What did you just say...? Selective Hearing

The book describes selective attention as “choosing one message over another” (Harris 131). After thinking carefully, I realized that I have selective hearing on a regular basis. The book gives different reasons as to why we may have selective attention or hearing. Reason five states that difficult material may be ignored. This has happened in a recent group project. One of the members was discussing technical terms, and because I did not understand the terms, I did pay attention to a word he said. I remember trying my hardest to understand the terms, but it was out of my scope.
I knew that I had to some how understand the terms, because I would need them for the presentation. I had the member write down a list of the terms so that I could look them up. By doing this, I could understand not only the discussion, but I was able to not have selective hearing.
I think this type of behavior can also happen with advertisements. There are just some advertisements that I do not pay attention to. One possible reason could be that that particular advertisement does not support my point of view. If someone was to ask me what the theme for the latest Coors Light commercial was, I would not be able to tell them. But ask me about the latest Nike commercial, and I’ll probably have the right answer.

Henry