Communication barriers can be broken into the following five categories:
- Physical barriers - These barriers are environmental challenges people face during communication due to their surroundings.
- Emotional barriers - This barrier can stem from a person's existing feelings toward a subject or person(s) involved in the communication process.
- Cultural barriers - These barriers derive from differences in a variety of categories, such as religion, language, traditions, and power distance.
- Cognitive barriers - Cognitive barriers are a combination of emotional and cultural barriers, such as word connotation affecting the message during the communication process.
- Systematic barriers - These barriers stem from a lack of structure in an environment, often seen in workplaces where roles are not clearly assigned or vocalized.
Physical Barriers of Communication
Physical barriers of communication can most often pertain to geographic distance between sender and receiver. When face-to-face communication is limited, the communicators must rely solely on verbal communication. Nonverbal communication makes up a large amount of our everyday communication. Without the ability to nonverbally communicate due to geographical location, a physical barrier is created in the communication process.
Other common, everyday physical barriers are often referred to as noise in the communication process. Noise could be traffic whizzing by or other conversations happening during the time that the communication is taking place. Something as simple as a cell phone dying mid-call is considered a physical barrier because the communication has been severed by an outside source.
Emotional Barriers of Communication
Emotional barriers of communication, or psychological barriers, could be seen in both the sender and receiver. These barriers are created from a multitude of things, including but not limited to the following: a person's ego, prejudice, existing feelings toward a person, self-image, open/closed-minded mentality, status (often seen in workplace conflict), and interest.
These barriers could arise from anticipatory feelings or problems that stem from a previous experience with the person, which could be a result of differing communication styles, miscommunication, a person's inability to listen, or their ability to effectively communicate a message. In order for effective communication to take place, both the sender and receiver must be open to the message. Emotional barriers often get in the way of the channel of communication. Emotional distress can lead to misunderstandings or a person's inability to actively listen. These barriers often arise in stressful situations and are often seen in the workplace.
Cultural Barriers of Communication
Culture can be defined as a person's way of life, or a code to which they live by. Cultural barriers of communication can stem from a number of cultural differences, such as language, status differences, gender roles, and body language. Various aspects of cultural barriers can be described as follows:
- Language is the most obvious cultural barrier. Not only do language barriers encompass totally different languages, but they also include the lingo in which one uses in specific workplace environments. For example, a person familiar with technology would recognize basic acronyms, such as PDF or JPG. However, to a person that knows very little about digital documents, this would be a foreign language.
- Gender barriers can best be defined as the differences between women and men in terms of communication style. For example, women prefer to meet face-to-face because they value nonverbal cues more than men. A physical separation during communication could pose conflict for women during the communication process.
- Body language is a broad term, and large aspects of it are similar across cultures. However, some aspects, such as eye contact, vary from culture to culture. For instance, in China they view eye contact with an elder to be disrespectful. In America, however, eye contact is a sign of respect and trustworthiness.
- Status is the way in which the people of a culture value one another. For example, high power distance cultures believe that respect is automatically given based on age, sex, and rank in the workplace; while a low power distance culture believes that respect must be earned and is not given solely based on status.
Cognitive Barriers of Communication
Cognitive barriers of communication can be defined as the differences in which a person perceives information during the communication process. This could include the following: selective perception, information overload, filtering, and denotation vs. connotation.
Selective perception is when a person sifts through information and selects what they want to see or hear. Filtering is cautiously withholding information in anticipation for how a person will respond. Information overload refers to an abundance of information trying to be processed and interpreted at once. Denotation refers to the dictionary definition of a word, while connotation refers to how a culture uses a specific word.
Systematic Barriers of Communication
Systematic, or structural barriers to communication, can be defined as a barrier that one encounters during the communication process when there is a lack of credibility or familiarity with the source or information. Sarcasm or irony are both examples of a systematic barrier disrupting the communication process. A common example of this is when someone tells a joke and the other person doesn't understand it. Lack of familiarity with the sender and/or their humor can lead to misunderstanding.
Another example of a systematic barrier is gossip. Gathering information through the "grapevine" is not always the most reliable source. That is why it is best to hear things "straight from the horse's mouth" in order to avoid systematic barriers in communication.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
