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3.3 Communication and Relational Dispositions — Comprehensive Notes

Communication Dispositions

  • Overview: This section introduces Daly’s (John Daly) communication dispositions as interpersonal patterns studied by communication scholars. It covers introversion–extroversion, approach and avoidance traits, and sociocommunicative orientation, with attention to how these dispositions shape interpersonal interaction.

  • Key takeaway: Communication dispositions describe general patterns of communicative behavior that influence how people initiate, conduct, and repair interpersonal interactions.

  • Introversion–extroversion

    • Core idea: People exist on a continuum from highly extroverted (talkative, dynamic, outgoing) to highly introverted (more reserved) in their likelihood to engage in interpersonal talk.
    • Measurement: The introversion scale developed by James C. McCroskey; scoring on the scale varies along the continuum.
    • Biological basis: A large body of research suggests introversion/extroversion is biologically based, with genetic factors contributing to one’s position on the continuum.
    • Interpersonal correlates: Individuals high on extroversion are perceived as intelligent, friendly, and attractive and tend to have more opportunities for interpersonal communication and often stronger communicative skills than those who are more introverted.
    • Significance: Extroverts’ greater sociability can lead to more relational opportunities, reinforcing their communicative advantages in many contexts.

  • Approach and avoidance traits (three core traits: shyness, communication apprehension, willingness to communicate)

    • Concept: Approach/avoidance dispositions describe the tendency to either seek out or avoid situations requiring communication with others.
    • Shyness
    • Definition and measurement: Shyness involves discomfort interacting in social settings; a classic scale by McCroskey and Virginia Richmond exists and is available on McCroskey’s website. Also, the Zimbardo study used questions about whether someone is currently shy and whether they have been shy at any point in life.
    • Zimbardo (massive survey): About 5{,}000 participants; questions: Do you presently consider yourself shy? Was there a period when you were shy?
      • Findings: Over 0.40 (40%) currently consider themselves shy; over 0.80 (80%) have been shy at some point.
    • Types of shy dispositions (Arnold Buss’s differentiation):
      • Anxious shyness: fear of face-to-face interaction; caused by strangers, novel settings, new social rules, fear of evaluation, or fear of self-presentation. Long-term causes include chronic fear, low sociability, low self-esteem, loneliness, and avoidance conditioning.
      • Self-conscious shyness: feeling conspicuous or exposed in social interactions; causes include breaches of privacy, teasing, ridicule, bullying, overpraise, or foolish actions. Long-term consequences include socialization pressures, public self-consciousness, teasing, low self-esteem, and poor social skills.
    • Outcomes: Shy individuals have fewer opportunities for interpersonal interaction, which worsens skill development and reinforces the avoidance spiral (a self-reinforcing cycle of being outside the crowd).
    • Communication apprehension (CA)
    • Definition: The fear or anxiety associated with real or anticipated communication with others.
    • Measurement: Many measures exist; the most prominent is McCroskey’s Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA).
    • PRCA-24: Evaluates four distinct CA types: Interpersonal CA, Group CA, Meeting CA, and Public CA. Interpersonal CA is most central for relational topics.
    • Impact on relationships: High interpersonal CA is associated with poorer early relationship development (e.g., in a 15-minute paired conversation, high CA individuals are perceived as less attractive, less trustworthy, and less satisfied than low CA peers).
    • Mindfulness study (2019): Rench, Poonawala-Carter, and Garcia examined mindfulness and religious communication; mindful description and nonreactivity to inner experience were found to be negatively related to religiosity in this context, suggesting mindfulness can build confidence to discuss religion, reducing religious CA.
    • Willingness to Communicate (WTC)
    • Definition: An individual’s predisposition to initiate communication with others.
    • Interpretation: People with high WTC are more likely to initiate interactions and work to make communication effective; those with low WTC initiate less and may be less effective in interpersonal exchanges.
    • Verbal aggression vs. argumentativeness
    • Verbal aggression
      • Definition: A tendency to attack another’s self-concept rather than solely their arguments on a topic.
      • Basis for self-concept attacks: Group membership, personal failings, or significant life events (e.g., spouse leaving).
      • Notable distinction from argumentativeness: It targets the person, not the position.
    • Argumentativeness
      • Definition: A tendency to advocate for positions on controversial issues and to attack others’ positions on those issues.
      • Relationship with outcomes: Seen as constructive; can promote critical discussion when focused on ideas rather than self-concept.
      • Distinction from verbal aggression: Argumentativeness attacks positions rather than personal attributes; verbal aggression attacks self-concept.
    • Empirical findings
      • Semick and Canary study: Dyadic friendships in a lab setting; examined how people argued on topics with varying levels of verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness.
      • Findings: Highly argumentative individuals did not necessarily provide more or better arguments than low-arguers; highly verbally aggressive individuals produced fewer argumentative contributions when disagreeing, indicating a negative impact on relationship quality.
    • Sociocommunicative orientation
    • Bem’s psychological gender orientation (BSRI) and its evolution
      • Bem’s constructs: Masculinity and femininity via the BSRI; categories include sex-typed, cross-sex typed, and androgynous.
      • Richmond and McCroskey’s revision: Reframed to non-biological language – assertiveness and responsiveness constitute sociocommunicative orientation.
    • Responsiveness
      • Definition: A tendency to consider others’ feelings, listen, and recognize others’ needs.
      • Descriptive terms: helpful, sympathetic, compassionate, sensitive to others, sincere, gentle, warm, tender, friendly.
    • Assertiveness
      • Definition: Ability to initiate, maintain, and terminate conversations; defend beliefs; demonstrate independence and leadership; can be aggressive or competitive.
      • Descriptive terms: defend own beliefs, independent, forceful, strong personality, assertive, leader, aggressive, competitive.
    • Versatility
      • Meaning: Communicators should adapt to context; no single best style across all contexts.
      • Related terms: adaptability, flexibility, rhetorical sensitivity, stance-flexing.
      • Opposite poles: dogmatic, rigid, uncompromising, unyielding.
    • Interpersonal orientation and repair (Patterson & Beckett)
      • Studies the role of sociocommunicative orientation in relationship repair.
      • Findings: Highly assertive individuals tend to take control in repair situations; highly responsive individuals defer to the approach of the target depending on whether the target is perceived as assertive or responsive.
      • If the target is perceived as highly assertive, responsive individuals let the assertive person take the lead; if the target is highly responsive, the responsive individual encourages self-disclosure and tends to listen; overall, highly assertive individuals emphasize optimism about the relationship, while highly responsive individuals tend to listen more in repair.

Relational Dispositions

  • Overview: Daly also identifies relational dispositions, patterns of mental processes that shape how people view and organize themselves in relationships. Two key relational dispositions are attachment and rejection sensitivity.

  • Attachment

    • Bowlby’s attachment theory (often cited as Bowlby’s framework; the text sometimes spells the name as Balby/Boldt): Humans are born with innate attachment behaviors that promote proximity to supportive others (attachment figures).
    • Internal working model: Early interactions with caregivers establish a basic model of how relationships work, including three core components:
    • Trust: belief that others are trustworthy.
    • Self-worth: belief that one is valuable and worthy of care.
    • Efficacy: belief that one can be effective in interpersonal interactions.
    • Maternal deprivation hypothesis (Bowlby): Separation from or lack of an attachment figure (typically the mother) in early years can lead to long-term negative outcomes (delinquency, reduced intelligence, aggression, depression, affectionless psychopathy).
    • Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) adult attachment model: Four attachment styles arise from two dimensions – self-view and other-view (worthy of love vs. unworthy; trustworthy vs. untrustworthy).
    • Secure: self-view as worthy of love and others as trustworthy; high relationship satisfaction, commitment, and trust.
    • Preoccupied: self-view as unworthy of love but others as trustworthy; seeks acceptance and closeness.
    • Fearful (often called fearful avoidance): self-view as unworthy of love and others as untrustworthy; avoidance of close relationships.
    • Dismissing: self-view as worthy of love but others as untrustworthy; avoidance of closeness to protect against disappointment.
    • Significance: These adult attachment styles influence ongoing patterns of intimacy, trust, and closeness in relationships.

  • Rejection sensitivity

    • Origins: Karen Horney (1930s) introduced the idea that people vary in how sensitive they are to rejection; defined as the degree to which a person expects, perceives, and reacts negatively to perceived rejection.
    • Characteristics of high rejection sensitivity
    • Expect rejection: anticipate being rejected based on prior experiences.
    • Perceive rejection readily: may interpret ambiguous cues as rejection.
    • Strong negative reactions: negative affect, hostility, or withdrawal when faced with perceived rejection.
    • Mechanisms and consequences
    • Some individuals may perceive rejection in situations where it does not actually exist.
    • The experience of even slight rebuffs can trigger negative emotional cascades and avoidance of future interactions.
    • The eight-step cycle of rejection sensitivity (as described by Horney):
      • 1. Fear of being rejected
      • 2. Excessive need for affection
      • 3. When needs are unmet, feel rejected
      • 4. React with hostility to the rejection
      • 5. Repressed hostility for fear of losing affection
      • 6. Unexpressed rage builds up
      • 7. Increased fear of rejection
      • 8. Increased need for relational reassurance, which further escalates the rejection cycle
    • Real-world impact: High rejection sensitivity predicts relationship instability and more frequent breakups.
    • Link to attachment theory: Rejection sensitivity interacts with attachment representations; insecure patterns in early life can magnify sensitivity to rejection in adulthood.
    • Empirical study (Downey et al.): Diary study of couples over four weeks, followed up after one year. Findings showed that high rejection-sensitive individuals were more likely to break up over time than low rejection-sensitive individuals, highlighting the real-world impact on relationship durability.

  • Chapter wrap-up: connections to temperament and personality

    • Temperament vs. personality: Temperament is biologically based and identifiable at birth; personality develops over the lifespan.
    • Practical implication: While temperament cannot be changed, individuals can learn to adjust behaviors in light of their temperaments to improve interpersonal effectiveness.

  • Connections to prior lectures and real-world relevance

    • The material links temperament (biological bases) to learned communication strategies (dispositions) and relational patterns, illustrating how biology and environment jointly shape interpersonal behavior.
    • Understanding these dispositions helps in communication training, counseling, team dynamics, and relationship coaching by highlighting areas for skills development (e.g., WTC, CA management, attachment-aware communication, reducing rejection sensitivity).

  • Formulas, numbers, and numerical references (LaTeX)

    • Zimbardo study sample: 5{,}000 participants
    • Shyness current prevalence: 0.40 (approximately forty percent)
    • Shyness lifetime prevalence: 0.80 (approximately eighty percent)
    • PRCA-24: four distinct CA types: Interpersonal CA, Group CA, Meeting CA, Public CA; use PRCA_{24} notation
    • Interpersonal conversation duration in study: 15 minutes
    • Attachment styles in Bartholomew & Horowitz model: 4 styles
    • Eight-step cycle of rejection sensitivity: 8 steps
    • Diary study duration: 4 weeks
    • Follow-up period: 1 year
    • Key dates: Bowlby’s maternal deprivation framework and Bartholomew & Horowitz’s adult attachment model introduced in the late 1990s (Bartholomew & Horowitz’s model is cited as 1991 in many texts)
    • Core contrasts: secure vs. preoccupied vs. fearful vs. dismissing (4 styles)
    • Core constructs with math-like descriptors (continued): willingness to communicate (WTC) is a predisposition; extroversion–introversion, CA, shyness, and argumentative/dispositional traits are measured with established scales and proposed as part of the repertoire of communication dispositions

  • Notes on terminology and context

    • Throughout, terms like “disposition” refer to relatively stable patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling that influence how people approach communication and relationships.
    • The material emphasizes both descriptive (what) and prescriptive (how to act) dimensions—recognizing patterns and offering strategies for versatile, effective communication in varied contexts.

  • Practical implications for exam preparation

    • Be able to define each disposition and differentiate similar constructs (e.g., shyness vs. CA vs. WTC; argumentative vs. verbal aggression).
    • Know the four adult attachment styles and their core characteristics.
    • Understand the eight-step rejection sensitivity cycle and its behavioral consequences.
    • Recognize how temperament interacts with learned communication skills to influence relational outcomes.