Interpersonal Communication

Identity management

the communication strategies people use to present the self and to influence how others view them

Regulators

cues that help control verbal interaction, such as the turn-taking signals in conversation.

Power Distance

describe the degree to which members of a society accept an unequal distribution of power

Intercultural Communication

describes the process that occurs when members of two or more cultures or co-cultures exchange messages in a manner that is influenced by their different cultural perceptions and symbol systems, both verbal and nonverbal.

Paraphrasing

feedback that restates the message the speaker sent.

Environments

fields of experience that help people make sense of others' behavior

Active Strategies

gaining insights about intercultural communication through seeking information from reading, watching films, and asking experts and members of the other culture how to behave

External Noise

includes different kinds of distractions that are outside the receiver that make it difficult to hear

Physiological Noise

involves biological factors that interfere with reception

Culture

is language, values, beliefs, traditions, and customs that are shared and learned. - Culture is a matter of perception and definition.

Complementarity

is when each partner's characteristics satisfy the other's needs.

Communication is irreversible

it is impossible to "unreceive" a message, as words and deeds, once said or done, are irretrievable

Face

name given to the socially approved identity we present

Passive observation

noticing what behaviors members of another culture use and applying them effectively

Asynchronous Communication

occurs when there is a gap in time when a message is sent and received

Reference Group

people we use to evaluate our own characteristics

Achievement Cultures

place a high value on material success and focusing on the task at hand

Ethnicity

the degree to which a person identifies with a group, usually on basis of nationality, culture or other unifying perspective. - Ethnicity is more commonly used.

Channels

the medium through which messages are exchanged, and the selection of the channel depends in part on the kind of message that is being sent

Self-Esteem

the part of the self-concept that involves evaluations of self-worth

Co-Culture

the perception of membership in a group that is part of an encompassing culture.

Perceived Self

the person each of us believe we are when we examine ourselves

Emotional Contagion

the process by which emotions are transferred from one person to another.

Reflected Appraisal

the process of mirroring the judgments of surrounding people

Presenting Self

the public image we present, which is normally a socially approved image

Self-Concept

the relatively stable set of perceptions you hold for yourself

Communication is unrepeatable

the same words and behavior are different each time they are spoken or performed.

Communication Climate

the social tone of a relationship and involves the way people feel about each other as they carry out activities.

Chronemics

the study of how humans use and structure time

Facework

the verbal and nonverbal ways we act to maintain our face and the faces of others

Social Comparison

the way we evaluate ourselves in terms of how we compare with others

Psychological Noise

refers to cognitive factors that lessen the effectiveness of communication

Nurturing Culture

regard the support of relationships as an especially important goal

High-culture Context

relies heavily on subtle, often nonverbal cues to maintain social harmony.

Reappraisal

rethinking meaning of events to alter emotional impact

Haptics

study of touching

Territory

the area that serves as an extension of our physical being and is stationary

Synchronous Communication

two-way and occurs in real time

Low-culture Context

uses language primarily to express thoughts feelings and ideas as directly as possible

Communication

using messages to generate meaning, is a complex process with many factors

Self-Disclosure

volunteering personal information to people from the other culture with whom you want to communicate

Emotions

way to represent nonverbal expressions in type. Can clarify meaning

Salience

weight attached to a particular person or phenomena.

relational transgression

which is when one partner violates the explicit or implicit terms of the relationship.

Mediated Communication

- Mediated communication affects relational quality. - Mediated communication might have a negative impact on closeness, connection and conversation quality. But social media can also be rich and satisfying. Can make communication easier.

Perception Checking

- provides a good way to review assumptions and share interpretations Three parts: 1) Describe the behavior you noticed 2) Consider at least two possible interpretations of the behavior 3) Request clarification about how to interpret the behavior

Empathy

- the ability to re-create another person's perspective, to experience the world from his or her point of view. Involves: perspective taking, emotional contagion and concern. Empathy is different from sympathy. Empathy and ethics - There's a link between empathy and ethical altruism. Bystanders who feel empathy more likely to intervene. Treatment for offenders involves instilling empathy. Requirements for empathy - most important requirement for empathy is to be open-minded to understand another's position, but imagination and commitment are also needed.

The language of responsibility - Language reflects the speaker's willingness to take responsibility for his or her beliefs, feelings, and actions.

1) "It" statements replace the personal pronouns "I" and "me" with "it's," which avoids responsibility for ownership of a message. 2) A "but" statement has the effect of canceling the thought that precedes it. 3) "I" language is a way of accepting responsibility. Assertiveness - clearly expressing thoughts, feelings, and wants. "You" language expresses judgment of another person, and "We" language implies joint concern and responsibility for both the speaker and receiver. 4) Evaluative/Emotive language seems to describe something but in reality announces the speaker's attitude toward it.

There are several common characteristics that characterize effective communication in most contexts.

1) A large repertoire of skills. 2) Adaptability is the ability to choose the right behavior for the situation. 3) Ability to perform skillfully 4) Involvement - Effective communication occurs when the people involved care about one another and about the topic at hand. 5) Empathy/perspective taking 6) Cognitive complexity is the ability to construct a variety of different frameworks for viewing an issue. 7) Self-monitoring describes the process of paying close attention to one's own behavior and using these observations to shape the way one behaves; this generally increases one's effectiveness as a communicator.

Characteristics of interpersonal communication. Four features distinguish communication in highly personal relationships from less personal ones.

1) Uniqueness 2) Interdependence 3) Self-disclosure 4) Intrinsic rewards

Precision and vagueness

1) Ambiguous language consists of words and phrases that have more than one commonly accepted definition. 2) Abstractions are convenient ways of generalizing about similarities between several objects, people, ideas, or events and can be thought of as being on an abstraction ladder. 3) Euphemisms are innocuous terms substituted for a blunt ones and are typically used to soften the impact of information that might be unpleasant. 4) Relative language gains meaning by comparison and is problematic because the relative word is not linked to a more measurable term. 5) Static evaluation is a description or evaluation that contains the word "is," which makes the mistaken assumption that people or things are consistent and unchanging.

Disagreeing messages lie between confirming and disconfirming and communicate that the other person is wrong; there are three types of disagreement.

1) Argumentativeness is presenting and defending positions on issues while attacking positions taken by others. 2) Complaining is a way to register dissatisfaction without arguing. 3) Aggressiveness is the most destructive way to disagree with another person and involves attacking the self-concepts of others and winning at others' expense.

Communication competence with social media can be improved by using the following guidelines.

1) Be careful what you post. 2) Be considerate by respecting others' need for undivided attention and keeping the tone civil. 3) Be mindful of bystanders. 4) Balance mediated and face time.

A model of communication

1) Began creating models in the 1950s to capture the communication process. 2) The one-way linear model was composed of a sender, message, and receiver. 3) Later models began to incorporate feedback. 4) Communication theorists develop sophisticated transactional communication models in an attempt to depict all the factors that affect human interaction.

Affiliation - Language can build and demonstrate solidarity with others, known as affiliation

1) Convergence is the process of adapting one's speech style to match that of others with whom the communicator wants to identify. 2) Divergence is speaking in a way that emphasizes differences.

Facilitative emotions contribute to effective functioning, while debilitative emotions hinder or prevent effective performance

1) Debilitative emotions are more intense than facilitative emotions. 2) Debilitative feelings also have an extended duration. 3) Rumination is recurrent thoughts not demanded by the immediate environment.

Nonverbal communication is influenced by culture and gender.

1) Emblems are culturally understood substitutes for verbal expressions. 2) Culture affects how nonverbal cues are monitored 3) Some nonverbal behaviors are universal but way they are used varies 4) Differences between culture hold true across cultures 5) Females more nonverbally expressive and better at interpreting other's nonverbal behavior 6) Men's and women's nonverbal communication has a lot in common

There are multiple dimensions of intimacy

1) Emotional intimacy is sharing important information and feelings. 2) Financial intimacy is how couples need to be open, honest, and in synch about finances. 3) Physical intimacy is a physical closeness with another individual. 4) Intellectual sharing involves the exchange of ideas. 5) Shared activities involve jointly experiencing life circumstances.

Strive for closeness while respecting boundaries

1) Enmeshed families suffer from too much consensus, too little independence, and a very high demand of loyalty. 2) Disengaged families occur when members of families have too little cohesion. 3) Boundaries are needed to set limits on family members' actions. Social networking provides challenges for privacy management

Body movement is a primary type of nonverbal communication. Kinesics: study of how people communicate through body movement.

1) Face and eyes are the most noticeable part of the body; the study of how eyes communicate is known as oculesics. 2) Posture reveals how people feel about themselves and others. 3) Gestures, like manipulators consist of fidgeting, or one part of the body manipulating another.

Reality is constructed, as we create our reality with others through communication

1) First-order realities are physically observable qualities of a thing or situation. 2) Second-order realities involve attaching meaning to first-order things or situations.

We judge ourselves more charitably than we do others

1) Fundamental attribution error - tendency to give more weight to personal qualities than to the situation when making attributions about others' behaviors. 2) Self-serving bias - when we perform poorly, we usually blame external forces - and we credit ourselves rather than the situation when we behave well.

Listening is the process of receiving and responding to other's messages

1) Hearing is the physical process of receiving the message and is automatic, unlike listening. 2) Mindless listening occurs when we react automatically and routinely, without mental investment, to messages. 3) Mindful listening occurs when careful and thoughtful attention is paid to messages received.

Disconfirming communication dismisses the value of a person; there are seven types of disconfirming response.

1) Impervious responses fail to acknowledge the other person's communicative attempt. 2) Interrupting responses occur when one person begins to speak before the other is through making a point. 3) Irrelevant responses are totally unrelated to what the other person was saying. 4) Tangential responses acknowledge the other person's communication, but the acknowledgement is used to steer the conversation in a new direction. 5) Impersonal responses are monologues filled with impersonal, intellectualized, and generalized statements so the speaker never interacts with the other individual on a personal level. 6) Ambiguous responses contain a message with more than one meaning. 7) Incongruous responses contain two messages that seem to deny or contradict each other, one at the verbal level and one at the nonverbal level.

Culture and Communication

1) In-groups are groups with which we identify. 2) Out-groups are groups that we view as different. 3) Social identity is the part of the self-concept that is based on membership in groups.

Listening Styles

1) oriented listening concerned with efficiency and accomplishing the job at hand. 2) Relational listening concerned with building emotional closeness with others. 3) Analytical listening concerned with attending to full message before judging 4) Critical listening is used to evaluate messages

Knapp's developmental models of relational stages should also include relational maintenance, which is aimed at keeping relationships operating smoothly, in addition to the ten stages.

1) Initiating is the stage where the goals are to show that you are interested in making contact and demonstrate that you are a person worth talking to. 2) Experimenting is the stage after initiating, wherein we seek information about the other person, sometimes using small talk to find the information we seek. 3) Intensifying involves spending more time together, shared activities, etc., and is marked by relational excitement and euphoria. 4) Integrating is when couples take on an identity as a social unit and their social circles merge. 5) Bonding is the stage where couples make symbolic public gestures to the world that their relationship exists and that a commitment has been made. 6) Differentiating is when the couple starts to re-establish individual identities. 7) Circumscribing stage is when partners reduce the scope of their contact with each other. 8) Stagnating occurs when circumscribing continues and no new growth occurs. 9) Avoiding takes place when stagnation becomes too unpleasant and people begin creating distance between each other. 10) Terminating is the end of the relationship. 11) Developmental models are limited because it doesn't describe the ebb and flow of communication in every relationship.

Concealing/deceiving

1) Majority of messages we exchange aren't completely truthful 2) Not easy to tell when someone is lying. 3) Liars have more speech disturbances, pause longer, pupils dilate 4) True feelings revealed in brief, unconscious microexpressions 5) Beware of jumping to conclusions!

Online language and gender

1) Men use more large words, nouns, and swear words 2) Women use more personal pronouns, verbs, and hedge phrases 3) On Facebook, women used more emotion words, first-person singular pronouns, and references to people in their lives. Men made more object references, and swore more often. 4) Online language differences are more pronounced among adolescents.

Minimizing debilitative emotions can be achieved to defeat the self-defeating thinking that leads to debilitative emotions.

1) Monitoring emotional reactions. The first step is to recognize when you're having debilitating emotions. 2) Note the activating event so that you are aware of the trigger, which may be specific people, types of individuals, settings, or topics of conversation. 3) Record your self-talk so that you are able to analyze the thoughts that link the trigger and your feelings. 4) Dispute your irrational beliefs by choosing an alternate belief that is more sensible.

Communication misconceptions—Avoiding these common misconceptions can save you trouble in your personal life.

1) Not all communication seeks understanding. It is a flawed assumption that the goal of all communication is to maximize understanding between communicators; instead, social rituals we enact every day attempt to influence others. Deliberate ambiguity and deception are examples of communication in which understanding is not the primary goal. 2) More communication is not always better, as excessive communication is unproductive or even aggravates a problem. There are times when no interaction is the best course of action. 3) Communication will not solve all problems, because even the best-timed and best-planned communication cannot fix all problems. 4) Effective communication is not a natural ability, because most people operate at a level of effectiveness far below their potential.

Voice

1) Paralanguage describes the way a message is spoken; vocal rate, pronunciation, pitch, tone, volume, and emphasis can give the same word or words many meanings. 2) Disinfluencies (e.g. "um" "uh" "like"): reduce credibility so should be avoided 3) Can use sarcasm to contradict verbal message. 4) People often miss vocal nuances of sarcasm. 5) Young children have difficulty making sense of mixed messages.

Relational maintenance

1) Positivity is keeping things polite and upbeat and avoiding criticism. 2) Openness is talking directly about the relationship. 3) Assurances let the other person know that he or she matters to you. 4) Social networks involves being invested in each other's loved ones. 5) Sharing tasks is helping the other take care of chores and obligations.

Power and politeness - A number of patterns communicate more or less power.

1) Powerless speech: tentative, indirect, hedges, hesitations 2) Powerful language: direct, forceful, declarations, assertions 3) Politeness: saves face for both sender and receiver

We cling to first impressions - our initial impressions often carry more weight than the ones to follow.

1) Primacy effect - tendency to pay more attention to, and to better recall, things that happen first in a sequence 2) Halo effect - tendency to form an overall positive impression of a person on the basis of one positive characteristic. 3) Confirmation bias - process of seeking out and organizing our impressions to support our initial opinion.

Distance

1) Proxemics is the study of how communication is affected by the use, organization, and perception of space and distance. 2) Personal space refers to the invisible bubble that puts distance between ourselves and others. 3) Intimate distance is skin contact to about 18 inches and is reserved for people who are emotionally close to us and in mostly private situations. 4) Personal distance ranges from 18 inches to 4 feet. 5) Social distance ranges from about 4 feet to 12 feet. 6) Public distance runs outward from 12 feet.

Poor listening habits exist; most people possess one or more bad habits that keep them from understanding others' messages.

1) Pseudolistening is an imitation of actual listening. 2) Stage hogging is when people are interested only in expressing their ideas and don't care about what anyone else has to say. 3) Selective listening is when people respond only to the parts of a message that interest them, rejecting everything else. 4) Filling in gaps is what people do when they like to think that they remember a whole story and manufacture information so when they retell what they listened to, they can give the impression they "got it all." 5) Insulated listening is when listeners avoid what they would rather not deal with. 6) Defensive listening is when someone takes innocent comments as personal attacks. 7) Ambushing is listening carefully but only to gather information to later attack the speaker.

Confirming communication refers to messages that convey valuing. Three positive types of messages that have the best chance of being perceived as confirming.

1) Recognition is the most fundamental act of confirmation, to recognize the other person. 2) Acknowledging the ideas and feelings of others is a stronger form of confirmation than simple recognition. 3) Endorsement means you agree with the speaker and is the highest form of confirming.

There are several guidelines for the healthy expression of emotions

1) Recognize your feelings. One must be aware of one's feelings and able to identify emotions. 2) Chose the best language. Many suffer from impoverished emotional vocabularies. 3) Share multiple feelings. While it is common to experience more than one emotion at a time, we usually express only one emotion at a time. 4) Recognize the difference between feeling and acting. Just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean you must always act on it. 5) Accept responsibility for your feelings by not blaming others for how you feel. 6) Choose the best time and place to express your feelings. Usually it is better to delay expressing feelings or even never express feelings, depending on the situation.

Rewards - Some relationships are based on the economic model, called social exchange theory, that we seek out people that can give us rewards that are greater than or equal to the costs we encounter in dealing with them.

1) Rewards + Costs = Outcome 2) Comparison level (CL) is the minimum standard of what behavior in a relationship is acceptable. 3) Comparison level of alternatives (CLalt) is the standard that compares the rewards one receives in a current relationship and what can be expected in other situations.

There are four steps in the perception process whereby we attach meanings to our experiences.

1) Selection - We select which data we'll attend to. Attention is related to stimuli that are intense, repeated, or change. 2) Organization is the stage where selected information must be arranged in some meaningful way to make sense of the world through four types of schema to classify information and punctuation, which is the determination of causes and effects in a series of interactions. -Physical constructs classify people according to their appearance. -Role constructs use social positions. -Interaction constructs focus on social behavior. -Psychological constructs refer to internal states of mind and dispositions. 3) Interpretation - attaching meaning to the data we have perceived. Factors that affect interpretation: - Relational satisfaction -Expectations -Personal experience -Personality -Assumptions about human behavior 4) Negotiation is the process by which communicators influence each other's perceptions through communication. One way to explain negotiation is to view interpersonal communication as the exchange of stories or narratives that we tell to describe our world.

Sexism and racism

1) Sexist language uses words, phrases, and expressions that unnecessarily differentiate between female and male. 2) Racist language reflects a worldview that classifies members of one racial group as superior and others as inferior.

Gender and language

1) Significant differences - Men and women have significant differences in the ways they behave socially, and some acknowledge significant differences in the way women and men use language. Some scholars describe men and women as members of distinct cultures. 2) Minor differences - Differences are not as clear-cut: Only 1% variance in communication behavior resulted from sex differences. Women are not more talkative than men. Women's and men's speech more similar than different.

Alternatives to self-disclosure

1) Silence is keeping information to yourself and may be the best for you and the other person. 2) A lie is a deliberate attempt to hide or misrepresent the truth. Benevolent lie - not seen as malicious by the person who tells it; is possibly helpful to person to whom it is told. 3) Equivocation - statements that are not literally false but cleverly avoid an unpleasant truth. Can be used to save face. 4) Hinting is more direct than equivocal language and seeks to get the desired response from the other person. 5) The ethics of evasion - there are instances when hints, benevolent lies, and equivocations are ethical alternatives to self-disclosure.

Similarity Thesis

1) Similarities are validating. 2) Enable us to make fairly accurate predictions. 3) We assume similar people will like us, so we in turn like them.

Online language and impression management

1) Text message errors can make sender look bad 2) Subscribers to dating services can manipulate photos and verbal self-descriptions. 3) Facebook friends try to put their best feet forward with strategic language choices. 4) Executives manage impressions in the way they craft their e-mails.

The integration-separation dialectic embodies the conflicting desires for connection and independence.

1) The connection-autonomy dialectic is where we want to be close to others but also seek to be independent; it is an internal struggle. 2) The inclusion-seclusion dialectic is the external struggle between integration and separation. The struggle to reconcile a desire for involvement with the "outside world" with the desire to live their own lives, free of interference from others.

Irrational thinking and debilitative emotions come from accepting irrational thoughts or fallacies.

1) The fallacy of perfection is the thought that a competent communicator should be able to handle any situation with complete confidence and skill. 2) The fallacy of approval is the mistaken belief that it is vital to obtain everyone's approval. 3) The fallacy of should is the inability to distinguish between what is and what should be. 4) The fallacy of overgeneralization occurs when a person bases a belief on a limited amount of evidence. 5) The fallacy of causation is the belief that one should not do anything that will cause harm or inconvenience to others because it will cause undesirable feelings. 6) The fallacy of helplessness suggests that forces beyond our control determine life satisfaction. 7) The fallacy of catastrophic expectations occurs when one assumes that if something bad can happen then it will.

The expression-privacy dialectic captures the desire for both intimacy and need to maintain some space between ourselves and others.

1) The open-closed dialectic is the internal struggle between expression and privacy. 2) The revelation-concealment dialectic is the external expression of the conflict between openness and privacy.

The stability-change dialectic operates between partners and when they face others outside the relationship.

1) The predictability-novelty dialectic is the tension within a relationship between wanting a predictable partner but not wanting to be bored 2) The conventionality-uniqueness dialectic is the tension felt by people when they try to meet others' expectations as well as their own.

There are several characteristics of communication competence.

1) There is no single ideal or effective way to communicate. The definition of what communication is appropriate in a given situation varies considerably from one culture to another. 2) Competence is situational, as communication competence exists in degrees or areas of competence. 3) Competence can be learned. To a great degree, competence is a set of skills that anyone can learn.

Components of Listening

5) 1) Hearing is the physiological aspect of listening. 2) Attending is the psychological process of listening and is part of the process of selection. 3) Understanding is composed of several elements: awareness of the rules of the language, knowledge of the source of the message, and the context of the message. 4) Listening fidelity - congruence between understanding and what sender trying to communicate 5) Remembering is the ability to recall information. 6) Responding is the final step of the listening process and involves offering feedback to the speaker.

Characteristics of nonverbal communication

A. All behavior has communicative value because much of what is communicated is done so nonverbally. B. Nonverbal communication is primarily relational, in that it allows us to define the kind of relationships we want to have with others as well as allowing us to convey emotions that we are either unable or unwilling to express vocally. C. Nonverbal communication is ambiguous; an action can be interpreted many different ways. D. Nonverbal communication occurs in mediated messages.

The nature of language

A. Language is symbolic; words are symbols and have no inherent meanings. B. Language is rule-governed. - 1) Phonological rules govern how sounds are combined to form words. 2) Syntactic rules govern the way symbols can be arranged. 3) Semantic rules help us understand the meaning of individual words. 4) Pragmatic rules tell us what uses and interpretations of a message are appropriate in a given context. The coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory suggests that pragmatic rules are used to create and interpret messages.

Developing intercultural communication competence

A. Motivation and attitude describe the desire to communicate successfully with strangers, along with people from other cultures. B. Tolerance for ambiguity has to do with the level of uncertainty when encountering communicators from different cultures. Competent intercultural communicators must accept and welcome ambiguity. C. Open-mindedness involves being free of ethnocentrism, which is an attitude that one's own culture is superior to others, and prejudice, which is an unfair and intolerant attitude toward others who belong to an out-group. D. Knowledge and skill are needed for communicators to possess enough knowledge about other cultures to know what approaches are appropriate.

Communication can be intentional or unintentional.

All behavior has communicative value.

Communication is transactional.

Communication is a dynamic process that the participants create through their interaction with one another.

Leanness

Richness describes the abundance of nonverbal cues that add clarity to a verbal message. Leanness describes messages that carry less information due to a lack of nonverbal cues. Leanness of social media channels encourages increased use of hyperpersonal communication, which is accelerated discussion of personal topics and relational development.

Communication has a content and a relational dimension.

The content dimension involves the information being explicitly discussed, while the relational dimension expresses how you feel about the other person.

Significant Other

a person whose evaluations are especially influential

Empathizing

a response style used to show that the listener is identifying with the speaker.

uncertainty avoidance

a term used to reflect the degree in which members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous situations and how much they try to avoid them

Noise

anything that interferes with the transmission and reception of a message

Physical Needs

are affected by communication, as its presence or absence affects physical health.

Social Needs

are met through communication, as it is the principle way relationships are created. Communication is the primary goal of human existence.

Practical Needs

are met through communication, as it serves important functions (e.g. tell stylist how much hair to cut, tell doctor where it hurts, tell plumber broken pipe needs to be fixed now, etc.).

Identity Needs

are met through communication, which is the major way we learn who we are as humans. Our sense of identity comes from the way we interact with others.

Race

category created to explain differences between people whose ancestors originated in different regions of the world. - Race has little use in explaining individual differences

Communication Competence

communication that is both effective and appropriate