Paper

CHAPTER TWO: Perception and Communication

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Human perception concerns how we make sense of the world and what happens in

it. Perception is an active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting people,

objects, events, situations, and activities.

A. Selection of stimuli is the first step in perception.

1. Qualities of external phenomenon draw attention. Such qualities include

immediacy, relevance, or intensity.

2. Our perceptions are influenced by acuity of our senses.

3. Change or variation compels attention.

4. We may deliberately influence what we notice (self-indication).

5. We select based on who we are and what is going on inside us.

6. Our expectations influence what we notice (self-fulfilling prophecy).

B. Organization of stimuli helps us to make sense of it. Constructivism is a theory

that says we organize and interpret experience by applying four types of

cognitive structures called schemata.

1. A prototype is a knowledge structure that defines the clearest or most

representative examples of some category.

2. Personal constructs are mental yardsticks or descriptions that allow us to

position people and situations along bipolar dimensions of judgment.

3. Stereotypes are predictive generalizations about people and situations.

Stereotypes may be accurate or inaccurate.

4. Scripts are guides to actions based on what we’ve experienced and

observed.

C. Interpretation is the subjective process of explaining perceptions to assign

meaning to them.

1. Attributions are explanations of why things happen and why people act the

way they do. Attributions have four dimensions.

a. Locus attributes what a person does to either internal factors or

external factors.

b. Stability explains actions as resulting from either stable factors that

won’t change or temporary, unstable factors.

c. Scope defines behavior as part of a global pattern or a specific instance.

d. Responsibility attributes behaviors to factors people can...