subject: Distorted Communication [print this page] Biases Filter Biases Filter
We all have biases that filter much of what we hear, see and think. This means our perceptions and conclusions are distorted. Biases distort reality. This hurts communication too because what the speaker means to convey is not what the hearer gets after the hearer filters the message.
Case of Overweight People
Consider the case of overweight people. Researchers at the University of North Carolina created a test study of perceptions of overweight people. They selected a volunteer audience at random. They hired actors to offer a speech with identical words, gestures, voice inflection, etc. As the actors gave their speeches, the audience rated them on their speaking ability 1-10 with a private, individual electronic device. The audience did not know that the speakers were hired actors.
The audience consistently rated certain speakers much lower than others. Guess who? The overweight speakers. In spite of the fact that the presentations were identical, the audience rated the overweight speakers as less competent.
One of the researchers explained to us what had happened. He said there is a common bias against overweight people. The audience unconsciously applied this bias and used it as a filter for their experience of the speakers. The audience concluded that the overweight people were less competent.
A bias against overweight people is just one example of many biases. In another article, I described a racial bias. Many people have biases against bosses, the elderly, country or city dwellers, foreigners, Democrats or Republicans, Christians or Muslims, etc. The same experiment with overweight people would work with other biases.
Awareness
Of course these biases and filtering raise havoc in our personal and organization lives. Communication gets distorted constantly. To limit this distortion, you have to start with increasing your awareness of when it is operating in you or your organization. Increased self-awareness is one of the key outcomes of my virtual workshops. We also train participants to discover when the filtering has occurred so distortions can be corrected.
Copyright 2009, by William R. Murray, President of Eagle Alliance Executive Coaching, LLC. Reprint rights granted to all venues so long as this article and by-line are printed intact with all links made live.
