Page 157 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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Psychology and Communication | 145

beliefs become the gateways or entry points into the central value system.
Next is the use of the trigger stimuli to carry the preferred messages. These
triggers activate needs and interests and open the door to the central value
system of the students. Triggers stimulate our signal behaviour.
Signal behaviour means responding without thought - a witty remark
by the teacher, an impressive audio-visual aid, and an interesting anecdote
can act as stimulus in classroom interaction. Semantics define signal behav-
iour as immediate, automatic, and uncritical responses, which are followed
by symbolic behaviour, which is a more critical response and marked by
more self-awareness. The learner, therefore, internalizes the messages and
interprets it. Once the pathway has been established and learned, the later
occurs easily.
The next stage leads to metaphors. Metaphor puts beliefs, attitudes,
values, people, activities, scene, etc. side by side with the communicated
content, and converts this contiguity into meaningful relationship. For
example, a teacher may start an unfamiliar lesson with a familiar experi-
ence. In tying the unfamiliar to the familiar, metaphor exploits similarity
and differences simultaneously, that leads to relationship. Here the teacher
makes imaginative transportation from the plane of feeling to the plane of
comprehension. He or she, thus, stresses the similarity between the planes
and minimizes the differences.
Another important aspect of psychology of communication is its rela-
tion to needs and personality of the learner. Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy of
needs indicates that all people have motives and drives that influence their
susceptibility to learning from messages. This staircase of needs includes
physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization factors. At the bot-
tom of the staircase are the needs that are physiological and related to safety
and love. The individual must find a way to satisfy these needs before the
higher-level needs assume any real importance. A starving man will think
only about food, a homeless man of shelter, giving little though to matters
of esteem or self-actualization. In institutes of learning, the appeal must be
made to the self-actualizing needs of the learners. They offer the challenge to
the learners to ‘become all that you are capable of being’. Successful commu-
nication in classroom interaction implies that the teachers know the learners’
position on the staircase of need.
We have examined here the influence of beliefs, attitudes, and values
on students. We have also discussed the impact of needs and personality
on how people receive messages. The communicator who wants to impart
knowledge or information, change or reinforce attitude or more people to
action must consider these variables. Each individual does not hear the same
messages. Nor does everyone have the same motivation or incentive to act
on the messages. A keen understanding of students’ psychology lies at the
heart of effective communication.

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