ABSTRACT
Pervasive orientations—of trust or suspicion, of affection or hostility—are learned early, often at considerable pain, and through communication with significant other people. Such perceptual biases, taken together, constitute what has been called the assumptive world of the individual. The world men get inside their heads is the only world they know. It is this symbolic world, not the real world, that they talk about, fight about, argue about, laugh about. Research on decision-making illustrates how important communication is in improving human performance. Subjects in one of these studies solved a set of problems working alone, then through majority vote, and finally by discussing them in small groups. The problems resembled those in everyday life; that is, they were difficult, emotionally involving, and presented a range of possible solutions. The most familiar form of threat is found in a highly evaluative communication context.
