cognition, communication, listening

Chapter 5 on social cognition is one of the most interesting chapters in the text for me. Much of my research is on the links between social cognition and message production and interpretation. In addition, my father is a psychology professor (now retired) and I was a psychology major before switching to communication studies, so my interest in human cognition started long before my interest in communication. The two are deeply intertwined--we can't communicate without thinking and how we think is grounded in our experiences with others.

Alexb discussed the importance of empathy, which is introduced in C. 4 on listening, but also plays a role in social cognition. For example, empathy is often a part of prototypes such as friendly and helpful and lack of empathy is typically associated with unfrlendly and selfish, as Alexb alluded to. Kcee's experiences provide a good link between cognition and listening and how the two influence each other. In addition, how we perceive people also impacts how we listen to them, and how we listen to others influences how they perceive us.

Amaja brought up the new COMM tagline: Listen • Speak • Engage. In the faculty discussions about the department's tagline, we spent some time trying to figure out which term should come first--they really happen all at once. The department's name used to be Speech Communication--note the emphasis on speech. And that emphasis is clear in course offerings not only in our department at SJSU, but in nearly all communication studies departments. Especially in the dominant American culture, speech is privileged over listening. Goofy talked about attributions, which structure our communicative experiences. How we explain what happens influences our response to a situation.

I grouped together Chapters 4, 5, 14, and 16 because they are highly interrelated, as you'll find out as you blog this week.

--Professor Cyborg