For this blog post I wanted to write about biases in communication. I think that this is important in regards to approaching communication effectively. We’ve discussed that people may take someone’s intention wrong when encoding a message but why is this? There a many different errors and noise that can interfere but the one that I find most interesting is understanding that every single person, regardless of who they are has built in biases. We have all different experiences and learned beliefs, which inform how we think. I believe that recognizing our own biases is important for any type of communication but especially in a global world where people’s thought processes may be entirely different from our own.
I recently took a course that emphasized the importance of understanding common biases. One thing that I found applicable is that we use our intuition of past experiences to inform our current experience (Bazerman & Moore, 2013). This means that we tend to implement past successful communication techniques and apply it to our current communication (Bazerman & Moore, 2013). Although this can be helpful when communicating globally we can’t make the assumption that the way we successfully speak to one person will be applicable to another. We also need to recognize the differences within groups to eliminate our bias that all people in a particular group can be similarly communicated with.
Penn State (n.d.) also presented a compelling example of biases due to egocentrism. Egocentrism deals with the fact that almost everything we do is somewhat self-serving (Penn State, n.d.). We are unwilling to take on other people’s perspectives and can only see things through our own lens. I’m curious if this is due to a lack of learned empathy. I believe that in order to eliminate our biases and be effective global communicators we need to move from an egocentric way of thinking and utilize more empathy. By having diverse communication we open ourselves up to expanded creativity and decision making but in order for it to be effective we must let go of egocentrism and challenge ourselves to eliminate biases and accept different perspectives.
It is necessary to note that there are multiple different biases that can cause errors in communication. Rettig (2017) explains that familiarity, confirmation and selective perception bias are three different biases that affect cross cultural communication. The familiarity bias means that in communication we constantly look for the things that we recognize. Therefore the “noise” that we experience when encoding can be due to glossing over new perspectives we are not familiar with. Confirmation bias is one of the most dangerous because unconsciously we look for things that confirm our opinions towards an entire group of people. In global communication this is especially important to stay away from. We need to approach everything with an open mind. Finally, the selective perception bias which makes us ignore anything that causes us discomfort or challenges the way we think (Rettig, 2017).
We are entering a time where global communication is necessary for growth. We are now more connected than ever. This is extremely positive as long as we are able to get rid of our egocentrism and biases. It is important that as we are encoding information we can take a step back and examine where our biases may be leading us.
References:
Bazerman, M. H. & Moore, D.A. (2013). Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. (Ith ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Penn State (n.d.). Errors in Communication. Retrieved September 18th 2019 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026965.
Rettig, T. (2017). 3 Cognitive Biases That Affect Your Intercultural Communication Skills. Retrieved September 19th, 2019 from https://medium.com/@rettigtim/3-cognitive-biases-that-affect-your-intercultural-communication-skills-532908fc3704.
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