Topic 3: Barriers to Communication
Barriers could be different types:
- Literally: foreign language.
- Using complicated words, technical terms, abbreviations.
- Using symbols, which can be understood differently by different people.
- Unreadable writing.
- Long, complicated, unclear sentences.
- Literally: noise, which doesn’t allow the words to be heard.
- Temperature, smell or other external factors that distract the communicators.
- Physical discomfort (internal) that distracts the communicators.
- If you admire someone, or think him/her in a higher or more authoritative position.
- If somebody behaves aggressively.
- Differences in perception: Different people view the world in a different way. That is why they code and decode messages in different ways too.
- Cultural differences: our entire cultural imprint determines our internal values and moral concepts and our entire experience, thinking and acting. And thus, different cultural imprints can also easily lead to barriers in communication and misunderstandings.
- Expectations, for example “Confirmation bias”, which means that we look for confirming evidence of what we expect and tend to disregard the disconfirming evidence.
- Listening: sometimes the receiver lacks active listening skills or motivation and desire to listen.
- Overloaded message: The receiver cannot process all of the information contained in the message.
- Stereotypes that distort both the way we code and decode the message.
Course: Pixabay