SCOM 123 JMU Final Exam

What are the most common myths about communication?

1. Communication is a cure all

2. Communicating is just common sense

3. Communication quantity equals quality

Linear

One way channel; sender sends a message through a channel to a receiver in an atmosphere of noise

Interactive

two way channel that incorporates feedback

Transactional

Everyone is a sender and a receiver; it affects all parties involved

Channel

Medium through which a message travels, such as oral or written

Sender

The initiator and encoder of messages; person sending message

Receiver

the decoder of the message

Message

Stimulus that produces meaning; what the senders want the receivers to get

Encode

Putting ideas into spoken language

Decode

Translating the spoken ideas

Context

The environment in which communication occurs; the who, what, where, when, why, and how of communication.

Fields of Experience

Cultural background, ethnicity, geographic location, extent of travel, and general personal experiences accumulated over the course of a lifetime that influence messages.

Noise

Interference with effective transmission and reception of a message.

Feedback

The receiver's verbal and nonverbal response to the message

Content

What is actually being said or done

Relationship

How the message defines or redefines the association between individuals

Constructive

Open and supportive

Destructive

Closed off and Defensive

Communication Competence

Engaging in communication with others that is perceived to be both effective and appropriate

Skills needed in order to be a competent communicator

1. Progress towards the achievement of their goal

2. Know that even the best communicators make errors

3. Communication focuses on the "we" aspect instead of the "me"

Explain the role of rules in communication contexts

Rules create expectations for appropriate behavior. Some rules are explicitly stated, others are implied.

List the characteristics of an ethical communicator

Respect, honesty, fairness, choice, and responsibility.

Selecting

A strategy for managing dialectics in which one contradictory impulse is given attention and another is ignored

Organizing

Organize data you collect and create schemas

Interpreting

Make sense of the stimuli or interpret the info collected and react to it

What is a perceptual schema

Mental framework that creating meaningful patterns from stimuli.

Prototype

The most representative or "best" example of something

Stereotype

Generalization about a group or category of people

Script

A predictable sequence of events that indicates what we are expected to do in a given situation

Self-Concept

The sum total of everything that encompasses the self-referential term me; your identity or self-perception

What are some of the influences on perception

Gender, culture, past experiences, mood, and context.

What is self-disclosure?

Process of purposefully revealing to others personal info about yourself that is significant and others would not know unless you told them

Depth

Refers to how personal you become when discussing a particular subject that reveals something about yourself

Breadth

Range of subjects discussed between persons

What are the rules for constructively and appropriately self-disclosing and responding to self-disclosure?

1. Trust to avoid being hurt or damaged

2. Reciprocity that risk and trust is shared

3. Understand that some cultures are not as open as others

4. Make sure appropriate for the situation

5. Do incremental disclose to avoid an overload of information

Why is reciprocal sharing important?

You want to be comfortable and be able to have the same trust and risk as the person sharing

Explain what a self-serving bias is and how it influences our interactions

attribute our successful behavior to ourselves and assign external circumstances to our unsuccessful behavior

First Impression

Biased influence but accurate

Primacy Effect

Tendency to be more influenced by initial info about a person than by the info gathered later

Negativity Bias

A strong tendency to weigh negative information more heavily than positive information, especially when forming perceptions of others

Attribution Error

Tendency to overemphasize personal traits and under emphasize situations as causes of other peoples behavior

Stereotyping

Using rapid judgement when instant decisions are required

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Acting on an wrong expectations that produces expected behavior and confirms the original impression.

Perspective Taking

see as others see

Emotional Understanding

Participate in the feelings of others

Concerns for others

you care what happens to them

Define what culture is

Learned set of enduring values, beliefs, and practices

Explain how culture influences communication

Different cultures have different set of values, beliefs, and practices all have the things that mean something different

Ethnocentrism

Ones own culture is superior to others

Cultural Relativism

Views cultures as different not deficient

Multiculturalism

Social-intellectual movement that promotes the value of diversity as a core principle and insists that all cultural groups be treated with respect and as equals

Low-Context

Straightforward, explicit, direct, expression of point of view

High Context

Indirect, forces you to use context clues to figure out meaning in the message, situation setting such as relationships, situations, setting, and time; typically found in collectivist cultures

Individualistic Cultures

Emphasis on self, motivated by personal achievement; individuals see themselves as loosely linked to each other and largely independent of group identification.

Collectivistic Cultures

Focused on group, not "me" but "we", commitment to groups is vital; individuals see themselves as being closely linked to one or more groups and are primarily motivated by the norms and duties imposed by these groups.

Low-Power Distance

Horizontal, share power equally

High Power Distance

Vertical, emphasize maintaining power differences, caste system

Feminine

exhibits stereotypical feminine traits such as affection, sensitivity, compassion

Masculine

exhibit stereotypical masculine traits such as male dominance, competitiveness, and drive for achievement

How does culture influence nonverbal communication?

Emotions are expressed differently in different cultures

Structure

form or shape characterized by an interrelationship among its parts

Productivity

capacity of language to transform a small number of phonemes into whatever words, phrases, and sentences that you require to communicate your abundance of thoughts and feelings

Displacement

ability to use language to talk about objects events, ideas, that don't just exist in the here now and may only be in our minds

Self-Reflexiveness

ability to use language to talk about language

Sense Experience

Physical world

Description

Verbal reports that sketch what we perceive from our senses

Inference

Conclusions about the unknown based on the known

Judgement

Subjective evaluation of objects, events, or ideas

Linguistic Determinism

Claims we are prisoners of our native language, unable to think certain thoughts or perceived in certain ways because of the grammatical structure ad lexicon of our language

Linguistics Relativity

Claims that grammar and lexicon of our native language powerfully influences but does not imprison our thinking and perception

Connotative Meaning

personal meaning

Denotative Meaning

shared meaning; The socially agreed-upon meaning of words; the meaning shared by members of a speech community.

Fact

something that actually exists and can be verified

Inferences

guesses, conclusion about unknown based on the known

Slang

informal words used by group with common interest

Jargon

The specialized language of a profession, trade, or group

Euphemisms

polite expression used in place of words or phrases that otherwise might be considered harsh or unpleasant to hear

Nonverbal

multi channeled

Verbal

single channel

Repetition

same message, different channel

Substitution

no words needed

Regulation

signals for verbal interaction

Contradiction

mixed message

Accentuation

intensify verbal communication

Kinesics

The study of both facial communication and gestures

Paralanguage

the vocal cues and way we talk indicate more meaning behind words

Territoriality

A predisposition to defend a fixed geographic area, or territory, as one's exclusive domain

Proxemics

The study of the influence of distance and territoriality on human communication

Haptics

use of touch

Comprehending

Shared meaning between and among parties in a transaction.

Retaining

keeping the info in our brains and retaining it for later

Responding

how we respond to verbal and nonverbal messages

Informational Listening

comprehend message of speaker before critically evaluating it

Critical Listening

The process of evaluating the merits of claims as they are heard.

Empathic Listening

taking the perspective of another person to listen for what that person wants/needs to make it more personal

Conversational Narcissism

listeners to turn ordinary conversations about themselves without showing interest in others

Competitive Interrupting

dominating the floor when others begin to speak

Glazing Over

when listener daydreams or attention wanders

Pseudo-Listening

pretend to be listening

Ambushing

listen for weakness and ignore strength of speaker's message