Chapter 1

What is Interpersonal Communication?

• Communication in general is the use of symbols to represent ideas so meanings can be shared

  • symbols include sounds, movements, or images

  • the process whereby humans collectively create and regulate social reality

  • ongoing and unending

• Interpersonal communication is using symbols to represent in order to share meanings and create a personal bond between people

  • referring to dyadic communication in which two individuals, sharing the roles of sender and receiver, become connected through the mutual activity of creating meaning

  • dyad is two people which is a common context for interpersonal communication

• Impersonal communication is using symbols to represent ideas in a manner that ignores personal qualities of the people involved in the interaction

• transactional model of communication ( or two way model) is a conception of the components present in an interpersonal interaction and how people participate together in the act of communication

  • the sender of information encodes a message to send to the receiver who needs to decode the message

  • SMR: sender → message → receiver

  • channel is the medium through which messages are exchanged between people

    • voice, actions, ect.

  • noise is anything that disrupts a message

    • physical noise, psychological noise (the voice in your head), physically noise (hunger, bathroom, pain)

  • receiver becomes the sender to respond

• Interpersonal communication is a continuous process

• Interpersonal communication is a dynamic process

• Interpersonal communication is consequential

  • Learning: Interpersonal communication allows you to gather information about yourself, other people, and past, present, or predicted events, beliefs, and attitudes.

  • Helping: Interpersonal communication allows you to provide information, advice, emotional support, or assistance that can help the recipient deal with a problem.

  • Influencing: Interpersonal communication allows you to persuade another person to provide help, give advice, share an activity, change an attitude, change a relationship, give permission, or fulfill an obligation.

  • Relating: Interpersonal communication allows you to experience closeness or distance, agreement or disagreement, and equality or inequality with another person.

  • Playing: Interpersonal communication allows you to experience humor, camaraderie, celebrations, as well as to pass time and coordinate shared activities.

• It is irreversible

• It is imperfect

  • thoughts can never perfectly be communicated

Types of Messages

• Content messages are the literal or typical meanings of the symbols used to communicate

• Relational messages is the nature of the relationship between communication partners that is implied by the symbols that are used to communicate

• Model of competence

  • interpretive

    • how good are you at decoding

  • goal

    • knowing what your goal is and how to achieve it

  • role

    • how good you are at certain roles

  • self

    • how much do you know about yourself

  • message

    • how good are you at encoding

• Contexts

  • organizational

  • health settings

  • computer-mediated

• Recognize the fallibility of symbols

  • As you communicate, pay attention to your partner’s responses to see if they seem to be getting the right idea. Notice whether your partner asks relevant questions, laughs when you meant to be funny, or looks concerned when you express disappointment. Your partner’s messages can tell you whether your meanings are coming across.

  • If the messages you receive seem out of line, don’t assume that your partner disagrees with you. Instead, double-check how well your meaning was understood. Phrases like “Did you understand that I meant…?” or “I’m not sure I was clear – what do you think I’m trying to say?” can help you to discover misunderstanding.

  • Keep in mind that you have more than one opportunity to express your ideas, then restate, clarify, or elaborate your messages if you need to.

• Pay attention to relational messages

• Communication Competency

  • fidelity

  • appropriateness

  • satisfaction

  • effectiveness

  • efficiency

  • ethics

• Interpersonal Communication Competence is the ability to use symbols appropriately and effectively to create a personal connection with another person

• Fidelity is the extent to which meanings can be correctly inferred from the symbols that are used

• Social rules are the guidelines that specify the actions that are expected, preferred, and off-limits within an interaction

• ethical communication uses values as a moral guide when you interact with other people

• Promoting communication competence

  • motivation

  • knowledge

  • skills

• Theory is a description of the relationships among concepts that promote an understanding of a phenomenon

  • highlights specific concepts

  • describes how concepts are related

  • is always incomplete

  • is tested against the experiences of people

• Concepts are categories of phenomena that are believed to be relevant to understanding an event, situation, or experience

  • positive association is when an increase in the amount, frequency, or intensity, of one phenomenon corresponds with an increase in another phenomenon

  • negative association is when a decrease in the amount, frequency, or intensity of one phenomenon corresponds with an increase in another phenomenon

  • curvilinear association is when the positive or negative association between two phenomena exists only up to a certain point, and then reverses

• Interpersonal communication ethics

  • considering moral responsibilities to other people and relationships when making communication decisions

Chapter 2

Culture

• Culture is the values, beliefs, and conditions, that we share with a group of people

• Cultural groups have shared norms, which refer to the expectations for behavior within a particular cultural group

How cultures differ

• Worldview

  • orientation toward such things as God, nature, the universe, and other philosophical issues that are concerned with the concept of being

• Control cultures

  • believe in one’s ability to control one’s destiny

• Constraint cultures

  • little control to change your fate

• Doing cultures

  • task-driven

• Being cultures

  • personal relationships

• M-time

  • monochronic, time is money, make activities fit their schedule

• P-time

  • polychronic, haste makes waste, unscheduled

• Individualistic

  • The basic unit is the individual

• Collectivistic

  • The basic unit is the group

• Low context

  • Blunt; accurate and clear

• High context

  • Implicit and unstated

• Low power distance

  • Assumes all people have equal rights and opportunities

• High power distance

  • Respect a rigid hierarchy based on power and status

• Outcome oriented

  • Value achievement, deadlines, and getting a job done

• Process oriented

  • Appreciate the experience gained by working on a task

• Uncertainty avoidance

  • Prefer stable routines that avoid risks or novel experiences

• Uncertainty seeking

  • Prefer diverse, novel, and even risky experiences

Culture Shapes Communication

• Speech Codes Theory is a theory that explains how people’s culture influences their communication behaviors.

• The theory defines a speech code as the system of symbols, rules, and assumptions that people create to accomplish communication.

  • Speech codes are created through social interaction in various situations.

  • Their meaning is complicated and flexible.

  • Speech codes are affected by context.

Communication Reflects Culture

• Boundary Markers

  • Messages that signal that an action is inappropriate or off-limits within a cultural group.

• Myths

  • Sacred stories in which the characters and their actions embody core cultural themes.

• Rituals

  • Carefully scripted performances that mark culturally significant events.

The Nature of Intercultural Communication

• Intercultural communication occurs when interaction is guided by the participants’ memberships in different social groups, rather than their unique qualities as individuals.

Communication Accommodation Theory

• Communication Accommodation Theory is a model that describes how cultural group memberships influence interpersonal interactions

Barriers to Intercultural Communication

• Ethnocentrism

  • the tendency to see one’s own cultural beliefs as more correct, appropriate, and moral than those of other cultures

• Uncertainty and Anxiety

  • a lack of knowledge and fear of consequences that can make people unable to predict or enjoy intercultural interactions

• Marginalization

  • the tendency to treat less dominant groups of people in a society as inferior or unimportant

  • In-group vs. out-group members

    • polarization: two ends of the spectrum (us vs. them)

    • discounting: ignoring

• Fundamental attribution error

  • tend to hold tight to first impressions

Sex and Gender as Cultural Identity

• Sex refers to whether a person is biologically male or female

• Gender refers to a social construction of one’s psychological identity as predominantly masculine or feminine

Chapter 3

Characteristics of the Self

• The self is subjective

  • self-esteem: an overall judgment of one’s self-worth or value

• The self is multifaceted

• Facets of the self are more or less visible

• The self is dynamic

Sources of Self-Knowledge

• Your own observations of yourself

• your social roles

• social comparison

• feedback from others

How does the “self” emerge from social roles and rules?

• The self concept

  • each person’s own subjective view or image of himself or herself as a person. What we know about ourselves

  • The working self-concept: the information that dominates a person’s sense of self at a particular point in time

  • personality: how others see us

• Self as Narrative

  • The narrative self: primary materials we gather that eventually fashion our personal myth

    • early bonding experiences

    • culturally available themes and images

    • recurring motives and ideological strivings

• Self as cognitive schema

  • self-schemata

    • cognitive structures that organize and guide the processing of self-related information

  • Life script

    • a relatively fixed way of thinking about the self and relating to others

  • Self-handicapping strategy

    • a technique for manufacturing protective excuses ahead of time to prevent possible failure in the future

      • excuses for poor behavior before the event

• Self as Behavioral indicators

  • behavioral self

    • self understanding we bring to a situation shapes the way we communicate, and in turn, the way we communicate can influence and revise what we think about ourselves

  • Self-perception theory

    • observing our own behavior after the fact and then inferring what kind of a person we must be

• Self as Relational Achievement

  • relational self

    • the particular self-identity we normally display in a given relationship

      • can’t be a good wife without being married

Identity

• Identity refers to the image of a person that is embodied in communication

• We create our identity through

  • self-disclosure

  • the qualities we display when we communicate

• Interpersonal communication is the venue in which identity is created for self and others

Self-Disclosure

• What is Self-Disclosure

  • any information you reveal about yourself that others are unlikely to discover from other sources

• Flooded disclosures

  • “stranger on the plane” phenomenon

• Premature disclosures

  • revealing intimate details too quickly

Rules of Self-Disclosure

• make sure topic is interaction-appropriate

• begin with safe, non-risky disclosures

• disclose in small doses

• reciprocate disclosures equally

• be mindful of disclosure style

• most important disclosures are reserved for intimate, ongoing relationships

Layers of Identity

• Personal layer of identity

Chapter 4

Cognition and Perception

• Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension.

• Perception is the process by which a person filters and interprets information to create a meaningful picture of the world.

Stages of Perception

• Selection involves directing attention to a subset of sensory information based on

  • point of view

  • intensity of stimuli

  • personal relevance

  • consistency with expectations

  • inconsistency with norms

• Organization is the process of arranging information into a coherent pattern

• Interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to information

What processes are involved in perception?

• The perceptual trio

  • emotion, motivation, and social cognition

• Schema

  • a cognitive structure that helps us process and organize information; a cluster of abstract knowledge

How is social cognition structured?

• Types of cognitive structures

  • a person and group schemas

    • stereotypes

  • role and relational schemas

  • self schemas

  • event schemas

    • scripts and episodes

• cognitive schemas and perceptions

  • naïve realism

    • seeing what we believe

  • impression formation

    • attention and identification

    • controlled categorization

    • personalization

What is involved in Interpersonal Perception?

• Sizing up situations

  • using scripts to guide interaction

    • open, closed and defined episodes

  • be mindful

• sizing up people

  • using personal constructs to judge others

    • physical constructs (beautiful-ugly)

    • role constructs (teacher-student)

    • interaction constructs (polite-rude)

    • psychological constructs (motivated-lazy)

  • implicit personality theory

  • primacy vs. recency effects

    • mood congruity hypothesis

Recency vs. Frequency

• storage bin model

  • recently primed concepts are strongest

• storage battery model

  • emphasizes frequently primed concepts

• synapse view model

  • time determines whether recently or frequently primed concepts emerge as more important

What is involved in interpersonal perception?

• sizing up relationships

  • self monitoring: deciding who we want to be

  • the impact of relational schemas

  • defining relationships

Semiotics

• look at signs

• sign: can be any word, color, sound, etc.

  • signifier

    • the symbol (or code) ‘a book’

  • signified

    • the concept of what a book is/represents

• syntagmic analysis

  • where signs are placed; order

• paradigmatic analysis

  • the value of sign (includes absence); in relation to other signs

• denotative

• connotative

• myth

• codes

  • figure/ground

  • proximity

  • continuity

  • closure

Attribution

• Attributions are explanations for why something happened

• dimensions of attribution:

  • internal vs. external (locus)

  • controllable vs. uncontrollable (control)

  • stable vs. unstable (stability)

  • individual or global (specificity)

    • Internal Attribution: Concluding that behaviors are caused by characteristics of the actor.

    • External Attribution: Concluding that a person’s behaviors are caused by the situation.

    • A global attribution occurs when an individual attributes an outcome to a factor they perceive to be consistent, irrespective of context.

    • A specific attribution occurs when an individual attributes an outcome to a factor only relevant in the specific context or setting of the experience.

    • Pessimists tend to believe that negative life events have a pervasive effect on other life events, while optimists believe that positive life events result from pervasive circumstances, but that failures are isolated incidents. Put simply, if you consider yourself to be “unlucky” then a negative experience can seem like a precursor for future failure. If you see a negative experience as something more specific, failure is easier to shake off.

• Maladaptive Attributions: Linking negative behaviors to internal and stable causes and positive behaviors to external and unstable causes.

Chapter 5

What is Language?

• Differences between verbal and nonverbal codes

  • analogic codes

    • indicate meaning by being similar to what they convey

  • digital codes

    • meaning is conveyed symbolically

• Characteristics of the verbal code

  • consists of discrete, separate units

  • encourages the creation of new realities

  • gives ability to think in new and more complex ways

  • is self-reflexive

The nature of verbal communication

• language is abstract

• language is arbitrary

• language is related to culture

• language is consequential

The rules of language

• syntactic rules

  • guidelines for structuring words and phrases within a message

• semantic rules

  • guidelines for using words in phrases based on meanings

• pragmatic rules

  • guidelines for performing actions using language

Two types of meaning

• denotative meaning

  • the literal, public, or conventional definition of a word

• connotative meaning

  • the implicit, emotional, or evaluative interpretation of a word

Language and Culture

• communication accommodation theory

  • convergence vs. divergence

• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

  • linguistic determinism

Language and conversation

• The Cooperative Principle suggests that people who
  are talking to each other are working together to
  advance the conversation.

• Maxims of Conversation

  • Maxim of Quantity

  • Maxim of Quality

  • Maxim of Relevance

  • Maxim of Manner

Factors that affect language use

• gender

• power

• intimacy

How are language, power, and politics related

• Group membership and language use

• Gender and disclosure

  • Men talk more in task related situations (mixed-sex), women in
    social (same-sex)

  • Role of talk

  • Conversation management

  • Vocabulary differences

  • Sentence structure