What I have noticed throughout my life (which isn't long, only a whopping 18 years)! However, I have noticed that a big problem in our world today is miscommunication. Miscommunication is when the listener or reader fails to understand what is said or written. As much as I hate to say it I do believe the primary source of miscommunication is through texting. I'm guilty of this myself as I'm sure everyone else is. It’s hard not to misunderstand something in a text. Sometimes people don't know: Is this person joking? Are they being serious? It’s so hard to fully understand someone's tone of voice over a text message. This leads me to perception and the difference in how people perceive things.
Perception is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through senses. The thing about perception though is that things are always perceived differently by different people. Because people perceive things differently it results in miscommunication between groups of people whether they are family members, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. Miscommunication can be annoying for all involved. I don't believe miscommunication is something intentional on anyone's part. I feel that people honestly perceive everything in their own different way. Almost all of the time people will perceive things differently, even if it's something as simple as two people standing next to each other looking into a room. Chances are the two people will notice two different things in that room. The way people perceive things differently when it comes to just about everything simply boggles my mind.
Sometimes a person will say something such as “I’ll see you later," and they are just using it as a phrase to say goodbye, as most people do. But for people who don't say this, they may think the person actually meant they would see them later and are expecting to make plans. This is just one of many examples of different perceptions by different people.
People perceiving things differently happens all over the world, every day, thousands of times a day, to thousands of people. A lot of times people are said to perceive things in different ways because they see what they want to see. They have different beliefs. They are focusing on their own thoughts or their own fears, or they are perceiving based on how they were raised and their morals. It is my belief that people perceive things differently from one another because of the way they were brought up, their customs, beliefs, morals and more. It is often more common for two people who are around each other often to perceive something more similarly than it would be for two people who have never had any contact at all. I think the psychology of perception and how people can interrupt things differently based on their experiences and norms can cause a lot of problems and miscommunication for people, but I do think it is truly fascinating how two people can look at the same thing so differently.
Sheetal Tadiparty
Flickr Creative Commons
