COM 130 Review sheet Exam 1

What is the value of Communication: Humans (especially children) don’t develop properly [a]without communicating with others; Communication with others promotes mental and physical health. Relevance in all aspects of life, need to be able to communicate well to succeed in professional and personal life; Being able to get your point across.

Definition of Communication: Communication is a systematic process in which people interact with and through symbols to create and interpret meanings

Process mean ongoing and dynamic, meaning communication is always in motion
System interrelated parts that affect one another (ex in a each one of your family members is part of the system of family communication)
Not collection of random parts, organized whole
Strive to be at a state of equilibrium but cannot sustain it
Symbols- abstract, arbitrary, and ambiguous representation of other things
Meanings - The significance we bestow on a phenomena or what it signifies
Content meaning- contains the literal message (may I come in)
Relationship meaning- express the relationship between the communicators (scorned lover evilly saying may I come in, at your door after you changed your identity and moved out of state)

Models of Communication

: Linear Model (transmission Model): A sender encodes a message that is sent through a channel to a receiver (Who? Says what? In what channel? To whom? With what effect?. Noise added: Anything that interferes with transmission of the message)

Interactive Model: Feedback and field of experience added

Feedback is the response
The more their fields of experience overlap the better they understand each other
Ex. offering a stranger help vs your friend

Transactional Model:

Pretty much just added that both people are send and the receiver because that's how conversation works

Careers in Communication: Research- Academic research, marketing research, political research, most areas of life are increasingly using research to make decisions about communication

Education- From teaching speech at the high school level to being a communication professor
Nonprofits- Interacting with the public who need help and essentially running a business
Mass Communication- Journalism, Broadcasting, Public Relations, and Advertising
Training and Consulting: Going into businesses and teaching communication skills or examining the communication patterns they use and trying to find ways to improve them
Human Relations and Management: Communication skills make you well qualified to help management and employees interact better and to encourage better work

History of communication:

465ishBCE: Corax and Tisias were the first to teach public speaking so that people could win court cases

Corax (teacher) and Tisias (student) got in this big cat fight because Tisias never paid him (dick move) so Corax takes him to court. Tisias said that since he never went to court (promised to pay after his first win) he should not have to pay and that if he lost he STILL shouldn't pay because that means Tisias was a shitty teacher, and that if he wins then great he beat his shitty teacher. Cortaz on the other hand said that if that dude won then pay up because that was the deal and he taught him effectively, and if he lost then it was not he won then it wasn't his fault the guy was a lazy deuce.
#TeamCorax465BC[b]
Judge threw out that case bahahaha

450ishBCE: Protagoras was Sophist who taught that there were two sides to every question

Literally a debate team
Law in theory

428-348BCE: Plato formed one of the first institutions of higher learning where he taught that the goal of philosophy was seeking universal truths. He argued that teaching public speaking was dangerous because it could lead people away from truth

Aristotle: One of plato's students founded a school and taught rhetoric

20th century: John Dewey promoted the study and teaching of communication skills as key to promoting democracy and tolerance rather than fascism and prejudice

Communication Organizations:

1914: National Association of teachers of Public speaking because they felt their interests were ignored by the English teachers of the Modern Language Association (After several name changes it now goes by National Communication Association. They have a conference every November in a different city. They have around 7,000 members)

1950: National Society for the Study of Communication was formed to create an Organization that would focus more on social scientific approaches to Communication research (Later changed the name to International Communication Association. They have a conference every May/June that is sometimes in an American city but sometime outside of the U.S. ( I think every 3 years it is outside of the US) There are around 4,500 members in countries all over the world.) There are also four American regional organizations and many focus on specific areas of communication such as rhetoric, small groups, romantic relationships, mass media, etc.

Research Methods in Communication: Rhetorical Criticism: “The process of examining a text to see how it works communicatively”

Text: any record of human communication including speeches, advertisements, billboards, public, art, television shows, quilts
What effect might a text have on its audience
What vision of reality is the text promoting (explicitly or implicitly)
Critical research: “Methods in which scholars identity and challenge communication practices that oppress, marginalize, or otherwise harm individuals and social groups:
Like rhetoric, they seek to understand texts but their goal it trying to uncover hidden patterns of oppression and domination
Stemmed from Marxist and Post-modern philosophy
Triangulation is studying a phenomenon in multiple ways
Qualitative research: Systematically collecting and analyzing non-numeric data about communication phenomena by attempting to look for deeper meaning of communication patterns in texts and groups
Textual analysis: The careful examination of texts or groups of texts for their deeper meanings, some scholars would include both rhetorical criticism and critical research.
Ethnography: “researchers try to discover what symbolic activities mean by immersing himself in naturally occurring activities and contexts”
Historical research:scholars attempt to understand the historical development of communication both as a discipline and communication events
Quantitative Research: Systematically collecting and analyzing numeric data about communication phenomena to draw broad conclusions about overall patterns of communication in a population
Studies collect data from samples about the relationship between different communication variables
Meta-analyses collect all the studies on a topic and attempt to derive the best estimate of the strength of the relationship between variables and what makes that relationship change

Topics in Communication: Intrapersonal: communication with ourselves, not just talking aloud to ourselves but thinking too.

Interpersonal: communication between a small number of people
One early and influential definition of interpersonal by miller and steinberg (1975) argued that how interpersonal an interaction is depends on how well you know the person you are talking to ranging from impersonal talking to waiter to the most interpersonal talking to a spouse or close friend
Much interpersonal research is focused on building and maintaining relationships
Small group and team communication: communication in committees and work teams but also includes naturally occurring groups like groups of friends
Public speaking: one person addressing a group of people
Organizational communication: the ways in which communication is used to create different kinds of social structures occurs between them
Mass medias: using mediated communication to reach large numbers of people
Mediated communication: communication that relies on technological channel in order to send a message between two entities
Most often computer-mediated communication
Intercultural communication: communication between people of different cultures
Health communication: the study of how communication can improve people’s health including public health campaigns, doctor-patient interactions, and the effects of communication on bodily processes

Perception Process: Selection, Organization, Interpretation.

Selection

We ignore most of the stimuli around us
We automatically orient to some stimuli (loud, unusual, threatening)
We intentionally orient to some stimuli (looking for something in our environment)
Ex. looking for someone in a room
Organization
We don’t just randomly take in information and store it
Constructivism states how we organize and interpret information
Schemata: Cognitive structures we use to organize and interpret experiences
Prototypes: knowledge structures that define the clearest or ideal examples of some category (most pure version of something) (perfect)
Personal constructs: bipolar constructs that we use to evaluate people. The ones you use are usually dependent on the context
Intelligent- not intelligent
Stereotypes: A predictive generalization about a person or situation based on the category employed to understand the person or situation
Do not necessarily represent people accurately
Scripts: A sequences of activities that spells out how we and others are expected to act in a specific situation
Interpretation
Interpretation: the subjective process of creating explanations for what we observe and experience
Attributions: our explanations for why someone did something
4 dimensions:
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1. Internal-external: is their behavior due to their personality (internal or due to the situation (external)
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1. Stability: is the behavior due to something that changes or not
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1. Specificity: is the behavior due to some very narrow cause or a broader cause
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1. Control: is the behavior due to something they cannot change or something they have control over?
self-serving bias: We are more likely to construct attributions that serve our own interests

Influences on perceptions:

Physiological Factors: Our bodies differ in how they sense the world
Could be what you are born with music to one person seeming lourdes than to the next
Also could be factors specific to a day, very tired due to lack of sleep, just drank coffee and are extra alert, etc
Expectation: We tend to notice things that fit with what we believed we would see and we tend not to notice what is inconsistent with expectations
Examples could be a friend telling you about someone and setting expectations
Cognitive abilities: There are a variety of aspects about how we think that affect our perception
Cognitive complexity: how many different ways we think about people and how organized our understanding of them tends to be
For perception, higher cognitive complexity makes it easier for you to adapt to new information rather than letting your expectations guide you
Cognitive complexity is associated with Person-Centered Communication such that you are more likely to interact with people as unique individuals rather than as members of groups
Person-centered communication increases effectiveness in persuasion and social support
Empathy is different from person-centeredness, empathy is the tendency to feel what other people are feeling
Social Roles: as we play different roles in our lives (teacher, employee, mother, student, etc.) the role we happen to be in can affect how we perceive.
Membership in Cultures and Social Communities
Culture: “Beliefs, values, understandings, practices, and ways of interpreting experience that a number of people share”
Social Communities: a group of people within an overall society that has a culture that is distinct from it

Guidelines for Improving Perceiving Skill:

Avoid mind reading: We tend to overestimate our ability to figure out what others are thinking.
Check Perceptions with others: Rather than try mind-reading, ask people if your explanation for their behavior is accurate or if your interpretation of what they said is accurate.
Distinguish facts from inferences and judgments: try to be aware of the extent to which you are dressing conclusions about someone based on ambiguous evidence
Inference: Additional facts you conclude are true based on a set of observations
Judgment: Evaluation of someone based on a set of observations and inferences
Monitor for self-serving bias: Try to think twice before you explain others behavior with negative attributions while giving yourself excuses for you own

Definition of Culture: Culture is a way of life- a system of ideas, values, beliefs, customs and language that is passed from one generation to the next and that reflects and sustains a particular way of life

Social Communities with Cultures: A group of people who live within a dominant culture yet also belong to another social group or groups that share values, understandings, and practices distinct from those of the dominant culture

Standpoint theory: Key ideas:

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1. Your social community affect how you perceive, though you belong to multiple social communities that all affect how you perceive
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1. A standpoint is NOT just any point of view. A stand point is developed when you develop “political awareness of the social, symbolic, and material circumstances of the community and the larger power dynamics that hold those circumstances in place.”
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1. Race, gender, class, and sexual orientation are some of the commonly studied socila communitires in American culture
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1. People who are members of marginalized groups tend to have a more objective view of inequality because they have to learn to overcome those inequalities whereas members of the dominant group are less aware of inequality because it does not negatively affect them

Dimensions along which cultures vary: It is important to note that these are dimensions not categories, that is cultures vary to a matter of degree as opposed to being completely one way or another

Individualism/ collectivism: “The extent to which members of a culture understand themselves as part of and connected to their families, groups, and cultures” such that a greater connection is associated with more collectivism
One aspect of this is losing face- do you look bad or do you make your whole family/group etc. look bad?
Is collectivism focused on the family the same as collectivism focused on the nation?
Oyserman et al. (2002): Countries that are often described as collectivist are not, for example, European Americans are equally collectivistic as Japanese and Koreans. Chinese, however, are more collectivistic
Uncertainty Avoidance: “the extent to which people want to avoid ambiguity and vagueness”(EX: list of rules posted)
High levels of this dimension is associated with cultes in which people prefer to have everything spelled out (South Korea, Poland)
Power Distance: “The size of the gap between people with high and low power and the extent to which that is regarded as normal”
High power distance cultures regard variations in power as normal and social mobility is low (India, China) where with low power distance people believe that positions of power can and should be earned
Though it is important to recognize within culture variation, there are many in India or China who are working to challenge power distance and people in low power distance cultures who wish there was less social mobility
Great Britain used to be more high power distance but after WWII became more low power distance
Long term/short term orientation: “the extent to which members of culture think about long term (history and future) versus short term (present)
Long term: respect for ancestors and old traditions, thrift and industriousness to safeguard future security (many Asian cultures)
Short term: living for the moment and less respect for older people and traditions (Australia and Germany)

Different Values of different cultures: A list of 58 values, clustered by type on which cultures (and people) can vary.

For each, they ask people: -1 opposed to my values — 7 of supreme importance

(I refuse to make this study guide longer than necessary so I won’t be putting any values on here but they are on the slides labeled day 6 culture 1)

The relationship between culture and communication: Culture and communication are reciprocal. “Communication expresses, sustains and alters culture.” Culture dictates how you communicate and to whom you communicate. Your primary culture is learned during development as a child by observing communication

High context/ low context cultures (Edward Hall): Low-context communication style: very direct, explicit, and detailed communication. Low-context speakers do not assume others understand their meaning so everything is spelled out carefully. High-context communication style: indirect, and undetailed communication. Listeners are meant to interpret rather than simply hear messages. High context speakers assume others understand their meaning due to a strong shared background so most things are left unsaid.

Communication as social change: New words create change by diving a label to something Ex: Sexual harassment and Environmental justice. Social movements organized around identities that have been marginalized by mainstream culture or by the mainstream in response to challenges to their authority from the marginalized groups.

Improving communication between cultures: Person-centered communication that balances awareness with awareness of individual differences within a culture or social community

Respect others’ feelings and ideas rather than assuming you can understand their experience
It’s useful to try to understand other people by asking them to talk about their experiences
It’s not useful to assume we understand experiences we have not had
Resist Ethnocentric bias such that we don’t automatically assume our cultural standards are superior to those of others
Cultural relativism: recognizing that cultures vary in what they believe and value
Moral relativism: there are no consistent standards of good and behavior and all such standards are merely the product of culture.

Definition of the self: A multidimensional process that involves forming and acting from social perspectives that arise and evolve in communication with others and ourselves (physical self, Emotional self, cognitive self, roles self). Self identity is acquired through communication.

Society and the self- Generalized other vs. specific others: George Mead argued that there are two kinds of others whose perspectives on us affect our identity. Generalized Other: The perspective that represents one’s perception of the rules, roles, and attitudes endorsed by one’s group or community. Specific Others: Particular people who are significant sources of how we understand ourselves.

Identity characteristics that American society considers to be important:

Race
A particular combination of melanin (skin and hair pigment) and other physical features that cause people to look different than others
Often visible
Particular clusters of these traits are often grouped together as a “rave” such as people of African, East Asian, South Asian, Hispanic, Arabic, or European descent
Critical Whiteness studies: An area of scholarship that argues that “whiteness” is a made-up construct that is used to define who is privileged and who is not. It is often defined by who is not “white” rather than by who is.
People often want to be able to easily categorize people based on race so they are uncomfortable with multi-race people
Gender
The meaning society attaches to sex
Biological Sex- The chromosomes you were born iwth that defined what kind of genitals you devopled in the womb
Some research suggest that Americans are more comfortable with women in “masculine” occupations than men in “feminine” occupations
Women are sometimes put into a double-bind in the workplace such that they are expected to act “feminie” but criticized for not acting in more “masculine” ways
Transgendered: people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth
Sexual orientation
How to define it? Which gender or genders do ou find sexually attractive? Which gender or genders do you wish to pursue romantic relationships with? Is it a category or a matter of degree?
Asexual- people who do not feel sexual desire for any gender
People in some cultures interpret their religious text to indicate that certian sexual behavior, desires, or identities are immoral and in some cases specify punsihments both by a deity (e.g. punishment in the afterlife) or by humans (e.g. execution)
People inother cultures deny the existence of certain sexual behaviors, desires, or identities.
Are people biologically predisposed towards particular sexual orientations?
Why did your textbook author put being transgendered under the sexual orientation section?
Socioeconomic class: How much money you and your family has and how much you had growing up and …?
Low SES is statistically associated with about everything bad that can happen to you including dying younger, having more stress, more depression, fewer sources of support, etc.

Attachment Styles (John Bowbly): Secure- Positive self-view, positive others-view

As a child they received consistent care for their parents
As adults they are affectionate and able to handle close relationships ups and downs
Mosts middle class children are securely attached whereas poorer children are less likely to be
Fearful- negative self-view, Negative others-view
As a child they were abused or neglected
As adults they seem themselves as unlovable and likely to be rejected by others
They are reluctant to enter into close relationships due to fear of rejection but they wish they could anxious/ ambivalent: Negative self-view, positive others-view
anxious/ ambivalent: negative self view, positive others view
As a child their caregivers were inconsistent, sometimes caring and protective ando ther times neglectful or abusive
They tend to be inconsistent in relationships. They may be affectionate one day and anxious about their relationship the next
Dismissive: positive self-view, negative others-view
Though they may be neglected by parents, they still see themselves as valuable but do not view close relationships and desirable or important

How others affect our identity: Reflected Appraisal (also known as looking-glass self): we learn about ourselves by seeing how others treat us. Direct Definition: We learn about ourselves when others explicitly tell us what they think our identity is. These can create self-fulfilling prophecies such that those who give us particular labels treat us in ways that cause them to become true

Social comparison: We evaluate ourselves relative to other people
Upward comparison: We compare ourselves to people who are much better than us- too much of this hurts self-esteem
Downward comparison: we compare ourselves to people who are much worse than us- Too much of this gives us over-inflated self-esteem
Self-Disclosure: When we reveal personal information to others that they would have been unlikely to learn on their own
Self-disclosure starts with surface level topics but over time can proceed to deeper and more private information

**Ways to improve self-understanding:**Reflect critically on social perspectives: Question the assumptions and stereotypes that people have for people like you, The “generalized other” is not always right about you

Committing to Personal Growth: Deciding how you want to improve yourself over time (unless you’re perfect, in which case you need to work on your narcissism)
Set Realistic Goals: Don’t try to become perfect overnight, try to honestly assess what you can do in what timeframe
Assess yourself fairly: try to strike a balance between keeping yourself accountable and aiming for perfection, Accept yourself as a process.
Create a supportive context for the change you seek-
Be aware of where you go and how you spend your time- is it consistent with the change you want?
Be aware of whether or not the people around you support the change you want
Uppers- People who communicate positively about us without being completely uncritical
Downers- People who communicate negatively about us
Vultures- Extreme downers who openly attack our self-concepts and do nothing but criticize us

THIS IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN I INITIALLY THOUGHT IT WAS GOING BE. SORRY[c]

[a]overall I think the slides were pretty comprehensive, I am not done but most is there

[b]for real tho

[c]bahhahahah