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Psychology of Communication: learning
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Psychology of Communication: learning
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Before continuing, please click here to display Berlo's model of habit formation - you'll need it to navigate through this section.
To summarise, the ingredients of the learning process, according to this behaviourist view, are:
(For more information, see the section on behaviourism.) If we want someone to 'learn', then it is that final stage which is our goal - the development of an habitual response to the stimulus. Once a habit has been developed we cease to interpret the stimulus any more. We begin to respond to it automatically, without thought or analysis. Although these S-R relationships have been learned, they become similar to the original reflexes that controlled our behaviour in infancy. That is why Berlo's model shows habit as a short-circuit between decoder and encoder.
There are at least five factors that affect the development of habit strength:
Each time a stimulus is presented, a response is made, and the response is rewarded, habit strengthened. The more repetitions, the stronger the habit. Some of the best examples of the use of frequency in communication come from advertising. Slogans, repeated frequently, become household words and increase the chances that we think of the advertiser's product when we want such a good. We will be more likely to purchase one such as at least a trial response.
If the organism makes a particular response (X) to a given stimulus (A), the relationship between A and X will be strengthened if the organism does not give X as a response to other stimuli as well. The relationship will also be strengthened between A and X if the organism does not give other responses to A as well.
If a communication source can isolate the receiver, can restrict the messages that get through, then the chances are increased that the receiver will attend to the sources messages. Examples of stimulus isolation are seen in totalitarian countries where the government control the media. In Nazi Germany and Communist Russia all radio stations, TV stations and newspapers were under the control of the state and listening to broadcasts from outside the country was an offence. When Pol Pot was in power in Kamputschea, he imposed the death penalty for possession of a radio. Radio would certainly have been a powerful means of broadcasting propaganda to the people, but he saw stimulus isolation as being more important.
The greater the reward, the more the habit tends to be strengthened.
The more reward that we get from a response, the more likely that we will retain that response. In interpersonal communication, the reward may be a compliment, open praise or non-verbal, such as a head-nod or smile. Caution needs to be applied: reward has to be defined the receiver's terms.
The faster she perceives the consequences of a response as rewarding, the more likely the individual is to retain the response.
When a receiver gets immediate reward from her response, she is more likely to retain that response. Schramm has the used the concept of response-reward time span in predicting the readership of news stories. He suggests that some material in the newspaper provides delayed reward for the reader, e.g. news about public affairs, science, social problems etc. He found that people vary with respect to their response time span. Some can wait longer than others for the reward. He found first that material which provided immediate reward was more likely to be read by everybody and that delayed-reward material was read more by people of high education levels.
Some responses require more energy than others. It can be argued that people operate on the principle of least effort, i.e. they do not want to expend more energy than necessary to achieve their goals. It follows that responses that are easy to make are more likely to be retained than are responses that are hard to make.
This principle is encapsulated in Schramm's Fraction of Selection.
Reward determines the strength of our habits, the speed and extent of our learning. We can go further than this: even the selection and interpretation of a stimulus is related to our expectations of reward. We perceive and interpret stimuli when we believe that we can respond to them in ways which will be rewarding. So, for example it is well known that most of the people who watch Conservative Party political broadcasts will be Conservative voters; most of those who watch Labour Party broadcasts will be Labour voters. We actively seek out those messages which we believe will give us a reward.
As communication receivers we want to meet our needs, satisfy our drives, accomplish our purposes. Our major purpose is the desire to affect - to have influence over self, others, and our physical environment.
We all attempt to make sense of what we perceive, to impose a structure on the world. We wish to reduce uncertainty about the nature of our environment. If we accept one further assumption, namely that we seek a state of reduced physiological tension, then it follows that we will seek situations which reduce uncertainty and avoid situations which increase uncertainty.
David Berlo argues that, in addition to the five senses, man also has a sense of balance, a desire for consistency. We not only try to impose a structure on our environment, we also attempt to make the various structures we impose consistent with each other.
It is from this argument that we derive the concept of reward. We perceive a response as rewarding to the extent that it helps us to develop a consistent structuring of our universe. We attend to those stimuli which we expect will be of use to us in structuring our environment and avoid those which we do not perceive to be of use. Thus it can be immensely difficult to change attitudes. If it is true that we wish to maintain consistency in our view of the world, then changing someone's attitude on one subject is likely to entail shifting all their other attitudes as well. (You will find more on this under Consistency Theory)
The consequences of a given response are not all plus. The same response may produce minus consequences as well. The taking of money that belongs to another has plus factors (it enables you to buy what you want etc.), but it has minus factors too (you may be arrested etc.).
In any communication situation, we select topics, treat messages, choose channels in part on the basis of the potential reward for the receiver. As communicators, we need to remember that the response we want from a receiver must be rewarding to him/her or it will not be learned.
We can look at the reward as the result of adding all the plus and minus factors that are involved in the intended response. In effective communication we emphasise plus factors and minimise minus ones. As plus factors increase and minus factors decrease, communication becomes more effective.
Behaviourism
Behaviour modification
Conditioned Reflex
Schramm's Fraction of Selection
For an interesting examination of the practical applications of some of these ideas, see Polly Woolley's dissertation, Strategies for developing uses of the Internet within education
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