Interpersonal Communication Exam #2 Review

Vocabulary

Angle’s Types of Conversation

One-way Conversation: Conversations where an individual is talking at the other person and not with the other person

Two-way Conversation: Conversations where there is mutual involvement and interaction

Cooperative Conversation: Conversation marked by a mutual interest in what all parties within the conversation have to contribute

Competitive Conversation: Conversation marked by individuals being more concerned with their points of view than others within the conversation

Discourse: One-way Cooperative Conversation - Purpose is for sender to transmit information to the receiver

Dialogue: Two-way Cooperative Conversation - Purpose is for participants to exchange information and build relationship with one another

Debate: Two-way Competitive Conversation - Purpose less about information sharing and more about persuading

Diatribe: One-way Competitive Conversation - Purpose is to express emotions, browbeat those that disagree with you, and/or inspires those that share the same perspective

Impression Management: The attempt to generate as favorable an impression of ourselves as possible, particularly through both verbal and nonverbal techniques of self-presentation

Self-Descriptions: First type of Impression Management - talking about specific characteristics of ourselves

Accounts: Second type of Impression Management - explanations of a predicament-creating event designed to minimize the apparent severity of the predicament

Occurs when an individual attempts to explain something that their interactant may already know

Apologies: Third type of Impression Management - Impression Management type designed to convince the audience that the undesirable event should be considered a fair representation of what the actor is ‘really like’

Entitlements & Enhancements: Fourth type of Impression Management - Impression Management type designed to explain a desirable event in a way that maximizes the desirable implications for the actor

Flattery: Fifth type of Impression Management - The use of compliments to get the other person to like you more

Favors: Sixth type of Impression Management - Involves doing something nice for someone to gain that person’s approval

Social Penetration Theory: Theory that helps to explain how individuals gradually become more intimate based on their communication behaviors

Relationships begin when individuals share non-intimate layers and move to more intimate layers of personal information

Three factors affect what people choose to disclose

Personal characteristics: Introvert or Extrovert
Plausible Reward/Cost: The possibility of any reward or cost with disclosing to the other person
Situational Context: Whether it’s the place & time (Breaking up on an anniversary)

Stages of Interpersonal Development

Orientation Stage: People communicate on very superficial matters like the weather
Exploratory Affective Stage: People disclose more about their feelings about normal topics like favorite foods or movies
Affective Stage: People engage in more private topics
Stable Stage: People will share their most intimate details
Depenetration Stage: People start to decrease their disclosures

Doesn’t always necessarily happen - not obligatory

Social Penetration Theory contains two different aspects:

Breadth: Refers to what topics individuals are willing to talk about with others
Depth: Refers to how deep a person is willing to go in discussing certain topics

The Johari Window: We build trust in our interpersonal relationships as we self-disclose revealing information about ourselves, and we learn more about ourselves as we receive feedback from the people with whom we are interacting

Open Self: The First quadrant of the Johari Window - When information is known to both ourselves and others

Hidden Self: The Second quadrant of the Johari Window - What is known to ourselves but is not known to others

Blind Self: The Third quadrant of the Johari Window - What we don’t know about ourselves that is known by others

Unknown Self: The Fourth quadrant of the Johari Window - When information is not known by ourselves or others

Hearing: Refers to a passive activity where an individual perceives sound by detecting vibrations through an ear

A psychological process that is continuously happening

Listening: Focused, concentrated attention for the purpose of understanding the meanings expressed by a source

Critical Listening: The careful systematic thinking and reasoning to see whether a message makes sense in light of factual evidence

Model of Listening (Judi Brownell): Model that breaks the process of hearing down into clearly differentiated stages:

Hearing: First stage of Listening Model - If a message is not attended, communication never occurred from the receiver’s perspective
Understanding: Second stage of Listening Model - The ability to comprehend or decode the source’s message
Remembering: Third stage of Listening Model - The ability to recall a message that was sent
Interpreting: Fourth stage of Listening Model - Involves attention to all the various speakers and contextual variables that provide a background for accurately perceived messages
Evaluating: Fifth stage of Listening Model - Judging the message itself
Responding: Sixth stage of Listening Model - Providing effective feedback

Discriminative Listening: Distinguishing between auditory and visual stimuli and determining which to actually pay attention to

Fifth-in-order foundational level of listening

Theorized by Wolvin and Coakley

Comprehensive Listening: Listening that requires the listener to use the discriminative skills while functioning to understand and recall the speaker’s information

Fourth-in-order foundational level of listening

Therapeutic Listening: Occurs when an individual is a sounding board for another person during an interaction

Third-in-order foundational level of listening

Critical Listening: Analyzing the message that is being sent

Second-in-order foundational level of listening

Appreciative Listening: When someone enjoys the act of listening or the message being sent

Listening Styles: Attitudes, beliefs, and predispositions about the how, where, when, who, and what of the information reception and encoding process

Styles of listening identified by researchers kittie Watson, Larry Barker, and James Weaver

There are Four Listening Styles:

People-Oriented Listening Style: Listening Style - Tend to be more focused on the person sending the message than the content of the message
Action-Oriented Listening Style: Listening Style - Focused on what the source wants
Content-Oriented Listening Style: Listening Style - Focused on the content of the message and process that message in a systematic way

More adapt at listening to complex information

Time-Oriented Listening Style: Listening Style - Always in a hurry and want the source of a message to speed things up

Types of Listening Responses

Silent Listening: Occurs when you say nothing

Questioning: Asking questions to understand the situation better

Paraphrasing: Rephrasing in your own words what the speaker said

Empathizing: Putting yourself in the same situation to understand what the speaker means

Supporting: Showing that you endorse the speaker

Analyzing: Considering possible solutions to what the speaker has said

Evaluating: Assessing the best course of action

Advising: Counseling, recommending, and offering information that will help the speaker

Perception Checking

Perceptions change in a relationship

Selection: First step of the Perception Process - Determines what things we focus on compared to what things we ignore

What we select to focus on depends on:

Intensity: If it’s bigger, brighter, or louder in some way
Repetition: Easier to remember
Differences: Pay attention to differences, especially if it’s different from what normally occurs
Motives/Goals: We tend to pay attention to things for which we have a strong interest or desire
Emotions: If sad, more likely to notice sad faces

Organization: Second step of the Perception Process - how we arrange information in our minds

Interpretation: Third step of the Perception Process - We try to understand the information and make sense of it

Depends on a few factors:

Degree of Involvement: Fourth phase of the Perception Process - If we’re involved, likely to have more information than an outsider
Relational Satisfaction: If we are happy in a relationship, tend to think everything is wonderful
Past Experiences - Previous impressions will affect how you perceive someone
Assumptions about Human Behavior: If you believe most people don’t lie, more hurt when someone close to you lies to you
Expectations: Behaviors are influenced by the expectations of others
Knowledge of Others: If you know someone close to you has a condition, not shocked when they need medical attention - stranger might be shocked

Negotiation: Fourth/Final step of the Perception Process - People try to understand what is happening and the best solution for all parties

Influences on Perception

Physiological Influences: Biology has an impact on what we do and don’t perceive through various physiological influences:

Senses: Senses can impact and focus our attention - on a smell for example
Age: Children vs. elderly
Health: when healthy can do a lot, and certain information may have a different perception - food when sick being gross
Hunger: When hungry it’s hard to concentrate on anything except food
Biological Cycles: The difference in cycles in which people perform at their highest level

Psychological Influences: Influences based in our mind that we can’t detect in others

Mood: Happiness or sadness can affect how we view the world
Self-Concept: Healthy self-concept vs. Negative self-concept when taking an insult

Social influences: Influences that include Sex and Gender roles, as well as Occupational roles

Sex and Gender Roles: Specific expectations in our culture regarding how men and women should behave in public
Occupational Roles: Jobs have an influence on how we perceive the world

Cultural Influences: Influences of the lifestyle and demographics of where one is born and raised

How certain values are perceived - like shaking hands not being universal

Perception Checking

Involves three steps:

Describe your perception of the event
Offer three different interpretations of that behavior
Seek clarification about the interpretations

The Nature of Relationships

Relationship Characteristics: Characteristics in the relationships we have with others

Duration: The length of any relationship
Contact Frequency: How often you communicate with the other person
Sharing: The more we spend time with people, the more we are likely to share information about ourselves
Support: A relationship trait because not everyone can support us in the same manner
Interaction Variability: The differing types of conversations we have with a person
Goals: In every relationship, we have certain expectations about that relationship

Significant Relationships

Significant relationships impact who we are and help us grow

Purposes of Relationships: Relationships serve a variety of purposes:

Work-Related: A significant work relationship that helps us advance our professional career
Task-Related: A specific task that we need to accomplish with this other person
Social-Related: Reasons for pursuing a relationship that can include: pleasure, inclusion, control, and/or affection

Relationship Formation

Understanding Attraction: Scientists have identified three primary types

Physical Attraction: Refers to the degree to which you find another person aesthetically pleasing
Social Attraction: The degree to which an individual sees another person as entertaining, intriguing, and fun to be around
Task Attraction: People we’re attracted to because they possess specific knowledge and/or skills that help us accomplish specific goals

Reasons for Attraction: Researchers have found several reasons for our attraction to others:

Physical Proximity: The amount of common places that create opportunities for others to meet and mingle - more likely to talk to people you see more frequently
Physical Attractiveness: More likely to pay attention to someone you find more attractive
Perceived Gain: We form relationships with people who can offer us rewards that outweigh the costs

Comparison Level: The minimum standard that one is willing to tolerate
Comparison Level of Alternatives: The comparison between current relationship rewards and what one might get in another relationship

Similarity Thesis: We are attracted to and tend to form relationships with others who are similar to us

Three reasons this thesis works:

Validation: to know that someone likes the same things we do
Predictability: when we are similar to another person, we can make predictions about what they will like and not like
Affiliation: We like others that are similar to us and thus they should like us because we are the same

Differences can make a relationship stronger

Complementary Relationships: Each person in the relationship can help satisfy the other person’s needs.

Stages of Relationships

Series of stages through which relationships can progress: Mark Knapp

Coming Together: The initial connection in the beginning of a relationship - has five stages

Initiating: Determining whether a relationship is worth the energy and effort put into talking to the other person
Experimenting: You try to figure out if you want to continue the relationship further - trying to learn more about the other person
Intensifying: Share more intimate and/or personal information about ourselves with that person
Integrating: The stage where two people let people know that they are exclusively dating each other - truly become a couple
Bonding: The revelation to the world that your relationship to each other now exists (marriage)

Coming Apart

Series of stages through which relationships progress to end the relationship

Differentiating: Stage where both people are trying to figure out their own identities

Circumscribing: Stage where partners tend to limit their interactions with each other

Stagnating: Stage where the relationship is not improving or growing - motionless

Avoiding: Stage where both people avoid each other altogether

Terminating: Stage where the parties decide to end or terminate the relationship

Relationship Maintenance: The stabilization point between relationship initiation and potential relationship destruction

Relationships need maintenance and care

To keep a satisfying relationship, individuals must utilize relationship maintenance behaviors

Joe Ayres discovered Three Strategies of Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships used by most individuals

Avoidance Strategies: Used to evade communication that might threaten the relationship
Balance Strategies: Used to maintain equality in the relationship so that partners do not feel under benefited or over benefited from being in the relationship
Direct Strategies: Used to evaluate and remind the partner of relationship objectives

Five Key Relationship Maintenance Behaviors

Positivity: factor used by communicating with partners in a happy and supportive manner
Openness: Occurs when partners focus their communication on the relationship
Assurances: Words that emphasize the partners’ commitment to the duration of the relationship
Networking: Communicating with family and friends
Sharing Tasks: Doing work or household tasks

Relationship Dialectics: The pushes and pulls that can be found every day in relationships of all types

Dialectical Tension: Is how individuals deal with struggles in their relationship

Separation-Integration: Where partners seek involvement but are not willing to sacrifice their entire identity
Predictability-Novelty: Deals with rituals/routines compared to novelty
Openness-Closedness: Disclosure and the level of information being disclosed
Similarity-Difference: Deals with self vs. others
Ideal-Real: Couples perceive some things as good and some things as bad - perceptions of what is real may interfere with or inhibit perceptions of what is real

Dating Relationships

There are Five Supracategories that help define the term “date”:

Communication Expectations: People expect a level of self-disclosure on a date
Date Goals: Future goals - (romantic relationships or to have fun, etc.)
Date Elements: Initiating the date, getting ready for the date, start and end of the date
Dyadic: Dating is a couple-based activity
Feelings: Dating involves feelings, from affection, attraction, and romantic

Love Styles: an attitude and describes how love is perceived

John Lee’s Love Typology

Eros: Romance - emphasizes love and physical beauty, immediate attraction, emotional intensity, and strong commitment
Storge: Love develops slowly out of friendship where stability and psychological closeness are valued along with commitment, which leads to enduring love
Ludic: Love is viewed as a game, and playing this game with multiple partners is perceived to be acceptable by individuals with this love style
Agape: Love involves altruism, giving, and other-centered love - approaches relationships in a non-demanding style with gentle caring and tolerance for others
Pragma: Practical love involving logic and reason
Mania: Love style characterized by dependence, uncertainty, jealousy, and emotional upheaval

Biological Sex vs. Gender

Sex: Refers to one’s biological status as male or female, as determined by chromosomes and secondary sex characteristics

Gender: Refers to the behaviors and traits society considers masculine and feminine

Bem Sex Role Inventory: Way to categorize the 4 types of gender

Feminine
Masculine
Androgynous: A combination of both feminine and masculine traits
Undifferentiated: Neither masculine or feminine

Males are conditioned to have Instrumental Roles: Task-oriented responsibilities

Women are conditioned to have Expressive Roles: Responsibilities focused on helping others

Understanding Conflict

Disagreement: a difference of opinion and often occurs during an Argument

Argument: a verbal exchange between two or more people who have differing opinions on a given subject or subjects

Tolerance for Disagreement: Whether an individual can openly discuss differing opinions without feeling personally attacked or confronted

Conflict: an interactive process occurring when conscious beings (individuals or groups) have opposing or incompatible actions, beliefs, goals, ideas, motives, needs, objectives, obligations resources and/or values

Two Perspectives on Conflict

Conflict as disruption in a normal working system vs. conflict as a normal part of human relationships

Disruptions in Normal Workings of a System

Two Types of Disagreements: The two types of disagreements noted by Richmond and McCroskey

Substantive Disagreement: Disagreements that people have about a specific topic or issue
Procedural Disagreements: Disagreements concerned with procedure, how a decision should be reached or how a policy should be implemented

Normal Part of Human Communication

Interpersonal Conflict: (Cahn and Abigail) Interpersonal Conflict requires four factors to be present:

The conflict parties are interdependent
They have the perception that they seek incompatible goals or outcomes or they favor incompatible means to the same ends
The perceived incompatibility has the potential to adversely affect the relationship leaving emotional residues if not addressed, and
There is a sense of urgency about the need to resolve the difference

Interdependence: When those involved in a relationship characterize it as continuous and important, making it worth the effort to maintain

Incompatible Goal: When two people want different things

Emotions and Feelings

Emotions: our reactions to stimuli in the outside environment

Feelings: the responses to thoughts and interpretations given to emotions based on experiences, memory, expectations, and personality

Emotional Awareness: an individual’s ability to clearly express, in words, what they are feeling and why

Alexithymia: A general deficit in emotional vocabulary - the ability to identify emotional feelings, differentiate emotional states from physical sensations, communicate feelings to others, and process emotion in a meaningful way

Emotional Intelligence: An individual’s appraisal and expression of their emotions and the emotions of others in a manner that enhances thought, living, and communicative interactions

Powers and Influence

Influence: when an individual or group of people alters another person’s thinking, feelings, and/or behaviors through accidental, expressive, or rhetorical communication

Within this are three types of communication:

Accidental: When we send messages to another person without realizing those messages are being sent

Not Planned

Expressive Communication: Our emotional states can often influence other people

Not Conscious

Rhetorical Communication: involves purposefully creating and sending messages to another person in the hopes of altering another person’s thinking, feelings, and/or behaviors

Purposeful

Levels of Influence

Herbert Kelman noted that there are three basic levels of influence:

Compliance: The first and weakest form of influence - implies that an individual accepts influence and alters their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors
Identification: The second form of influence - when an individual accepts influence because they want to have a satisfying relationship with the influencer or influencing group

Based purely in the realm of relationships

Internalization: The final level of influence - when an individual adopts influence and alters their thinking, feeling, and/or behaviors because doing so is intrinsically rewarding

French & Raven’s Five Bases of Power

Power: The degree that a social agent has the ability to get another person(s) to alter their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors

Informational Power: Refers to a social agent’s ability to bring about a change in thought, feeling, and/or behavior through information
Coercive Power: The ability to punish an individual who does not comply with one’s influencing attempts
Reward Power: The ability to offer an individual rewards for complying with one’s influencing attempts
Legitimate Power: Influence that occurs because a person believes that the social agent has a valid right to influence, and has an obligation to accept the attempts to influence their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors
Expert Power: The power we give an individual to influence us because of their perceived knowledge
Referent Power: A social agent’s ability to influence another person because A wants to be associated with B

Conflict Management Strategies

Integrative Conflict: A win-win approach to conflict; where both parties attempt to reach a settled agreement that is mutually beneficial

Distributive Conflict: A win-lose approach to conflict; where conflicting parties see their job as to win and for the other person or group to lose

STLC Conflict Model

Model for when thinking about how we communicate during conflict - Ruth Abigail & Dudley Cahn

Stop: To take time to be present within the conflict itself
Think: After stopping, have the ability to really think about what you’re communicating
Listen: To suspend your judgment and really attempt to be present enough to accurately interpret the message being sent by the other person
Communicate: Communicate with the other person - hardest one to do correctly if any of the other steps are done incorrectly