Ch 2 - Overview of Interpersonal Communication

Interpersonal Communication Skills

Action Model

Views communication as a one-way transmission: a sender encodes a message, sends it through a channel to a receiver, and noise may interfere.

Attending

The nonverbal side of active listening: the way you use your body, eyes, face, voice, and environment to signal “I'm with you” to the speaker.

Channel

The route or medium through which a message travels from sender to receiver.

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to accurately perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions—both your own and others’—to guide effective thinking and behavior in relationships.

Environment

The setting and conditions that surround a conversation and shape how messages are sent, received, and interpreted.

Ethics

The set of principles and standards for deciding what is right, fair, and responsible in how we communicate with others.

Feedback

The receiver’s response signals how they interpreted and felt about the sender’s message; it helps the sender adjust and keep the interaction on track.

Interaction Model

Views communication as a two-way exchange where people take turns sending messages and giving feedback, and the roles of sender and receiver alternate

Interpreting

The listening step where you make sense of a message—linking the speaker’s word, tone, and nonverbal cues with the context and your prior knowledge to infer what they mean.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

A motivation theory proposing that humans tend to prioritize needs in a general progression—from basic survival to growth—where lower-level needs usually demand attention before high-level goals get ready traction.

Model

A simplified representation of a complex process that highlights the key parts and how they relate so we can explain, predict, and improve communication.

Noise

Anything that interferes with sending, receiving, or interpreting a message accurately.

Organizing

The perception step where your mind arranges the information you’

Perception

The active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting what you notice so you can make meaning about people and events during communication.

Receiver

The person (or group) who gets a message and decodes it—that is, assigns meaning to the symbols they’ve perceived—and can respond with feedback.

Self-Concept

Your organized, relatively stable—but still adaptable—set of beliefs and feelings about who you are. It includes how you see your traits, roles, values, abilities, and group memberships, and it guides how you communicate and behave.

Source

The person who initiates communication by encoding an idea, feeling, or intention into symbols (words, tone, gestures), choosing a channel (e.g., face-to-face, text, email), and launching the message toward a receiver.

Transaction Model

Views communication as a dynamic, ongoing process where people are both senders and receivers at the same time, co-creating meaning together within a specific context.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Explains how, especially in first encounters, people are motivated to reduce uncertainty about each other so they can predict and coordinate behavior more smoothly.

Symbol

Anything (usually a word, image, sound, or gesture) that stands for or represents something else; its meaning isn’t inherent but agreed upon by people in a community.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Uncertainty Reduction Theory