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CHAPTER 3
PERCEPTION
Objectives
After studying the material in Chapter Three of Looking Out/Looking In, you should understand:
1. How the processes of selection, organization, interpretation, and negotiation operate in the
perception process.
2. How physiological influences, cultural differences, social roles, and self-concept influence the
Specifically, you should be able to:
1. Describe how the processes of selection, organization, interpretation, and negotiation shape
communication in a given situation.
Notes on Class and Student Activities
A. Your Perceptual Schema (Pause and Reflect, text, p. 80)
Objectives
To help students recognize the perceptual, physical, role, interaction, psychological, and membership
B. Punctuation Practice (Skill Builder, text, p. 83)
Objective
To help students discover the importance of punctuation in our perceptual organization.
Discussion Questions
C. Role Reversal (Pause and Reflect, text, p. 93)
Objective
To give students the opportunity for firsthand experience with an orientation or perspective different
from his or her own.
Options
An effective warm-up is to have the class members name people, groups, or philosophical positions
Discussion Questions
1. What were your expectations prior to the experience?
2. How did the experience meet your expectations? Were there any surprises?
D. Perception-Checking Stimuli
Instructions
Here are two activities designed for group interaction.
The Gender Game. Divide the class into men and women. Each group is to come up with 5–10
questions they have always wanted to ask the opposite gender but, for some reason or another, never
Note: Both of these activities can be used as the stimulus for activity 3.4 in the Student Activities Manual. Ask
students to keep track of perceptions they have during the course of the activity and prepare 2-5 perception-
checking statements to be delivered to specific individuals during the next class. (Examples: “Shelley, when you
Discussion Questions
1. What did you find out about the other gender (or about another culture) that you didn’t know
before?
E. Perception-Checking Practice
1. What aspects of perception checking are most/least useful?
2. How can you use perception checking most effectively in your life?
Note 1. The pillow method is a culmination of the entire chapter. The measure of a student’s success in
Discussion Questions
1. What insights can we gain about the perspectives of others when we apply the pillow method?
2. How has empathy (or lack thereof) affected communication in your past and current
G. Empathy Skills
Objective
Student Instructions
1. Choose an interpersonal issue with a person who is important to you. This person may be a
friend, family member, fellow student or worker, instructor, or any other person who matters to
you. This person must be available to you for feedback during the time you are completing this
5. Add a written summary to your paper describing the following dimensions of the issue:
6. There are understandable reasons for the behavior of both parties in the issue.
H. Explore Your Perceptions
Objective
To illustrate the process and characteristics of students’ perceptions.
1. Have students pair up with classmates they have not yet interacted with or met.
3. Write the following (or similar) items on the board, and tell them that, without talking to each
4. After their guesses are complete, have them talk with their partners about unrelated subjects
(what’s the last movie they’ve seen, what they did last weekend or plan to do the next weekend)
Discussion Questions
1. How many of you guessed more than half correctly? Less than half? Half?
2. What information did you use to base your guesses on (hairstyle, clothing, initial greeting,
previous behavior in classroom, people you know who look like your partner, your own
I. Sexual Harassment and Perception (On the Job in text, p. 95)
Discussion Questions
1. How might sexual harassment actually be defined by people in a variety of different roles (e.g.,
males, females, younger, older, cultures with high and low power distance)? What specific
J. Exploring Our Reality Glasses
Objective
To develop awareness of the many influences on the perception process.
Instructions
1. Draw a giant pair of glasses on the board. Explain that we each have our own unique set of lenses
5. Apply the metaphor to specific examples if you wish to carry out the activity further. For
Discussion Questions
K. Building Cognitive Complexity
Objective
To help students enhance their cognitive complexity.
To explore the uniqueness of perceptions.
Instructions
1. Do a Google search for interesting images of people in situations (such as “people at work”) and
project it onto the screen.
1. How many people in your group had the same first impression of what was going on in the
L. Empathy Through Doing
Objective
Instructions
1. Show a segment from the television program “Undercover Boss,” and/or discuss the Empathy
Experiment described in the text.
Discussion Questions
1. Have your own perceptions been altered by similar “doing” activities or by “walking in
