978-0134202037 Chapter 3 Soluotion Manual

subject Type Homework Help
subject Pages 9
subject Words 3992
subject Authors Mark V. Redmond, Steven A. Beebe, Susan J. Beebe

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Copyright ©2017, 2014, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Chapter 3: Interpersonal Communication and Perception
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
3.1 Define perception, and explain the three stages of interpersonal perception.
3.2 List and describe the strategies we use to form impressions of others.
3.3 List and describe the strategies we use to interpret the behavior of others.
3.4 Identify the eight factors that distort the accuracy of interpersonal perception.
3.5 Identify and apply five suggestions for improving interpersonal perception.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Understanding Interpersonal Perception
Learning Objective 3.1: Define perception, and explain the three stages of interpersonal
perception.
A. To understand perception, we must begin by understanding the difference between
perception and interpersonal perception, as well as differences between passive
perception and active perception.
1. Perception is the process of experiencing your world and making sense out of what
you experience.
2. Interpersonal perception is the process by which you decide what people are like
and give meaning to their actions.
3. Passive perception occurs without conscious effort, simply in response to one’s
surroundings.
4. Active perception occurs because you seek out specific information through
intentional observation and questioning.
B. Stage 1: Selecting
1. During the selection stage, we attempt to simplify the stimuli that flood in through
our senses.
2. We Perceive and Remember Selectively
a. Four principles of selection frame the process of how we select what we see, hear,
and experience.
b. Directing our attention to specific stimuli and consequently ignoring others is
called selective perception.
c. Selective attention is the process of focusing on specific stimuli.
d. Selective exposure is our tendency to put ourselves in situations that reinforce our
attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviors.
e. Selective recall occurs when we remember things we want to remember and
forget or repress things that are unpleasant, uncomfortable, or unimportant to us.
3. We Thin Slice
a. Thin slicing is using a small sample of someone’s behavior and then generalizing
as to what the person may be like, based on the brief information you have
observed.
b. There is evidence that women are better at interpreting nonverbal cues than men
are.
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C. Stage 2: Organizing
1. We Create Categories
a. After we select stimuli to attend to, we start to categorize, organizing them into
convenient, understandable, and efficient patterns that allow us to make sense of
what we have observed; we superimpose a familiar structure over the information
we select.
b. People also search for and apply patterns to their perceptions of other people.
2. We Link Categories
a. The way we link information depends partly on the way we punctuate it or how
we make sense out of stimuli by grouping, dividing, organizing, separating, and
categorizing information.
b. When it comes to punctuating relational events and behaviors, we each develop
our own separate set of standards.
3. We Seek Closure
a. Closure is the process we use to fill in missing information or gaps in what we
perceive.
b. When we have an incomplete picture of another human being, we impose a
pattern or structure, classify the person on the basis of the information we do
have, and fill in any missing information.
D. Stage 3: Interpreting
1. We attempt to make sense of the information we see and hear.
2. We interpret the meaning of verbal and nonverbal cues we experience.
II. Forming Impressions of Others
Learning Objective 3.2: List and describe the strategies we use to form impressions of
others.
A. Impressions are collections of perceptions (physical qualities, behavior, what people tell
us, and what others tell us about them, according to impression formation theory) about
others that we maintain and use to interpret their behaviors.
B. We Develop Our Own Theories About Others
1. Most people rely on an implicit personality theoryour personal set of assumptions
and expectations or patterns of qualities that we attribute to peopleto understand
them, which helps us organize the vast array of information we have about people’s
personalities.
2. Constructs are bipolar qualities or continuums we use to classify people, such as
“good” or “bad,” “warm,” or “cold.”
3. Uncertainty reduction theory suggests that one of the main reasons we
communicate at all is to reduce our uncertainty about others.
C. We Form Impressions of Others Online: The Social Media Effect
1. Others evaluate you based on what you have posted on social media.
2. What others say about you on Facebook social media is more likely to have an effect
on how others perceive you than what you post.
3. Other people may also be making inferences about your popularity, personality, and
sincerity simply by noting the number of friends you have on your Facebook wall; too
few or too many friends is likely to lower your social attractiveness as perceived by
others.
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D. We Emphasize What Comes First: The Primacy Effect
1. When we form impressions of others, we pay more attention to our first impressions.
2. The tendency to pay greater attention to the first piece of information we receive is
called the primacy effect.
3. Predicted outcomes value theory (POV) suggests that we make predictions about
the future of a relationship based on our initial interactions with the people we meet;
this supports the primacy effect.
4. When we first meet someone, we use our early knowledge (primacy effect) to help us
make decisions about whether to continue or diminish the relationship.
E. We Emphasize What Comes Last: The Recency Effect
1. When we place heavy emphasis on the most recent information we observe, the
recency effect has occurred.
2. The last impression or communication we receive may be the cause of the perceptions
we form.
F. We Generalize Positive Qualities to Others: The Halo Effect
1. Categorizing people as those we “like” often creates a halo effect, in which we
attribute a variety of positive qualities to them without personally confirming the
existence of these qualities.
2. When you add a “halo” to your impression of a person, you then apply to that person
those qualities from your implicit personality theory that applies to people you like.
G. We Generalize Negative Qualities to Others: The Horn Effect
1. The horn effect involves attributing a variety of negative qualities to people simply
because we do not like them.
2. Research suggests that during periods of conflict in our relationships, we are more
likely to attribute negative behaviors to our feuding partner than we are to ourselves.
3. Infante and Rancer observed that some people have a tendency to see the worst in
others, which causes them to lash out and be verbally aggressive.
4. Some people may interpret any negative feedback as a personal attack.
III. Interpreting the Behavior of Others
Learning Objective 3.3: List and describe the strategies we use to interpret the behavior of
others.
A. We Attribute Motives to Others’ Behavior: Attribution Theory
1. Attribution theory explains how we ascribe specific motives and causes to the
behaviors of others.
a. We attempt to apply common sense to our observations to understand what others
do.
b. We attempt to explain people’s motives for their actions through the most credible
explanation.
2. Causal attribution theory identifies three potential causes for any person’s action:
circumstance, a stimulus, or the person herself or himself.
a. Attributing the behavior to circumstance means you believe the person acted a
certain way because the situation leaves no choice.
b. Attributing the behavior to the stimulus means you believe the person acted in
response to an incentive.
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c. Attributing the behavior to the person means you believe there is a quality about
the person that caused the behavior.
B. We Use Our Own Point of Reference About Power: Standpoint Theory
1. Standpoint theory explains that a person’s social position, power, or cultural
background influences how the person perceives the behavior of others; where you
stand influences what you see.
2. Standpoint theory explains why people with differing cultural backgrounds have
different perceptions of others’ behavior.
C. We Draw on Our Own Cultural Background: Intercultural Communication Theory
1. Culture is a learned system of knowledge, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, values, and
norms, shared by a group of people.
2. Culture elements include: material culture, social institutions, belief systems,
aesthetics, and language.
3. Researchers have found that stereotypingmaking rigid judgments of others based
on a small bit of informationis rampant in many cultures.
In-Text Opportunity for Classroom Discussion
Relating to Diverse Others: The Power of Being Other-Oriented
This feature highlights the importance of being other-oriented to show more empathy and
understanding to people from diverse backgrounds. Use the four questions in this feature as a
starting point for a class discussion about applying aspects of standpoint theory to students’
personal lives.
IV. Identifying Barriers to Accurate Interpersonal Perception
Learning Objective 3.4: Identify the eight factors that distort the accuracy of interpersonal
perception.
A. We Stereotype
1. To stereotype is to attribute a set of qualities to a person because of a person’s
membership in some category.
2. We allow our preexisting rigid explanations about others to influence our perceptions.
3. When we stereotype others, we overgeneralize, or treat small amounts of information
as if they were highly representative.
B. We Ignore Information
1. People sometimes do not focus on important information, because they give too much
weight to information that is obvious and superficial.
2. Often, we are unaware that others are making biased attributions, because they do not
express them openly.
3. At other times, we can tell by the way others react to us and treat us.
4. Researchers have found that we hold what are called implicit attitudes that affect how
we perceive others.
5. Categorizing individuals is not an inherently bad thing to do, but it is harmful to hang
onto an inflexible image of another person in the face of contradictory information.
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In-Text Opportunity for Classroom Discussion
#communicationandtechnology: The SIDE Model: Forming Stereotypes Online
This feature explains the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE), which says
that people are more likely to reduce someone to a stereotypeor, to use a technical term, to
deindividuate themonline because we have fewer cues to help us develop a clear impression.
Findings from two research studies are presented. Use the three questions in the research
implications section to start a class discussion about how students can counter tendencies to
oversimplify and stereotype others online.
C. We Impose Consistency
1. We overestimate the consistency and constancy of others’ behaviors, ignoring
fluctuations.
2. As intimacy develops in relationships, we interact with our partners in varying
circumstances that provide a more complete picture of our behavior.
D. We Focus on the Negative
1. We focus on the negative, giving more weight to negative information than to
positive information.
2. We have a tendency to focus on the negative information for others and for ourselves.
E. We Blame Others, Assuming They Have Control
1. People are more likely to believe that others are to blame when things go wrong than
to believe that the problem was beyond their control.
2. The fundamental attribution error occurs when we think that a person’s behavior is
influenced by his or her actions and choices rather than by external causes.
3. You can enhance the quality of your relationships when you own up to making
perceptual errors.
F. We Avoid Responsibility
1. People are more likely to save face by believing that they are not the cause of a
problem; people assume that other people or events are more than likely the source of
problems or events that may put them in an unfavorable light.
2. Self-serving bias occurs when we perceive our own behavior as more positive than
others’ behavior.
In-Text Opportunity for Classroom Discussion
Improving Your Communication Skills
Assuming the Best or the Worst About Others: Identifying Alternative Explanations
This feature expands on the fundamental attribution error and asks students to consider whether
they give others the benefit of the doubt or assume the worst about others intentions. Use the
bulleted points to have students think about the first explanation that comes to mind if the
scenario were to happen to them. Additional reflection questions about the fundamental
attribution error are also provided.
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V. Improving Interpersonal Perception Skills
Learning Objective 3.5: Identify and apply five suggestions for improving interpersonal
perception.
A. Be Aware of Your Personal Perception Barriers
1. Identify the perception barriers that you fall prey to most often.
2. Being aware of perception barriers and minimize their impact during interactions with
others.
B. Be Mindful of the Behaviors That Create Meaning for You
1. Mindful is being conscious of what you are doing, thinking, and sensing at any given
moment.
2. Try to find one new thing to identify and observe when you are interacting with other
people.
C. Link Details with the Big Picture
1. Keep the big picture in mind when looking for clues about another person.
2. Look and listen for cues that can help you better understand the other person.
D. Become Aware of Others’ Perceptions of You
1. Seek out as much feedback from others about what you are doing right and wrong.
2. The strongest relationships are those in which both partners are willing to share their
perceptions and be receptive to the perceptions of others.
E. Check Your Perceptions
1. Indirect perception checking involves seeking additional information through passive
perception to either confirm or refute your interpretations.
2. Direct perception checking involves asking straight out if your interpretations of a
perception are correct.
F. Become Other-Oriented
1. The key to becoming other-oriented is by showing empathy and social decentering.
2. Gather as much knowledge about the circumstances that are affecting the other person
as possible.
3. Gather as much knowledge about the other person as possible.
In-Text Opportunity for Classroom Discussion
Communication and Emotion: How to Perceive the Emotions of Others More Accurately
This feature presents information about how to improve perception of others’ emotions by using
perception checking. Use these bulleted points as a starting point for a class discussion on
strategies that help with improving perception checking.
In-Text Opportunity for Classroom Discussion
Applying an Other-Orientation to Interpersonal Perception
This feature points out several questions to help students become more other-oriented. Have
students identify different interactions that they will encounter in which being other-oriented is
particularly important (e.g., asking someone on a date, attending a job interview). Use the
questions in this feature for a class discussion on how students can be more other-oriented in
different situations.
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KEY TERMS
perception, LO 3.1
interpersonal perception,
LO 3.1
passive perception, LO 3.1
active perception, LO 3.1
selective perception,
LO 3.1
selective attention, LO 3.1
selective exposure, LO 3.1
selective recall, LO 3.1
thin slicing, LO 3.1
cognitive schema, LO 3.1
superimpose, LO 3.1
punctuation, LO 3.1
closure, LO 3.1
impressions, LO 3.2
impression formation
theory, LO 3.2
implicit personality theory,
LO 3.2
construct, LO 3.2
uncertainty reduction
theory, LO 3.2
primacy effect, LO 3.2
predicted outcome value
theory (POV), LO 3.2
recency effect, LO 3.2
halo effect, LO 3.2
horn effect, LO 3.2
attribution theory, LO 3.3
causal attribution theory,
LO 3.3
standpoint theory, LO 3.3
culture, LO 3.3
stereotype, LO 3.4
social identity model of
deindividuation effects
(SIDE), LO 3.4
fundamental attribution
error, LO 3.4
self-serving bias, LO 3.4
mindful, LO 3.5
indirect perception
checking, LO 3.5
direct perception checking,
LO 3.5
LECTURE TOPICS
1. When we focus on one thing, it means that we exclude others. How does this work in your
everyday life? What are the consequences? What are the benefits?
2. When you aren’t sure of your own perceptions, do you tend to use direct or indirect
perception checking? When would you consider each to be more appropriate than the other?
Explain.
3. Think of a time when you used predicted outcomes values theory in an initial interaction with
someone. Did you decide to pursue a relationship of any kind with that person? Why or why
not? If you knew them longer than that initial interaction, did your perception of them
change? Why do you think it did or did not?
GROUP IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES FOR SKILL DEVELOPMENT
1. Direct Perception-Checking Role-Plays
Ask for several pairs of volunteers or divide the entire class into pairs.
Give each pair of students one of the following pairs of perception-checking scenarios.
Ask students to create several lines of dialogue to enact their scenarios.
Have pairs perform their scenarios for the class; have the class provide comments and
suggestions on the handling of each type of scenario.
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Scenarios
This morning, your boss told you that he or she wants to speak with you this afternoon
and that you need to arrive at his or her office on time. You have been wondering what
your boss meant by this and now you see an opportunity to ask your boss, before the
afternoon meeting.
You found a bouquet of flowers at your doorstep this morning. There was no note. You
have been crazed with curiosity about the flowers. Now you run into a colleague who,
you believe, has a crush on you.
Your significant other said that he or she would telephone you last night, but you
received no calls. Now you have an opportunity to speak with him or her, face to face.
Yesterday was your birthday and you heard nothing from one of your closest friends.
Now you encounter this friend.
Your instructor insisted that you promptly turn in an assignment. In addition, he or she
had been unwilling to allow you the one extra workday you had requested. It has been
two weeks since you turned in the assignment and you have not received it back. You see
your instructor in the hall.
You just heard the end of a group conversation in which one of the participants
concluded loudly, “That sounds like some people I know,” and then looked quickly at
you. Now that person is walking away from the group, toward you.
This morning, one of your acquaintances looked straight at you but did not respond when
you said “Hello.” Now you see this person again.
Lately you have noticed a change in the appearance of one of your friends. He or she
looks thinner, is constantly perspiring, and trembles most of the time. What do you say to
your friend?
A classmate of yours is looking at you every time you look in his or her direction. The
classmate does not look away, even if you stare at him or her for a long time. Now you
encounter each other outside of class.
2. Impression Formation in the Classroom
Objective: To illustrate the pervasiveness of impressions based on general physical qualities,
behaviors, and disclosed information
Directions:
1. Divide the class into pairs.
2. Instruct students to spend a few minutes getting to know their partners.
3. Provide all students with copies of the following list of variables.
4. Ask students to record their impressions of each other, according to these variables.
5. Ask them to also record the stimuli that gave rise to their impressions.
6. Carefully instruct students to refrain from speaking while recording their impressions.
7. When everyone has finished recording, have pairs share their impressions and their bases
with each other.
8. As a class, discuss the accuracy of the impressions formed. Question the speed and
confidence with which they formed those impressions.
9. Ask: Has your impression of the other changed as a result of this exercise?
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Variables:
Age
Socioeconomic background
Political affiliations or beliefs
Hobbies or interests
Personality characteristics
Cultural background
Religious preferences
Current living arrangements (i.e., dorm, apartment, etc.)
Major in college
Romantic attachments
3. Perceptions of Our Environment. Lead your class through the following exercise:
Think of every piece of sensory information present in this room. Let’s begin with the
physical environment: What noises are present? What colors are present? What objects are
present? What smells? Is the temperature comfortable or unpleasant? Now, let’s move on to
the interpersonal stimuli present in the room: Do you feel tension with any other person in
the room? Is there anyone you are attracted to or drawn to in some way? Is there anyone in
the room that you have regrets about (perhaps you treated them poorly in the past)? What
stimuli in the room are you only aware of because you are participating in this exercise?
The point is that we are bombarded with a great deal of stimuli. We cannot possibly attend to
all of it, so we select some things to focus on and designate other things as unimportant or
irrelevant.
Ask students if they have ever been listening to a piece of music that they had heard many
times before . . . when they suddenly became aware of an instrument layered deep in the mix
that they had never before noticed. How did that discovery affect their appreciation or
enjoyment of the music?
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS
1. Standpoint Theory: What is your social perception? Dorothy E. Smith is a standpoint
theorist often referenced in sociological theory texts. She shares some interesting thoughts
about how our perceptions color the way in which we view someone. How have students’
own experiences influenced their social perception of the world? Have students write a
reflection on how social location, privilege, education, gender, and other factors affect their
perception of the world.
2. Fundamental Attribution Errors. Before the next class, have students keep track of actions
you see other people engage in for which you COULD make a fundamental attribution error.
For an example of the fundamental attribution error at work, imagine yourself walking down
a crowded sidewalk, carrying loaded bags from shops. If someone bumps into you, you are
probably inclined to think, What an idiot! That person has no respect for others, he clearly
saw me!” In this assessment of the person’s behavior, you may fail to consider situational
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factors, like someone else bumping into that person or your failure to realize that your bags
are taking up more room than you think they are, thus forcing people to bump into you as
they try to get around you.
For each scenario, create a list of what the fundamental attribution errors might have been
and what the more likely cause of the situation may have been.
Finally, explain why you might have made the error in the first place and how you could
be sure in the future that such errors are reduced in number and in frequency.
3. Editorial Biases. Have students find a newspaper editorial and write an evaluation based on
any barriers to accurate perception illustrated in it. Finally, have students write about how
these barriers could have been overcome.
REVEL WRITING EXERCISES
Journal Writing
3.1 Journal: Perception. Describe your current environment. What is going on around you at
the moment? What are you hearing? What do you see? What can you smell? Are there other
people around? Are you perceiving other things that you are able to ignore or tune out? Explain.
3.2 Journal: Forming Impressions. Think of a recent interaction with a friend, family member,
or work colleague in which you interpreted the person’s behavior incorrectly. Did you attribute
specific motives to the person’s behavior? What led you to ascribe these motives? What was the
outcome of the exchange?
3.3 Journal: Standpoint Theory. Standpoint theory suggests that people may have power and
not always be aware that they have it. To increase your awareness of the power and influence
you have on others, describe the sources of power you possess and ways that you influence
others at school, in your family, or within your circle of friends.
3.4 Journal: Perceiving Others. What do you think contributes to the tendency to perceive
others inaccurately? How might the effects of those factors be minimized or eliminated?
3.5 Journal: Your Perceptions. If you are aware of how you are distorting your own
perceptions and attributions, should you try to change? Are people morally obligated to perceive
others accurately? Explain your reasoning.
Shared Writing: The Social Media Effect
Work with a group of your classmates and discuss some ways you form impressions of others
online. Have you ever judged people based on what photos they post on Facebook or what they
write on Twitter? Have you ever found these impressions to be misleading or inaccurate? Have
these impressions changed your online behavior?

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