This summary is organized around the questions found at the beginning of the chapter. See if you can answer them before reading the summary paragraphs.

1. Why is perception important to communication?

Our perceptions form the basis of interpretations about ourselves and others, and we communicate based on those interpretations.

2. What are some factors that influence perception?

Specific factors that influence perception include physical characteristics, such as ability, age, and height, and personality traits. Perception is also affected by the cultural context of interaction.

3. What are the main steps in forming perceptions?

There are three steps in the process of forming perceptions: selecting, organizing, and interpreting. We often do all three simultaneously, and it can be particularly difficult to separate organizing, the placing of stimuli into categories, and interpreting, the process of explaining our perceptions. Environmental cues of salience and vividness help us select some stimuli rather than others. Salience includes novelty, familiarity, and repetition. Vividness consists of intensity, size, figure and ground, and motion. We also select perceptions based on our past experiences, and we tend to maintain perceptions of people and events over time.

We use personal constructs, prototypes, stereotypes, and scripts as ways to define what we see and hear and to organize our perceptions in manageable ways. Some of the most creative thinking occurs when we shift our perceptions, develop new constructs, and adopt new ways to perceive people and events. When we attempt to understand and explain how we have categorized our perceptions, we are engaged in interpretation.

4. What happens when we make attributions?

We rely on attributions to assign meaning to the behavior of others. Attributions are commonly based on how much responsibility we think people have for what they say and do. When explaining our own behaviors, we tend to take credit for actions we're proud of and blame external factors for things we don't like. We often evaluate others based on the degree of control we think they have, and their degrees of physical attractiveness and similarity to us. The attributions we make influence the way we communicate about ourselves and with others.

5. How can managing perceptions contribute to responsible communication?

Perceptions are the basis for decisions about how to communicate appropriately and effectively, because how we perceive people or events will influence our responses to them. The perceptions we have are always important, even if they seem to differ from the perceptions of those around us. Overcoming attributional bias helps us evaluate our perceptions and limit the quick judgments of others that can lead to communication based on unfair stereotypes. Perception checks help us determine the accuracy of perceptions and can communicate respect to others. Finally, perspective taking helps us empathize with others and see things in new ways.