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Chapter 2
Self and Perception
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
In this chapter, students will learn:
• The nature of self and its impact on communication
• How to present themselves to others, online and off
CHAPTER OUTLINE
THE NATURE OF SELF
Your “self” isn’t just one thing; it’s many things: who you think you are as a person; your values,
attitudes, and beliefs; and how you feel about your self-worth. Because all of these factors influence how
you communicate, the first step to improving your communication is to understand your self.
• Your self shapes how you communicate, whether online or offline, with friends or in groups, and
even before an audience.
o Self is an evolving blend of three components:
1. Self-awareness
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SELF-AWARENESS
• Self-awareness is the ability to view yourself as a unique person distinct from your surrounding
environment and to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In short, it means asking
yourself, “Who am I?”
o Self-awareness isn’t only about inward analysis. You also look outward to others and compare
yourself to them.
• Critical self-reflection is a special kind of self-awareness that focuses on evaluating and improving
your communication. By routinely practicing critical self-reflection, you will achieve a deeper
understanding of the factors that influence your communication choices, allowing you to make better
decisions and achieve improved outcomes as a result.
o To engage in critical self-reflection, consider these five questions:
1. What am I thinking and feeling?
2. Why am I thinking and feeling this way?
SELF-CONCEPT
• Self-concept is the overall assessment of who you are; it completes this statement: “I’m a _____
person.” It is based on the beliefs, attitudes, and values you have about yourself.
o Beliefs are convictions that certain things are true (“I’m a caring person”).
o Attitudes are evaluations (“I’m satisfied with my fitness level”).
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o Values are enduring principles that guide your behaviors (“I think it’s morally wrong to lie”).
• Self-verification theory suggests that you often choose your relational partners based on how well
they support your self-concept. This includes choosing others who support a positive or negative self-
concept.
SELF-ESTEEM
• Self-esteem is the overall value you assign to yourself. It answers the question: “Given who I am,
what’s my evaluation of my worth?”
o Self-esteem strongly shapes your communication, relationships, and general outlook on life.
• Self-discrepancy theory holds that your self-esteem results from comparing the following two
mental standards:
1. Your ideal self involves all the qualities (mental, physical, emotional, material, spiritual) you
want to possess.
2. Your ought self is the person you think others want you to be. The concept of ought self stems
from expectations of your family, friends, colleagues, and romantic partners, plus the culture you
grew up in.
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• You can work on improving your self-esteem by following these steps:
1. Assess your self-esteem. List the beliefs, attitudes, and values that make up your self-concept.
Review the list and determine whether you view yourself positively or negatively.
2. Analyze your ideal self. Who do you wish you were? If this ideal self is attainable, how could you
become this person?
5. Create an action plan. List the actions necessary to reach your ideal and ought selves. Establish a
realistic timeline, perhaps several months or years. Then carry out this action plan, checking your
progress as you go.
GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, CULTURE, AND SELF
Gender and Self
• Gender is the set of social, psychological, and behavioral attributes that a specific culture attributes to
a person’s biological sex.
o Your concept of gender forms over time through interactions with others.
o Gender is distinct from the biological sex organs you were born with and that distinguish you
anatomically as male, female, or intersex (having a combination of male and female sex organs).
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Sexual Orientation and Self
• Each person possesses a sexual orientation that strongly impacts our sense of self.
Culture and Self
• Culture is as an established, coherent set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices shared by a large
group of people.
o Culture includes many types of large-group influences, such as nationality, ethnicity, religion,
gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, and age.
• Individualistic cultures teach that individual goals matter more than group goals.
• Collectivistic cultures promote the value of belonging to groups that look after you in exchange for
your loyalty.
PRESENTING
YOUR
SELF
Every time you communicate with others, you present a version of your self to them. Sometimes this
represents who you really are. Other times you may hide your true self. In either case, the self you present
is the “you” people know. If you want people to see you in a certain way, it’s essential to learn how to
present your self skillfully.
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o You actively create your public self through your communication and behavior.
o People form impressions about you based on the public self you present.
CREATING FACES AND MASKS
• Face is the positive self you want others to see and believe that you actively create through your
communication. It can be anything (perky, upbeat, cool) and varies depending on the situation.
LOSING FACE
• Losing face occurs when you create a certain face (or a mask) and then do something that contradicts
it, causing others to feel betrayed or to view you as a phony. Losing face can also cause you to
experience embarrassment—feelings of shame, humiliation, and sadness.
MAINTAINING FACE
• Maintaining face often involves the following:
o Using words and actions that are consistent with the face you’re trying to create
o Making sure your communication meshes with others’ existing knowledge about you
o Trying to anticipate and manage events that could contradict your face
• When you lose face, try to
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o move to maintain your face again. Remember, most people want you to maintain face because
your face is the positive, public “you” with whom they’re most familiar.
PERCEIVING
OTHERS
Along with your view of self, your perception of others determines how you communicate. While it may
seem that your view of other people is both accurate and objective, it is anything but that. Understanding
the process of perception will help you avoid errors that might cause you to communicate incompetently.
THE PERCEPTION PROCESS
The three steps in the perception process are:
Step 1: Select Information
• Select information to focus your attention on.
o Selecting information involves focusing your attention on certain sights, sounds, tastes, touches,
and smells in your environment.
Step 2: Organize the Information into a Pattern
• Organize the information from your senses into an understandable or coherent pattern in your mind,
such as words, phrases, ideas, or images.
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Step 3: Interpret the Pattern
• Interpret the meaning of the pattern by calling to mind familiar information that’s relevant and using
that information to make sense of what you’re hearing and seeing.
PERCEPTION AND CULTURE
ATTRIBUTIONS AND PERCEPTUAL ERRORS
• Attribution is the process of assigning an explanation for why things happen the way they do. Two
types of attributions are commonplace:
o External factors or events are the things outside of the person that cause the person’s behavior.
o Internal factors are the personality, character, and emotions that cause the person to act as they
do.
• Attribution errors occur when you form invalid attributions. Two common types of attribution errors
are:
1. Fundamental attribution error is the common tendency to attribute others’ behaviors to internal
rather than external forces.
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FORMING IMPRESSIONS
Whenever you meet people, you paint pictures in your mind of who they are and what you think of them.
These images can be positive or negative, long lasting or subject to change. However, these pictures act as
a powerful guide in shaping your communication, for better or for worse.
• Impressions of others are created when you use the perception process to form mental images of who
people are and how you feel about them.
o All aspects of the perception process shape your impressions: the information you select to focus
your attention on, the way you organize this information, the interpretations you make, and the
GESTALTS
• A Gestalt is a general impression of a person that’s positive or negative.
o Gestalts form rapidly from a few traits you identify about the person.
o They are useful for encounters in which you must make quick judgments about others with
limited information.
• The halo effect is the tendency to interpret the behavior of people positively if you’ve formed a
positive Gestalt.
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ALGEBRAIC IMPRESSIONS
• An algebraic impression is an analysis of the positive and negative things you learn about someone
to calculate an overall impression, updating your impression as you learn new information.
o Information that’s important, unusual, or negative is usually weighted more heavily than
information that’s trivial, typical, or positive because people tend to believe this type of
information reveals more about a person’s “true” character than more positive or commonplace
information.
STEREOTYPES
• Stereotyping involves forming impressions by categorizing people into a social group, such as by
race, age, or gender, and then evaluating them based on information you have related to that group.
o Stereotypes take the subtle complexities that make people unique and replace them with blanket
assumptions about their character and worth based solely on their social group affiliations before
it’s possible to make any other impression.
o Stereotyping is difficult to avoid and is the most common way we form impressions.
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IMPROVING YOUR PERCEPTION
Even though perception and impression formation occur in specific ways, they are not unchangeable
processes. You can improve your perception and impressions by critically questioning your own judgments
and routinely considering the feelings, needs, and viewpoints of others.
PERCEPTION-CHECKING
• Perception-checking is a five-step process for testing your impression of someone else and avoiding
errors in judgment:
1. Review your knowledge about the other person. Your impression of this individual is only as
accurate as the information you have. Never presume that you know the “truth” about someone.
4. Share your impression with the individual. Present it as “here’s my viewpoint,” not as the “right”
or “only” perspective.
5. Check your impression with the other person.
• Mastering perception-checking takes practice, but the effort is worthwhile.
o Perception-checking helps you make fewer communication blunders.
EMPATHY
• Empathy, from the Greek word empatheia, is when you “feel into” others’ thoughts and emotions,
making an attempt to identify with them. It has two components: perspective-taking and empathic
concern.
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1. Perspective-taking is the ability to see things from another person’s point of view, without
necessarily experiencing that person’s emotions.
• We often think of empathy as an automatic process beyond our control, something we either feel or
don’t feel yet:
o Research suggests that whether we feel empathy toward others depends largely on our empathy
mindset—our beliefs about whether empathy is something that can be developed and controlled.
• Experiencing empathy isn’t enough; you must also convey your empathy to others. You do this by:
o Letting others know you’re genuinely interested in listening to them (“I’m here to listen if you
want to talk”)
o Telling them you think their views are valid and understandable (“I can totally understand why
you would feel that way”)
• When expressing empathy, avoid using “I know” messages (“I know just how you feel”). Even if you
make such comments with kind intentions, the other person will likely be skeptical, particularly if
they suspect that you don’t or can’t feel as they do.
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• Competently conveying empathy isn’t just something to be strived for as a matter of principle; it’s a
recommendation packed with practical benefits. When others perceive you as empathic, they’re also
more likely to perceive you as relatable, to like you, and to help you when you are in need.
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Think of a time when you became more self-conscious as a result of socially comparing your self
with others. What happened and how did you handle it?
• Possible answers from students may include job interviews, dates, or witnessing public
performances. Discuss with your students the importance of having a healthy gauge when making
2. Considering the differences between an individualistic culture and a collectivistic culture, how
might these cultures differ in their perception of family? Their perception of wealth?
• Students may bring up differences such as prioritizing family or career responsibilities or viewing
wealth as essential to happiness. You may also want to expand this discussion and ask them to
3. Thinking of your private and public self, give an example of a time when you intentionally
presented an image that was nothing like the real you. Why? How long did you keep it up?
• This question may spark a discussion about the ethics behind presenting a public self. Depending
on the situations that students present, you might want to talk about the differences between a
public self, a mask, and a lie. When do versions of self become lies? It may help the discussion if
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4. Give an example of a public figure or celebrity who lost face. Did it have far-reaching effects on
their career? How did they cope with the incident? Are public figures and celebrities held to
different standards?
• Students may bring up a variety of instances, such as talk show host Wendy Williams admitting that
she is living in a sober house and rumors of her husband cheating; when Elon Musk was
investigated by NASA for smoking marijuana during a podcast or investigated by the SEC for
making statements on Twitter regarding taking Tesla private; or Jeff Bezos’s affair and divorce
5. Give an example of a common stereotype young people might hold toward the elderly. Can you
think of someone you know or a celebrity who doesn’t fit into that stereotype? How can you
prevent such a stereotype from becoming a prejudice?
• Common stereotypes about the elderly may include difficulties using or understanding
technology or limitations related to certain physical activities, such as driving. This question will
give you an opportunity to remind students that there are many different kinds of stereotypes and
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Show-and-Tell
Goal: To illuminate individual differences between self-concepts and demonstrate the various ways
we develop our concept of self.
Time: 40 minutes (depending on class size)
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1. Ask students to bring in one object that represents their past and one object that represents their
future. Remind students of any banned items (for example, live animals or weapons). You may
2. During class, ask each student to explain briefly why they selected their two objects and what the
objects mean to them.
2. Critical Self-Reflection Writing Exercise
Goal: To demonstrate how critical self-reflection can improve our communication skills.
Time: 15 minutes
1. Either in class or as homework, ask students to think of a past communication experience in
which they experienced stress, provoked an argument, or just needed improvement in order to get
their point across to the other person. Have them briefly describe the event in writing and then
answer the following critical self-reflection questions:
a. What was I thinking and feeling?
b. Why did I feel that way?
2. Now ask students to describe how this situation may have been improved if they had used the
critical self-reflection questions during the actual situation. If they could do it over again, how
would they change their communication style? Would changing their style have changed the
outcome? Do they think critical self-reflection would have helped?
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will demonstrate critical self-reflection and give students an opportunity to connect with you and
their classmates.
3. Group Communication Comics
Goal: To have students explore how simple it is to make attributional and perceptual errors.
Time: 50 minutes
4. Gather paper, colored markers, and/or crayons or have students use online cartoon creation sites
like ToonDoo, found at toondoo.com.
6. Have each group review the section on attributions and perceptual errors in the textbook (pages
47-49) and then create an original comic strip with at least six frames (one per page) that
demonstrates an example of communication gone wrong due to these types of errors. Encourage
them to be creative.
4. My Advertisement
Goal: To help students understand their overall value and improve self-esteem.
Time: 15 minutes
5. Martians Reading Magazines
Goal: To explore how our senses of self and gender are influenced by media.
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Time: 30 minutes
1. Ask students to bring a copy of a popular magazine or provide used magazines (Maxim,
Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Elle work well for this activity).
2. Ask students to trade magazines or randomly pass them out to the students as they enter the room.
4. As students look through their magazines, have them make a list of 20 items about the media’s
portrayal of gender. Encourage them to find at least 10 items related to women and 10 items
related to men.
MEDIA RESOURCES
1. TED Talks: Thandie Newton: Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself
This TED Talk by actress Thandie Newton is an elegant two-minute discussion of the concept of self,
perceptions, and stereotypes. She describes her story of finding her “otherness,” first as a child
2. African Men: Hollywood Stereotypes
This short video narrated by four African men provides a good example of how the media,
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3. Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
4. In Her Shoes (20th Century Fox, 2005)
This movie is a light comedy that explores how sisters, party girl Maggie and plain, dependable Rose,
affect each other’s self-images. Both struggle with their ideal self and their ought self as they mature
5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Miramax Films, 2008)
This is the story Bruno, the son of a German SS commander who lives a wealthy lifestyle in prewar
Germany. Bruno’s father is assigned to take command of a prison camp, and the family relocates.
Bruno befriends another youth, strangely dressed in striped pajamas, named Shmuel, who lives
behind an electrified fence. This is a touching portrayal of how we perceive others and form
impressions.