Page 63 - Essentials of Human Communication

42 CHapTer 2 Perception of Self and Others

● ask. Learn about a person through asking others. You might inquire of a
colleague if a third person finds you interesting and might like to have
dinner with you.
● Interact. Interacting with the individual will of course give you consider-
able information. For example, you can ask questions: “Do you enjoy
sports?” “What would you do if you got fired?” You also gain knowledge
of another by disclosing information about yourself. These disclosures
help to create an environment that encourages disclosures from the per-
son about whom you wish to learn more.

Increase Cultural Sensitivity Recognizing and being sensitive to
cultural differences will help increase your accuracy in perception. For ex-
ample, Russian or Chinese artists, such as ballet dancers, will often applaud
their audience by clapping. Americans seeing this may easily interpret it as
egotistical. Similarly, a German man will enter a restaurant before a
woman in order to see if the place is respectable enough for the woman to
enter. This simple custom can easily be interpreted as rude by people from
cultures in which it’s considered courteous for the woman to enter first
(Axtell, 2007).
Cultural sensitivity will help counteract the difficulty many people have
in understanding the nonverbal messages of people from other cultures. For
example, it’s easier to interpret the facial expressions of members of your
own culture than those of another culture (Weathers, Frank, & Spell, 2002).
VIewpOIntS This “in-group advantage” will assist your perceptional accuracy for mem-
predictability and uncertainty bers of your own culture but will often hinder your accuracy for members
As you and another person develop a closer and more of other cultures (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002).
intimate relationship, you generally reduce your uncer- Within every cultural group there are wide and important differences.
tainty about each other; you become more predictable As all Americans are not alike, neither are all Indonesians, Greeks, or Mexicans.
to each other. What level of predictability do you want in When you make assumptions that all people of a certain culture are alike,
a romantic partner? Are there certain things about your you’re thinking in stereotypes. Recognizing differences between another
partner (best friend, lover, or family member) that you’d culture and your own, and among members of the same culture, will help
simply rather not know? you perceive people and situations more accurately.

Objectives Self-Check
● Can you describe the nature of impression formation and the factors that influence perception:
self-fulfilling prophecy, perceptual accentuation, primary-recency, and the attribution of control?
● Can you apply the skills for increasing your accuracy in impression formation?

Impression management: Goals and Strategies

Impression management (some writers use the term self-presentation or identity
Communication management) refers to the processes you go through to communicate the impres-
Choice point sion you want other people to have of you.
Mutual Attraction Impression management is largely the result of the messages communicated.
testing In the same way that you form impressions of others largely on the basis of how
You’ve become attracted to they communicate, verbally and nonverbally, they also form impressions of you
another student in your class but don’t based on what you say (your verbal messages) and how you act and dress (your
know if it’s mutual. In what ways might you nonverbal messages). Communication messages, however, are not the only means
use the suggestions discussed here for increas- for impression formation and management. For example, you also communicate
ing your own accuracy in perceiving whether
or not the attraction is mutual? your self-image and judge others by the people with whom they associate; if you
associate with VIPs, then surely you must be a VIP yourself, the conventional