Diverse Viewpoints

You’re on your phone and suddenly you get a text from your friend. You read the text, but the tone of the message seems sarcastic. Therefore, you get annoyed, and a whole argument arises based on that one simple text message. Once you finally talk to that person, face to face, they tell you that they were not being sarcastic. Meaning that you happened to just perceive the text message wrong, and as a result, a whole argument started based on a wrong perception. Almost everyone that I know has gone through a situation like this, and I have dealt with this numerous times. Maybe you happened to have a bad day, and your mood was reflected in the message, or you perceived the text based on your mood. This is called selective perception since your perception is influenced by your wants, needs, attitudes, and other factors. In the text, The Role of Perception in Communication it states how perception plays a huge role in our daily lives. Everyone is different and has had different experiences, therefore, as a result, our perception of subjects tend to be different. Berelstein and Steiner stated the exact definition of perception, “complex process by which people select, organize, and interpret sensory stimulation into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world” (p.88). There is not one correct answer for ways things should be properly be perceived due to many different factors. Past experiences, cultural expectations, gender, class, beliefs, etc… all go into play when it comes to perception.

Culture plays an important role in perception, and I found it really fascinating. A study was done where subjects wore binoculars with a picture in each eye, and the subjects were white and Mexican. The pictures were bullfighting and baseball, and the subjects were higher to see the picture that corresponded with their culture. For example, Mexicans saw the bullfighting picture more than Caucasians did. I feel like this small study helps explain certain aspects of our life, and it shows how important culture is. Meaning that we are drawn to things that we can relate to, and culture plays an important role in that. At the same time, it also shows how we could be ignorant to other’s cultures since in the experiment the other picture was completely disregarded. I personally believe that this helps to show how people, especially Americans can be ignorant to other cultures or other beliefs since they are so focused on their own.

Another experiment was done where the subjects viewed an image and discussed what that image meant to them. However, the image was shown at different moods, as a result, the image’s meaning changed due to the subject’s mood. This was a fascinating subject that I touched on in The Ways Of Seeing Blog post about mood changing our perception. I completely agree with what the text says since we can view an image of the sun and it would make us feel happy. However, if we were mad then we would change the image’s meaning so it can fit into our mood. As a result, that image may have completely different meanings for people. Our mind is so powerful that it can make us believe what we want to believe. It can also make us believe that we are right even if we might be wrong.

Due to different perceptions, many advertisements tend to have trouble when it comes to targeting their audience. One person might understand the ad while another person might get a completely different message from that same ad. Going off of that same idea, many television shows tend to be misperceived. In the text, it mentions antiprejudice cartoons that used satire. In the cartoon, there was an exagerrated prejudice person . The goal was to make prejudice seem ridiculous, however, due to perception this goal was not entirely met. People who agreed with prejudice took this as “what they were doing was right”, and in a way helped motivate them. On the other hand, more open-minded people were able to understand the joke of it and get the intended message. Therefore, this didn’t help the cartoon get their message across due to perception.

In the text, it states, “selective exposure is the tendency for individuals to expose themselves to those communications that are in agreement with their existing attitudes and to avoid those communications that are not ” ( p. 81). I believe that this is an important process that we go through, and that it is important for us to understand it. Many times when arguments occur we tend to ignore what points the other person is making, and we just hear what we want to hear. As a result, miscommunication occurs, and the argument does not go well. A bystander of this argument might also see how both people in the argument tend to talk about nonsense, and only repeat certain points. Therefore, selective exposure is the whole process of “hearing what we want to hear”, and it is important to getting past that and viewing the entire picture.

No matter how hard someone might try to get everyone to view something the same, it will never happen because of perception. I believe that perception makes things seem unique because if everyone viewed something the same it would be kind of bland. At the same time, perception causes many arguments especially due to technology, specifically our phones. As mentioned earlier, we could perceive a text message the wrong way, or even on social media, a message could be misinterpreted. Therefore, it is important to understand that there will be people who will not think the same as you and to think before you speak as well. I believe that perception will always remain a controversial topic, especially for many businesses.