Interpersonal Communication // Exam 2

Importance of nonverbal communication

"Wherever you go, nonverbal communication is there. Nonverbal communication is an ever-present form of human expression."

5 conflict management styles

1. Avoidance: Conflict management style that involves backing off and trying to side-step conflict. 2. Accommodation: Conflict management style that involves giving in to the demands of others. 3. Competition: Conflict management style that stresses winning a conflict at the expense of the other person involved. 4. Compromise: Conflict management style that attempts to find the middle ground in a conflict. Collaboration: Conflict management style that uses other-oriented strategies to achieve a positive solution for all involved.

Common listening barriers

1. Being Self-Absorbed: These listeners focus on their needs rather than on yours; the message is about them, not you. / Conversational Narcissism: A focus on personal agendas and self-absorption rather than on the needs and ideas of others. / Selective Listening: Letting pre-formed biases, prejudices, expectations, and stereotypes cause us to hear what we want to hear, instead of listening to what a speaker actually said. 2. Unchecked Emotions: Emotional noise: form of communication interferences caused by emotional arousal. / Can be caused by words, concepts, or ideas...leads to lack of focus. 3. Criticizing the Speaker: Causes listener to be distracted from the message. / Ambush Listener: Person who is overly critical and judgmental when listening to others. / Superficial factors affect our interpretation of a message. 4. Differing Speech Rate and Thought Rate: We can listen much faster than we can speak, 600-800 words a minute vs. 125 words a minute. / Use this to your advantage to process rather than daydream. 5. Information Overload: We have many things competing for our attention, such as technology which reduces our listening effectiveness. / Make sure whoever you're talking to is truly ready to listen. 6. External Noise: Distractions in conversation, such as TV. Listener Apprehension: The fear of misunderstanding, misinterpreting, or being unable to adjust to the spoken messages of others.

Common word barriers

1. Bypassing: Confusion caused when the same word evokes different meanings for different people. 2. Lack of Clarity: Inappropriate or imprecise use of words. 3. Not being specific and using allness language: Tendency to lump things or people into all-encompassing categories. 4. Static evaluation and not being aware of change: Labeling people, objects, or events without considering how things evolve. 5. Either-Or Polarization: Use of either-or terms (good or bad, right or wrong). Biased Language: Use of language that reflects gender, racial, ethnic, age, ability, or class bias.

4 functions of eye contact

1. Cognitive Function: Eye contact provides clues to thinking patterns. For example, if your partner breaks eye contact after you ask him or her a question, you may conclude that he or she is probably thinking of something to say. 2. Monitoring Function: You look at others to observe and assess their behavior. You receive a major portion of information through your eyes. You look at others to determine whether they like what you are saying. 3. Regulatory Function: Eye contact regulates whom you are likely to talk with. When you look at someone, it's like you're inviting that person to speak to you. Looking away often means you don't want to communicate with that person. For example, when standing in a crowded bakery, you fix your eyes on the clerk to signal, "My turn next. Please wait on me." Expressive Function: Finally, the area around your eyes provides important information about the emotions you display. You may cry, blink, and widen or narrow your gaze to express your feelings, which is why the eyes have been called the "window to the soul."

Categories of movement and gestures

1. Emblems: Nonverbal cues that have specific, generally understood meanings in a given culture and may substitute for a word or phrase. 2. Illustrators: Nonverbal behaviors that accompany a verbal message and either contradict, accent, or complement it. 3. Affect Displays: Nonverbal behaviors that communicate emotions. 4. Regulators: Nonverbal messages that help to control the interaction or flow of communication between two people. Adaptors: Nonverbal behaviors that satisfy a personal need and help a person adapt or respond to the immediate situation.

Primary dimensions of meaning in nonverbal communication

1. Immediacy: Feelings of liking, pleasure, and closeness communicated by such nonverbal cues as increased eye contact, forward lean, touch, and open body orientation. 2. Arousal: Feelings of interest and excitement communicated by such nonverbal cues as vocal expression, facial expressions, and gestures. Dominance: Power, status, and control communicated by such nonverbal cues as a relaxed posture, greater personal space, and protected personal space.

4 zones of space found in western cultures

1. Intimate Space: 0-1.5 feet...communicating with our most intimate acquaintances. 2. Personal Space: 1.5-4 feet...conversing with good friends and family members. 3. Social Space: 4-12 feet...working with others in small groups and in professional situations. Public Space: 12 feet and beyond...engaging in public speaking.

5 sources of interpersonal power

1. Legitimate Power: Power that is based on respect for a person's position. 2. Referent Power: Power that comes from our attraction to another person, or the charisma a person possesses. 3. Expert Power: Power based on a person's knowledge and experience. 4. Reward Power: Power based on a person's ability to satisfy our needs. Coercive Power: Power based on the use of sanctions or punishments to influence others.

Strategies for improving conflict management

1. Manage Your Emotions: Be aware that you are becoming angry and emotionally volatile, seek to understand why you are angry and emotional, make a conscious decision about whether to express your anger, select a mutually acceptable time and place to discuss a conflict, plan your message, breathe, monitor nonverbal messages, avoid personal attacks/name calling/emotional overstatement, take time to establish rapport, use self-talk. 2. Manage Information: Clearly describe the conflict-producing events, take turns talking, "own" your statements by using descriptive "I" language, use effective listening skills, check your understanding of what others say and do, be empathetic. 3. Manage Goals: Identify your goal and your partner's goal, identify where your goals and your partner's goals overlap. Manage the Problem: Use principled negotiation strategies (separate the people from the problem, focus on shared interests, generate many options to solve the problem, base decisions on objective criteria), use a problem-solving structure, develop a solution that helps each person save face.

Principles of interpersonal power

1. Power exists in all relationships: being in a relationship means letting someone have some influence on you and having influence on the other person. 2. Power derives from the ability to meet a person's needs: if you can meet someone's needs, then you have power. 3. Both people in a relationship have some power: each person has some degree of power. 4. Power in circumstantial: because our needs change, so does power (like with parents). Power is negotiated: partners often negotiate which individual will have decision-making responsibility over what issues.

5 stages of conflict process

1. Source: Prior Conditions...begins when you become aware of differences between you and another person. 2. Beginning: Frustration Awareness...at least one person is becoming aware that the differences are increasingly problematic. 3. Middle: Active Conflict...when you bring your frustration to the attention of others (expressed struggle). 4. End: Resolution...when you begin to try to manage conflict. Aftermath: Follow-Up...after a conflict has been resolved...involves dealing with hurt feelings or managing simmering grudges, and checking with the other person to confirm that the conflict hasn't retreated into the frustration awareness stage.

Interpersonal conflict

An expressed struggle between at least two interdependent people who perceive incompatible goals, scare resources, or interference in the achievement of their goals.

Assertiveness vs aggressiveness

Assertive: Able to pursue one's own best interests without denying a partner's rights. Aggressive: Expressing one's interests while denying the rights of others by blaming, judging, and evaluating other people.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Based on the principles of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language shapes our thoughts and culture, and our culture and thoughts affect the language we use to describe our world.

Abstract vs Concrete Words

Concrete Word: can experience its referent with one of the senses; if you can see, touch, smell, taste, or hear a word's referent, then the word is concrete. Abstract Word: Broader and more general. (Red Mercedes C-230 vs. Transportation)

Triangle of Meaning

Explains the relationships between referents, thought, and symbols. / Referent: The thing that a symbol represents. / Thought: Mental process of creating an image, sound, concept, or experience triggered by a referent or symbol. / Symbol: Word, sound, or visual image that represents something else, such as a thought, concept, or object.

"ics"

Kinesics: Study of human movement and gesture. / Proxemics: Space; Study of how close or far away from people and objects people position themselves. / Haptics: Touch; creates intimacy / Morphics: Change

Connotative Meaning

Personal and subjective association with a word.

Understanding

Process of assigning meaning to sounds.

Selecting

Process of choosing one sound while sorting through various sounds competing for your attention.

Responding

Process of confirming your understanding of a message.

Attending

Process of focusing on a particular sound or message.

Remembering

Process of recalling information.

4 listening styles

Relational listeners, analytical listeners, critical listeners, task-oriented listeners

Denotative Meaning

Restrictive or literal definition of a word.

5 stages of the listening process

Selecting, attending, understanding, remembering, and responding

Disconfirming Response

Statement that causes another person to value himself or herself less.

Confirming Response

Statement that causes another person to value himself or herself more.

"I" language

Statements that use the word "I" to express how a speaker is feeling.

Dialectical Tensions

Tension arising from a person's need for two things at the same time. / Being separate and connected: Desire to be both separate from other people and connected to them at the same time. / Feelings of being open and closed: We want to share and disclose our thoughts and feelings, but we also want our privacy and secrecy.

Interpersonal Communication

The distinctive, transactional form of human communication involving mutual influence, usually for the purpose of managing relationships.

Task-Oriented Listeners

Those who look at the overall structure of the message to see what action needs to be taken; they also like efficient, clear, and briefer messages.

Relational Listeners

Those who prefer to focus on the emotions and feelings communicated verbally and nonverbally by others.

Critical Listeners

Those who prefer to listen for the facts and evidence to support key ideas and an underlying logic; they also listen for errors, inconsistencies, and discrepancies.

Analytical Listeners

Those who withhold judgment, listen to all sides of an issue, and wait until they hear the facts before reaching a conclusion.