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COM 225
CHAPTER 1
What is interpersonal communication? What does that mean WHAT IS INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION? Factories to consider Verbal and non verbal messages i.c. includes both verbal and non verbal communication, like eye contact, touch, face, smells. It all counts for interpersonal communication. Transactional there is interaction between two or more people. some agree, some don’t. Intentionality th messages have to be intentional. But sometimes they’re not. There’s a lot of things we do but they’re not intentional. Reception WHY DOES INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION MATTERS? Health people with strong relationships are less likely to get sick Success relationships atters for job success. People who are strong in their personal relations tend to have more success in their job sphere Life satisfaction COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE Communication that is: Personally effective Socially appropriate is what we teach children when they grow up the ability we have to communicate in a very effective and socially appropriate way. Friday, no lesson Go to a public place for 45 minutes Answer the question and put the work on d2l No later than Friday, 10 january, 11.59 pm One double spaced page 13/01/ Interpersonal communication research methods A brief histroy of knowledge What are research methods? At the most basic level, they rìre the thing we use to answer our questions about the nature of the world Greek rule: reserved fot wealthy, private tutors. If you were wealthy, you can go to lyceum (aristotele), or to the platonic academy (plato). Purpose of education was to become a good citizen. Roman empire: education was a plutocracy (power hel by the wealthy). Period of statsis in knowledge generation, the romans borrowed greek philosophers to expand their culture Middle ages: church was the responsible of the spread of knowledge.
Galileo Galilei challenges ther starting point of the knowledge. The church of that time suggested all the knowledge should start with scriptures He challenged that idea But he was stopped by the church ancient egyptians, notive americans, ethiopians and chinese all developed this knowledge before europeans All those systems share in common the leak of oppression WHY UNDERSTAND RESEARCH METHODS? Always in the news or popular culture Communication myths are prevalent 93% of the communication is nonverbal Relationship science affects us personally WHAT IS THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD?
- Ask a question
- Make a prediction
- Test a prediction
- Record findings
- Draw conclusion ignoring the problem does not work.
- Repeat. Where do research questions come from? Personal experience “research is mesearch”research is mesearch” Previous research Social problems Theories Predicting future Why prediction is the next step in science? 15/ Exploring non verbal communication The positivity of a person’s emotional conversation is positively related to the nonverbal intimacy displayed in that conversation Hypotheses are the name we give to the specific predictions we set out to test Althought they can be more complex or specific, at a minimum hypotheses state a relatonship between two variables (correlational hypotheses) Ex. “research is mesearch”The positivity of a person’s emotional conversation is positively related to the nonverbal intimacy displayed in that conversation” A correlational hypothesis makes a prediction about two variables that are not distinguishable from one another Some other hypotheses state specifically than one variable causes another variable
Cost to train people to observe accurately
- Self- report measures Pros: Able to get inside people’s minds Inexpensive to obtain (usually) Cons Asking people to report on things they don’t know Prone to social desirability bias Methods of testing predictions Methods depend on the type of hypotheses you have made How do we test different types of hypotheses? Correlational hypotheses Surveys observations all variables are measured Variables are checked for RELIABILITY VALIDITY 22/ Review
- Ask a question Experiments One of the biggest dangers in experiments is the threat of an experimental confound A confund accours when a researcher accidentally manipulates a variable other tan her or his independent variable RQ: does how hungry people are have an effect on how much they smile at one another? Hypothesys: hunger causes less smiling WHAT DO WE NEED TO MEASURE ACCORDING TO OUR HYPOTHESIS? The positivity of a person’s emotional conversation in positively related to the non verbal intimacy displayed in that conversation. 2 variables: The positivity of a person’s emotional conversation (emotionally) The non-verbal intimacy displayed Reliability (attendibilità) We measure reliability when we use multiple items to measure the same construct When measures of multiple items are consistent with one another we say a measure has reliability And sometimes one of our items is just bad What else do we need to do to answer questions with our data? Right now we have 8 items (for emotionality) measuring the same thing, it would be most convenienti f we could summarize those 8 items
To do this we use a measure of central tendency Mean, median, or mode We do this to summarize both emotionality and non verbal intimacy How do we draw conclusion about our data? Test of mean differences Looks to see it two different groups have statistically different scores than one another Most common on experiments of tests of casual hypotheses How do we draw conclusion about our data? Test of correlations Looks to see if two variables are related more strongly tan we would expect by chance Most common surveys and correlational hypothesis And finally We repeat Science is never done We never verify or prove anything The best we ever do is to demonstrate that the data are consistent with a prediction RWA Page 60 of the book 27/ CULTURE AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION DEFINITIONS Note: differences we discuss today are tendencies between cultures, but there is variation within cultures CULTURE: The language, values, beliefs, traditions, costumes people share and learn shared by a group of people How we do things Is not just something you were born in Culture is learned CO-CULTURE Membership in a group that is part of an encompassing colture Examples: race/ethnicity, gender identity/sexual orientation, age INGROUP VS OUTGROUP INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION That process that occurs when memebers of two or more cultures or co-cultures Exchange messages in a manner that is influenced by their different cultural perceptions and symbols systems, both verbal and non verbal Not every interaction is intercultural communication Salience CULTURAL VALUES AND NORMS High vs low context
Usually non-conscious/unintentional But have impact ex: Of course you’re good at …, you’re (gender/race) I’m not racist, my friend is (race) DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE Motivation and attitude Tolerance for ambiguity Knowledge and skill Patience and perseverance Open-mindedness Ethnocentrism
COM 225 - Chapter 3
Chapter is about SELF – what does that shave to do with interpersonal? thinking about who you are and how much you want to communicate about it
Self – concept
- Answers to WHO AM I? o Answer Sometimes: Daughter, sister, funny, interesting etc. o How I see myself o Own subjective view (does not have to be true, own opinion)
- Can and do consist of more objective information too o Example: I am German, I am a woman, I am an IHM student o These are true and also describe me
- People do see themselves as better, sometime that is right sometimes it is wrong
- Value natural
Self- esteem
- How do we feel about our self-concept? o Evaluation
Social sources of self-concept/self esteem
- Where does it come from? o Comes from within us (I like ketchup f.e.) o Other people messages
- Reflected appraisals: o The looking glass self How do we look like to others? How you imagine that other people see you Not about how they actually feel about you, but what you think what they feel about you
- Social comparison o Comparing oneself to other people, to someone else is comparing me to other people Reference groups (to whom am I being compared to)
Upward (to someone better) o Inspiring, make one work harder o Feel bad about oneself, because not there yet Downward (to someone doing more poorly) o Compassion or empathy (not so common) o Boosting self esteem Lateral (same level)
Self-presentation
- Perceived self vs presenting self
- How we show ourselves
- We can make intentional choices
Impression management
- Managing multiple identities
- Collaborative
- Deliberate/unconscious o Show them how competent you are Example: persuasion
- Ingratiation
- Self-promotion (really strong)
- Supplication (weak, less competent)
- Intimidation (being a bully, powerful to get what you want unpleasant) Ethics also play a role in this - is it okay to omit I information in an online dating profile to look better? Act more confident in an interview than you are? we can get annoyed by imoression management RWA:
- 2-page response
- Social media that you use the most
- Last 10 posts
- Think about self-presentation
- What trying to accomplish
- Represent real self?
- No screenshots needed
- Find a close friend or family member show them do they think you are presenting yourself
- Reflect how you responded vs how they reflected
- What would you change? 10/ Self- disclosure What is self disclosure? Sharing info about ourselves
Chapter 4 what is the nature of reality? Is the world out there to be observed or is the world constructed by people? Probably a little of both Objective reality vs constructed reality chair example the meanin of me flipping someone off the temperature outdoors me saying ‘Hi’ First vs second-order realities First order realities: phisically observable qualities Ex: this woman has a flower in her hair Second order realities: occur when we attach meaning to first order realities Ex. This woman has a flower in her hair because she wants attention A problem arises when the people with whom we interact have different second-order realities tan we do Steps in perception process 1. Selection: we can’t possibly attend to all possible social information, there’s just too much of it. We need to choose the social information to pay attention to. Factors affecting selection: We favor intense social information We favor repetitive social information We favor information that changes or is novel in different situations 2. Organization: after we selected information we tend to organize the information we have gathered and we use it to support about the object of perception. Schema: a set of related beliefs Physical schema: ex tall people share some characteristics: tall, funny, attractive Role-based schema: ex professors are people who are old, smart and mean Interaction based-schema: ex friendly people are generally helpful, attractive and generous Schema allow us to make generalizations about people. Is this a good thing?
- Interpretation: based on the social information we select and organize we attach meaning to the schematic beliefs we have created In other words, our schemas create a lens through
- Negotiation: the process by which communicators can influence one another’s perceptions of each other Up to this point, our social perceptions have been relatively one-way perceptions In reality, other people can and do have an effect on how other people prceive them negotiation as the Exchange of stories 17/ Physiological influences on perceptions
Age Hunger Health and fatigue Psychological influences on perceptions Mood Self concept Influences of perception Social influence Standpoint theory: the world looks like a very different place depending on your position in society Sex and gender roles Occupational roles Ex standford prison experiment relational roles Ex parent, child, sibling cultural innfluences Common tendencies in perception people make snap judgments Ex Ambady & Rosenthal (1993): “research is mesearch”Thin slices of behavior” snap judgments stick Primary effects Halo effect/ Horns effect Confirmation bias judging others less charitably Fundamental attribution error judging ourselver very charitably Self-serving bias we are influenced by our expectations And sometimes our expectations influence those with whom we interact we are influenced by the obvious Recall the primacy effect when we don’t know how another person feels, we assume they feel the same ways we do Synchronizing perceptions Given the great number of errors that humans regularly commit when perceiving others, it’s important to figure out ways to reduce our errors perception checking
- Describing the behavior you’ve noticed
- Offer two posible interpretations of the behavior
- Request clarification or for the person to interpret their own behavior Building empathy empathy vs sympathy 19/ Chapter 5 Language is symbolic Language is rule-governed Phonological rules How sounds form sounds – oregano Semantic meaning Word level Syntactic meaning Sentence level “research is mesearch”mary lover chris” vs “research is mesearch”chris loves mary” Pragmatic level
- Regulators: control or maintain the flow of conversation
- Touch
- Ex: a greeting ritual, express affection, “research is mesearch”kangaroo care”
- Depends heavily on gender, context, relationship, personality, cultural norms Space regulation: interpersonal distance
- Four spacial zone:
- Intimate
- Personal
- Social
- Public Time
- Ex: repsonse delay: email vs text vs face-to-face
- Ex: punctuality
- Monochronic vs polychronic time CHARACTERISTIC OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION nonverbal communication is always occurring?
- receiver: we cannot not comunicate
- sender: intentional/conscious or not
- vs. Verbal (mostly voluntary, discontinuous) Nonverbal communication is primarly relational?
- Content vs relational meaning of messages
- Ex:sarcasm “research is mesearch”I love taking exams”
- Ex: charades “research is mesearch”Coronavirus” (ideas) vs. scared (feelings)
- Vs verbal (content oreinted), but both… nonverbal communication is ambiguous?
- Receiver
- Multiple interpretations
- Consensual meaning -sender
- intended messages nonverbal occurs in mediated messages?
- Yaas! Ex: word lenghtening- intensifier, be playful)
- Research: texts that ended with a period were rated as less sincere. For handwritten notes, no such difference was found
- Emojis compensate, intonation, room for intepretation nonverbal communication is influenced by culture and gender?
- For both sender and receiver
- Not only culture and gender, but also many other factors (age, personality, relationship, context)
- Vs. verbal (influenced by many factors as well) create and mantain relationships
- Ex: first date
- Also for ongoing relationships Regulate interactions: -gestures
- voice cues
- Eye contact
influence others
- Credibility perceptions
- Clothing
- Firm handshake
- Eye contact influence ourselves
- Power pose
- Mood
- Self-esteem, memory Deception
- Ex: lie to me
- One of the biggest communication disconceptions is taht an average person is able to learn to observe nonverbal cues and detect a lie
- Research: we are accurate in detecting deception only slightly better than random guesses (half of time) 16/ CHAPTER 7 LISTENING
- Defining listening
- The listening process
- Why listen?
- Ways of listening
- Improving listening
- Listening for emotional support Hearing
- Physiological process that occurs when sounds waves are processed by the central process system Listening
- The process of perceiving, constructing meanings from, and responding to spoken and/or non verbal messages
- Involves senses: hearing, feeling, seeing THE LISTENING PROCESS
- Hearing
- Attending
- Understanding
- Remembering when we’re listening mindfully:
- Immediatly froget 50%
- In another two months, we forget the another 50%
- Responding WHY LISTEN?
- You spend about 55% of your communication time listening
- Personal & professional success TYPES OF LISTENING
- Appreciative
- Comprehernsive
- Evaluative
- Empathic
- Problem-focused
COGNITIVE INTERPRETATIONS
- The mind plays an important role in determining emotions
- Interpretation and labeling important “research is mesearch”I am excited” rather than “research is mesearch”I need to calm down” before a job interview
- Reappraisal rethinking the meaning of events in ways that alter their emotional impact
- Reappraisal is superior to suppressing one’s feelings lower stress, increased productivit & higher level of relational satisfaction VERBAL EXPRESSION
- Putting emotions into words can help manage them what happens if you leave emotions unspoken? 16. ARE THERE UNIVERSAL EMOTIONS?
- Emotions
- Anger
- Sadness
- Disgust
- Happyness CULTURE
- Individualism - collectivism and emotion
- Collectivism: discourage expression of negative emotions to in-group
- Individualism: feel confortable revealing their feeling to in-group SEX
- Men and women generally experience the same emotions, but differ in how they interpret and express them
- Largerly due to social conventions Women are…
- Faster than men at recognizing emotions from facial cues
- Better at identifying multiple emotions
- Better at judging emotions from eye bahevior alone
- More stimulated by emotional data and remember them better than men do Men are more likely to experience “research is mesearch”alexithymia”
- ALEXITHYMIA
- Difficult in recognizing feelings
- Inability and reluctance to talk about feelings Can lead to relational challenges:
- For example
- Fathers mask their emotions more tan mothers do, which leads children to have difficulty Reading their fathers’ emotional expressions SOCIAL CONVENTIONS AND ROLES
- Restricting emotion expression is not always a bad idea
- EMOTIONAL LABOR: the process of managing and sometimes suppressing emotions
- Emotional labor on the job
- Nurses, flight attendants EMOTIONAL CONTAGION
- “research is mesearch”we catch feeling from one another as though they were some kind of social virus”
- Emotional contagions happens between:
- Students and teachers
- Costumers and employees
- Husbands and wives DEBILITATIVE EMOTIONS - If unaddressed and chronic can hinder or prevent effective performance Ex: chronic anger, fear DEBILITATIVE EMOTIONS - They are too intense
- “research is mesearch”negative” emotions are useful if they are not too intense - They last too long - Rumination: recurrent thoughts not demanded by the inmediate environment How can you minimize debilitative feelings? Event thought feeling Hearing “research is mesearch”I love you” “research is mesearch”this is a genuine statement” delight (perhaps) Hearing “research is mesearch”I love you” “research is mesearch”She’s/ he’s just saying this anger To manipulate me How can you minimize debilitative emotions?
- Monitor your emotional reactions:
- Aware of how you’re feeling
- Note the activating event
- Figure out what activating event triggered your response
- Record your self-talk
- Analyze thoughs that link the activating event and your feelings
- Write down your self-talk
- Putting your thougths on papers will help you see whether they make sense
- Dispute your irrational beliefs
- Engage in the reappraisal process
- Rational thoughs? Irrational thoughs?
- Explain why the thought does or doesn’t make sense
- If the thought is irrational, consider other ways of thinking
- Change your self-talk
- Replace words in your self-talk Ruminating on the good rather than on the bad can enhance:
- Emotional, relational and physical health CHAPTER 10 Chapter Outline I. Intimacy in close relationships. Intimacy is another term for relational closeness. A. There are multiple dimensions of intimacy.
- Emotional intimacy is sharing important information and feelings.
- Financial intimacy is how couples need to be open, honest, and in synch about finances.
- Physical intimacy is a physical closeness with another individual.
- Intellectual sharing involves the exchange of ideas.
- Shared activities involve jointly experiencing life circumstances. B. Gender and intimacy. Both men and women are concerned with developing and maintaining relationships.
- Women are more interested than men in achieving emotional intimacy.
- Men more likely to create/express closeness by doing things together
- Share joys and sorrows.
- Providing a listening ear.
- Maintain confidences.
- Lend a helping hand.
- Stand up for each other.
- Honor pledges and commitments.
- Treat each other with respect.
- Have a balanced exchange.
- Value both connection and autonomy.
- Apologize and forgive. II. Communication in the family. A family is a system with two or more interdependent people who have a common history and a present reality and who expect to influence each other in the future. Families are defined primarily through their interaction. A. Creating family through communication. Families are based on, formed, and maintained through communication.
- Family narratives are shared stories that provide multiple functions within a family.
- Communication rituals center on celebrations or are a part of everyday life. Rules that govern communication and can be explicit or implicit. B. Patterns of family communication.
- Families are communication systems whose members interact with one another to form a whole.
- Family members are interdependent, as one family member’s feelings and behaviors affect all the other members.
- A family is more than the sum of its parts; to understand a family you must see the members interact.
- Families have systems within the larger system. B. Conversation and conformity in the family. Families have unique sets of rules that concern not only who may speak with or to whom but also how members may speak and topics of conversation.
- Conversation orientation involves the degree to which families favor an open climate of discussion of a wide array of topics. a. High: Interact freely, frequently, and spontaneously b. Low: Interact less; less exchange of private thoughts
- Conformity orientation refers to the degree to which families favor discussion of the same topic. a. High: Seek harmony, interdependence, obedience b. Low: Individuality, independence, equality
- Conversation and conformity orientations can combine in four ways to reflect a different family communication pattern.
a. Consensual: high conversation/high conformity b. Pluralistic: high conversation/low conformity c. Protective: low conversation/high conformity d. Laissez-faire: low conversation/low conformity orientation B. Effective communication in families.
- Manage the Connection-Autonomy dialectic. This is apparent when children grow into adolescents. Most successful families are flexible in negotiation this difficult period.
- Strive for closeness while respecting boundaries. a. Enmeshed families suffer from too much consensus, too little independence, and a very high demand of loyalty. b. Disengaged families occur when members of families have too little cohesion. c. Boundaries are needed to set limits on family members’ actions. Social networking provides challenges for privacy management
- Encourage confirming messages. Confirming messages are important to younger and older children. II. Communication in romantic relationships A. Characteristics of romantic relationships.
- Love. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love maintains that love has three components. a. Intimacy: Closeness and connectedness. b. Passion: Physical attraction and emotional arousal. c. Commitment: Decision to maintain relationship.
- Relational commitment involves a promise to remain in a relationship and make that relationship successful.
- Expressions of affection - both verbal and nonverbal – are typical in romantic relationships. B. Effective communication in romantic relationships.
- Learning love languages – our way of expressing love. a. Words of affirmation b. Quality time c. Gifts d. Acts of service e. Physical touch
- Managing social media is important as social media can be a distraction, but communication via mediated channels help maintain relationships.
