Unit 4 Project
Barbara Harris
Kaplan University
CM206 Interpersonal Communications
November 12, 2012

Questions and Answers

1. Describe your perception of the situation. My perception of the situation is that Toya is going to be a hard person to work with. Her job is done on time and she takes initiative but with her insecurity issues she seems like she would be the type that could not handle criticism well and heads straight into defense mode. I also think that her needing constant praising will hinder everyone’s work because if you don’t praise her for something she is going to assume that she is not liked or did a bad job and then if you do every time she does something you will be taking time out of getting other work done even if only a few minutes- there may be times you don’t have a couple minutes to focus on her. 2. What do you think is the self-concept of Toya? Toya’s self-concept is reflected appraisal which means that a person will determine their self-worth based on what people say about them and need appraisals to feel good about themselves (Woods, 2010). Toya would also suffer from self-fulfilling prophecies which is when a person takes what other people say and it will determine how they perceive themselves like if a parent told you that you are average and slow you would think that about yourself and act that way (Woods, 2010).

3. How is self-concept affecting the interaction? Is it helping it? Hindering it? Explain.

Toya’s self-concept of herself is hindering her interaction because she is so dependent on what others think in order for her to do a good job so that means if someone gives her constructive criticism she will go into defense mode and that person may feel they do not want to interact with her anymore. It could make people uncomfortable because they have to be careful what they say to her and around her.

4. Using the process of human perception starting on page 68, explain the situation.

To define this situation using the process of human perception the first category is selection which is the process of what people feel is important in their surrounding environment and chooses not to focus on the rest (Woods, 2010). This is best explained through the trainer in this situation she has chosen to focus on certain thing she feels are important about Toya like she needs appraisal on a regular basis, she does not pay attention to detail and cannot handle constructive criticism, she has touched on the good things about Toya but does not seem to make that the focus of her evaluation of her. The next thing is she organizes what she perceives to be important which means to organize what we have selected as important and put meaning to it (woods, 2010). The trainer has put Toya in a co-worker category as Toys has probably put her in supervisor category. The trainer in this situation has put a personal concept on Toya of being responsible and non-assertive and then after deciding that she stereotyped her as being someone that she would not take criticism in order to help herself improve and in reality you don’t know that from the video it is just an assumption.