Perceptions

Have you thought of someone’s culture as weird? Have you thought that you are completely different from them? If so, what prompts us to make that assumption. Culture is a very good reason for this. So, to what extent does one’s culture inform the way one views others and the world? Culture informs a person on the way others are and the world.

The harmony of the existing cultures is crucial for the survival and success of any communication and ignoring these aspects may challenge the communication. For example, speaking to employees in Middle East is quite different from Switzerland; talking about personal things is acceptable by Swiss. Individuals who move to other countries unprepared for cultural differences may face unpleasant frustration when communicating. However, those who try to learn other cultures are likely to avoid individual tragedies. For example, Americans doing business in Mexico need to learn the local language to enhance interactions with the locals.

Learning the verbal and nonverbal way that people communicate in one’s environment is the key to one’s success. When one faces the challenges that the opposite sex can present to each other, and learn to communicate effectively with one another one can begin to see the world from a different perspective. This different perspective can oftentimes be a better way of viewing things then the same old way that has always been used. In the same respect gaining an appreciation and understanding of the way other cultures communicate can give one another tool to use when tackling problems. Sometimes good old American ingenuity might not be the answer. Being able to understand another culture may bring in fresh ideas that have

Different social, professional and cultural contexts may affect relationships and the way people communicate due to of a lack of understanding or knowledge of one another’s background and culture. This could be through their race, religion, ethnicity or where they come from. Each one of these can have similar or very different ways to communicate. For example

These senses are the avenues by which the stimuli around us can be absorbed and translated into our perception. However, certain characteristics of sense perception as a basis for attaining knowledge about our reality can raise problems. This is because it is subjective and relative; it varies with condition and can be external to the object perceived.

The World of Perception is a book that relates how individuals distinguish the world in association to the self, others, and society. Written by Merleau Ponty, the World of Perception contradicts the classic understandings of society and engages the various abstractions of the world. Perception shows how people observe the world and what is within it. Perception is how one may sense one thing in the world, while another person may sense something else. Perception is an important concept because it is the basis of how humans view themselves and the world around them. For self-understanding, human understanding, and the understanding of society, perception plays a key role in how one understands the world. In the film Wild, originally a

Perception is one of the many things wrong with society. Not one individual has a rounded perception of everything like someone else. People tend to perceive me differently than how I perceive myself. When people think of me they think outgoing, friendly, and an athlete and when I think of myself I think of my ability to always look at the brightside of a situation, and my athletic ability. In my personal opinion I see myself the same as others see me through their eyes, but no one is completely perceived correctly.

We receive information through our senses – the stimulation of the sensory receptors and sensory nerves. However, our response and relationship to the information that we are sensing is the act of perceiving – how we accept, reject, adapt, filter and use the information. As Cohen (2008) notes, “We all have sense organs which are similar, but our perceptions are totally unique.” Perception is about relating and reacting to what we are sensing – to ourselves, others and the environment. What we perceive may be influenced by our previous experiences and therefore, we draw on those experiences and we anticipate. As Brodie and Lobel (2012) describes it, “The focus of our perception is on the individual experience; how we feel in contrast with how others perceive us or how we think we are perceived.”

Culture is hard to define, almost impossible to delineate. The interactions of different cultures, then, are complicated and difficult to characterize. This is especially

Culture is defined as the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another (Staff, 2015). Culture effects the way a person perceives, communicates and behaves in the world, what is “socially” acceptable in one culture is not necessarily acceptable in another. Common language, gestures and signals are used to communicate within each culture and are therefore an extension of culture and how you speak is effected by what you were taught and how you view the world. Communicating is a give and take process and it is an experience that you share with someone.

Cultural identities and our personalities affect our perceptions. There’s a tendency to favor others who exhibit cultural or personality traits that match up with our own. Effective communication with people of different cultures can be especially challenging. Intercultural communication occurs when a member from one culture produces a message that absorbed by a member of another culture. As stated by (Jandt, 2015), “human perception is usually thought of as a three-step process of selection, organization, and interpretation, each of these steps is affected by culture. The first step in the perception process is the selection. Within your substantial limitation, you are exposed to more stimuli than you could manage. The second step in the perception process is organization. Along with selecting stimuli from the environment, you must organize them in some meaningful way. The third step in the perception process is interpretation. This refers to attaching meaning to sense data and is synonymous with decoding”.

The four barriers to accurate perception of self and others is physiology, culture, social roles, and cognitive ability. Physiology someone mental state affects their perception of a situation. Culture in some sense you can agree that its the way you was brought up and how people around you did things, you tend to do things you see others around you doing. Social Roles are related to culture but its mostly being able to live up to something, setting goals or doing what you think people expect you to do. Cognitive Ability is basically your strong suit or what your best at

Our society is comprised of groups of people who view and act on life situations either in a collective or an individual perspective. These orientations are established in the different cultures of the world, and therefore, one acquires the characteristics as he or she grows up (Brewer & Chen, 2007). We are more likely to avoid cross-cultural miscommunication by understanding the differences in school performance, dating and marriage, and our definition of happiness.

People perceive the same situation in their own ways. We learn from the flow of information through our five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. However, each of us receives, organises and interprets the received sensory information in an individual way using short and long term memory as part of the process. ¡§Perception is the process by which people select, organize and interpret information to form a meaningful, whole picture of the world. It is influenced by selective exposure, selective distortion, and selective retention.¡¨ (Kotler, Brown, Adam & Armstrong, 2004)

Culture is not something you’re born with, like blue eyes or black hair; culture is something you learn through communication (O 'Hair & Wiemann, pg.67, 2011). Culture also includes your continued way of thinking, feeling and behaving. Just as we learn culture through communication, we also use communication to express our culture (O 'Hair & Wiemann, pg.68, 2011). As a child I observed all of my mother’s behaviors. From observing my mother I quickly learned three things respect, independence and honesty. Many say I am very independent just as my mother is. Within cultures, there are co-cultures. Co-cultures are groups whose members share at least some of the general culture’s system of thought and behavior, but which have distinct characteristics or group attitudes that both unify them and distinguish them from the general culture. Some co-cultures are defined by interest, activities, opinions, or by membership in particular organizations (O 'Hair & Wiemann, pg.80, 2011).