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8: Social Perception

  • Page ID
    184655
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    In looking at the basics of communication theory, we know humans live in a stimulus-thought-response world. We do not experience the world directly. We sense and then think about external experiences. Our senses are stimulated by things we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell, and then our brains sort through our accumulated store of knowledge to determine what it is. As a result, our perception of what we have seen/heard/touched/tasted/smelled is our interpretation of events. We respond to the interpretation of the events, not to the stimuli directly. Understanding this process of abstraction, of converting reality into thought, aids us in managing communication more effectively.


    This page titled 8: Social Perception is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Keith Green, Ruth Fairchild, Bev Knudsen, & Darcy Lease-Gubrud (Minnesota State Colleges and Universities) .