The psychology of communication
Contemporary psychologists have, since World War II, shown considerable interest in the ways in which communications occur. Behaviourists have been prone to view communication in terms of stimulus-response relationships between sources of communications and individuals or groups that receive them. Those who subscribe to Freud’s analysis of group psychology and ego theory tend to regard interactions in communication as reverberations of family group dynamics experienced early in life.
By the mid-1950s, psychological interest settled largely on the persuasive aspects of various types of messages. Psychologists have attempted to discover whether a general factor of personality called “persuasibility” might be identified in people at large. It would appear, though with qualifications, that individuals are indeed variably persuasible and that, at times, factors of personality are related to this quality.
Other psychologists have studied the recipients of communication, evolving concepts of “selective perception,” “selective attention,” and “selective retention” in order to explain not only the ways in which communication changed attitudes but also the reasons for resistance to change. Among their interests were the dynamics of the communication of rumours, the effects of “scare messages,” the degree of credulity that sources of prestige value provide, and the pressure of group consensus upon individual perceptions of communications.
Some of the suggestions that emerged from the work of certain modern psychologists may be subsumed under a theory of what is called “cognitive dissonance,” which is based upon the observation that most people cannot tolerate more than a specific degree of inconsistency in the environments they perceive. An example of cognitive dissonance may involve a person who considers himself a superb bowler but who on one occasion earns an extremely low score. The dissonant or inconsistent elements include the bowler’s knowledge of his skill and the fact of his poor score. This produces tension. To reduce this tension—dissonance—the bowler may change his behaviour or misinterpret or reinterpret the dissonant elements in order to lessen the difference between the facts. For example, he may blame his performance on the bowling ball, the alley, or the temperature of the room. Thus he seeks a psychological equilibrium.
This modification of an individual’s perception of reality is of fundamental interest to the psychologist of communications. Because the agreement or disagreement of a communication with an individual’s cognitive structure affects not only behaviour but perception as well, the major criterion for the psychological analysis of communication is neither the message nor the medium but the expectation of the person receiving the message.
It must not be assumed that any of the theories of audience psychology offered to date (including those of Gestaltists, Freudians, behaviourists, and others) lack relevance to an understanding of communication processes. None, however, seems to account fully for all the effects of communications upon people. The many facets of communication offer substantial problems for future psychological experimentation and theorizing.