Receiver of communication:

You will, thus, see in which a particular kind of condition, event, happening or words and symbols are capable of being interpreted differently through different people depending on their psychological states. A receiver who is suspicious or hostile, either as a consequence of his/her feeling of insecurity or because of his/her past experience along with the sender of the communication, is more likely to begin 'reading between the lines' and ascribe a distorted meaning to the message.

To the receiver's mind a communication gets tied up along with the personality of the source. This is what some people call the halo effect. Thus, if we receive a message from a person we admire, we are more likely to agree along with it and act accordingly. On the other hand, our immediate reaction will be one of disagreement with a message which has been received from a person we do not such as or trust. Thus, the meaning of the communication might be colored by our own value judgments about the source of communication.

A receiver of communication suffers from another problem in which psychologists refer to as cognitive dissonance. Since an individual tends to be fed along with too much of information from several sources, s/he becomes selective in receiving and responding to the communications. S/he is most likely to 'hear' only those messages in that conform to her/his own beliefs, attitudes and judgment. Communications which conflict along with her/his own viewpoint tend to be ignored. Frequent the 'other' point of view might not only be ignored, it might indeed be regarded as unfriendly or even hostile. If this happens frequent, subordinates may begin questioning whether their superior actually requires hearing, opinions contrary to her/his own. As a consequence, much of the unfavourable news in an organisation would never get reported to higher levels until the problem has supposed the form of a crisis.