I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again." 

3 Nephi 17:2-3 

Perception Process

Kenneth Southwick, a former Church Educational System Area director, taught what it means to be a true disciple to a group of students at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He said, “Imagine yourself in the post-mortal realm, and the announcement is made that it is time to give a report on the great measure of your discipleship…. The question might occur to you, ‘Well, what is the great measure of my discipleship?’ If you are taking notes, will you write this sentence: ‘The great measure of my discipleship is…’ Then take twenty seconds to consider how you would fill in that blank. 

“I think there are a lot of answers, correct answers, possible for that question. You may have written something like, ‘living by the Spirit, obedience to the commandments, keeping covenants.’ I believe all of those are correct. They are truly great measures of our discipleship. For our purposes today, I would like to suggest the following: the great measure of our discipleship is how we view others.      

“That may come as a bit of a surprise; I would guess that few, if any of you, chose that phrase. Some of you might very well have chosen the phrase, ‘The great measure of our discipleship is how we treat others.’ I would agree with that; That also is a correct answer. What I would invite you to think about today is how we treat others is determined by how we view others. We need to pay particular attention to how we view others.”¹

This book has asked how you think, how you view yourself, and how you use skills to improve your communication and relationships: your perceptions. At the foundation of communication and connection is perception, or the way that you view the world.  

Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information. How you perceive the people and objects around you affects your communication. You respond differently to an object or person that you perceive favorably than you do to something you find unfavorable. How do you filter through all the information you receive, organize it, and make meaning from it? 

Selecting Information

People take in information through five senses, but the world around you includes so much information that your brain can't process and make sense of it all. Selecting is the first part of the perception process, in which you focus your attention on new information by touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting. Think about how, out of all the information to pay attention to, you may hear a familiar voice, see a pair of shoes you want to buy at a store, or smell something cooking for dinner. You quickly cut through and push to the background all kinds of sights, smells, sounds, and other information to select what is most important. Sometimes, the stimuli you select isn’t the most important, only the most demanding of your attention.

Organizing Information

Organizing is the second part of the perception process, in which you sort and categorize information based on patterns. Three ways you sort things into patterns are by location or proximity, similarity, and difference.² In terms of proximity, people tend to think that things that are close together go together. For example, have you ever been waiting to be helped in a business and the clerk assumes that you and the person standing beside you are together? The slightly awkward moment usually ends when you and the other person in line look at each other, then back at the clerk, and one of you explains that you are not together. Even though you may have never met that other person in your life, the clerk used a basic organizing cue to group you together because you were standing in proximity to one another.

You also group things together based on similarity. People tend to think similar-looking or similar-acting things belong together. You also organize information that you take in based on differences. In this case, you might assume that the item that looks or acts differently from the rest doesn’t belong with the group. 

Perception organizing is like the literal act of organizing something, like your desk at home or work. If you have a bunch of papers and mail on the top of your desk, you will likely sort papers into separate piles for separate classes or put bills in a separate place than personal mail. You may have one drawer for pens and pencils, another for supplies, and another drawer for files. In this case, you are grouping items based on similarities and differences. Perception organization has you simplify information and look for patterns to help you more efficiently communicate and get through life. Simplification and categorizing based on patterns isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Your brain files information and experiences away for later retrieval, and different parts of the brain are responsible for different sensory experiences. It is natural for things to be grouped together so you are not overwhelmed by all the data.

Looking for patterns helps you in many practical ways. However, the judgments you might place on various patterns and categories are not natural; they are learned and are culturally and contextually relative. Your perceptual patterns are not useful and even unethical when the judgments you associate with certain patterns are based on stereotypical or prejudicial thinking. 

You also organize interactions and interpersonal experiences based on your personal experiences. When two people experience the same encounter differently, misunderstandings and conflict may result. 

Interpreting Information

Although selecting and organizing new information happens very quickly, and sometimes without much conscious thought, interpretation can be a much more conscious step in the perception process. Interpretation is the third part of the perception process, in which you give meaning to your experiences using mental structures known as schemata, which are like databases of stored, related information that you use to interpret new experiences. All people have fairly complicated schemata that have developed over time as small units of information combine to make more meaningful information.

It’s important to be aware of schemata because your interpretations affect your behavior. For example, if you are doing a group project for class and you perceive a group member to be shy based on your schema of how shy people communicate, you may avoid giving him presentation responsibilities in your group project because you do not think shy people make good public speakers. Schemata also guide your interactions, providing a script for your behaviors. You know, in general, how to act and communicate in a waiting room, in a classroom, on a first date, and at church.

These schemata are used to interpret others’ behavior and form impressions about who they are as a person. To help this process along, you might ask for information from people to help you place them into a pre-existing schema. You make similar interpretations based on where people are from, their age, their race, and other social and cultural factors. In summary, people have schemata about individuals, groups, places, and things, and these schemata filter perceptions before, during, and after interactions. As schemata are accessed from memory, they are executed, like computer programs or apps on your smartphone, to help you interpret the world around you. Just like computer programs and apps must be regularly updated to improve their functioning, competent communicators update and adapt their schemata as they have new experiences.

Perceiving Others

Are you a good judge of character? Research shows that many people are surprisingly accurate at predicting how an interaction with someone will unfold based on initial impressions. Just as others make impressions of you, you make impressions of others. You have already learned how the perception process works in terms of selecting, organizing, and interpreting. In this section, you will focus on how you perceive others, with specific attention to how you interpret your perceptions of others.

Attribution and Interpretation

Attribution is mapping meaning and intent onto others’ behavior. It helps answer the question, “Why did they do that?” In most interactions, you continually run an attribution script in your mind, which essentially tries to come up with explanations for what is happening. Why did my neighbor slam the door when she saw me walking down the hall? Why is my partner being extra nice to me today? Why did my co-worker miss the project team meeting this morning? In general, you seek to attribute the cause of others’ behaviors to internal or external factors. Internal attributions connect the cause of behaviors to personal aspects such as personality traits. External attributions connect the cause of behaviors to situational factors. Attributions are important to consider because your reactions to others’ behaviors are strongly influenced by the explanations you reach. Imagine that Juan and Alisi are dating. One day, Juan gets frustrated and raises his voice to Alisi. She may find that behavior more offensive and even consider breaking up with him if she attributes the cause of the blow-up to his personality since personality traits are usually fairly stable and difficult to control or change.

However, Alisi may be more forgiving if she attributes the cause of his behavior to situational factors beyond Juan’s control since external factors are usually temporary. If she makes an internal attribution, Alisi may think, “Wow, this person is crazy. Who knows when he will lose it again?” If she makes an external attribution, she may think, “Juan has been under a lot of pressure to meet deadlines at work and hasn’t been getting much sleep. Once this project is over, I’m sure he’ll be more relaxed.” This process of attribution is continuous, and, as with many aspects of perception, you may sometimes be aware of the attributions you make, and sometimes they are automatic. Attribution occurs in the same part of the perception process that some of the most common perceptual errors or biases occur.

One of the most common perceptual errors is the fundamental attribution error, which refers to the tendency to explain others’ behaviors using internal rather than external attributions.³

Perceptual errors can also be biased, and in the case of the self-serving bias, the error works out in your favor. Just as people tend to attribute others’ behaviors to internal rather than external causes, people do the same for themselves, especially when behaviors have led to something successful or positive. When the behaviors lead to failure or something negative, people tend to attribute the cause to external factors. Thus the self-serving bias is a perceptual error through which you might attribute the cause of your successes to internal personal factors while attributing your failures to external factors beyond your control. When you look at the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias together, you can see that you are likely to judge yourself more positively than another person, or at least less personally.

The professor-student relationship offers a good case example of how these concepts can play out. Students who earn an unsatisfactory grade on an assignment attribute that grade to the strictness, unfairness, or stupidity of their professor. The behavior is explained using an internal attribution and is an example of the fundamental attribution error. Students may further attribute their poor grades to their busy schedule or other external, situational factors rather than their lack of motivation, interest, or preparation (internal attributions). On the other hand, when students get a good grade on a paper, they will likely attribute that to their intelligence or hard work rather than an easy assignment or an “easy grading” professor. Both of these examples illustrate the self-serving bias. 

Impressions and Interpretation

As you perceive others, you make impressions about their personality, likeability, attractiveness, and other characteristics. Although many of your impressions are personal, what forms them is sometimes based more on circumstances than personal characteristics. All the information you take in isn’t treated equally. How important are first impressions? Does the last thing you notice about a person stick with you longer because it’s more recent? Do you tend to remember the positive or negative things you notice about a person? This section will help answer these questions as you explore how the timing of information and the content of the messages you receive can influence your perception.

First and Lasting Impressions

The old saying, “You never get a second chance to make a good impression,” points to the idea that first impressions matter. The brain is a predictive organ in that it wants to know, based on previous experiences and patterns, what to expect next, and first impressions function to fill this need, allowing you to determine how you will proceed with an interaction after only a quick assessment of the person with whom you are interacting.⁴ Research shows that people are surprisingly good at making accurate first impressions about how an interaction will unfold and at identifying personality characteristics of people they do not know. Studies show that people are generally able to predict how another person will behave toward them based on an initial interaction. People’s accuracy and ability to predict behavior based on first impressions vary, but people with high accuracy are typically socially skilled and popular and have less loneliness, anxiety, and depression; more satisfying relationships; and more senior positions and higher salaries.⁴ So not only do first impressions matter, but having the ability to form accurate first impressions seems to correlate to many other positive characteristics.

Physical and Environmental Influences on Perception

You make first impressions based on a variety of factors, including physical and environmental characteristics. In terms of physical characteristics, style of dress and grooming are important, especially in professional contexts. You have a general schema regarding how to dress for various situations ranging from formal, to business casual, to casual, to hanging around the house.

Different professions also have a schema for appearance and dress. Imagine a doctor, a mechanic, a government official, or a mail carrier. Each group has clothing and personal styles that create and fit into general patterns. Of course, the mental picture you have of any of the examples above is not going to be representative of the whole group, meaning that stereotypical thinking often exists within your schema.

The Halo and Horn Effects

People tend to adapt information that conflicts with earlier impressions to make it fit within the frame they have established. This is known as selective distortion, and it shows in the halo and horn effects. The angelic halo and devilish horn are useful metaphors for the lasting effects of positive and negative impressions. 

The halo effect occurs when initial positive perceptions lead you to view later interactions as positive. The horn effect occurs when initial negative perceptions lead you to view later interactions as negative.⁴ Since impressions are especially important when a person is navigating the job market, let’s imagine how the horn and halo effects could play out for a recent college graduate looking to land her first real job. Ana has recently graduated with her degree in business and is looking to start her career as a corporate trainer. If one of Ana’s professors has a relationship with an executive at an area business, his positive verbal recommendation will likely result in a halo effect for Ana. Since the executive thinks highly of his friend the professor, and the professor thinks highly of Ana, then the executive will start his interaction with Ana with a positive impression and interpret her behaviors more positively than he would otherwise. The halo effect initiated by the professor’s recommendation may even lead the executive to dismiss or overlook some negative behaviors. 

Let’s say Ana doesn’t have a third party to help make a connection and arrives late for her interview. That negative impression may create a horn effect that carries through the interview. Even if Ana presents as competent and friendly, the negative first impression could lead the executive to minimize or ignore those positive characteristics, and the company may not hire her.

Culture, Gender, and Perception

Your cultural identities affect your perceptions. Sometimes you are conscious of the effects and sometimes you are not. In either case, people tend to favor others who exhibit cultural or personality traits that match up with their own. This tendency is so strong that it often leads you to assume that people you like are more similar to you than they actually are. Knowing more about how these forces influence your perceptions can help you become more aware of and competent regarding the impressions you form of others.

Culture

Be aware of differences that come from culture. Culture is how you are raised and includes your values and beliefs. These past experiences affect your perception, especially the traditions and values that your parents taught you as children, behaviors taught at home or in school, and social expectations. These cultural influences are not the same for everyone, even people who grew up in the same country. Being sensitive to cultural differences helps you to be a more effective communicator.  

Problems arise when cultural influences cause you to make incorrect assumptions about others or when you believe your perception is the right one and any other is wrong. You can improve your cultural perception by trying to understand how another person was raised and how that person views the world based on cultural background.

Race, gender, class, nationality, and age all affect the perceptions that you make. Unless you are exposed to many cultural groups and learn how others perceive you and the world around them, you will likely have a narrow or naïve view of the world and assume that others see things the way you do. Exposing yourself to and experiencing cultural differences in perspective doesn’t mean that you have to change your schema to match another cultural group’s. Instead, it may offer you a chance to better understand why and how your schemata were constructed.

Perception starts with information that comes in through your senses. How you perceive even basic sensory information is influenced by your culture, as is illustrated in the following list:

• Sight. People in different cultures “read” art in different ways, differing in terms of where they start to look at an image and the types of information they perceive and process. Different cultures may dress differently. What is considered beautiful in one culture may be misunderstood in another. 

• Sound. Some cultures speak louder or softer than others. Music in some cultures is unpleasant to others. Sounds can be irritating to people who aren’t taught that these combinations of sounds are pleasing. 

• Touch. In some cultures it would be very offensive for a man to touch—even tap on the shoulder—a woman who isn’t a relative. Greetings are often influenced by a culture's view on touch, like bowing, shaking hands, or kissing.   

• Taste. Tastes for foods vary greatly around the world. “Stinky tofu,” which is a favorite snack of people in Taipei, Taiwan’s famous night market, would likely be very off-putting in terms of taste and smell to many foreign tourists.

• Smell. Some smells appeal to different cultures. For example, the smell of a freshly brewed cup of coffee might be inviting to some cultures, while it might offend those who don’t drink coffee for religious reasons. 

Aside from differences in reactions to basic information you take in through your senses, there is also cultural variation in how you perceive more complicated constructs, like marriage, politics, and privacy.  Remember, your brain processes information by putting it into categories and looking for predictability and patterns. The previous examples have covered how you do this with sensory information and with more abstract concepts like marriage and politics, but you also do this with people. When you categorize people, you generally view them as “like us” or “not like us.” This simple us/them split affects subsequent interactions, including impressions and attributions. For example, you tend to view people you perceive to be like you as more trusting, friendly, and honest than people you perceive to be not like you.⁵ You are also more likely to use internal attribution to explain the negative behavior of people you perceive to be different from you. Having such inflexible categories can have negative consequences. Forcing people into rigid categories leads to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. The problem with your rough categorization of people into “like us” and “not like us” categories is that these differences aren’t as easy to perceive as you think. You cannot always tell whether or not someone is culturally like you through visual cues. 

Gender

The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose”.⁶

Men and women are different. Some characteristics of men and women are divine and spiritual, part of your premortal birthright. David A. Bednar (2006), a modern-day prophet, said, “[Gender] in large measure defines who we are, why we are here upon the earth, and what we are to do and become. For divine purposes, male and female spirits are different, distinctive, and complementary. … The unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both males and females were needed to implement the plan of happiness”.⁷

Some differences come from simple biology. For example, the organization of the hemispheres of the brain and how the two are connected differ between men and women.⁸ Hormones and brain chemicals affect how men and women behave and react emotionally. This doesn’t mean one gender is right and the other is wrong; it simply means there might be differences because of physiology. 

Some differences come from cultural and social influences. Media, family, and friend groups might influence appropriate gender behavior. Many cultures differ in how feminine or masculine men or women behave. For example, in some cultures, men hold hands, while in other cultures, this practice would be considered feminine. 

However, the doctrine of who men and women are is stated clearly in the Family Proclamation: “Fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.” Equality is often mistaken to mean that if two things are equal, they must be the same. Beginning from Adam and Eve, men and women were complements to each other. Earl C. Tingey (2008), a special witness of Jesus Christ, taught, “You must not misunderstand what the Lord meant when Adam was told he was to have a helpmeet. A helpmeet is a companion suited to or equal to [the other]. [They] walk side by side … not one before or behind the other. A helpmeet results in an absolute equal partnership between a husband and a wife. Eve was to be equal to Adam as a husband and wife are to be equal to each other.”⁹

Gender communication creates opportunities for empathy. Empathy is the process of understanding the whole message by attempting to experience not only how someone is responding but why the person is responding that way. Consider that your perception might not be the same perception or experience as a member of the opposite gender. Cross-communication is using your own gender style to communicate with the opposite gender, resulting in your message being interpreted in a way opposite to that which you intend. 

Smith and Tague-Busler¹⁰ came up with the idea of the Opaque Rule to describe how to avoid cross-communication. The Golden Rule is, “Do unto to others as you would have done unto you.” Treating people respectfully because that's how you wish to be treated is a good policy, but it can often be the cause of gender misunderstandings between men and women. The Opaque Rule is “Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.” 

Many women struggle in the workplace for a voice, and, depending on culture, some women are still fighting for equal pay and opportunities for advancement.⁸ It is important to remember that all people want to be treated as professionals, regardless of culture or gender.  

Overcoming Barriers to Perceiving Others

Many barriers prevent people from competently perceiving others. While some are more difficult to overcome than others, they can all be addressed by raising your awareness of the influences around you and committing to monitoring, reflecting on, and changing some of your communication habits. Whether it is lazy listening skills, lack of empathy, or stereotypes and prejudice, various filters influence how you perceive and respond to others.

Develop Empathetic Listening Skills

Effective listening is not easy, and most do not make an effort to overcome common barriers to listening. Your fast-paced life, cultural values, and the tendency to value speaking over listening sometimes make listening feel like work. But you shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to make someone else feel better and to open your perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic listening can also help you expand your self and social awareness by learning from other people’s experiences and taking on different perspectives. Empathetic listening is challenging because it requires cognitive and emotional investment that goes beyond the learning of a skill set.

Beware of Stereotypes and Prejudice

Stereotypes are sets of beliefs that you develop about groups, which you then apply to individuals from that group. Stereotypes are schemata that are taken too far, as they reduce and ignore a person’s individuality and the diversity present within a larger group of people. Stereotypes can be based on cultural identities, physical appearance, behavior, speech, beliefs, and values, among other things, and are often caused by a lack of information about the target person or group.¹¹ Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral, but all run the risk of lowering the quality of your communication.

While the negative effects of stereotypes are pretty straightforward in that they undervalue people and prevent you from adapting and revising your schemata, positive stereotypes also have negative consequences. Stereotypes can also lead to double standards that point to larger cultural and social inequalities. 

Since stereotypes are generally based on a lack of information, you must take it upon yourself to gain exposure to new kinds of information and people, which will likely require you to get out of your comfort zone. When you do meet people, you should base the impressions you make on describable behavior rather than inferred or secondhand information. When stereotypes negatively influence your overall feelings and attitudes about a person or group, prejudiced thinking results. Prejudice is negative feelings or attitudes toward people based on their identity or identities. Prejudice can have individual or widespread negative effects. 

Engage in Self-reflection

A good way to improve your perceptions and increase your communication competence in general is to engage in self-reflection. If a communication encounter doesn’t go well and you want to know why, your self-reflection will be much more useful if you are aware of and can recall your thoughts and actions.

Self-reflection can also help you increase your cultural awareness. Your thought process regarding culture is often focused on the “other,” meaning that the culture of the other person or group is what stands out in your perception. However, the phrase “know thyself” is appropriate, as you become more aware of your own culture by better understanding other cultures and perspectives. Developing cultural self-awareness often requires you to get out of your comfort zone. Listening to people who are different from you is a key component of developing self-knowledge. This may be uncomfortable, because your deeply held beliefs and values may become less certain when you see the multiple perspectives that exist.

You can also become more aware of how your self-concepts influence how you perceive others. You often hold other people to the standards you hold for yourself or assume that their self-concept should be consistent with your own. For example, if you consider yourself a neat person and think that being messy in your personal appearance would show that you are rude and lazy, then you are likely to think the same of a person you judge to have a messy appearance. So asking questions like “Is my impression based on how this person wants to be, or how I think this person should want to be?” can lead to moments of self-reflection. Asking questions in general about the perceptions you are making is an important part of perception checking.

Checking Perception

Perception checking is a strategy to help you monitor your reactions to and perceptions about people and communication. There are some internal and external strategies you can use to engage in perception checking. In terms of internal strategies, review the various influences on perception that you have learned about in this chapter and always be willing to ask yourself, “What is influencing the perceptions I am making right now?” Even being aware of what influences are acting on your perceptions makes you more aware of what is happening in the perception process. In terms of external strategies, you can use other people to help understand your perceptions.

The cautionary phrase “Things aren’t always as they appear” is useful when evaluating your own perceptions. Sometimes it’s a good idea to share your ideas first, especially if the perceptions relate to some high-stakes situation. Not all situations allow you the chance to understand your perceptions. Preventable crimes have been committed because people who saw something suspicious didn’t report it even though they had a bad feeling about it. Of course, you have to walk a line between being reactionary and being too cautious, which is difficult to manage. Sometimes you are morally or legally required to report someone who is harming him or herself or others, but sometimes the circumstances are much more uncertain.

The Holy Ghost’s Influence on Perception

Perception is a process by which you become aware of the world. Your sensing organs gather and feed information to your brain, which, as the organ of perception, determines what it all means. Your perceptual world is not an accurate representation of the physical world. Even at your best, your perception is limited. Your perception of an object, person, or experience depends not only upon that stimulus but more so upon your own feelings and past experiences. Perception is as much the process of extracting information from within yourself as it is a process of extracting information from the world outside you. 

Your mind works by categorization—putting everything new into categories that are standard and established for you by your past experiences. If you could not categorize, you would be overwhelmed by the number of sensations that constantly come to you. However, categories—being largely inventions of the mind—can never be exact or entirely accurate. The Holy Ghost is the only consistently accurate way humans have of perceiving without mistakes. Keith B. McMullin (1996), a special witness of Jesus Christ, taught, “A millennium of experience through sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and all the powers of the universe combined cannot approach the sublime and complete experience of one brief moment under the influence of the Holy Ghost." ¹² You gain more perspective with the Holy Ghost as a guide than your own senses. Remember and model the perspective of Jesus Christ. “... the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7

Study Tips

• Make flashcards with physical materials.
• Use flashcard apps - quizlet.com is a good example of an application that allows you to make your own flashcards.
• Read the assignments and try to understand what the words mean. The reading assignments for this week include the words you are required to study.

¹ Kenneth Southwick, 2007, The Great Measure of our Discipleship

² Coren, S., “Principles of Perceptual Organization and Spatial Distortion: The Gestalt Illusions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 6, no. 3 (1980): 404–12.

³ Sillars, A. L., “Attributions and Communication in Roommate Conflicts,” Communication Monographs 47, no. 3 (1980): 180–200.

⁴ Hargie, O., Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 261.

⁵ Brewer, M. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55(3), 429–444.

⁶ The Family: A Proclamation to the World

⁷ “Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan,” Liahona, June 2006, 51; Ensign, June 2006, 83.

⁸ Roy Berko, Joan E. Aitken, Andrew Wolvin, 2010, ICOMM: Interpersonal Concepts and Competencies: Foundations of Interpersonal Communication (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010)

⁹ Earl C. Tingey, “The Simple Truths from Heaven: The Lord’s Pattern,” Church Educational System fireside for young adults, Jan. 13, 2008).

¹⁰ Tracey L. Smith and Mary Tague-Busler, 2012, The Key to Survival, Waveland Press Inc, Long Grove, Ill, 131

¹¹ Guyll, M., et al., “The Potential Roles of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Stigma Consciousness, and Stereotype Threat in Linking Latino/a Ethnicity and Educational Outcomes,” Social Issues 66, no. 1 (2010): 116.

¹² Keith McMullin, “Ye May Know,” April General Conference, 1996