- Stereotypes occur when you rush to generalize a group based on your judgment about the people in the group. Stereotyping means inferring everyone within a specific group has the same characteristics. For instance, the stereotype of Asian people to be a lot smarter than Americans or that older adults do not know how to use social media. Society usually insists that their stereotypes are correct through selective attention which basically is that we see what we want to see and selective retention which gives meaning about how we relate to our past memories to reinforce our stereotypes but it may not be accurate or true.

- Our perceptions of people affects our expectations and interpretations of others. Stereotypes are not only positive but some can be harmful and negative. Also, not all people have the same stereotypes, thus, contributes to one of the reasons why people perceive things differently.  At times, we tend to exaggerate or underestimate some people due to the stereotype of them we believe in. Because of that, there are several ways to avoid stereotypes. Firstly, we can treat people as individuals and not as members of groups. Secondly, we can get exposed and to educate ourselves to diverse cultures. Our exposure to different cultures will get rid of the stereotypical beliefs we have about their cultures. Lastly is to be open minded and to do more research of our assumptions. 

- Based on the movie, I can relate stereotyping to the scene where the Dr was asked by the nurse to take a swab test after sending his pregnant wife to the emergency room. With this, I can say that the nurse’s stereotype or point of view is that whoever that had direct contact with the patient has high risk of getting the Covid virus. 

 

 

- First impressions is the initial opinion about someone when you met them for the first time. First impressions are mainly based on someone’s appearance. People notice a lot from someone’s appearance for example their clothing, physical attractiveness, interaction skills and etc. First impressions can also occur upon stumbling over someone’s social media for the first time. Different people have different first impressions. This is also one of the reasons why people perceive differently.

 

- First impressions can be affected by specific circumstances that can make our initial perspective towards someone inaccurate. People tend to cling onto their first impression towards someone or something, thus, effects their perception towards it. A recent study was done on how facts don’t change first impressions and people still identified the situation or person based on their first impressions. 

 

- First impressions are important so there are a few ways to make a great first impression. Firstly is to be on time. Running late on your first meeting does not leave a good first impression to you. Next is to present yourself appropriately in terms of clothing. We must dress appropriately according to the dress code or an event. Other than that is to be open and confident. When it comes to making a good first impression, body language is often more eloquent than words. Lastly is to always be positive. 

 

 

The aspects of your identity can influence how you perceive and communicate with others. People differ from each other in gender, biological sex, height, weight and etc. For instance in terms of biological sex, a girl can be a young adult but she looks rather younger than her age. Probably looks like a teenager. Adults will not take her seriously because of her appearance as they perceive that she is still young. 

 

Other than that, difference in perception may also be from temporary conditions. For example when you are sick, you will be unable to focus on what is offered or told to you and won’t be able to answer questions well when asked for opinions. Thus, perceptions might differ from when you are feeling well. Also, other physiological needs may contribute to difference in perception such as when you are hungry and thirsty.  As an example, in the movie, at 54:22, when the Dr's wife started to have breathing problems, she started to panic and said what she has to say to her husband in case she doesn't make it even though before that they had a little argument with each other. 

 

- Past experience can also affect our perceptions. What happened to one’s self in the past will influence their current perceptions. For example, a bad experience may cause one to avoid that situation in the future. Thus, our experiences affects how we respond to people in our society. Other than that, roles also influences our perceptions. A role is basically a part we play in various social contexts. Given a situation that some role that you hold in your household is not suitable to be used in your work as it may come too bossy, rude and even informal. Roles affects our communication to any types of society we engage in. 

 

- Based on the movie, I can relate this point to the scene where Sham's father who is a policemen has to be on duty and be responsible towards his work when at home, he is a lovable husband towards his wife and caring father towards his son.

 

Present feelings and circumstances is how we feel at the moment. This can affect our perceptions and thus alters our communication. For example, when you are talking to your friend and your friend looks away for a bit. You might perceive that she is uninterested with communicating with you. She might be worried about something else that you won’t know which results you to overthink if you’re a bad friend or if you did something wrong. As you can see, present circumstances and internal state influences our communication with other. For example, in the movie at 21:25, Captain Nasir's mother was devastated that her son can't go back to his hometown due to the current situation. Without thinking much, his mother told Captain Nasir to not regret it when she dies when Captain Nasir did not get to meet his mother before that.

Stereotypes is a tendency to classify people to a general groups or categories in order to simplify the matters. People usually judge someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which he or she belongs. 

From the movie, Mak Captain Nasir have stereotyping toward responsibilities as a police officer by her son, Captain Nasir. She thought that Captain Nasir making his work which is a police officer as a priority more than her. Captain Nasir needs to be standby 24 hours, working day and night and repeating it all the times along pandemic made him not come to see her for a long time . But the truth is Captain Nasir really consent about Mak. Because of movement control order (MCO) and work in high risk of virus infection environment as police officer making him to delay his intention to back to his hometown. [5:00 - 7:30]

First impression is an initial opinion about people upon enduring meeting them for the first time. It gives primacy effect, which leads us to place more value on the first information we receive about a person. So if we interpret the first information we receive from or about a person as positive, then a positive first impression will form and influence how we respond to that person as the interaction continues. Likewise, negative interpretations of information can lead us to form negative first impressions.

From the movie, there is a scene that shown Inspector Zulkifli gives his first impression toward a teenager. Inspector Zulkifli and his colleagues were on duty and they arrested some teenagers who disobeyed movement control order (MCO) instructions. After that, Inspector Zulkifli gave advice on the teenager's behavior but was opposed by one of the teenagers. He resisted, rebelled and being rude to the police officers. Inspector Zulkifli was angry and described the teenager as rude and disrespectful to older people. [10:25 - 11:40]

- The strategies or ways we use to present ourselves when communicating with others.
- It also refers to influencing people as the way we portray ourselves. 

- People usually manage their identity as an ideal self-image to reach desired needs

Since communication and perception influence each other, identity management also can influence the perception of self and others.

- By managing our identity in the way, we desired, we can understand ourselves better.

- We can know the uniqueness of ourselves regarding various personality characteristics, interests, and values.

- Example:

 

As a person that works in Non-Government Organization, Nora needs to present herself as the one that caring and kind to others. This identity will help her to gain trust and calm her client especially when they are in problems. Here, Nora tends to help Nadia to give her some advice about her financial problem due to the Covid-19 pandemic. [2:18 – 3:02]

 

 

- By managing our identity, we also can influence how people view us.

- People will look at us as the person that we present in front of them. 

- Example:

 

As a police officer, Kapten Nasir needs to be strict so that people can respect and understand his job. From this scene, Kapten Nasir tries to convince a man to do the swab test because he did not want to. He also said that the man will get legal action due to his stubbornness until the man agrees to do the test. [18:50 – 19:08]

When you meet someone for the first time, you seek to form an initial opinion about people upon meeting them. Usually first impression are based on other people’s appearances like clothing, height, weight and physical attractiveness.

From the movie, [30:43 - 36:10] Nora suffered with stomach ache and she called his husband, Azhan for help. Azhan sent her to hospital. On their way, they get blocked by the polices, Zul and Nadir. The polices let them to pass because they knew it is emergency.

It describe one who realize what kind of person he or she is. Then, personal identity represents self-characters that decide how we perceive others but it is not static due to our daily experiences.

From the movie, [1:04:06 - 1:06:43] Dr Azhan felt the tiredness of this colleagues and thus he realised that as a responsible and supportive colleague, it was the time for him to communicate with them and give some motivation to them as support.

When you do expose yourself to information and ideas, you focus on certain cues and ignore others. In communication, you do not treat all sounds, words, phrases and sentences equally.

From the movie, [12:57 - 13:13] Shamsul asked for his mother’s permission to go to his friends, Muz’s house to give him back his book but Nadia’s attention was on his asking to go out but not the reason of returning book.

The tendacy to remember better the things that reinforce your beliefs than those that oppose them.

From the movie, [1:08:29 - 1:09:23] Although Dr. Azhan felt angry and insisted his wife, Nora had cheated but when his wife’s condition worsen, he still cared and worry about his wife. During Nora’s treatment, he selectively forgets about their argument and took care of his wife like usual.

No one perceives all the stimuli in his or her environment at all times. Through selection, you neglect some stimuli and focus on others. For example, when  you are out to a community work you focus on the briefing from the respective fellow community rather the tantrum that was thrown by a little child asking for ice cream. You block out certain sights, sound, smells et cetera.

During selective perception, you tend to see, hear and only believe what you see, hear and believe. A person who unconsciously apply selective perception amid communicating, can be seen talking positively about the subject that they believe to be a good thing. Along that line, they will react otherwise when people talk negatively about their beliefs.

For instance, a teacher who see, hear and believe that their students might face difficulties in time of learning new topics, tend to notice the frustration that was conveyed by the students. These are the type of teacher who are involved in their students’ education progress and are actively giving verbal and speech cues. In contrast to that, an educators who lack interaction with their students and only focuses on their lecture tend to miss the signals from their students. These findings illustrate how selective perception, perhaps driven by past experiences and roles, can cause some teachers to selectively perceive and react to such nonverbal signs while others do not.

Example from Frontliners Movie: In an argument of Nora and her son's Sham it can be seen that their perception of the dangers of Covid-19 are not on similar page. Sham believes that his mother is doing great as she have time occupied with online classes and work, while he only does homework since the pandemic started. Sham voice out that he was very bored and going out can help him to let off some of his boredom. What Sham looked pass over all his emotional build up was, how scared his mother about his safety and health during the outbreak of Covid-19.

Firstly, one organized their perceptions through figure and ground. For instance, when someone commented your work on an art about how intricately and beautifully made it is but at the same time pointing out about how you can make it more attractive will arise an emotion that causes you to forget the positive part of their comments. Their comment on how you can improve is the figure while their praise is the ground.

Secondly, closure is tendency to fill in missing information to complete an otherwise incomplete figure or statement. For example, when someone texted with a massive typos in their written message, you can still understand it because you can still make some sense out of the incorrectly typed message.

Thirdly proximity, according to the principle of proximity, people or objects that are close to each other in time or space are seen as meaningfully related. In nonverbal communication, an example of proximity is when you perceive someone who wears an expensive looking attire to an event to be a wealthy person but in reality they just borrowed their friend’s tuxedo or gown. 

Lastly, one organizes their perceptions of stimuli through similarity. On the basis of

other in size, colour, shape, or other attributes. For example, when choosing our group of friends, we tend to choose a group of people that somehow resemble a piece of you. Our choices are made due to the similarity and familiarity that we recognize to be an easy way to communicate and exchange information with each other.

Example from Frontliners Movie: During a phone conversation between Captain Nasir and his mother, he comforted his mother saying that he is very busy with his work and could not make time to visit her in the time being. Because Captain Nasir's mother didn't understand the importance of his work, she takes it to heart by interpreting that Captain Nasir do not care about her health and well being. This is an example of figure and ground, where dismissal of Captain Nasir care towards his mother health is the figure and the importance of his work during pandemic outbreak is ground.

 

Interpretive perception, then, is a blend of internal states and external stimuli. The more ambiguous the stimuli, the more room for interpretation. In communication time, we tend to interpret someone by how well they carry a certain task. For example, in a group of friends, they had planned a short getaway together to an island, but in that group of friends only one person willingly sacrifices their time to bring up a tentative, accommodations and places they would visit during that stay. Meanwhile, the others only wait on the update by the other person with deficit amount of help. Hence, unconsciously if we were to put ourself in the first person shoes, you might feel like you are the only person who are so eager for the upcoming trips. The other way around for when you are that group of friends who didn’t do much for the upcoming trips, you might feel like the first are showing off but at the same time you are glad that she is up for the scheduling part.