*Concept from Chapter 2*

Adam and Betty introduced the Elements of a Psychological Model and during the encoding/decoding they filter messages through Mental Set. "A Mental Set consist of a person's beliefs, values, attitudes, feelings and so on." (Trenholm. P. 26) It goes on to talk about how mental sets can lead to misunderstanding and miscommunication. Because, each person has his or her own meaning for a particular word. For instance, when I was apart of a social website, my profile stated, "Christian". When someone reads that, they have different meanings on how a Christian should act or that, I must act or look a certain way. Also, because I have two tasteful tattoo's, tattoo's hold a certain attitude or belief to someone else. Or even the word "love", the word can hold a deeper meaning to someone else, and for instance in dating, if someone says "I love you", the other person may feel obligated to say it back. Although, later they may say, "I love you, yet not IN love with you." People have different meanings and beliefs towards words, that's why I found this interesting to read. Because, I always thought this and as years go by, I feel that having understanding, clarity and meaning with someone is very important, with all sorts of forms of relationships within life. "Communication is most successful when individuals are "of the same mind"- when the meanings they assign to messages are similar or identical." (Trenholm. P. 27) Take time out to understand the other person, there will be less miscommunication or misunderstanding.