COM1000 Chapter 6

Interpersonal Communication

Nature of Communication in Interpersonal Relationships

  • In the past, a friend was a person with whom we had face-to-face conversations and with whom we shared details of our lives
  • Today, definitions of interpersonal relations are more complex and variable
Defining Interpersonal Communication

  • Defined by the context

  • @@Interpersonal communication@@ = the process of using messages to generate meaning between at least two people in a situation that allows mutual opportunities for both speaking and listening

    • Broad definition

  • Communication that occurs within interpersonal relationships

    • Can be limited to when we have knowledge of the personal characteristics, qualities, or behaviors of the other person
    • Knowledge of their uniqueness as an individual

  • When we make guesses about outcomes of conversations based on sociological or cultural information, we are communicating noninterpersonally (Miller and Steinberg)

  • @@Nonpersonal communication@@ = communicating with others on the basis of general social interaction rules

    • Turn taking, pleasantries, nonpersonal matters, small talk, etc.
Defining Interpersonal Relationships
  • @@Interpersonal relationships@@ = associations between at least two people who are interdependent, use some consistent patterns of interaction, and who have interacted for an extended period of time
    • Include 2+ people
    • A couple, parent and child, close friends, coworkers, family unit, social group, etc.
    • Interdependent people
    • @@Interdependence@@ = people’s being mutually dependent on each other and having an impact on each other
    • Consistent patterns of communication
    • Behaviors generally understood across a variety of situations, as well as behaviors unique to the relationship
    • nicknames for your partner
    • Interaction for some time
    • One-time interactions do not constitute interpersonal relationships
    • Some are relatively short but others continue for a lifetime
Importance of Interpersonal Relationships
  • 3 basic interpersonal needs that are satisfied through interactions with others (William Schutz)
    • Need for inclusion or becoming involved with others
    • Need for affection
    • Need for control
    • Having the ability to influence others, our environment, and ourselves
    • Interdependent nature of interpersonal relationships suggests that people mutually satisfy their needs
  • @@Complementary relationships@@ = those in which each person supplies something the other person(s) lacks
  • @@Symmetrical relationships@@ = those in which the participants mirror each other or are highly similar
    • Two people of similar ancestry might marry in part to preserve culture
  • Conflict can be healthy when it is used to resolve differences
    • It can also be dysfunctional
    • Avoiding talking about problems, withdrawing, or becoming sullen
    • Taking criticism or suggestions as a personal attack
    • Remain calm, express feelings in words rather than actions, deal with one issue at a time, consider your language, don’t exaggerate or invent additional problems not central to discussion, and establish ground rules that both adopt
Dark Side of Interpersonal Relationships
  • Obsessions, misunderstanding, gossip, conflict, and codependency can lead to harmful results
  • Qualities associated with healthy relationships can become extreme and therefore unhealthy
    • Self-disclosure, affectionate communication, mutual influence, etc.

Self-Disclosure in the Development of Interpersonal Relationships

  • @@Self-disclosure@@ = the process of making intentional revelations about yourself that other would be unlikely to know and that generally constitute private, sensitive, or confidential information
    • Voluntary
    • @@Confession@@ = forced or coerced
    • @@Revelation@@ = unintentional or inadvertent communication
    • Not always negative, but is generally private information
    • Position on abortion, sexual history, deepest fears, proudest moments, problems with drugs or alcohol
    • Privacy rules are created to control the permeability of the boundary
Why is self-disclosure important?
  • Allows us to develop greater self-understanding
    • @@Open Area@@ = information that is known to you and other people
    • Approximate height and weight and freely disclosed info
    • @@Blind Area@@ = information known to others but not to you
    • Personality characteristics that others perceive but you do not recognize or acknowledge
    • @@Hidden Area@@ = information that you know about yourself but others do not
    • @@Unknown Area@@ = information that is unknown to you and to others
    • When you will die (assuming that you have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness)
  • Allows you to develop a more positive attitude about yourself and others
    • Self-disclosure is a powerful form of communication in grieving and in healing a fractured identity
  • A way that relationships can grow in depth and meaning
    • Greater feelings of security when disclosure is intentional and honest
  • Can be used inappropriately
What factors affect appropriate self-disclosure?
  • Generally increases as relational intimacy increases
    • Gradually reveal an increasing amount of information
  • Tends to be reciprocal
    • When people reciprocate, we tend to view them positively; when they do not, we tend to view them as incompetent
    • Does not often occur in families
    • Parents do not perceive a need to reciprocate
    • Grandparents may become the target of self-disclosures, since they are sometimes seen as more empathetic and positive
  • Negative disclosure directly related to intimacy; however, positive disclosure does not necessarily increase as the relationship becomes more intimate
    • Negative information increases over time, but positive disclosure does not necessarily increase
  • May be avoided for a variety of reasons
    • Does not flow freely on all topics
    • Self-protection, relationship protection, partner unresponsiveness, and social appropriateness
    • Not always avoided for noble reasons
  • Varies across cultures
    • Not uniformly valued or disvalued
    • Relational satisfaction and disclosure are curvilinearly related

Friendship

Value of Friendships
  • Friendships can be based on shared activities of on the level of information we exchange with others
    • Young adolescents = shared activities
    • Emerging adults = self-disclosure
    • Communication of private info appears to gain in importance as people mature
  • Change over time
  • Quality is affected by psychological predispositions
    • Avoidant people experience higher levels of conflict and lower levels of companionship
  • Rawlins’ six stage model of how friendships develop
  1. Role-limited interaction

   

  1. Polite and careful with disclosures
    1. Two people determine mutual interests or other common ground
    2. Moving towards friendship allows them to introduce a personal topic or to set up times to get together
    3. Nascent friendship, establish own ways of interacting
    4. Friends feel established in each other’s lives
    5. Waning stage, when the relationship diminishes

   

  1. Not all friendships reach this stage
  • Partners behave differently in their communication with friends and romantic partners
  • Not necessarily defined the same way in all cultures
    • Collectivist cultures are more intimate but fewer friendships
  • Internet friendships perceived as less close and less supportive
    • Less likely to be engaged in joint activities
Friendships and New Technology
  • Social networking sites have made new friendships possible
  • No clear personality factors distinguish social networkers from others
    • Sense of safety and security
    • More exciting?
    • More idealized self
  • People may have dozens of online friends, but rarely large numbers of friends with benefits (FWB)
    • The most conservative study suggested that 51% of college students are or have been in an FWB relationship
    • 36% quit having sex but remained friends, 28% stayed FWB, 26% were no longer friends or lovers, 10% pursued a romantic relationship
    • Set clear rules and boundaries
Cross-Cultural Relationships
  • Have meaningful personal interaction
  • Maintain equal status
    • Each has something unique to offer in terms of knowledge, creativity, openness, listening, etc.
  • Find ways to build interdependence
  • Respect individual differences

Stages in Interpersonal Relationships

Developing relationships
  • @@Relational development@@ = the initial stage in a relationship that moves a couple from meeting to mating
  • Intimacy is an emotional step in a relationship
    • Couples may assess the cost and benefits of becoming intimate with someone to whom they are not committed
    • First fight may occur after intimacy
  • Develop rituals to manage both work and play
  • Commitment is the final stage
    • Increasing amounts of time at each other’s place
    • Moving in together
    • Marriage
Maintaining relationships
  • @@Relational maintenance@@ = the stage in a relationship after a couple has bonded and in which they engage in the process of keeping the relationship
  • Begin establishing strategies for keeping the relationship together
    • Relationships stabilize when the partners reach a basic level of agreement about what they want from the relationship
  • Jagged rather than a plateau
    • Healthy relationships are always changing
    • Static relationships are either dead or dying
  • @@Dialectic@@ = tension that exists between two conflicting or interacting forces, elements, or ideas
    • Relationships often incorporate contradictions or contrasts
    • Integration/separation
    • Wanting to be separate entities and wanting to be integrated with another person
    • Stability/change
    • Wanting events, conversations, and behavior to be the same and desiring change
    • Expression/privacy
    • Wanting to self-disclose and be completely open and wanting to be private and closed
  • College students tend to use self-disclosure, positive comments, and discussions of social network in their messages
When relationships deteriorate
  • @@Relational deterioration@@ = the stage in a relationship in which the prior bond disintegrates
    • May occur because of pressures of external events, because of differences that develop within the couple, or because of relationships with other people
  • Physically, emotionally, and communicatively pull away from each other
  • Might find spending time with each other to be boring, stifling, and awkward
  • Avoid spending time together at all
    • Communication may increase, but it is marked with anger and negative intent
  • Legal action to end their relationship, if legally sanctioned
  • Not all relationships go through these stages, particularly deterioration or termination
  • In relationships that are dysfunctional or deteriorating, communication can help heal or remedy problems
    • In new relationships, relational development and growth
  • Base decisions to develop relationships on factors such as physical attractiveness, personal charisma, and communication behaviors
    • More likely to attempt to develop relationships with people who are attractive, emotionally expressive, extroverted, and spontaneous

Motivations for Initiating, Maintaining, and Terminating Relationships

Motivations for initiating
  • @@Proximity@@ = location, distance, or range between persons and things
    • Most likely to find others where you spend most of your time
    • Roommates, co-workers, religious services, social clubs, etc.
    • Changes in location often change relationship patterns
  • Usually select people we find with high attractiveness
    • Physical attractiveness, how desirable a person is to work with, how much social value the person has for others, etc.
    • Varies from culture to culture, person to person
  • @@Responsiveness@@ = the reason we tend to select our friends and loved ones from people who demonstrate positive interest in us
  • @@Similarity@@ = the idea that our friends and loved one are usually people who like or dislike the same things we do
  • @@Complementarity@@ = the idea that we sometimes bond with people whose strengths are our weakness
    • Having a friend or spouse who is too much like us may also have negative effects on the relationship
Motivations for maintaining
  • Maintained relationships invite levels of predictability or certainty
  • Less concerned with partners’ expressive traits and more concerned with their ability to focus on us through empathic, caring, and concerned involvement
  • Gender and cultural differences
    • People with different ethnicities express different primary needs in their interpersonal relationships
    • Latinos emphasized relational support, Asian Americans emphasized a caring, positive exchange of ideas, African Americans emphasized respect and acceptance, and Anglo Americans emphasized recognizing the needs of the individual
    • People display different levels of nonverbal involvement and intimacy with their romantic partners
  • Satisfying relationships
    • Many lasting marriages are characterized by stubbornness, distortion, and the continuous push and pull of autonomy or independence versus unity or interdependence
    • People who are the most satisfied with their relationships are probably those who have worked hardest at maintaining them
Motivations for terminating
  • Hurtful messages create emotional pain or upset
    • Accusation, evaluation, directive, advise, express desire, inform, question, threat, joke, and lie
    • Most common are accusations, evaluation, and inform
    • Occur in most relationships
    • End in disruption if they become a pattern or are so intense that one partner cannot forget them
    • Relational history, closeness, and satisfaction affect perception and response
    • Active verbal responses
    • Attacking the other, defending oneself, or asking for an explanation
    • People express more relational satisfaction when verbal responses were used
    • Acquiescent responses
    • Apologizing or crying
    • Most likely extremely hurt
    • Invulnerable responses
    • Laughing or ignoring the message
  • @@Deceptive communication@@ = the practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are untrue
    • Can lead to relational dissatisfaction and termination
    • White lies, nonrevelations of the whole truth, and omission of details
    • @@Familiar lies@@ = stores that are manufactured and that they tell repeatedly
    • @@Unfamiliar lies@@ = truths that are constructed on the spot
    • Vary length of pauses, eye gaze, and amount of smiling and laughing depending on whether it is a familiar or unfamiliar lie
    • Observers cannot detect these alterations
  • @@Aggressiveness@@ = the assertation of one’s rights at the expense of other and caring about only one’s own needs
    • Negative self-concept or because they have learned this behavior growing up
    • Sons and daughters have patterns of verbal aggression that are similar to their mother’s
  • Argumentativeness is synonymous with being contentious or combative
  • Defensiveness occurs when a person feels attacked
  • Some behaviors encourage defensiveness in others
    • @@Evaluation@@ = an individual makes a judgement about another person or their behavior
    • @@Control@@ = the speaker does not allow the other person to join in the discussion of how a problem should be solved
    • @@Neutrality@@ = the originator of the message does not show concern for the other
    • @@Superiority@@ = the first person treats the other as a person of lower status
    • @@Certainty@@ = lack of openness to alternative ideas
    • @@Strategy@@ = employment of manipulative and premeditative behavior
  • Others can reduce defensiveness
    • @@Description@@ = reporting observations rather than evaluative comments
    • @@Problem orientation@@ = eager to discuss multiple ideas
    • @@Empathy@@ = concern for others
    • Equality
    • @@Provisionalism@@ = communicator does not communicate certainty or a total conviction, open to other ideas
    • @@Spontaneity@@ = lack of premeditation

Essential Interpersonal Communication Behaviors

  • Need to be aware of perception, self-concept, provide clear verbal and nonverbal cues to others, and listen and empathize
Using Affectionate and Supportive Communication
  • Affectionate communication can be risk-laden
    • Your own and the other person’s sex, the kind of relationship you have, the privacy and emotional intensity of the situation, and your predispositions
  • Expressions of liking do not always result in positive relational outcomes
  • Give advice, express concern, and offer assistance
    • In distress, comforting messages encourage people to feel less upset
    • Suggesting a diversion, offering assistance, and expressing optimism
    • Could also feel demeaned if offered by an acquaintance rather than a close friend
Influencing Others
  • @@Influence@@ = the power to affect other people’s thinking or actions
  • @@Compliance gaining@@ = a person’s attempts to influence a target to perform some desired behavior that the target otherwise might not perform
    • Asking a friend for advice, a parent for financial assistance, or encourage a relational partner to feel more committed
  • @@Compliance resisting@@ = targets of influence messages refuse to comply with requests
    • Often offer reasons for their refusal
Developing a Unique Relationship
  • @@Personal idioms@@ = unique forms of expression and language understood only by them
  • @@Rituals@@ = formalized patterns of actions or words followed regularly
    • If a relational partner does not enact them, uneasiness often follows
  • Rituals that are important for long-term relationships:
    • Couple-time rituals
    • Having dinner together once a week
    • Idiosyncratic/symbolic rituals
    • Calling each other by a special name
    • Daily routines and tasks
    • Intimacy rituals
    • Communication rituals
    • Patterns, habits, and mannerisms
    • Spiritual rituals

Possibilities for Improvement

  • Improving relationships is a lifelong process that nobody perfects
Bargaining
  • @@Bargaining@@ = when two or more parties attempt to reach an agreement on what each should give and receive in a transaction between them
    • Explicit and formal
    • Sharing tasks, attending an event, or behaving in a specified way
    • Implicit and informal
  • 3 essential features of a bargaining situation
  1. All parties perceive the possibility of reaching an agreement in which each party would be better off or no worse off
  2. All parties perceive more than one such agreement could be reached
  3. Each party perceives the others as having conflicting preferences or opposed interests
Maintaining behavioral flexibility
  • @@Behavioral flexibility@@ = the ability to alter behavior to adapt to new situations and to relate in new ways when necessary
    • Key is self-monitoring
    • Relationships between people are in constant flux
  • A flexible person is confident about sharing messages with others, understands the messages others provide, self-discloses when appropriate, and demonstrates good listening skills
  • Draws on a large repertoire of communication behaviors