Mixed messages

In chapter 6 Nonverbal communication, I thought that it was interesting to see nonverbal communication serve many functions. Contradicting and deceiving fall under these categories. When people are expressing messages verbally and nonverbally, the two can be opposite and contradict each other. This happens when there are mixed messages which everyone will face this. When we get older we display these messages more often. Sometimes I can tell when someone needs help with something because they display non verbal messages of struggle and pain, I try to help. Once I try doing this they say “oh I can do this myself”, or “i don’t need help”, when obviously they are displaying that they are struggling. This gives me a mixed signal and it frustrates me because I don’t know what they want. When people give off deceiving messages they are called leakage. I find this very interesting because it can be very inconsistent. I thought it was interesting to see that experiments found that a liars voice tends to be higher than a truth tellers because there is less thinking involved in truth tellers. One thing I have found from personal experience with my friends is they won’t make eye contact when they are lying. Also when they fidget or so a lot of pauses I can tell they are lying.

Five Elements

In chapter seven listening: more than meets the eye, I thought elements in the listening process were very insightful. There are five elements that make up listening. The elements are hearing, attending, understanding, responding, and remembering. I never realized that are so many components to listening. There are many factors that influence our hearing such as background noises, fatigue, and loss of hearing. Background noises affect my hearing the most because it’s hard for me to focus on other things besides that. Attending is another important part of listening. If we were to attend every sound then we would go crazy because of all the sounds that are constantly going on. This is important to do when listening to a friend because you have to turn off all the sounds around you. Understanding and making sense of all the messages is important for listening too. If you don’t do this then it’s hard to figure out the conversation you are listening to. I personally feel that responding is the most effective way to listening. This helps fully understanding messages because you are interacting in the conversation. I feel like you look like a good listener if you do this. Remembering is key to listening, because it is good to recall what you just heard, if you can’t remember then it makes it hard to listen.

Appearance

In chapter 6 nonverbal communication, it discussed that appearance is a form of nonverbal communication. Two of the dimensions of appearance are physical attractiveness and clothing. It was interesting to see that scientists actually did research on this. The women who are more attractive get better grades in college, get more dates, and persuade men easier. Many girls that I know who are attractive do hold these positive attributes. When I see someone who is ugly or unattractive I sometimes think they are lazy, dirty, anti social, and I tend to have a hard time holding a strong conversation with them. When I get to know them, then it’s a different story. But when we are sending nonverbal messages, I pick up more negative things then positive things. Clothing has a big effect on non verbal messages, whenever I see someone wearing a gothic outfit like a slipknot t-shirt, I automatically assume they are devil worshipers, and they are scary! I don’t know why but I always have thought this way. I need to learn that clothing doesn’t mean that and I should try to get to know them after I see the clothing and then I will judge them for who they are.

Nonverbal Messages

In chapter 6 it mainly focuses on nonverbal communication. One thing I want to focus on is the different types of nonverbal communication. Things like gestures, body movement, posture, face and eyes are elements of nonverbal communication. When I am speaking with someone and they’re reacting with these types of nonverbal messages, I generally make my own assumption on what they mean. This can be very deceiving because they might not mean to make a certain facial expression. Also people perceive them differently. For example, if I was talking to them and facial expression was smiling. They could perceive that I am laughing at them or not taking the conversation seriously, when really I am just agreeing with them with smiling. Sometimes when people aren’t making eye contact with me I start feeling flustered. This can affect my communication with that person because it’s very distracting. One thing I think I can do is to be aware of these nonverbal messages. Also one thing I think would help is talking to the people that know me the best like my family and friends and ask them which type of nonverbal messages to I portray. This will be a good way to change because there things I am not aware of. I believe that everyone should do this because there is always room for improvement.

Opinions/facts when communicating

In chapter five language barrier and bridge, I thought disruptive language was a very interesting topic. I believe that fact –opinion confusion- happens all the time whether we mean to or now. When people state facts in conversations then it can be verifies as true or false. When opinions happen in conversation they tend to be unnecessary arguments. Like myself I am a very opinionated person and I can get myself into unnecessary arguments with people. I feel like my opinion matters and I try to take control of the conversation. I need to learn to find the facts before stating my opinion. It’s not a bad thing to have an opinion about something, but having facts will help back up my opinion. When you are communicating with someone, one things that I realized was using the word I. When I am stating my opinion, using I before my opinion helps take responsibility for my thoughts and opinions. The problem I was having before was using the word it when stating my own opinions. This is a problem because it doesn’t show ownership when communicating. For example when I say it was nice hanging out with you tonight doesn’t show ownership. On the other hand when I say I enjoyed the time we spent together sounds more personable.

Emotions

In chapter four I read about what emotions are. It is hard to say what emotions are because it’s a feeling and it’s hard to put into words. In the book it explains there are several different components to feelings. I personally think that I am very in touch with my feeling and emotions because I have been through a lot of crazy situations. I think the hardest part about emotions is explaining how you are feeling when you are experiencing certain emotions. I am very good at understanding what type of emotion it is when I am feeling it. Sometimes when I get so angry I start to cry because I don’t know what else I can do with my anger. Anger is the most effective emotion because it has so many components. Sometimes when there are too many things going on at once in my life, I have an emotional roller coaster. I feel different emotions back to back and sometimes it confuses people around me who are witnessing it. Emotions play a huge part in my actions for example, if I am in a bad mood and I am tired, angry, and annoyed I will communicate differently and my actions will be irregular.

Stereotying

In chapter 3 I read about stereotyping. Many of my friends do this quite a bit and even though I think its mean I am guilty of it also. Many times when you first meet someone we tend to be very stereotypical because as humans we are very assumptive. It’s very hard not to stereotype somebody because you constantly are evaluating people. This can be very deceiving because it affects they way you act towards them and definitely how you communicate with them. There is a lot of stereotyping that happens between genders in the media, school, and even at home. Some is very unnoticeable because we are so used to it because it’s so common. In a way I view stereotyping to be almost sexist. When I was in middle school I played football with the boys. Many peoples first reaction was “Girls are too weak to play” or “She will get hurt because she won’t know what she is doing.” Since people are so used to seeing guys play football they automatically stereotyped me because it was not the norm. The main reason why people stereotype is because they are not used to a situation or they have been told that this is how things have to be.