who’s speaking?

Closing Case Analysis: Back to Shoshone

Let’s go back to the Grange Hall parking lot. Nandini has just made a decision. She’s put the projector remote away. She’s walking toward the door. The question is whether she made the right call—and, if so, why.

Before we answer that, notice what the chapter has given us for evaluating her choice. Each section offers a different angle on the same moment.

Section 3.1 (Self-Understanding). Nandini’s self-concept is wobbling. Six weeks into her first real job, she is prepared, anxious, and running a looking-glass loop in her head that keeps getting worse the longer she stands in the parking lot watching Doc Kirsch. Her five-minute inventory, if she ran it, would tell her that her self-image is pinging as “new hire trying to prove herself” and her self-esteem is pinging as “sinking.” The risk of walking into that room in either of those states is a self-fulfilling prophecy: she will expect the audience to reject her, communicate that expectation through her posture and delivery, and get exactly what she expected. The first thing the chapter would tell her to do is interrupt that loop—not by faking confidence, which the room would read in a heartbeat, but by changing her mental job from “defend the deck” to “figure out what’s actually happening.”

Section 3.2 (Perception). Her perception process is running a “box” on her—literally, the nine-dot box from Gestalt. The box is called “MLIS-appropriate presentation format,” and she built her deck inside it without noticing. When she thinks, I wasn’t going to say it in slide order, that’s her stepping outside the box for the first time. The question is whether she can stay outside it long enough to see what’s actually in front of her: a room that has been selecting, organizing, and interpreting her mailed flyer in ways she did not anticipate. Doc Kirsch isn’t reading the flyer wrong. He’s reading it correctly, through his own frame of reference, and what he sees is another city initiative that used a phrase like “service delivery model” twice.

Section 3.3 (Differences in Perception). The Carhartt signal is individual difference at work, in both directions. The people in the room are reading Nandini through their own perceptual set—probably something like “young, urban, credentialed, will leave when the grant does”—and she is reading them through hers. Neither perception is wrong from the inside. Both are incomplete. The chapter’s answer to individual differences isn’t to pretend they don’t exist; it’s to name them, suspect your own readings, and ask questions instead of ratifying your first impression as fact.

Section 3.4 (Getting to Know Your Audience). The iceberg model is brutal for Nandini in this moment, because almost everything she prepared was built from the tip of the iceberg—”residents of Shoshone Township interested in digital literacy”—and almost everything that’s about to matter lives below the waterline. The prior failed internet initiative. The grandson who dropped online classes when the hotspot died. The long history of county-level programs that arrived, announced themselves in acronyms, and left. None of that was in the folder Delphine handed her. All of it was about to be in the room.

Section 3.5 (Listening and Reading for Understanding). Which brings us to the instinct Delphine handed her through a windshield on I-74: start by listening. This isn’t a nice-to-have. In this case, it’s the only move Nandini has left that gives her any information at all about the iceberg beneath the waterline. If she opens with the deck, she closes the channel that would have told her what to say. If she opens with a question, she might learn something that makes the rest of the meeting possible.

So: did she make the right call?

The chapter’s answer is careful. There is no universally correct answer to a question like this. She could have been wrong. Not every audience rewards “let me just listen first.” Some audiences want you to stand and deliver, and if you don’t, they conclude you don’t know your material. Some audiences interpret listening-first as condescension—don’t try to relate to us, just say what you came to say. Nandini’s option three carries real risk. She might walk out of that meeting without a clear next step, and Delphine might genuinely second-guess her for it.

But the chapter also tells us what she was about to lose if she went with option one. The deck was built for a different audience. The conventions it followed were MLIS conventions. The Gestalt it created was “institution, outsider, credentials first.” The audience was going to perceive it before a single data point landed. Running that deck in that room was not a neutral act. It was not safe at all. It was the option that had the highest floor and the lowest ceiling, while option three had the lowest floor and the highest ceiling. Which option is “right” depends on which risk she can live with.

Notice, too, a fourth option Nandini didn’t consider in the parking lot but which the chapter’s tools make visible: she could do both. She could open with ninety seconds of framing—”I’m Nandini Bhattacharya-Russo. I’m new. My boss was supposed to be here and she’s stuck on 74. Before I say anything about the program, I’d like to hear what people in this room have been trying to get and haven’t been able to”—and then, after listening, pull up one or two slides from her deck that actually answer the questions the room just asked her. The deck wasn’t the problem. The deck was actually fine for answering some of those questions. The problem was the assumption that she had to show all twenty-four slides in order before the audience was allowed to speak.

That fourth option is, interestingly enough, the most demanding one. It requires all five sections of the chapter at once: the self-awareness not to cling to the plan, the perceptual flexibility to see outside the box, the willingness to recognize individual differences without panicking about them, the audience awareness to read the iceberg in real time, and the listening skill to hear what’s underneath the first thing someone says.

The chapter can’t tell you what Nandini said when she opened the door. That’s not the chapter’s job. The chapter’s job is to make sure that, whatever she said, she was awake when she said it.

Case Discussion Questions

1. The chapter identifies three options Nandini considered in the parking lot and a fourth option the analysis added after the fact. Which option would you have taken? Defend your answer using at least two concepts from the chapter.
2. Describe Nandini’s looking-glass self in the twelve minutes in the parking lot. What is she seeing, and how accurate do you think her reading is?
3. Apply the iceberg model to the people in the room. What is above the waterline (what Nandini can see through the window) versus below (what she can only find out by asking)? Which is the harder layer to access, and why?
4. Doc Kirsch is holding up Nandini’s flyer. From his perspective, what Gestalt principles is he using to interpret it? From Nandini’s perspective, how might those same Gestalt principles have shaped her writing of it?
5. Is Delphine’s text (“start by listening”) good advice in every communication situation, or only in some? Describe a situation where “start by listening” would be the wrong move.
6. If Nandini takes option three and gets nothing usable out of the room—silence, flat answers, skepticism—what does she do next? Walk through the next ten minutes of the meeting as concretely as you can.

End-of-Chapter Review

Review Questions

1. What is the difference between self-image and self-esteem? Why does distinguishing them matter for communication?
2. List Rosenthal’s four principles of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Give an example of the loop running in a positive direction and an example of it running in a negative direction.
3. Define selection, organization, and interpretation as steps in the perception process. What makes each one distinct?
4. Name four Gestalt principles of organization and give a one-sentence example of each from business or everyday life.
5. What is Habermas’s concept of preunderstanding, and why does it matter for audience analysis?
6. What are “conventions” in communication? Provide two examples of conventions your audience would expect in a formal business email.
7. Describe three categories of individual differences that influence perception.
8. Explain the iceberg model and why it’s useful for audience analysis.
9. List the four principles of reciprocity in fair communication, and explain how each one shapes a communicator’s ethical obligation.
10. What is the difference between hearing and listening? Between scanning and reading?

Key Terms

Match each term to its definition.

Terms

1. Self-concept
2. Self-image
3. Self-esteem
4. Attitude
5. Belief
6. Value
7. Looking-glass self
8. Self-fulfilling prophecy
9. Perception
10. Selection
11. Organization
12. Interpretation
13. Gestalt
14. Proximity
15. Closure
16. Preunderstanding
17. Convention
18. Iceberg model
19. Reciprocity

Definitions

1. The process of using previous knowledge to fill gaps in an incomplete idea or picture.
2. An immediate, learned disposition toward a concept or object; easily changed.
3. A conviction or expression of confidence that may not be based on logic or fact.
4. How you see yourself—your description of your physical characteristics, knowledge, experience, and relationships.
5. Your central identity and set of beliefs about who you are and what you can do.
6. The final step in the perception process, where meaning is assigned to stimuli based on past experience and current expectations.
7. How you feel about yourself—your sense of self-worth, acceptance, and respect.
8. Cooley’s concept that we form our sense of self in part from how we imagine others see us.
9. A core, long-lasting ideal that guides behavior and requires a transformative experience to change.
10. Perceptual organization of information based on the physical relationship of space to objects.
11. A phenomenon in which expectations communicated verbally and nonverbally produce behavior that matches those expectations.
12. The process of sorting stimuli into logical categories or series.
13. Habermas’s term for the expectations and assumptions we apply to a new situation based on earlier experience.
14. A visual representation of audience awareness in which surface traits are visible and most of the defining characteristics are below the waterline.
15. The action of choosing which stimuli to attend to and which to ignore.
16. The customary forms and configurations of communication that audience members expect.
17. A relationship of mutual exchange and interdependence; the basis of fairness in communication.
18. The process through which we take in, organize, and interpret information from our environment.
19. A German word for “the organized whole”; a theory holding that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Answer Key

1–E, 2–D, 3–G, 4–B, 5–C, 6–I, 7–H, 8–K, 9–R, 10–O, 11–L, 12–F, 13–S, 14–J, 15–A, 16–M, 17–P, 18–N, 19–Q

Application Exercises

1. Flyer Autopsy. Find a flyer, pamphlet, or one-pager that has been sent to you recently by an institution (school, employer, city office, nonprofit, political campaign). Identify three places where the writer made assumptions about the audience’s frame of reference that you—the actual audience—didn’t match. Rewrite one paragraph to close the gap.
2. The Perception Interview. Interview two people who were in the same meeting, class, or event. Ask each of them to describe what happened in five sentences. Compare the two descriptions. Where did they select different details? Where did they organize those details differently? Where did they interpret the same detail to mean different things? Write a one-page summary.
3. Scrap-the-Deck Drill. Take a presentation you’ve already prepared for a specific audience (a class presentation, a work pitch, a school project). Now reimagine it for an audience three decades older or younger than the original. What changes? What stays? Produce a revised one-page outline—not new slides, just the outline.

Discussion Questions

1. The chapter says “start by listening” is good advice but not universal advice. Where is the line? When does “listen first” stop helping and start looking like avoidance?
2. If self-fulfilling prophecies are real and powerful, what ethical responsibility does a manager, teacher, or parent have when they form private expectations of the people around them?
3. How should communicators handle situations where their own perceptual set is clearly different from their audience’s? Is it more honest to ignore the difference, name it, or work around it?

Extended Project: The Perception Audit

Choose an organization you belong to, work for, or volunteer with—a workplace, a club, a student group, a place of worship, a small business. Your assignment is to conduct a perception audit of one specific piece of that organization’s external communication: a flyer, a website landing page, a recruiting email, a welcome letter, a public-facing video, a sign on a door.

The deliverable is a 1,500–2,000 word report structured in five parts:

1. The Artifact. Describe the piece of communication you’re auditing and attach a copy or photograph. Who produced it? For whom? In what context was it designed to be encountered?
2. The Intended Audience. Fill in the iceberg model for the audience the artifact was designed for. Surface traits above the waterline, deeper traits below. Be specific; “the public” is not an audience.
3. The Actual Audience. Identify who’s really encountering this piece of communication. If possible, interview at least two members of the actual audience and ask them what they perceive when they see it. Record the gap between intended and actual.
4. Perceptual Diagnosis. Using the chapter’s language—selection, organization, interpretation, Gestalt principles, individual differences, perceptual set—diagnose the top three ways the artifact is likely to be misperceived by the actual audience. Be concrete. Quote the specific words or describe the specific layout decisions that create the gap.
5. Revised Artifact. Produce a revision of at least one significant part of the artifact—a paragraph, a headline, a section of the website, a redesigned flyer panel. Explain the changes and tie each change to a concept from the chapter. Bonus: evaluate your revision against the four principles of reciprocity.

Your final report should demonstrate that you can think critically about perception, step outside your own perceptual set to see an audience honestly, and translate your analysis into a concrete improvement that an organization could actually use.

Self-Assessment: Back to Before You Read

Pull out the answers you wrote at the beginning of the chapter. Read them without judgment. Then answer these four follow-ups.

1. You were asked what’s the first thing you try to find out about a new audience. Has that answer changed? Is the first thing you’d ask today different from the first thing you’d have asked two hundred pages ago?
2. You described a time someone made a snap judgment about you that was wrong. Having read Section 3.3 on individual differences and perceptual set, can you explain, more precisely, what kind of perceptual error they made?
3. You took a position on whether listening is a skill you can practice or mostly an attitude. Does the chapter’s treatment of active listening support or complicate your original answer?
4. Nandini walked into the parking lot prepared for one audience and found another. You described a time you did something similar. If you ran that moment back today, what would you do in the first thirty seconds that you didn’t do then?

Don’t rewrite your original answers. Let the two sets sit side by side. The distance between them is a map of what this chapter actually moved for you.

3.6 Additional Resources

Explore the website of the National Association for Self-Esteem. http://www.self-esteem-nase.org

Forum Network offers a wealth of audio and video files of speeches on various topics. Listen to a lecture titled “Selective Attention: Neuroscience and the Art Museum” by Barbara Stafford, professor of art history, University of Chicago. https://www.wgbh.org/forum-network/lectures/selective-attention-neuroscience-and-the-art-museum

Explore the website of the journal Perception. https://journals.sagepub.com/home/PEC

Visit this About.com site to learn more about the Gestalt principles of perception. http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws_4.htm

Visit About.com to read an article by Kendra Van Wagner on the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws.htm

Philosophe.com offers a collection of articles about understanding your audience when you design a website. http://philosophe.com/understanding_users

Read more about active listening on this MindTools page. http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm