Thursday, June 07, 2007

As a social being, man can’t avoid from interacting with each other. In communicating with each other, man subject to intra-personal communication and interpersonal communication systems. Furthermore, as a psychological being, man don’t only absorb visible things, but they also perceive those visible things with their psychological devices, so that one’s performance is not only understood from visible things of his but also from things that are assumed to be also exist behind those visible things. People in general may tend to judge someone based on his outward appearances as the parameters. In judging someone, educated and civilised people, however, tend to put emphasis on his moral and akhlaq credibilities as the most important parameters among his qualities. They refer to those parameters in any social transaction. One’s akhlaq credibility is a very helpful and powerful factor in negotiating with others in various matters.

A. INTRAPERSONAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
A party’s leader may say to his public that he is a honest person who never lies, but his public will not immediately conclude that he is indeed a honest person, since man isn’t a cassette recorder that record every sound it hears. Instead, any information received by a man is passing three phases: (1) Receiving the stimulus; spoken words are listened and the speaking person is seen. (2) Processing information; words listened are connected with the person uttering it, his present words are connected with his words in previous days, his words are connected with others’ words, and so on, then words of the party’s leader are concluded into an information in accordance with one’s perception. (3) Storing information, what had been concluded into an information is then stored in one’s memory. (4) Providing back the information. When one wants to respond the statement of the party's leader, he has to think about what responses should be given, what possibly will be the implications or impacts and so on. This process gives rise to a new information on the party’s leader. A same message may have different meanings for different persons and responded differently by different persons too.

According to Communication Psychology, the process of receiving information involves Sensing, Perceiving, Memorising, and Thinking:

1. Sensing
Sensing originates from the word “sense” that is the faculty of perceiving that connects man and animals with their environments. In Communication Psychology, sensation is the process of receiving stimuli. When two persons communicate near each other, they can perceive each other physically, seeing body of each other by means of sight, listening each other by means of hearing, smelling perfume used by each other by means of smell, feeling the smoothness of each other’s skin by means of touch. All that perceived by the senses are stimuli. Sometime people can perceive two stimuli at the same time, for example, when you are watching television (external stimulus), another stimulus comes inwardly in form of memory of your parents which are unhealthy in the village and waiting for you to come.
Different sensations of different persons may be caused by different senses’ faculties/capacities and by different experiences and environments. A food tasted very peppery by tongues of Yogya people is probably tasted normal by tongues of Minangese people. On the contrary, words spoken loudly deemed normal by Medan people may sound very disturbing or annoying to the ears of Javanese people.

2. Perceiving
Perceiving is a process of giving meaning to sensation so that one gains new knowledge. Perception is a process of changing sensation into information. When you think you’ve heard someone had said “silat” while in fact he had said “salat”, you are in wrong sensation. When you praise your love, however, by saying “you’re the most beautiful woman in the world”, but your lover feels that she was ridiculed through those words, then your lover are in misperception. Wrong sensation may also cause misperception.

Misperception may happen due to personal, situational, functional, and structural factors. Factors having big impacts on perception among others are attention, functional concept, and structural concept.

2.1 Paying attention
Paying attention is a mental process in which awareness of one stimulus is more dominant and at the same time awareness of other stimuli is weak. For example, when the public attention is focused on what alleged to be corruption done by the present president, attention to the corruption done by other people weakens. Or, when a moviegoer’s attention is focused on a scene on the screen, his attention to other spectators around weakens. Attention has a big impact on perception so that there is a proverb says, “an ant in the middle of the ocean is seen (due to attention), while an elephant in eyelids is unseen (due to no attention). One intending to catch others’ attention should know that attention might come outwardly or inwardly. External factors may psychologically become attention getter usually since the stimulus has a striking nature compared to those of other stimuli. For example, one little moving object may catch one’s attention compared to other big motionless objects around it. Contrariety also may be the cause, for example, a sound louder that other sounds, a light in darkness, a new thing among old ones, or one thing seen or heard repetitively in a long time, so that it becomes familiar to the eyes or the ears.

Furthermore, internal factors influencing attention are biologic and socio-psychological factors. A hungry person is more interested to food, a thirsty person is more interested to beverage, and a husband missing his wife, since his wife is in a distant place, is more interested to women (biological factor). Meanwhile, for example, when a group visited victims of Bengkulu earthquake, it appears that doctors, veterinarians, ulamas, educators, politicians, and entrepreneurs who were members of the group had different interests or focuses in accordance with their own socio-psychological factors.