Source–message–channel–receiver model of communication

The efficiency or fidelity of communication is defined by the degree to which the reaction of the receiver matches the purpose motivating the source.

Source and receiver share the same four attributes: communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, and social-cultural system.

Berlo discusses it primarily in terms of the five senses used to decode messages: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting.

[6][7] Berlo sees communication as a dynamic process that does not consist of a fixed sequence of events with a clearly defined beginning, middle, or end.

[9][10] In this regard, he rejects the idea that other goals, like informing the receiver or entertaining them, are equally important.

Berlo gives a biological argument for this position by holding that "[our] basic purpose is to alter the relationship between our own organism and the environment".

This is similar to how the purpose of many ingrained habits, communicational and otherwise, is to affect the environment even though the agent is often not aware of it while performing them.

[15] In such cases, the source tries to influence itself, like a poet who writes poetry in secret in order to emotionally affect themselves.

It explains communication in terms of five basic components: a source, a transmitter, a channel, a receiver, and a destination.

[25][27][28] Similar ideas are expressed in the SMCR model in the discussion of how attitudes, knowledge, and the social-cultural system of the participants shape communication.

[8][36] Berlo sees thought or reasoning as an additional communication skill relevant both to encoding and decoding.

Good encoding skills ensure that the purpose is expressed very clearly and makes the decoding for the receiver much easier.

If the receiver's communication skills are very limited, they may not be able to understand the expressions used by the source and thus not follow their train of thought.

It includes background beliefs and values common in this culture and ideas about what kinds of behavior are unacceptable.

Within a culture, these aspects are also determined by the person's position within society, like their social class, which groups they belong to, and their more specific roles.

Such factors can influence how communicators behave, what guidelines they follow, what is being discussed, and how the contents are encoded and decoded.

[44][45][46] In cases of big social or cultural differences between source and receiver, effective communication is often severely limited.

[8] Berlo understands the message as a physical product of the source, like a speech, a written letter, or a painting.

What meaning they associate with the message depends on various factors, including their past life experiences, their communication skills, their knowledge, and their culture.

For example, the source might think that the meaning of their message is of utmost importance while the receiver may dismiss it as trivial or irrelevant.

They do this by deciding how to express the ideas and how to arrange the sentences to make sure that they are easily understandable for the intended audience.

[4][61] Another application focuses on human behavior and intrapersonal communication in the context of organizations and management.

[62] Bette Ann Stead applies Berlo's model to content theories of motivation, like the ones by Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg.

[4] A lot of criticism of the SMCR model focuses on its description of communication as a one-way flow of information that starts with a source and ends with a receiver.

Berlo mitigates this criticism by claiming that the simplified presentation implying a linear nature is used mainly for convenience.

At the same time, he holds that real communication is not a linear process consisting of a fixed sequence of events.

[4][1] This means that the SMCR model fails to properly address the effects of noise and other barriers that may inhibit the transmission of the message or distort it along the way.

[1] Hal Taylor criticizes Berlo's model by holding that it does not put enough emphasis on "the purposive nature of human communication".

This criticism is based on the idea that the source usually intends to achieve some purpose by engaging in communication, like persuading the audience or getting them to perform a certain action.

Berlo himself acknowledges the role of a purpose guiding communication but his model does not include an separate component corresponding to this factor.