Psychological Barriers and Emotional Barriers to Communication

Psychological barriers to communication

Psychological states of communicators (senders and receivers) influence their attitude toward communication, thus limiting their ability to communicate effectively. When people are suffering from mental disturbances, their communication is highly affected by the mental state that they are in. Therefore, people who engage in communication need to be emotionally stable in order to be able to communicate effectively.

Communication is not the same in machines or with numbers. Every person has a unique mind. In order for the communication to be effective, everyone involved in the process must trust each other, e.g., if your boss does not trust you, they will only supply selective information.

Several causes of psychological barriers are mentioned below:

Lack of attention

The communication will face challenges and become ineffective when a person's mind is preoccupied or distracted. In addition to being unable to understand what others are saying, they will fail to listen, understand the message correctly, or respond appropriately. During a tragedy, for example, a person may not want to hear advice from others. People may be preoccupied with problems in their professional or personal lives, which affects all aspects of their lives

Poor retention

Information retention is the capacity for the brain's memory to store information and the way the brain retains information. Unlike other organs, the brain does not store all of the information it receives, but only those it deems useful for future reference. In other words, half of the information is lost.

Additionally, the brain loses information that becomes outdated or isn't taken as seriously as it once was over time. Then, in the process of forming a message, the information has to be extracted from the brain. During this phase, the brain attempts to recall the required information from the fragments it has already forgotten.

Say, for example, you were told a friend was going to meet you before a month had passed, and you had received the person's name, address, phone number, etc. However, now you have to tell someone else about it. When you were young, you only remembered the name and address of the person, but not their phone number. The truth can be distorted or changed due to poor retention, which is a barrier to communication.

Distrust and defensive

When communicators trust one another, communication is successful. The lack of trust causes them to derive negative interpretations of the message and ignore it. When an individual asserts their viewpoint, the receiver does not take the information into consideration. Receivers will not listen if the message provided does not agree with them or if they think it is a threat. The communication also fails when the message isn't delivered across to the recipient. In the case of a friend, I will only give them details about what is happening in my personal life that I believe are harmless.

Perception, viewpoints, attitudes and opinions

Perception is the mindset that people adopt when judging, understanding, and interpreting everything. We perceive reality differently depending on our perspectives and experiences, which are shaped by our thoughts and feelings. Additionally, viewpoint can also be defined as a way to view the world. There might be a viewpoint that the sender holds that the receiver does not share. This viewpoint is not explained, but taken for granted by the sender. This results in a barrier to effective communication since the receiver does not comprehend the message as it must be understood. The attitude we have toward things and ideas shapes our thought process and creates a psychological barrier to communication. The perception of a person may be that females are weak. They tell someone who does not think that way about females. This causes misunderstandings between them. Afterwards, everything they communicate becomes ineffective because the person's view has already been formed.

Emotions

If someone doesn't feel good, they will likely speak less or negatively. People who are preoccupied cannot communicate well. As an example, when someone is angry, they may say things they regret later. Someone who is angry can easily misinterpret what someone else says, even when they are listening to them.

In addition to fear, nervousness, confusion, mistrust and jealousy, there are other emotions that affect communication. If a person is feeling extremely happy, for instance, they will laugh at anything that you say. Conversely, someone who is sad might cry or become highly upset over trivial things.

Emotional barriers to communication

Creating emotional barriers stems from mental limitations that one has created. Among the many barriers found within the category of intra-personal barriers, emotional barriers are among the most common.

It is only within the context of an individual's psychological frames of reference that senders and receivers can encode and decode messages. This includes the values, expectations, perceptions, backgrounds, and personalities of each individual. There is also an agent known as Filtering that has an important part to play here.

Throughout life, we filter information based on our own needs and interests, which affect how we listen. When the sender and receiver have different frames of reference, it can make communication difficult. Communication is highly influenced by one's emotional state of mind.

The way in which information is encoded or transmitted is influenced by personal experiences, perceptions, and expectations. An individual's messages will reflect the state of their mind at the time the message was sent.

Communication can also be affected by the emotions of the receiver. An upset receiver will have difficulty understanding what you are saying if their mind is clouded by stress. The results of studies demonstrate that individuals with high emotional intelligence (EI) tend to be much more emotionally stable and less likely to be affected by these emotional barriers than individuals with lower emotional intelligence or those with low emotional stability.

An employee with a more stable emotional state may respond differently to the same warning (i.e., for missing a deadline) than an employee with an unstable emotional state. In contrast, the latter may ignore the warning or react disagreeably to it, while the former may take the warning literally and aim to meet it.

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