Running head: INFORMATIVE ESSAY

Informative Essay
Lindsay Stephens
University of Kentucky

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INFORMATIVE ESSAY

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Abstract
This essay discusses how different perceptions of people affects the way people communicate
with each other and how relationships are affected because of this. Inaccurate perceptions play a
huge part in how people view each other as a person and how they treat them in response to this.
These perceptions often blind us from the truth of a person and only shows us one side of a
person. In the long run, these perceptions can really negatively affect relationships and
understanding and communications. This essay compares and contrasts the story of Ronald
Cotton and Steve Titus, both men who were convicted of a crime they did not commit and who
later were seen for the truth, innocent. Race and stereotypes are also discussed in how these can
affect perceptions of people and how they are treated in society.

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Informative Essay

In Picking Cotton, a man is wrongfully accused of a terrible crime, rape. There are many
inaccurate perceptions that occurred throughout his trial. These perceptions influenced how the
jury saw him and also how others communicated with him. Not only was he wrongfully
convicted and sent to jail for over ten years, but his life and the relationships he had were
changed forever. Selective perception, forced consistency, prejudice and stereotypes and
impression formations helped the jury to wrongfully convict Ronald Cotton of rape which in the
long run affected his relationships and the way he communicated all the rest of his life.
Many factors contributed to the conviction of an innocent man. Ronald Cotton was
falsely identified as the man who raped Jennifer Thompson. Verderber explains selective
perception to be the perceptual distortion that arises from paying attention only to what we
expect to see or hear and ignoring what we dont expect (Verderber 2013). This played a key
role into the conviction of Cotton. Jennifer and the jury only payed attention to the information
that they expected to hear or see, but ignored all of the information that they did not expect to
hear or see. This made Cotton look guilty, because the only information that was relevant to the
jury and Jennifer was the information that they knew to make him guilty in their eyes. Another
factor that strongly influenced Cottons future was forced consistency which is similar to
selective perception. Forced Consistency is defined by Verderber to be the inaccurate attempt to
make several perceptions about another person agree with each other (Verderber 2013). The
jury and Jennifer Thompson already knew Ronald Cotton was guilty before they had the
information backing up their accusations. This is because they got rid of all information that
contradicted their beliefs of what was true and only focused on the things that matched their

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beliefs. Since they only perceived all of the information that would make Ronald Cotton guilty,
they believed it to be true that. These are inaccurate perceptions that negatively influenced
Ronald Cottons life forever. Because of this, Ronald Cotton was hated by Jennifer, her family
and the community, and the way he communicated changed drastically. Not only was he in jail
with very little communication at all, but he became frustrated because these false perceptions of
him were taking away all of his freedom and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
In chapter two, Verderber discussed how the way we perceive someone changes the way we
communicate with them and then in the long run influences our relationship with them as well as
their relationships with others. Verderber defines perception as, the process of selectively
attending and assigning meaning to information (Verderber 2013). It has even been said that
sometimes how one perceives a situation is more important than the reality of the situation
because of how much it influences communication and the outcome in the long run (Rodrigo
2012).
Not only did selective perceptions and forced consistencies influence Ronald Cottons
future, but impression formations and prejudice did as well. Ronald Cottons physical appearance
was one of the main reasons he became convicted of rape. Jennifer Thompson was so convinced
that he was the one who did this terrible thing to her because he resembled the actual criminal. In
chapter two of MindTap, Verderber says that someone gets an impression of you by your
physical appearance in just 100 milliseconds (Verderber 2013). It only took a short second before
Jennifer was convinced that Cotton was her rapist and from there, nothing could change her mind
(Cannino-Thompson 2009). Another thing that influenced the decision that changed this innocent
mans life was his race. Because he was black and came from a poor area, he was assumed to be

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someone who would commit a crime like this. There was automatically no doubt that he was
dangerous and capable of something like this simply because of what he looked like and the
stereotype that was pinned to his skin color. Ronald Cotton was automatically assumed to be
guilty because of his physical appearance.
Unfortunately, Ronald Cotton is not the only one who has been found guilty for a crime
he didn't commit. Along with Cotton, Steve Titus was also wrongfully convicted of rape (Loftus
2013). The two cases are very similar, but also different in many ways. Steve Titus was a white
man, so race and prejudice did not play any parts in his conviction. Steve Titus was driving home
from dinner with his wife when he was pulled over and accused of raping a woman in Seattle
because his car resembled the car seen leaving the crime scene, and also because he was thought
to resemble the man (Loftus 2013). Besides these two components, not many things matched up
with the evidence, but because of his looks and his car, he was thought to have committed the
crime. This goes back to the idea of selective perception and forced consistency. The police only
looked at the information that they expected to find and completely disregarded the information
that they did not expect or want to find (Anderson 2013). Because of this, the only information
that was important was the information that made it more convincing that Titus was indeed
guilty. They also eliminated any information that contradicted the their beliefs involving the
crime and Titus, which presumably eliminated any evidence that made Titus look innocent. This
in turn made it seem that all of the evidence they had on Titus was just what they were looking
for to convict him for rape. According to Anderson (2013), the police even went as far as
changing event records so that Tituss alibis didn't match up. The police were so convinced that

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Titus had committed this crime that they refused to believe that information didn't match what
they thought to be true, which goes back to forcing consistency.
In many ways, this unjust conviction could be seen as the laws fault and could be fixed
by changing a few legal issues. In the article Washington States Wrongfully Convicted,
Henderson says, there was a distinct absence of fair play (Anderson 2013). It is addressed that
these convictions could have easily been avoided, but they simply were not. This leaves many
people wondering how the legal system has not found ways to get around this issue of sending
innocent people to jail for terrible crimes they never committed. At the same time, it seems there
are very few ways to fix this because the legal system has to go off of what they think is true and
right, but there is never any way to know for a fact exactly what happened. To make sure that the
legal system is just, the jury needs to be free of inaccurate perceptions such as selective
perception, impression formation, and forced consistency. Also, race and stereotypes should not
play any part in the decision making process when trying to decide if someone is guilty of a
crime or if they are innocent.
Its not often that people hear of an innocent person spending many years in jail for a
terrible crime that they did not commit. In this paper, two individuals were discussed that both
spent many years in jail just to later be found as innocent. One might say How do these things
happen? Inaccurate perceptions influence communication and the outcomes that follow by
changing the way people see information and how they act on this information seen as true and
accurate. Steve Titus and Ronald Cotton are both men who suffered the consequences of
inaccurate perceptions. The way these men communicated because of these perceptions was
changed dramatically which influenced their relationships largely. This could all have been

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prevented if the individuals involved looked at the whole picture instead of only the information
they had expected to find. Selective perception, forced consistency, prejudice and stereotypes
and impression formations helped the jury to wrongfully convict Ronald Cotton of rape which in
the long run affected his relationships and the way he communicated all the rest of his life.
Inaccurate perceptions influenced the lives of many individuals in Picking Cotton as well as
Steve Titus and his family. In Picking Cotton, Ronald Cotton says "I had to believe God had a
plan and that this miscarriage of justice would one day be revealed. I used to read the Book of
Psalms a lot (Cannino-Thompson 2009). Cotton saw how this one situation was influencing his
life and continued to have faith that justice would come and people would see his innocence.
Although the way he communicated was changed, Cotton took these perceptions of him and
turned them around to bring something positive out of it.

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References

Anderson, R. (2013 May 7). Washington States Wrongfully Convicted. Seattle Weekly News.
Retrieved from www.seattleweekly.com
Cannino-Thompson, J, & Cotton, R., & Torneo, E. (2009). Picking Cotton: Our memoir of
injustice and redemption. New York, New York: St. Martins Griffin.
Loftus, E. (2013 June). How Reliable is Your Memory? Ted Talk. Podcast Retrieved from http://
www.ted.com/talks
Rodrigo. (2012 December 22). An Analysis of How Perception Affects Communication.
Retrieved from http://writepass.com/journal/2012/12/an-analysis-of-how-perception-affectscommunication/
Verderber, K.S., Verderber, R.F., and Sellnow, D.D. (2013). Communicate! (14ed). Retrieved
from http://ng.cengage.com.