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Once again, filtering can lead to miscommunications in business. Each listener
translates the Message into his or her own words, creating his or her own version of
[1]
what was said.
Selective Perception

Selective perception refers to filtering what we see and hear to suit our own
needs. This process is often unconscious. Small things can command our attention
when we’re visiting a new place—a new city or a new company. Over time, however,
we begin to make assumptions about the way things are on the basis of our past
experience. Often, much of this process is unconscious. “We simply are bombarded
with too much stimuli every day to pay equal attention to everything so we pick and
[2]
choose according to our own needs.” Selective perception is a time-saver, a
necessary tool in a complex culture. But it can also lead to mistakes.
Think back to the earlier example conversation between Bill, who was asked to
order more toner cartridges, and his boss. Since Bill found his boss’s to-do list to be
unreasonably demanding, he assumed the request could wait. (How else could he do
everything else on the list?) The boss, assuming that Bill had heard the urgency in her
request, assumed that Bill would place the order before returning to the other tasks on
her list.
Both members of this organization were using selective perception to evaluate
the communication. Bill’s perception was that the task of ordering could wait. The
boss’s perception was that her time frame was clear, though unstated. When two
selective perceptions collide, a misunderstanding occurs.
Information Overload
Information overload can be defined as “occurring when the information
processing demands on an individual’s time to perform interactions and internal
calculations exceed the supply or capacity of time available for such
[3]
processing.” Messages reach us in countless ways every day. Some are societal—
advertisements that we may hear or see in the course of our day. Others are
professional—e-mails, and memos, voice mails, and conversations from our
colleagues. Others are personal—messages and conversations from our loved ones
and friends.
Add these together and it’s easy to see how we may be receiving more
information than we can take in. This state of imbalance is known as information
overload. Experts note that information overload is “A symptom of the high-tech age,
which is too much information for one human being to absorb in an expanding world
of people and technology. It comes from all sources including TV, newspapers, and
magazines as well as wanted and unwanted regular mail, e-mail and faxes. It has been
exacerbated enormously because of the formidable number of results obtained from
[4]
Web search engines.” Other research shows that working in such fragmented
fashion has a significant negative effect on efficiency, creativity, and mental
[5]
acuity.
Going back to our example of Bill. Let’s say he’s in his cubicle on the phone
with a supplier. While he’s talking, he hears the chime of e-mail alerting him to an
important message from his boss. He’s scanning through it quickly, while still on the
phone, when a coworker pokes his head around the cubicle corner to remind Bill that

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