COMM 218Z Midterm

Why do we communicate?

• Physical Needs (health)

• Relational Needs

• Identity Needs (how we learn who we are)

• Practical Needs (allows us to complete tasks and successfully go through life)

Relational Rationale (Belongingness Hypothesis)

• We need to maintain at least a minimum number of significant close relationships.

• Relationships are needed for human wellbeing and development.

How are relationships beneficial?

• Socially connected people live longer.

• Isolated individuals are more susceptible to human cold.

• Join easily, leave difficulty.

Definition of Interpersonal Communication

Communication that occurs between two people within the context of their relationship, helps us understand closeness, dominance, and intimacy.

What are the three modes of communication?

The Nature of Communication

• Action model

• Interaction model

• Transactional model

What is the action model?

• The action model treats communication as a one-way process (Ex: lecture)

1. A source formulates an idea

2. The source encodes the idea in a form of message

3. Message is sent through a channel

4. Receiver decodes the message

5. Interpretation is affected by noise (physical or psychological)

What is the interaction model?

The interaction model treats communication as a two-way process.

Includes all the elements of the action model, and also suggests that receivers provide feedback through verbal and nonverbal behavior

What is the transactional model?

Have a specific environment that changes the way two people talk to each other

Noise affects the way you are able to send and receive messages

Main difference is that in this model both people are constantly responding and decoding at the same time

Always communicating some meaning to each other

What are the characteristics of communication?

• Communication is transactional (it is something we do WITH others not TO others

• It’s irreversible

• Sends messages, whether intentional or unintentional

• Governed by rules

  • Explicit (grammatical, swear words)

  • Implicit (teacher isn’t supposed to yell at students)

What are communication myths?

• Everyone is an expert at communication

• Communication will solve any problem

• More communication is always better

• Communication is inherently good

What is communication competence?

• Competent communicators are effective and appropriate

• Effectiveness describes how well your communication achieves its goals

• Appropriateness describes how well your communication complies with the rules and expectations of the social situation

How do you build communication competence?

• Self-monitoring: Process of paying close attention to one’s behavior

• Empathy/Perspective Taking: Process of paying close attention to the emotions and/or behaviors of others

• Adaptability: Choose the right communication for the specific situation

• Cognitive Complexity: Construct several different frameworks for viewing and issue

• Ethics: Competence must be paired with morals

• Involvement; Level of caring about the topic and person

What is mediated interpersonal communication?

• Personal content

• Personalized receivers

• Mutual obligation

• Expectation of privacy (not face to face, texting, conversation over text should be kept private)

• Ex: telephone conversations, email

What is mass personal communication?

• Personal content

• Larger audience

• Less mutual obligation

• Low expectation of privacy (Instagram post, Facebook status update)

What is competence in mediated communication?

• Consider the channel

• Richness vs Leanness (fewer nonverbal communication)

• Be aware of hyper personal communication

• Synchronous vs Asynchronous communication

What is the difference between individualistic and collectivistic cultures?

Individualistic cultures believe their responsibility is to themselves.

Collectivistic cultures believe their responsibility is to their communities.

What is the difference between low-context and high-context cultures?

Low-context cultures are more direct, and you should say what you mean.

High-context cultures involve more subtle behaviors and contextual cues rather than verbal directness.

Achievement vs nurturing cultures

Achievement cultures place high value on material success and the task at hand

Nurturing cultures regard the support of relationship as primary goal

Difference in polychronic and monochronic cultures

Monochronic cultures view time as a finite commodity

Polychronic cultures view time as more holisitc, fluid, and less structured

Difference in uncertainty-avoiding and uncertainty-accepting cultures?

Avoiding cultures are drawn to the familiar and are relatively unlikely to take risks

Accepting cultures are open to novel situations and are accepting of people and ideas that are different from their own

What is intercultural communication?

Process when members of two or more cultures or co-cultures exchange messages in a manner that is influenced by their different cultural perceptions and symbol systems

What is intercultural communication competence?

Motivation and attitude: Do you care about the intercultural significance and/or salience in a given interpersonal encounter? Do you care about those differences? Are you motivated to learn about them?

Tolerance for ambiguity: Can you deal with some ambiguity in terms of the types of verbal/nonverbal norms for this encounter?

Open-mindedness: Can you encounter cultural differences without an ethnocentric mindset?

Knowledge and skill: Can you gain knowledge regarding verbal/nonverbal norms from other cultures and co-cultures? Ex: learning a new language

What is the self-concept?

The relatively stable set of perceptions you hold on yourself. Based largely on beliefs, attitudes, and values. Self-esteem is the positive or negative evaluation of that set of perceptions.

Development of self-concept

• Biology

• Family

• Group memberships

• Gender/culture

What is reflected appraisal?

Mirror of judgements you have received from the world around you

What is social comparison?

Comparing yourself to those around you (Ex: height, status, athleticism)

What are the characteristics of the self-concept?

• Your self-concept is multi-faceted

  • You highlight different parts of yourself in different contexts

• Your self-concept is mostly subjective

  • Think you’re a good singer when you’re not

• Your self-concept resists change

• Your self-concept strongly influences your behaviors

  • Idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy

  • See yourself as a better student, so you perform better in a classroom

What is image management?

• I make sure you think about me in a certain way and you do the same

• Collaborative

• Multiple identities (chameleon)

• Face: desired public image + face and - face

• Facework: how we communicate that image to others

Communicating self (disclosure)

• Act of intentionally giving others information about ourselves that believe to be true that we think they don’t already have

• Intention and truthful

• Varies in breadth and depth: social penetration theory

  • likely to disclose more in closer relationships or ones we are wanting to develop

  • disclosure is a gradual process and reciprocal

What are the benefits of self-disclosure?

• Enhancing relationships and trust

• Reciprocity (gives us information about the other person)

• Catharsis (get a secret off your chest)

• Self-clarification (clarify self-concept)

What are the risks of self-disclosure?

• Rejection

• Decrease relational satisfaction

• Hurt to others

• Loss of control

Alternative to self-disclosure: Deception

Speaker transmits information knowingly and intentionally for the purpose of creating a false belief in the receiver

What are the types of deception?

Falsification: communicating false information as thought it were true

Exaggeration: Overestimating something that is true in principle (I caught a 10 lb fish when it reality it was only 1 lb)

Omission: leaving out parts of a story to create a false impression (I built a playground for my kids, not telling people that my dad did most of the work)

Equivocation: making ambiguous statements to give 5e false impression that one has said something when one hasn’t

What is perception?

The process of making meaning from the people in our environment and our relationship with them

First order realities: physically observable qualities of thing/situation

Second order realities: attaching meaning to those first order realities

What is the perception process?

1. Selection: attention to stimulus (someone comes up to talk and you select them and you start organizing your perception

2. Organization: categorizing that information (categorize that person, determine their role like coworker or stranger)

3. Interpretation: assigning meaning to that information

4. Negotiation: influencing each other’s perception

What are influences in perception?

Physiological influences

• health/fatigue

• Hunger

• Biological cycles

Psychological influences

• mood

• Self-concept

Social influences

• occupation

• Relationship

What are the fundamental forces in perception?

Stereotyping: identifying a group, recall a generalization about the group, apply generalization to that person

Primary effect

• first paper changes gabe way the student is perceived for the rest of their papers

Recency effect

• drastically change our perception (cheating)

Perceptual set

• general predisposition to believe what we want to believe

Egocentrism

• I want to protect my own identity/self image

• Change perception (tribe)

Positivity bias

• honeymoon stage, rose colored glasses

Negativity bias

• only look at negative

• Focus on bad characteristics

Halo effect

• trust attractive people more

Horn effect

• if one thing is wrong about the person, the entire person is terrible

• Ex: wrong stance on pro life vs pro choice

Explaining what we perceive

Attribution: explanations we give for our own and other peoples behavior

Attributions vary according to their:

Locus

• is it internal fault or external

Stability

• generally flunk tests or first time

Controllability

• did the person have a great deal of control over it

How we can fail in our attributions

Self-serving bias

• our successes are earned and deserved (stable, controllable, internal)

• Our failures are not our fault (unstable, uncontrollable, external)

Fundamental attribution error

• other peoples behavior are due to internal, stable causes

Over attribution

• identify one prominent characteristic of a person (sexual orientation, religious belief) attribute most of what that person says and does to that one characteristic

Nature of language

Definition: a structured system of symbols used for communication meaning

Symbolic: we use symbols that have no meaning in and of themselves to communicate meaning

Bound by context and culture

• sapir-whorf hypothesis

Language is rule governed

• phonological: how sounds are combined to form words

• Syntatic: the way symbols are arranged (spelling)

• Semantic: the meaning of statements

• Pragmatic: what meaning is appropriate in a given context

Triangle of meaning

What is the impact of naming?

Names help shape the way we think about ourselves and how we perceive others

Ex: professor, husband or wife

What is the impact of affiliation?

Communication adaption —> convergence (sound like the person)

Highlight differences between two people —> divergence (talking to kids)

The image of credibility

Examples of dialects and swearing

The impact of PRECISION

Ambiguous language: words and phrases that have more than one correct definition (bass)

Abstraction: more specific to more abstract language

Euphemisms: innocuous terms substituted for blunt ones

Relative language: gains meaning by comparison (wealthy)

Static evaluation: pushes someone into a box (millennials are lazy)

The impact of responsibility

It language vs I language changes responsibility

But statements

I, you, and we language

I: during confrontations

You: praising or including others

We: group settings to enhance unity

Gender and communication

Expressive (F) vs instrumental talk (M)

More-powerful (M) vs less-powerful speech (F)

Either talking and interrupting more vs asking more questions and using hedges (sort of, might be)

Masculine vs feminine linguistic style

Either shorter sentences and more sentence fragments vs longer sentences with references to we and they (unity)

Gender differences

Touch

• among adults, other-sex touch is more common than same-sex touch

• In same-sex pairs, women touch each other more than men do

Emotional communication

• women express more positive emotions, men express more negative emotions

Affection communication

• among adults, women use more affection behaviors than men do

This is potential due to:

• the amount of affection received in childhood

• The perception that affection is feminine

• Differences in hormonéis that promote affection behavior (women gave a more oxytocin)

Nonverbal communication

Definition: Include those behaviors and characteristics that convey meaning WITHOUT the use of words

Often conveys more meaning than verbal

Usually believed over verbal

Nonverbal communication characteristics

All nonverbal behavior can be communication

• true wether conscious or unconscious

• True wether intentional or unintentional

Primarily relational

• demonstrates the relationship we have with other person

Ambiguous

• higher abstraction (nonverbal cues have different meanings in different cultures)

• Not a singular meaning for every action

Still present in mediated communication

• for example avatars, emojis, font size, formatting

Influenced by culture and gender

• emblems: culturally understood substitutes for verbal expressions

• Usage of nonverbal cues (facial displays)

Functions of nonverbal communication

Creating and maintaining relationships

Regulate interactions

• regulators: cues that help control verbal interactions (hand out - stop)

Influencing others (professional attire)

Primary method of emotional communication

Concealing/deceiving

Nonverbal leakage cues: speech errors, blinking, gaze, pupil dilation

Strategic deception behaviors: immediacy/nonimmediacy (leaning in/being far) channel selection (email instead of face to face)

Predictors of detection success: look for leakiest channels, familiarize yourself with the baseline

Are we good at this? No basically a coin flip

• truth bias - believe people are telling the truth

• To maintain relationships we need this element of shared trust

Impression management

• manner: way we act (walk, posture, facial expression)

• Appearance: way we dress, display of artifacts

• Setting: physical items we surround ourselves with (posters, wall decor)

NONVERBAL CHANNELS

Kinesics, haptics, vocalics, proxemics, territoriality, chronemics, physical appearances, olfatics

What is kinesics?

Body movement!

• facial displays (important for emotion, attractiveness)

• Oculesis (eye behaviors like eye contact, pupil dilations)

• Posture (confidence)

• Gestures (illustrators, affect displays)

What is haptics?

TOUCH

• affecitonate

• Power/agression

• Ritualistic

What is vocalics?

Aspects of voice that convey meaning

Pitch, inflection, volume, rate, filler words, accent, silence

What is proxemics?

Usage of space, such as how close we stand to each other

Intimate, personal, social, public

What is territoriality?

How you arrange yourself in comparison to those around you (classes, lunch tables)

What is chronemics?

Usage of time to communicate messages (value and power)

Physical appearance

Halo effect

Trust

Dark side of preference for beauty (ED)

What is olfatics?

Study of smell, including memory and sexual attraction

why do we communicate?

using messages to create meaning