CMS 315M Exam 2 Study Notes: Chapters 4-7, Research Lecture & Team Contract

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering core terms, theories, and concepts across Chapters 4 through 7 and research/team management from the CMS 315M lecture notes.

Transactionalism

The perspective that relationships unfold in complex social, physical, historical, and cultural settings, examinable at multiple levels of scale, showing both stability and change.

Bronfenbrenner's Social Ecological Model

A framework positing that individuals sit inside nested layers of influence, specifically family, community, and culture.

Norms and Values (Relational Context)

Cultural expectations about how relationships should work.

Patterns of Work

Deceptively alluring work environments whose hours, location, and demands pull people away from relationships and affect time and energy.

Relationship Styles

The form a relationship takes, linked to needs such as sharing concern, depending on close friends, and respecting competence.

Attitudes Toward Self-Fulfillment

Relational context factors involving social diversity, focusing on oneself, and personal ambition.

Affordances

The communication acts or functions made possible by particular features of a communication channel.

Internet Compulsion

The feeling of being driven to stay constantly connected.

Editability

The correctable, changeable, and modifiable feature of a channel that allows a sender to polish a message before sending and control self-presentation.

Asynchronicity

A communication condition where events occur at two different times so replies are not immediate, enabling reflection while creating delay and ambiguity.

Surveillance

Close monitoring or observation in digital spaces, such as checking profiles or location sharing.

Triangulation

Verifying information about a person using several methods or sources.

Passive Strategies

Indirect information-gathering techniques that involve watching and listening rather than direct interaction.

Receive Stimulation Impulse

An internal impulse pulling people together to seek excitement, variety, or a change of pace from a temporarily stale existence.

Express Experiences Impulse

An impulse pulling people together driven by private experiences that eventually must overflow onto others.

Assert Oneself Impulse

An impulse pulling people together based on establishing identity by testing its potential components against other people.

Enhance Enjoyment of Certain Activities Impulse

An impulse pulling people together to associate over events or activities that are more fun when shared with others.

Matching Hypothesis

The tendency of people to choose partners who are similar to themselves in physical attractiveness.

Phantom-Other Technique

A research procedure where subjects evaluate targets they believe are real people, but who are actually fictional profiles crafted to vary in specific traits.

Unobtrusive Observation

An indirect uncertainty-reduction strategy that involves watching a person interact with others without interacting with them directly.

Observing Uninhibited Behavior

An uncertainty-reduction strategy involving watching how someone behaves in informal or relaxed settings, such as at a party or among friends.

Selective Perception

Seeing only what one wants to see or overlooking what is obvious to others due to personal needs, desires, or temporary emotional states.

Implicit Personality Theory

A belief or assumption that certain personality traits naturally co-occur in individuals.

Stereotyping

Holding an overgeneralized belief about a particular category or group of people.

Inductive Stereotyping

Inferring an individual's overall personality or group membership based on specific observed features.

Deductive Stereotyping

Inferring an individual's specific features or traits based on their personality or group membership.

Attribution Theory

A framework addressing how people are motivated to explain others' behavior, particularly when it is unexpected or negative.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Overestimating dispositional (internal, stable) factors when explaining others' behavior while overestimating situational factors for one's own behavior.

Self-Serving Bias

Interpreting one's own behavior in more positive, generous ways than the behavior of others, attributing successes to oneself and failures to outside causes.

Spiral of Reciprocal Perceptions

A perceptual cycle where people simultaneously observe others, are observed by others, and are influenced by both sets of observations.

Perceptual Anesthesia

A distortion in what an individual senses and perceives caused by their own inner drives.

Pollyanna Principle

The tendency to perceive and remember positive, pleasant things more accurately than unpleasant or bad things.

Negativity Effect

The tendency to place greater cognitive weight on negative information than on positive information when forming impressions.

Gestalt Impression Formation

The process of organizing discrete individual traits into a unified whole, where individual traits are interpreted positively if the overall impression is favorable.

Fatal Attraction (The Ick)

Coming to dislike the exact qualities in a partner that initially generated attraction, where 'fatal' denotes a prophetic outcome rather than lethality.

Communication Rules

Followable prescriptions indicating what communication behavior is obligatory, preferred, or prohibited in certain social situations.

Communication Norms

An accepted way of communicating that most people agree with, developed when a rule is followed most of the time.

Metacommunication

The act of communicating about communication, which serves to make implicit rules explicit.

Garfinkeling

Deliberately and respectfully breaking a social rule in order to expose unspoken norms and test hypotheses about group expectations.

Disclaimer

A communication strategy that formally acknowledges a rule or social expectation is about to be broken.

Hedging

A disclaimer indicating that what follows is tentative and that the speaker is open to accepting other views (e.g., 'I'm no expert, but…').

Credentialing

A disclaimer used when anticipating an unfavorable reaction, establishing special credentials to soften the impact (e.g., 'I know you won't like this, but…').

Sin License

A disclaimer acknowledging an upcoming negative reaction while declaring that the behavior simply must be that way.

Cognitive Disclaimer

A disclaimer showing that one is in control of their mental faculties when anticipating that listeners might think they are losing touch with reality.

Appeal for Suspended Judgment

A disclaimer asking the listener to withhold an unfavorable reaction until hearing the complete explanation (e.g., 'Hear me out').

Attenuation Rule

The conversational rule stating that the expansiveness of an interaction ritual greeting gradually subsides with each subsequent greeting.

Eyebrow Flash

A distinct, barely detectable up-and-down movement of the eyebrows used as an interaction ritual.

Ego Depletion

The condition occurring when self-control draws down a limited mental resource to the point of temporary exhaustion.

Frenemies

A discordant relationship where parties engage in cordial, polite interactions while privately evaluating each other in a distrustful, unfriendly, or hostile manner.

Affinity-Seeking Strategies

Communication strategies individuals deliberately use to get others to like them and feel positively toward them.

Love of Beauty

A primary love style characterized by intense passion and rooted in a powerful attraction to physical beauty.

Playful Love

A primary love style that treats love as a game, emphasizing winning while minimizing dependency.

Companionate Love (Lee)

A primary love style grounded in patience, stability, and enduring friendship and companionship.

Obsessive Love

A secondary love style resulting from Love of Beauty combined with Playful Love, characterized by possession, consumption, and addiction-like traits.

Realistic Love

A secondary love style formed by Playful Love combined with Companionate Love, grounded in practicality and logic.

Altruistic Love

A secondary love style formed by Companionate Love combined with Realistic Love, marked by unselfish, patient, caring kindness described as 'a religious experience.'

Intimacy (Sternberg)

The component of Sternberg's Triangular Theory encompassing closeness, sharing, communication, and emotional support.

Passion (Sternberg)

The component of Sternberg's Triangular Theory driven by physiological arousal and an intense desire to be united with the loved one.

Commitment (Sternberg)

The component of Sternberg's Triangular Theory involving the short-term decision to love another and the long-term determination to maintain that love.

Nonlove

A relationship state in Sternberg's model that lacks intimacy, passion, and commitment entirely.

Liking (Sternberg)

A love classification in Sternberg's model consisting solely of intimacy, with neither passion nor commitment.

Infatuation

A love classification in Sternberg's model defined by high passion in the total absence of intimacy and commitment.

Empty Love

A love classification in Sternberg's model characterized by high commitment accompanied by low passion and low intimacy.

Romantic Love

A love classification in Sternberg's model characterized by passion and intimacy, but lacking commitment.

Companionate Love (Sternberg)

A love classification in Sternberg's model characterized by intimacy and commitment, but lacking passion.

Fatuous Love

A love classification in Sternberg's model characterized by commitment and passion, but lacking intimacy.

Consummate Love

The complete form of love in Sternberg's model incorporating all three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.

Affection

A form of liking based on mutual interaction, characterized by warmth, closeness, and fondness.

Respect

A form of liking founded upon admiration for another person's characteristics.

Attachment

Powerful desires to be in a person's presence, make physical contact, and receive approval and care.

Caring

Love characterized by giving to the partner rather than needing from them.

Intimacy (Attachment-Caring Model)

The relational state resulting from the combination of attachment and caring.

Responsiveness

A foundational characteristic of intimate relationships involving doing things out of consideration for the other person that one would not otherwise do.

Secure Lovers

Lovers who are happy, friendly, trusting, and fully accepting of their partner despite known faults.

Avoidant Lovers

Lovers who fear intimacy and experience heightened emotional extremes and jealousy.

Anxious/Ambivalent Lovers

Lovers who experience emotional extremes, obsession, jealousy, and intense sexual attraction.

Limerence

An involuntary, cognitive, and physical obsession with another person driven by uncertainty regarding whether they reciprocate desire ('the desire to be desired').

Love Bombing

An unhealthy relational pattern of overwhelming, often incongruent affection, excessive compliments, grand gestures, and premature demands for commitment early in a relationship.

Team Contract

A proactive, written agreement defining goals, member roles, communication channels, response times, and conflict resolution mechanisms before disputes occur.