Week 3 Post #2

I could apply the psychological model of communication to my own life. The part I found really interesting was that a persons mental state has a lot to do with the way they decode a message.  "A mental state consists of a person's beliefs, values, attitudes, feelings, and mental sets" (pg 26). 

My fiance and I often have miscommunication which are sometimes caused by distractions such as noise, which is anything that interferes or changes a message during the transmission process (pg 27). The main reason we have misunderstandings  has more to do with our mental states. For example, when I have had a really hard day and I am tired I tend to be a little more on edge. I was talking about this with a girlfriend that sometimes he can say something to me on Monday and it is completely fine. However, he can say the same exact thing to me on Friday and I maybe I have had a bad day so the comment he says hits me in the wrong way. 

I think sometimes we hear what we want to hear, so when we are upset then we want to get defensive. We choose to assume that everyone is out to get us just because we are having a bad day; and this isn't true.  I know we here this all the time but it is so true, it is not what you say but how you say it. That is why there are so many communication errors in emails and text messages because you aren't physically having the conversation, this makes it difficult to know what the person really means by what they are saying.

 Decoding the message is up to the receiver and the sender. If the sender is saying one thing but their body is saying something else then the message will not be clear. I am sure everyone has been guilty of this at some point or another.