Discovering our realities

How we use the perception process to create realities about people, events, and things in our

environment.

What is commonly called “reality” is created in the mind. Reality is not what is “real,” it’s what we think is real.

What is reality?

All disagreements between human beings occur as a result of differing realities generated from the same environment.

The perception process – the method we use to create our reality

from our environment.

1. Select data from the environment We use five senses (sight, smell, hearing, feeling, taste). 2. Organize and prioritize the information

Organization is based on our experiences. They are unique.3. Interpreting the data

We search our memory and assign meaning to the data based on its similarity to our previous experiences.

3 steps in the perception process:

Psychological condition affects HOW we recognize incoming data(if we are in love even a rainy day might look good to us)

Selecting and sorting filters

Physical condition can affect WHAT data we recognize(include sense, age, health, hunger)

Language allows us to understand messages from the environment

Selecting and sorting filters

Formal learning shapes how we view our environment

Experiences are our first hand learning activities

Expectations are perceptions that we expect to conform to what we already believe the actual event is. Influenced by: culture, social roles, gender roles.

Selecting and sorting filters

Closure is the mind’s imperative to make sense out of its environment, even when only a limited amount of data is available.

Selective perception takes place when we use only some of the cognitions to interpret the environment.

Pattering is the attempt to keep new perception in line with past ones.

Factors that influence how we interpret data

Our perception does not necessarily represent the one and only reality of the topic under discussion.

Reality testing

One goal of the argumentative process is to narrow the differences in perceptions between individuals.

Sharing and comparing our realities with those of others can help reduce distortions and differences among the many realities you have created.

Reality testing

Empathic listening – employs empathy as the basis for understanding the positions of others.

Total empathy is impossible to achieve. The objective of empathic listening is understanding.

Deliberative listening – an attempt to make definite, deliberate attempt to hear information, analyze it, draw conclusion from it, and recall it at a later time.

This type is appropriate when the goal of listening is to gather information.

Better listening skills

Is the absence of change in one or more of our realities for some extended period of time.

While experiencing stasis, we feel physically and emotionally content.

Stasis can be referred to as a person’s personal comfort zone.

Stasis=“at rest”

Communicating Critical Thinking by Jack Sterk and Jim Marteney

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