Am I actually seeing you?

When I think about perception I tend to think about politics. Democrat or Republican? Liberal or independent? They each have their own set of perceptions and beliefs. One side will have “selective perception” to the other side. For example my grandfather is a republican, and he solely watches only fox news which is a more conservative news channel compared to CNN which can be considered a more democratic news channel. He doesn’t watch CNN because their tone inst for conservative beliefs. The article has three main topics that it covers such as selective retention, selective attention and selective exposure. Selective exposure is a theory based off of psychology basically saying that a person will favor information that reinforces their preexisting views while avoiding anything that may be the opposite. Like my grandfather his choice of only watching fox news could be in the theory of selective exposure. We can also discuss selective attention, when this comes to mind I think about being in an argument with someone and you have plenty of points but the other person will only reply or give attention to one point, this sometimes is called selective hearing as well. Selective attention is when you choose to only focus on one thing, and disregard everything else that may be occurring. Finally the article talks about selective retention in other words is the process of only remembering messages that correlate or correspond with an individuals beliefs or values. For example I tend to only remember quotes that correlate with what I believe, “Speak only if it improves upon the silence” Gandhi. I tend to stay quite because there’s really nothing important or mind exploding going on up in my head, or maybe its something that I’ve learned because I used to talk so much about absolutely nothing that held no substance whatsoever to what I was saying. I digress, The article helped me to understand more in detail why my grandfather only watches Fox news. Why politics only see their sides as the right side, Am I really seeing you? or what I want to see of you? perception can be so interesting when you think about it in communications Its very important for the world to be able to have the ability to perceive each other as what it really is. Media has come to make things very difficult with all the “fake news” and propaganda that floats around on the web. On the other hand it helps information to be passed on very quickly. Its up to the people to have the ability to stay opened minded and know whats real or fake.