Just the other day after church, I went to meet my friend. I had written two new songs and I wanted his comments and critique. After playing them to him, he said that he really liked the chords I was using. However when i asked him if the lyrics were good, he said that he did not really pay attention to them. As a guitarist himself, he had unconsciously ended up paying more attention to the chord progression and riffs that I was using on the guitar than on the words I was singing.
This prompted me to think of the theories of perception and selection. When a message or stimulus is presented to us, we tend to select information based on our previous experiences and who we are as a person. My friend as a guitarist, automatically and unconsciously picked out the guitar parts and that influenced his perception on how good or bad the song was.
I was reminded as well of this advertisement that was on TV some time back. There was a tennis coach teaching a boy hopeless at tennis. When the coach gave the bad news to the proud father, he father ended up hearing only the 'good stuff'.
His pride as the father caused him to perceive a negative judgement of his son, as good. Although the advertisement was an exaggeration in order to bring in humor, we can see how as humans we tend to base our perceptions on who we are.
That being said, as communicators, some times we have to think about who our audience are, and how our messages will relate to them. Only when we tailor our messages accordingly can we communicate well and make sure our message is received.
The Study of Semiotics
16 years ago
11 comments:
that advertisment is olddddddddddddddddddddddddddd!!
tsk, you sing for your friend but you never sing for me :(
Logical and precise comments you have. Being a guitarist, he unconsciously takes notes of the chords and rifts because thats the required know-hows of a guitarist. I would suppose i can relate that to sports, if you're an offensive player, you tend to take note of a player's offensive abilities to judge if they had a good game or not, vice versa for defensive a defensive player.I believe we tend to be selective on the stimuli that we can relate to in our lives. Get my drift?
Well if its old..shows how good it was that I still remembered =)
we all come from different backgrounds, cultures and were brought up differently. with that in mind, different messages will appeal differently to us, since the way we perceive them will be different.
to add on to your post, i think that in order to have a successful ad, much market research has to be done as well, in order to cater correctly to the local audience.
yeah i remember this ad, there were a few other similar one right?
i find it disheartening, but how the dad only hears the good things is a reflection of many of us.
many a times we are given constructive feedback on how to improve ourselves, but our ego and pride chooses to only listen to what we want to. so, this ad may have a deeper meaning to it, poking fun at our own demise.
Hi Darren,
Well, I reckon it's just the pride of how people work. We only want to be praise and continue wearing our rose tinted glasses. But then again, listening to too much flattery can cause the downfall of anyone. Think Julius Caesar who lost his life due to too much flattery by the conspirators. I think without criticism people can never improve. However there again, it's just my own views and perception of things.
Nice!
Your guitarist friend is interpreting the stimuli he receives using cognitive schemata. He must be unaware of it and shocked if you told him about it.
I agree that some parents see their children as almost perfect and totally ignores criticisms from other people. Eg. parents with severely obesed children do not think that they are fat at all, instead they find their children 'chubby and cute'! That is really bad! But yes, this is one of the phenomenons that involves perceptual biasness.
I completely agree.
Remember Nina's ESL407 class, when she highlighted the importance of keeping your target audience in mind. I do feel thats of utmost importance in all forms of communication, and not only in writing.
But meh. Perhaps your friend was just too WOW-ed with your guitar skills. =)
Regads,
Shawn Lee Wei Bin
Darren, you perceived that your friend was not concerned about your singing. In reality, he was simply AWED into respectful silence by your superb guitar skills!!!
Ok jokes aside, I have always thought that people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, learn what they want to learn, etc.
In this case, your friend loves the guitar. Therefore, he only pays attention to the notes of the chords and rifts as that is his interest.
Thus, there is always a chance that the other party might misinterpret your words and actions. I think your video showcases that extremely well.
Of course, as some of you stated, this selection of information is bad. It may end up in omission, distortion or oversimplification. This does nothing except hide the facts and may lead to misunderstanding.
This is somewhat like a communication's version of a self fulfilling prophecy.
For example, a racist person will only hear bad comments about the race his biased against and disregard the positive feedback. This will result in him to reaffirming his notion that that particular race is bad, and repeat the cycle.
what can we do about this?
I think we always like to see and hear things that validate our identities.
It extends beyond just how we interpret other people's critiques of us, to how we construct our social identities by the choices we make.
For example, I hang out with the people who act a certain way because I want to reinforce my identity as a fun-loving, funny kinda person.
And the problem with that is not being secure with one's identity, it's being too caught up with one's identity to be closed to all other possibilities and possibly conflicting identities as well.
Which, I think, is the root of prejudice--it's when you become too caught up with your world view because of your processes of selection and perception that you cannot accord equal importance to any other person's world view.
Michelle =]
True enough, sometimes we perceieve things the way we want to. Subconcious it may be, but thats just hman nature.
That example you gave with your friend, he payed attention to something which related to him. But for you lyrics played a more important role, whereas for your friend it wasn't the case as the tune was something he'd sub conciously look out for.
As you highlighted how our past experiences mould our future interpretations, youre absolutely spot on. I have had a few cases of perception bias myself.
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