3) Pick one concept from the assigned reading that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.
I found elements of a psychological model to be really interesting. Part of the reason is that we use this model on daily basis and trying to perfect it is a life-long process.
I send out an encoded message that travels along a channel, its medium of transmission, until it reaches its destination. Upon receiving the message, my friend then decodes it and decides how he will reply. The fascinating part about this model is that the messages that are being transmitted back and forth travel through mental sets. A mental set is person's beliefs, values and morals, thus is the reason we often have mis-understandings in real-life.
The example that the book gave was really funny, yet very insightful. Professor Smith is trying very hard to give an intelligent lecture that sometimes does seem filled with noise distractions. He struggles to find a medium, meaning he wants all of his students to be excited by the lecture and understand it, but so far only the prepared students understand the words, while the less-prepared pupils are cruising along and the words fly over their heads.
Like most of us, sometimes we succeed in getting our point across and sometimes no matter how hard we try to make what we say perfectly understandable, the other person is not able to decode it.
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First of all, I would like to thank you for your comments regarding my third post.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with what you said about the psychological model to be interesting due to the fact that we humans use this model on a daily basis and try to perfect it as a long-life process.
According to Sarah Trenholm, “In a psychological model, messages are filtered through an individual’s store of beliefs, attitudes, values, and emotions” (Trenhom 2008, pg. 26). I think this may be due to the fact that we as individuals constantly believe we have to look intelligent, have an attitude of appearing to be knowledgeable about all subjects and keep a façade profile of their values and emotions. By this I mean, some people who do not have a clue about who they are as an individual will not be in touch with their values or emotions. It is just the way it is in the American society.
Hi Siral,
ReplyDeleteHow messages are send, the medium which is used and reaching the destination is very interesting and important to studying communications. The problem is that sometimes our messages are not sent and received as smoothly as we would have liked.
Noise is often a huge problem, as the book shows. In Professor Smith’s case it is extra hard to find a way to make it exciting for some students without getting other students lost.
Decoding messages is also often a problem with communications. Our cultural backgrounds often makes us interpret our messages differently. This means we might not interpret the message the same way as the sender intended it to be.
Keep up the fabulous posts!
ImaginePeace
Hello Siral! You brought up the Psychological Perspective here. Why specifically do you think misunderstandings happen, as you have observed? And, can a person really understand what another is saying to its fullest extent? Why or why not?
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