SUBMITTED TO: DR.

ABDUL BASIT

Name:Riasat Qayyum
314040

Reg No.:- 1452Assignment No. 2

Psychological barriers to communication.

PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS

These barriers are categorized in the way which effects the communicationpsychologically. In
other words the psychological barriers effects thecommunication in three ways.
Emotionally.
Perceptually.
Selectivity.
Now we will discuss the given three psychological barriers.
i) Emotional Barriers:
As we know that emotions directly effects the communication. In other words thesuccess and
failure of the communication also depends upon the emotions of acommunicator. The more the
emotions of a communicator are devoted to thecommunication, the more the more the
communication would be effective andhelps in achieving the goal for the specific purpose.This
rule does not only applies on the communicator, but the on theaudience aswell. It depends on
the audiences response to the communication. If the emotions of the audience are attached
with the communicator thecommunication would be successful but it goes fail in the in the
opposite case. Itspsychology of a man that for effective communication the two individuals
must beemotionally attached, if this is not so, the communication will be ineffective so if itthere
is one way communication or the communication between two or more thantwo individuals,
emotional attachment must be there to make the communicationeffective. Now we will have
some of the examples of emotional psychologicalbarriers.Lets take an example of a political
gathering, a politician standing and deliveringhis speech to the audience who support his party,
now among those people there must be some people of the other political party, the people of
his own partywould be at high morale during his speech and become hyper at his each
word,this is because they are emotionally attached to that leader, but the other handthe people of
his opposing party does not give a deaf ear to his words and takethem as a drama, so the
communication to those people goes ineffectivebetween them while it will be effective between
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him and his party followers. Nowlets take an example of two brothers Ali and Abbas. Ali is
elder than Abbas. Aliforbade Abbas to meet his bad friends.
Emotions
Now there are two ways of saying so to his brother the one is the polite way andthe other is the
harsh way. Now it depends on the emotional understanding of those two brothers that which
way would be accepted by Ali. But the way heaccept the orders of his elder brother is the
effective way of their communication. And there would be no emotional barrier among them
and thecommunication will be successful but in the other case if Abbas does not bearsthe
strictness of Ali he will refuse his orders and will continue with his doings, soin this way there is
a barrier in communication between them. These were someof the examples of emotional
psychological barriers. So there should be somesteps taken to avoid these barriers in
communication.

ii) Perceptual Barriers:

These are the second type of psychological barriers. As people have differentand complex
personalities and they belongs to different backgrounds, therefore,they perceive things
differently according to their own point of view which causeshurdles in the way of
communication sometimes the communication goes fail dueto these miss perceptions. There
are further three cases of failure of communication due to wrong perception. It also depends
upon the frame of reference of ones mind which basically controls the perception of an
individual.
(The perceptual process)

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Infirst case, people perceive thinks differently sometimes they think totallyopposite to the thing
which is being under discussion or being delivered to them.Lets take an example of two friends
discussing a matter on patriotism for their country, the one says our country should be disputed
by America so that therewould be some betterment in education, laws and jobs etc. on the other
hand theother friend taking it wrong and says you are a rebel, so this is the way thesecond
friend assumed according to his perception which goes wrong and thediscussion ends without
any conclusion due to the miss perception of the secondfriend, which is a psychological barrier
existed between them hence the secondcase of perceptual barrier takes place and the
communication fails.
Insecond and third casespeople sometimes fill in the information withoutchecking accuracy, for
example, I am writing this article there might be somepoints which I couldnt understood
exactly as they were taught to me but I am stillfilling in the information according to my own
experience, this is what I perceivefrom the lecture delivered to me in the class. Hence
perceptual barriers are dueto the different ideas and concept of people which they acquired from
their livesand experiences, so there should not be any wrong perception for achieving thegoal of
communication.

Example:
Here is an example of a complicated sign board which may cause a wrong perception to many
of the travelers driving on the road
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iii) Selectivity:
A final set of psychological barriers exists because of competition for peoplestime and
attention- "The selectivity block". we all are bombarded withinformation. Sources, such as
newspapers, magazines, technical journals,reports, memo, letters, meetings, radio, television,
videotapes, computerprintouts, terminal displays and electronic mail. We simply cannot absorb
allthis information flowing our way, so, we must screen it selectively.One factor in the way
people select is timing. Some messages that may beeffective at one time might be blocked or
even detrimental at another time.For example a letter of congratulation or condolence sent out
immediatelyafter the event is more effective than one sent later. A meeting about
accidentprevention gets more attention if it follows an accident than if it precedes one.A report
turned in late may have a highly negative effect if your supervisor hasbeen anxiously awaiting it
or may have little effect if he is busy with othermatters. A rush typing assignment may affect
your secretary differently at 4:45pm than at 9:30 am

Another selection factor is context. In one research experiment, subjects wereshown two
identical pictures of a rail road train in a station. One captionedparting and the other arriving
on a scale ranging from sad to happy thesubjects tended towards sad for the first and
happy for the second. Thesubjects received the same data but the suggestiveness of the
context- thecaptions influenced the way they perceived the picture. In the business world,you
might be more apt to read an article if it appears in a magazine yourespect or a report if it is
accompanied by a cover memo from your boss.Similarly, you might tend to pay more attention
to a presentation if it is held ina boardroom or a well appointed conference room, or listen more
attentivelyto a sales talk in an elegant restaurant or hotel.One more aspect of selectively, we tend
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to remember the extremes and forgetthe middle ground. Think about comments you may have
gotten from ateacher, a coach or a boss. Most people remember that most positive and themost
negative and forget the neutral or middle ground comments. Therefore,your communication
may be blocked or selected out simply because it doesnot contain startling positive or negative
news.

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