Page 94 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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theory (Festinger 1957), which suggests that individuals should keep the
psychological world balanced; ideas that do not fit in with one’s belief system
cause a psychologically unbalanced state, which motivate an individual to
correct the imbalance by whatever means he can. For example,, most people
do not read ‘x’ ideas not because they do not read any books at all. It is rather
because ‘x’ ideas would necessarily cause their discomfort.

Perception
Perception is the process by which we become aware of objects and events
in the external world through our various senses—sight, smell, taste, touch,
and hearing. Perception is an active rather than a passive process. Out per-
ceptions is only in part functions of the outside world in large measure. They
are a function of our own past experiences, desires, our needs and wants, our
causes of love and hate. Therefore, each perception is the beneficiary of all
previous perceptions, and in turn, each new perception leaves its mark on
the common pool. A percept is, thus, a link between the past which gives it
its meaning and the future which it helps to interpret. In communication we
are particularly concerned with that area of perception and the judgments
we make about them.
To understand Perception there are three principles or rules that
perceptual process follows. They are: subjectivity, stability and, meaningful-
ness. Perception is active and perceived as some structured whole. Stability
or invariance focuses on an object. The meaningfulness lies in viewing a film
of a dream scene, that is, at the time of viewing without any meaning.
• Perceptual processes: Interpersonal perception is an extremely com-
plex affair. Perhaps the best way to explain some of these complexities
is to examine at least some of the psychological processes involved in
people’s perceptions.
• Psychological processes: Primary recency, self-fulfilling prophecy,
perceptual accentuation, implicit personality theory, consistency, and
stereotyping.
• Primacy recency: In a class half the students are dull and other half
are extremely exciting. At the end of the semester if the results are
evaluated it would be found that what portions were taught ear-
lier had been remembered best by some students while others had
remembered what had been taught the last. In the former case it is
called the primacy effect and when what had come later had the most
influence it was called the recency effect. The principle here is that we
utilize early information to provide us with a general idea as to what
the subject is like and we utilize the later information to make this
general idea or impression more specific.

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