Interpersonal
Communication
Points of Emphasis
Exam III
Chapter Eight
Sharing Personal Information
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
A.
Self-disclosure is arguably the most researched behavior in the
communication discipline.
B. Most
researchers believe self-disclosure is a critically important
communication skill because it helps relationships
develop and contributes to the maturation and
revision of self concept.
C. Ample
evidence shows that greater disclosure is related to greater emotional
involvement in a relationship.
D. Researchers
and nonresearchers alike believe that self-disclosure and relationship
development are intertwined.
II. Definition of Self-Disclosure: Opening Up
A.
Self-disclosure is communication about your self.
B.
Self-disclosure occurs when you intentionally tell another
something about yourself that the person would be unable
to easily learn otherwise.
C. There are at
least two types of self-disclosure.
1. Evaluative disclosures are used
to tell another how we judge other people, things, and events.
2. Descriptive disclosures are
self-revelations.
3. Self-disclosure, then, is
evaluative and descriptive information about the self, shared
intentionally, that another would
have trouble
finding out without being told.
a)
Implicit in this definition is the fact that self-disclosures are
verbal behavior.
b)
Note that verbal communication doesn’t have to be oral or
face-to-face, we could self-disclose in a letter
or an email, although not much
research has investigated written self-disclosures.
III. Features of Self-Disclosure: Expanding the
Definition
A.
Intentionality and Choice
1. Intentionality
a)
Disclosures are intentional communication.
b)
When you engage in self-disclosure, you choose to tell another
something about yourself.
c)
Although disclosures sometimes slip out unintentionally, these
“slips” don’t meet the above definition for real self-disclosure.
2. Choice
a)
Implicit in the feature of choice is the idea that there are
varying degrees of self-disclosures.
b)
We choose whether to tell something and we also choose how to
tell it and how much detail to provide in the telling.
B. Intimacy and
Risk
1. Intimacy
a)
Because a self-disclosure is information another would not be
easily able to discover without being told, the
information involved must be
personal.
2. Risk
a)
Self-disclosure is a frightening notion.
b)
It involves sharing who we really are with another and letting
ourselves be truly known by them.
c)
We may be rejected by the other person after we have made
ourselves vulnerable in this fashion.
3. Public versus Private
Information
a)
Public information consists of facts that we make parts of our
public image – the parts of ourselves that we present to others.
(1) Usually,
people strive to present socially approved characteristics as public
information.
b)
Private information reflects the self-concept.
(1) Private
information consists of the assessments – both good and bad – that we
make about our selves.
(2) It also
includes our personal values and our interests, fears, and concerns.
c) Notions of public and private
information have changed over time.
C. Trust
1. Trust explains why we decide to
take the plunge and reveal ourselves through self-disclosure.
2. When we trust someone, we are
likely to provide more intimate disclosures.
3. Our perception of trust is a
key factor in our decision to self-disclose, and most self-disclosures
take place in the
context of a
trusting relationship.
IV. Self-Disclosure as a Subjective Process: Making
It Real
A. Whether
information is considered a self-disclosure depends on subjective
assessments made by the discloser.
B. History
consists of information that may sound personal to a listener but that
is relatively easy for a speaker to tell.
1. These disclosures may be told
easily because of the teller’s temperament, changing times, or simply
because the
events
happened a long time ago and have been told and retold.
C. Story or
what some researchers call true self-disclosure, exists when the teller
feels the risk he or she is taking in telling the information.
1. A disclosure should be
considered story (or authentic) even if it doesn’t seem personal to the
average listener.
D. Some topics
seem to be inherently more personal than others.
E. Disclosures
are typed based on topical intimacy.
1. A person can reveal an actual
disclosure (that is, story) about what seems to be a low-intimacy topic.
2. It all depends on the risk the
teller feels while disclosing to a listener.
F. Some believe
that disclosures aren’t discrete, finite events; rather, they are
viewed as processes that occur on a continuum.
G.
Self-disclosures are unfinished business because there is always
something more to tell or someone else to disclose to.
V. Factors Affecting Disclosure
A. Individual
Differences
1. People have different needs for
openness.
2. Even people who have a high
need to disclose don’t wish to tell everyone everything.
B. Relational
Issues
1. People have expectations about
the need for, and the appropriate amount of, self-disclosure based on
their definitions
of their
relationships with significant others.
a)
These needs vary depending on the relationship.
2. When we engage in interpersonal
encounters, we negotiate the boundaries between privacy and openness
through
self-disclosing or keeping quiet.
3. Selectively self-disclosing
helps us as we create the balance between what is private only to
ourselves, what is shared
only with
intimates, what is disclosed only to close friends, and what is known
to many others.
4. Self-disclosures wax and wane
over the life of a relationship.
a)
The longer people know each other, the less time they spend in
disclosing.
b)
As relationships endure and stabilize, the participants need to
disclose less because they already know a great
deal about one another.
5. Some general patterns of
self-disclosure behavior may be related to the life of a relationship.
a)
One pattern shows a gradual increase in self-disclosing that
parallels the growth of the relationship until the
relationship stabilizes; at that
point, self-disclosure decreases.
b)
A second pattern has a long-term relationship that is
characterized by low self-disclosures and then a spike up
before a leveling off of openness.
c)
The third pattern is sometimes referred to as a “clicking,” and
shows a high incidence of self-disclosing almost
immediately in the relationship.
(1) Researchers
refer to these relationships as ones that just “click” from the start
rather than needing a gradual build.
(2) Researchers
explain the clicking process by suggesting that people carry around
relationship scripts in their heads,
and when they find someone who fits the main
elements of that script, they begin acting as though all the elements
were there.
d)
In all three patterns, self-disclosures eventually level off –
and, in many cases, they eventually decrease dramatically if
relationships last a long time.
e)
When new issues arise, relational partners will self-disclose.
f)
If self-disclosure decreases suddenly and radically between
people, that may signal that a relationship is in trouble.
C. Cultural
Values
1. Self-disclosing behavior is
moderated by cultural prescriptions and values.
2. The level of self-disclosure of
a culture relates to whether it is a high-context or low-context
culture.
D. Gender
1. Many people believe that gender
or sex is a major factor in self-disclosing behaviors.
2. In general, in the United
States, women seem to self-disclose more than men, and they value
self-disclosures more.
3. Women seem to expect that close
relationships involve exchanging intimate knowledge.
a)
Men may prefer to relate to their friends through actions rather
than words.
b)
Men and women may choose different topics for their
self-disclosures.
4. Research indicates that women
and men both believe establishing close relationships is important.
a)
However, they differ a bit in how they think closeness is
achieved.
b)
Men choose to do things together, and women favor talking things
over.
E. The Receiver
1. Although we may disclose the
same information to several people, the way we frame our disclosure may
vary based on the person involved.
2. In some cases, disclosures are made because the
receivers are “licensed” to receive them.
3. In other cases, the recipients
of disclosure may not realize the gravity of what they are hearing.
4. The recipient of the disclosure
has an impact on the process as well as on the sender.
VI. Models of Self-Disclosure: Seeing the Big Picture
A. Social
Penetration
1. The social penetration model,
developed by Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor (1973), says that people,
like onions,
have many
layers.
2. A person’s layers correspond to
all the information about them ranging from the most obvious to the
most personal.
a)
Some information is easily observable. This information
makes up the outer layer.
b)
Other information is less accessible; conversation is necessary
to “peel” these layers of the onion.
3. Through interaction, people may
choose to reveal these deeper layers of themselves to one another and,
in so doing,
deepen their
relationship.
4. The social penetration model
pictures all the topics of information about a person along the
perimeter of an onion that
has been
sliced in half.
5. Breadth refers to the number of
topics covered.
6. Depth occurs when we tell our
friend how we feel about the topics.
7. Some relationships have a great
deal of breadth without depth, and vice versa.
8. The degree to which you
self-disclose controls the social penetration described by the model.
B.
Dialectics
1. Dialectics explains relational
life as full of push-pull tensions resulting from the desire for polar
opposites.
2. We discuss the tension between
wanting to be open with our relational partners and the opposing desire
of wanting
to maintain
our privacy.
a)
Sidney Jourard (1971) is probably the research who most
influenced our positive response to self-disclosure.
He suggested that we must engage
in self-disclosure to be psychologically and physically healthy.
b)
More recently, people have rejected this idea in favor of
emphasizing the benefits of privacy and even deception.
(1) Some
researchers now contend that concealing information can have positive
effects on relationships.
c)
The dialectics model tries to integrate these opposing positions.
3. Dialectics
explains how we wish to have conflicting, seemingly incompatible things
at the same time and how we try to deal
with the tensions raised by this conflict.
4. Dialectic
thinking assumes that we all want to have both privacy and the
closeness that comes from being known by others,
even though these two things seem like polar
opposites.
5. Dialectics
theory says that to reduce the tension of this process, communicators
use several coping strategies.
a) Cyclic alternation helps
communicators handle tension by featuring the oppositions at
alternating times.
b) Segmentation allows people to
isolate separate arenas for using privacy and openness.
c) Selection means that you choose
one of the opposites and ignore your need for the other.
d) Integration can take one of
three forms:
(1) Neutralizing involves compromising between the
two oppositions.
(2) Disqualifying allows people to cope with tensions
by exempting certain issues from the general patterns.
(a) This coping
strategy creates taboo topics, or issues that are out of bounds for
discussion.
(b) Most
relationships contain topics that are not talked about by unspoken
mutual consent.
(3) Reframing refers to rethinking the notion of
opposition. In doing so, people redefine the dialectic.
C. The Johari
Window
1. The Johari Window is another
model that can be used to examine the self-disclosure process.
2. Luft and Ingham were interested
in the self, and the model they created can help us understand more
than just self-disclosure.
3. The Johari Window is a device
that provides a pictorial representation of how “known” you are to
yourself and others.
4. The entire, large square
represents your self as a whole.
a)
It contains everything that there is to know about you.
b)
The square is divided by two axes: one representing what you know
about yourself and one representing what you
have revealed about yourself to
others.
5. The axes split the window into
four parts.
a)
The open self includes all the information about you that you
know and that you have shared with others through disclosures.
(1) Whenever
you tell someone a piece of information about yourself, the open self
increases.
b) The hidden self contains the
information that you are aware of but that you have chosen not to
disclose.
c) The blind self encompasses
information that others know about you although you yourself are
unaware
of this
information.
d) The unknown self consists of
the information that neither you nor others are aware of about you.
(1) There is always something about each person that
remains a mystery.
(2) So there are always things about you to learn and
discover.
6. The Johari Window is a
person-specific model, meaning that we need to draw a different window
for each person
with whom we
interact.
7. Also, the size of the panes can
change as your relationships evolve.
8. The Johari Window helps us
understand self-disclosure in many ways.
a)
Self-disclosure emanate from the parts of the self that are know
to us: the hidden self and the open self.
b)
Self-disclosures regulate the relative sizes of the open and the
hidden selves. As we choose to disclose, the
open self becomes larger, and the
hidden self becomes smaller; when we decide to withhold disclosures, we
achieve the opposite result.
c)
As others provide us with feedback, we learn more about our
selves, which increases our ability to self-disclose.
d)
As we have new experiences and learn more about ourselves, the
unknown self decreases, and we have
more available information that
we may choose to disclose to others.
VII. Principles of Self-Disclosure
A.
We Disclose a Great Deal in Few Interactions
1. This
principle suggests that self-disclosures are somewhat rare if we
examine our total communication behavior.
2. Some
researchers estimate that only approximately 2% of our communication
can be called self-disclosure.
3. We generally
spend a lot more time in small talk than in the relatively dramatic
behavior of self-disclosure.
4. Most of our
interactions are short, routine, and relatively impersonal.
5. Only a few
of our interactions are truly self-disclosive.
6. Yet, because
of the emotional impact self-disclosure has on us and on our
relationships, it receives more
attention from researchers and ourselves than some
of our other communication behaviors, which actually take up more of
our time.
B.
Self-Disclosure Occur between Two People in a Relationship
1. Although it
is possible for us to tell personal information to small groups of
people, generally self-disclosure
occurs when only two people are present.
2. How much and
how frequently we self-disclose depends in great part on the nature of
our relationship with another.
3. Some
research suggests that people disclose the most in relationships that
are close.
4. However, an
axiom is only true most of the time, and there are some exceptions to
this generalization.
a) Some research argues that
television disclosures are a different sort of self-disclosure than
those that occur
in
interpersonal relationships.
(1) Television disclosures break the norm of
self-disclosure by taking place in public to strangers who don’t
respond.
(2) However, these disclosures may still provide
benefits to the discloser, including correcting stereotypes
and educating the public;
achieving fame’ and getting a forum to speak, including being able to
market a
book or business idea.
b)
Another exception is “the bus rider phenomenon,” also called
“strangers on a train.”
(1) This notion
refers to self-disclosures made to strangers rather than to close
friends or relatives.
(2) The
phenomenon derives its name from the fact that such self-disclosures
may often occur on public
transportation like buses, planes, or trains where
two people are confined together for a period of time with not
much to do but talk to each other.
(3) The
relationship between the people is temporary and transient rather than
close and ongoing.
C.
Self-Disclosures Are Reciprocal
1. This axiom of self-disclosure
refers to reciprocity, or the tendency to respond in kind.
2. Most research suggests that the
self-disclosures of one member of a dyad will be reciprocated by
self-disclosures by the other.
3. The dyadic effect describes the
tendency for us to return another’s self-disclosure with one that
matches it in level of intimacy.
4. Reciprocity is sometimes
explained by noting that it keeps people in the relationship on an
equal footing.
a)
If two people have reciprocated disclosures, they have equalized
the rewards and the risks of disclosing.
b)
Researchers observe that disclosure reciprocity may be governed
by global conversational norms such
as the requirement that a
response has to be relevant to the comment that preceded it.
5. However, we know that
conversations involving self-disclosures do not always contain
immediate responses of reciprocal
self-disclosures.
6. People in close relationships
don’t have to engage in immediate reciprocity but that they should
reciprocate within the
conversation
at some point.
7. When people are just getting to
know one another, the need for immediate reciprocity is strong.
8. In developing relationships,
however, this need is relaxed, and reciprocal disclosures may not even
need to occur within the
same
conversation.
D.
Self-Disclosures Occur in the Context of Time
1. Disclosures generally happen
incrementally over time. We usually tell a low-level
self-disclosure to a relationship partner
first and then
increase the intimacy level of our disclosures as time goes by and our
relationship with that person continues and deepens.
2. Although initially
self-disclosure is a message or a single event, it is also a process
that develops as a relationship develops.
3. Self-disclosures change the
relationship, and the nature of the self-disclosures changes as the
relationship matures or deteriorates.
4. This axiom also specifies that
time affects the meaning of disclosure.
5. Therefore, the function and
meaning of disclosures vary within the context of time.
VIII. Reasons to Self-Disclose: I Want You to Know Me
A.
Individual Reasons
1. To
Experience Catharsis and Improve Psychological Health
a) One reason psychologists are so
interested in the concept of self-disclosure is probably because
individuals
experience
catharsis, or a therapeutic release of tensions and negative emotion,
through disclosing.
b) Engaging in self-disclosure is
seen as a method for helping individuals achieve psychological health.
c) The field of psychotherapy is
predicated on the psychological healing function of self-disclosing.
d) Recently, therapists have
advanced the idea that some self-disclosure on the part of the
therapists themselves
could be
healing and helpful.
e) The adage “A trouble shared is
a trouble halved” contains the common wisdom that self-disclosing about
troubles
provides some relief from those troubles.
f) People engage in
self-disclosure to receive psychological support for their problems.
2. To Improve
Physical Health
a) Evidence supports the belief
that self-disclosure provides physical as well as psychological
benefits for disclosers.
b) Self-disclosure promotes
physical health and that failure to disclose may cause ill health.
c) It is a viable argument today
because a great deal of evidence supports the contention that
disclosing has a
positive
impact on blood pressure levels and resistance to cardiovascular
disease.
3. To Achieve
Self-Awareness
a) Self-disclosures provide us
with the means to become more self-aware.
b) We are able to clarify our
self-concepts by the feedback re receive from others when we disclose
and by the
process of
hearing ourselves disclose.
c) As we listen to ourselves
disclose and receive feedback, we increase the side of the window that
is known to us.
B.
Relationship Reasons
1. To Initiate
a Relationship
a) Disclosers are prompted to tell
private information as a way of developing a new relationship with
someone
who seems
interesting.
b) When we self-disclose to others
we like, it’s probable we’ll develop new relationships.
2. To Maintain
Existing Relationships
a) Existing relationships also
benefit from self-disclosures.
b) Researchers Karen Ijams and
Larry Miller (2000) found that 100% of their participants attributed
their disclosures
to some
relational goal.
(1) People said they told a relational partner about
a dream to enhance closeness, warmth, and trust.
3. To Satisfy
Expectations of What Constitutes a Good Relationship
a) The ideology of intimacy
dictates that we should be completely open and self-disclosive with
people in
intimate
relationships.
(1) If we fail to do so or if we consciously keep
secrets from intimate others, we often believe that our
relationships are flawed or not
as good as we want them to be.
(2) Self-disclosing allows us to see our
relationships in a positive light.
4. To Escalate
a Relationship
a) Self-disclosing provides a way
to get to know another and to allow that person to know you.
(1) This process escalates a relationship, often
moving it from one stage to another.
(2) Casual acquaintances may become close friends
after they spend time telling each other information about themselves.
b)
Communication can be used for dark purposes as well as positive
goals.
c)
Self-disclosures can be used to manipulate a relational partner.
IX. Reasons Not to Self Disclose: Why Am I Afraid to
Tell You Who I Am?
A. To
Avoid Hurt and Rejection
1. Perhaps the most common
reason for keeping a secret is because we believe that the person we
reveal it to may use
the
information to hurt us or may reject us when they know our inner selves.
2. If we share a really critical
piece of information, even with a sympathetic friend, we have given
this friend some potential
power over us,
and we can’t be absolutely sure that our friend would never use this
power against us or in a way that we wouldn’t like.
B.
To Avoid Conflict and Protect a Relationship
1. Some secrecy
may provide a good balance for openness in a relationship.
2. Culture
influences people’s views of self-disclosures and whether they help or
harm a relationship.
3. Some
research indicates that if you disclose to someone who responds in a
negative fashion, you are likely to feel
badly about the interaction, the other person, and
about your relationship with the other person.
a) Some people may believe
disclosing isn’t worth that risk.
C.
To Keep Your Image Intact and Maintain Individuality
1. Some people
withhold self-disclosures because they are concerned that if they begin
disclosing, they will lose
control and be unable to stop disclosing.
2. These people
fear that disclosures will bring with them unrestrained emotionality,
perhaps causing the discloser to cry uncontrollably.
3. People may
choose to keep their secrets to avoid engaging in uncontrolled
behaviors.
a) Men more than women cite this
reason as a rationale for not disclosing.
4. Some people
worry that self-disclosing will cause them to lose their sense of
mystery and individuality. Such concerns may
keep people from telling their private disclosures.
5. If someone
has established a particular role in a relationship, they may fear
changing that role and their image.
D. To Reduce
Stress
1. Some evidence indicates that
the opposite is also true. Continuing to think and talk about
stressful issues can result in more stress.
2. Stress is reduced only when the
disclosures begin to reflect a positive outlook.
X. Choices for Effective Disclosing
A. Use
I-Statements
1. Owning, or the use of
I-statements is the most basic verbal skill for self-disclosing.
2. These statements indicate that
you accept that what you are talking about is your own perception,
based on your own
experiences,
and affected by your value system.
3. When you self-disclose using
owning, you take responsibility for your feelings and experiences.
4. Your listener realizes that you
are speaking for yourself and not trying to make a generalization.
B. Be Honest
1. Honesty in self-disclosure
refers to being both clear and accurate.
2. If you are too ambiguous and
unclear, your self-disclosures may not be “heard” as real disclosures.
3. If you and your partner know
each other very well, you may be able to offer disclosures more
indirectly.
4. Generally speaking, you need to
be clear and accurate in your disclosures.
5. If you are dishonest, or
inaccurate while disclosing, you are defeating the purpose of
self-disclosure.
6. You won’t help you or your
relationship by receiving feedback for a problem that doesn’t actually
exist.
C. Be
Consistent with Your Verbal and Nonverbal Communication
1. Consistency means that your
nonverbal communication should reinforce, not contradict, your verbal
communication.
D. Focus Your
Nonverbal Communication
1. Try to focus your nonverbal
communication on the issue at hand and provide nonverbal cues that add
meaning rather
than ones that
distract from your message.
E. Be Sure Your
Content Is Relevant
1. Relevancy to the context refers
to an assessment of the appropriateness of the disclosure to the
situation itself.
F. Be Sure Your
Topic Is Relevant
1. Relevancy to the topic means
that you are able to weave your disclosure naturally into the
conversation.
G. Estimate the
Risks and Benefits
1. To be competent in
self-disclosure, you need to be able to estimate and balance its risks
and benefits.
2. There are compelling reasons to
reveal and to withhold disclosures, many of which pertain to issues of
self-identity.
3. You need to practice judging
when the benefits outweigh the risks, and vice versa.
H. Predict How
Your Partner Will Respond
1. Your ability to decode messages
of warmth, concern, and empathy on the part of the other person will
help you make
judgments
about when to tell and when to be silent.
I. Be Sure the
Amount and Type of Disclosure Are Appropriate
1. The amount and type of
disclosure should match the perceived intimacy level of the
relationship.
2. Early in your relational life,
you and your partner should share talk time.
3. You don’t want to dominate the
conversation with long self-revelations.
4. Pace your disclosures so that
they roughly match the developing intimacy of your relationship.
J. Estimate the
Effect of the Disclosure on Your Relationship
1. Think about how the disclosure
might affect the relationship. You can never know for sure what
effect a
disclosure
will have, but making well-founded assessment of effects is an
important skill to develop.
Chapter Nine
Communicating Conflict
Chapter Outline
XI. Introduction
A. It’s
difficult to imagine relating to others without ever experiencing
conflict; it’s simply a normal, unavoidable part of relational life.
B. Some
researchers estimate that couples in happy, stable relationships may
engage in conflict twice a week on average.
C. If you have
a relationship of any consequence, you’re bound to eventually engage in
conflict.
D. Conflicts
are common in relationships because we are all different, unique
individuals, and conflicts occur when differences
between people become a problem.
1. Sometimes, people recognize
differences between them that do not matter.
2. Most of the time, our
differences do cause friction.
E. Conflict is
a fact of life in relationships because when we interact, we become
aware of both our similarities and our differences.
1. Even if we get to know someone
well and feel we have a lot in common, we will still differ in some
respects, so there
is always the
potential for conflict.
2. In some relationships, the
people involved notice differences relatively quickly because the
nature of the relationship
implies
differing interests, concerns, and bases of power.
F. Some people
suggest that relationships between people of different cultures and
even relationships between men and
women maximize difference and provide opportunities
for more conflicts than do relationships between more similar people.
G.
Interpersonal conflict occurs when people recognize differences and are
challenged, threatened, inconvenienced, and/or troubled by them.
H. Experiencing
conflict in your relationship is inevitable.
1. What is not preordained is how
you and your partner deal with the normal conflicts of relational life.
XII. Defining Conflict: Knowing It When You See It
A.
Interpersonal conflict is commonly defined as “the interaction of
interdependent people who perceive incompatible goals and
interference from each other in achieving those
goals.
B. There are
several key parts to this definition.
1. Interaction
a) Interaction means that conflicts are created and
sustained through verbal and nonverbal communication.
(1) The
interaction that conflicting parties exhibit ranges greatly.
(2) Regardless
of the behaviors, remember that the definition specifies that conflict
is interaction between people.
b) Because this text is focused on explaining
interpersonal communication, we emphasize the expression of conflict
through verbal and nonverbal cues.
(1)
Communication is central to understanding conflict.
(2) This focus
doesn’t mean that we are not interested in the thoughts that people
have during conflicts.
(3) The
emphasis is on now thoughts influence talk; interaction is in the
foreground, and cognition is in the
background, or they work
together, each affecting the other.
c) In severe conflicts especially, husbands and wives
tended to construct individual accounts that didn’t agree with each
other.
d) Selective perception is a central dynamic in
conflict interactions.
2. Interdependence
a) Interdependence means that the people involved in
the conflict rely on one another, need each other, and are in a
relationship with one another.
b) Parties must feel some degree of interdependence
to experience conflict.
(1) If you have
no relationship with a person, that person isn’t important enough to
you for conflict to exist.
c) Interdependence issues bring up one of the
striking ironies in the discussion of conflict.
d) Although people’s need for others is a basic,
fundamental human desire, people rank conflicts with others one
of the most critical stressors
that they experience daily.
e) Our connection to others provides us both pleasure
and pain, both the joy of merger and the conflict of differentiation.
f) Interdependence is the main reason we assert that
conflict is a natural and inevitable part of life.
(1) The more we
rely on another, the more potential there is for observing differences
and for being affected by them.
(2) Conflict
orients us to others and, in some cases, even helps define our
relationships with others.
3. Perception.
a) Perception refers to the psychological process
involved in sensing meaning.
b) For conflict to exist, the interdependent people
have to perceive that they have incompatible goals.
4. Incompatible Goals
a) Friction results when people’s goals differ and
when people think that others stand in the way of the achievement of
personal goals.
b) These conditions are rather broad and cover a
range of conflict types.
(1) Image
Conflicts
(a) Image conflicts concern
self-presentation.
(b) This type of conflict is
especially difficult when two different images are in play.
(c) Sometimes, image conflicts may
masquerade as another type of conflict, but at the core is a
disagreement
about one’s sense of oneself.
(2) Content
Conflicts
(a) Content conflicts are often
called “substantive” because they revolve around an issue.
(b) Content conflicts can be
subdivided.
(3) Value
Conflicts
(a) Value conflicts can be
considered content conflicts in which the content is specifically a
question of right and wrong.
(4) Relational
Conflicts
(a) Relational conflicts focus on
issues concerning the relationship between two people.
XIII. Power: Who’s Got It, Who Wants It, and How to
Deal with It
A. Power can be defined as the ability to control the
behavior of another.
B. In conflict situations, power often influences the
outcome as well as the process of the interaction.
C. Some believe that all communication contains a
power dimension, even simple conversations used to exchange
demographic or superficial
information.
D. Conflict communication utilizes power in a variety
of ways.
E. Modes of Power
1. Direct
application of power in a conflict situation involves using any
resources at your disposal to compel the
other to comply, regardless of their desires.
2. Direct and
virtual use of power involves communicating the potential use of
direction application. Threats and
promises are examples – which some would say are two
sides of the same coin.
3. Indirect
application of power concerns employing power without making its
employment explicit.
a) When people send relational
messages, they define the relationship.
4. Most of the
time we think of power as the ability to force someone else to comply
with a decision, but in the case
of hidden power decisions are suppressed or avoided
in the interest of the one of the parties.
F. Sources of Power
1. Referent
power derives from the charisma and attractiveness a person possesses.
a) Everyone wants to be identified
with and spend time with that person.
b) Legitimate power usually is
based in the positions people occupy.
Not all
individuals respect legitimate power.
c) Depending on their
personalities, people differ in the ways in which they occupy positions
of power.
2. Expert or
information power refers to the knowledge a person possesses.
a) Anyone who knows something that
another needs has a source of expert power.
b) Note that the key is the need
on the part of another.
3. Persuasive
power comes from being seen as a good, logical communicator who can
sway others to a certain point of view.
4. Reward power
originates from the ability to reward others.
a) Rewards may be material or
social.
5. Coercive
power derives form the ability to punish others and usually accompanies
reward power because if you have
the ability to reward someone, you probably have the
ability to punish that person as well.
G. Empowerment
1. Empowerment
is helping to actualize people’s power.
2. Some
mediators refer to empowerment as “power balancing” or the efforts of a
third party to equalize the
power distribution so that the participants in the
conflict can both listen and be heard.
3. Whether you
call the intricate power dynamics within a relationship power balancing
or empowerment, managing
conflict necessitates that each party is listened to
and really heard.
XIV. Conflict Models: Seeing the Big Picture
A. Satir’s Four-Part Model
1. Virginia
Satir conceived of conflict as a circle divided into four sections that
represent the critical parts of any
conflict: you, me, the context, and the subject.
a) You refers to one of the
participants in the conflict.
b) Me refers to the other
participant.
c) Context comprises the emotional
background surrounding the conflict.
d) Subject means what the parties
are arguing about.
2. Satir argued
that effective conflict management requires that each part needs to be
considered completely.
a) All four parts are equally
important and that if each part is not attended to, the conflict will
fester.
b) If one segment is ignored, none
of the other can be completely resolved.
3. People
generally fear or dislike conflict interaction and, as a result, will
try to resolve conflicts as quickly as possible.
4. In our haste
to conclude conflict interactions, we usually ignore one or more of the
four integral segments,
resulting in ineffective conflict management.
When people disqualify the me in a conflict, they
are being passive or ignoring their own needs in the situation.
a) This passive response, which
cancels out one’s won position in a conflict, is called placating.
b) This course of action is a
mistake because it doesn’t pay attention to the full circle of conflict.
5. When people
disqualify the you in a conflict, they respond in an aggressive manner
without acknowledging the
needs of the other person in the conflict.
This is called pouncing.
6. The context
contains the emotional aspects of the conflict.
a) If someone disqualifies the
context, according to Satir, this computing response ignores the
emotional
aspects and
focuses on the rational aspects.
b) Although Satir didn’t advocate
irrational responses, she observed that conflicts touch emotion deeply
and
that they
cannot be resolved unless these emotions are addressed.
7.
Disqualifying the subject of the conflict is called a distracting
response because it involves keeping the parties distracted
from the subject of a conflict.
8. When any
portion of the conflict is ignored or disqualified the conflict
interaction is rushed or skipped altogether.
a) This accomplishes the immediate
goal of minimizing the time that two people spend in conflict.
b) However, in the long run, none
of these responses is capable of doing justice to the conflict because
all four
of the
segments of the conflict circle are equally important, and if one is
ignored, the conflict is not managed properly.
B. Filley’s
Process Model
1. Filley (1975) models conflict
as a process that occurs in the following stages: prior conditions,
initial awareness,
active
conflict, resolution, and aftermath.
a) Prior conditions, which are similar to the context
in Satir’s model, set the stage for conflict and contain the
history between the two parties,
the areas of disagreement they have discussed in the past, and so forth.
b) The second stage consists of an initial awareness
of a problem.
c) The next stage is the active conflict stage.
(1) Our
original definition of conflict comes into play in this stage, when the
two engage in interaction
around their differences.
d) The active conflict stage may last for a long
time, and the next stage – resolution may not be reached. In the
resolution stage, the parties
decide on a way to manage the conflict.
(1) Some
conflicts recur because the parties don’t go through this stage, and
some relationships end because
the parties are unable to resolve their
conflicts.
(2) The ideal
is that the parties reach a mutually agreed upon solution.
e) Filley’s model shows that conflicts are never
completely over. The results of the resolution stage form the
conflict
aftermath. The aftermath
includes the residue of having engaged in the conflict and the feelings
that both of the
participants have about their
interaction.
(1) The
aftermath feeds into the prior conditions for the next conflict between
the two parties.
f) Filley’s model shows how conflicts affect
relationships and even define relational life.
XV. Myths about Conflict: What Not to Believe
A. Conflict Is Always Bad
1. One myth
states that conflict is completely negative and implies that relational
life would be perfection if only the
partners could eliminate all conflicts.
2. When people
think of comparisons for interpersonal conflict, their choices are
overwhelmingly negative.
3.
Relationships cannot exist without conflict
4. There are
also many positives to engaging in conflict with a relational partner.
5. Managing
conflict with sensitivity leads to evaluations of communication
competence.
a) Dealing productively with
conflict in marriage promotes physical and mental health.
b) Other researchers have also
claimed benefits for engaging in conflict.
6. Although all
conflict doesn’t automatically produce positive outcomes for
relationships, it is a myth that conflict is all bad.
B. Conflict Is Just Miscommunication
1. This myth
suggests that all conflict results from people not clearly
communicating their goals and wishes ton one another.
2. Sometimes
people communicate clearly to each other and, in fact, they disagree.
C. All Conflicts Can Be Resolved through Good
Communication
1. This myth
tells us that if we master a certain set of skills, we can resolve all
conflicts.
2. We recognize
that some conflicts persist, and partners may have to agree to disagree.
D. It Is Always Best to Talk through All Conflicts
1. This myth
represents the commonly held belief that increasing communication
solves conflicts.
2. Relational
partners often believe that they simply need to communicate more to
reach a mutually satisfying solution
to their conflicts.
3. Many
scholars believe that this myth obscures the benefits that sometimes
occur when people avoid topics rather
than talk about them in great detail.
4. Some
arguments are not that important and if you ignore them, they really
will go away. On the other hand, talking about
them just exaggerates and prolongs the problem.
XVI. Factors Influencing Interpersonal Conflict
A. Gender and Conflict
1. When we talk
about gender, we are referring to gender socialization. Men and
women are not inherently
different in their orientations to conflict or in
their conflict behaviors; rather, they have been taught a set of
responsibilities
and norms that affect their conflict interactions.
a) Not all men nor all women are
socialized to the same degree.
b) We see great variety in how
women and men enact gendered social norms.
2. Because
women are taught to be keepers of relational life and men are
socialized to pay attention to public life
women often want to talk about relationship issues,
and men do not.
a) This imbalance may cause
conflict within relationships.
3. Some
research suggests that women are more collaborative and men are more
competitive in conflict interactions.
However, recent studies call this generalization
into question.
4. Shuter and
Turner (1997) concluded in their research that people are affected by
stereotypes when asked to talk about
a group but that they see themselves as not
necessarily representative of the group to which they belong.
5. Some
evidence does point to more enduring differences between women and men
in conflict.
a) Men and women react differently
to the stress of relational conflict.
(1) Whereas women seemed to be able to tolerate high
levels of the physiological arousal found in conflict
with a partner, men were more
bothered by this arousal and sought to avoid it.
b) Men also desired to avoid
marital conflict more than women.
B. Culture and Conflict
1. Differing
cultural practices and norms may put us in conflict with one another.
2. The ways in
which respect and approval area expressed often differ from culture to
culture.
3. Even the
meaning of the word conflict may differ across cultures.
4. Culture
affects our conduct of interpersonal conflict in myriad
ways.
a) A person whose primary
orientation is toward orientation might conflict with a person whose
primary
orientation is
toward collectivism because of their different values.
XVII. Communication Patterns in Conflict
A. Symmetrical Escalation
1. Symmetrical
escalation exists when each partner chooses to increase the intensity
of the conflict.
2. Each partner
matches the other’s escalating fight behaviors. Sometimes this
pattern is called “fight-fight.”
3. These
patterns cannot go on indefinitely, or it would end in the destruction
of the two parties.
4. Because the
amount of escalation that can exist is limited, this pattern is a
futile one for communicators.
B. Symmetrical Withdrawal
1. Symmetrical
withdrawal means that when conflict occurs, neither partner is willing
to confront the other.
2. One person’s
move away is reciprocated by the other’s move away.
3. This
pattern, like symmetrical escalation, spells the end of the
relationship if it’s carried to its logical conclusion.
4. If both
parties move away from each other when conflict happens, they will soon
be so far apart that they will have difficulty reuniting.
C. Pursuit-Withdrawal/Withdrawal-Pursuit
1. These two
patterns are asymmetrical. This means that the behavior of one
partner is complemented by the other’s
behavior rather than one partner mirroring the
behavior of another.
2. In
pursuit-withdrawal, when one partner presses for a discussion about a
conflictual topic, the other partner withdraws.
3. In
withdrawal-pursuit, it is just the opposite. In this pattern, a
partner’s withdrawal prompts the other person’s pursuit.
4. These
patterns are extremely unsatisfying to the participants; they have the
quality of a dog chasing its tail.
5. Gregory
Bateson (1972) referred to these types of conflicts as schismogenesis:
both partners do what they wish the
other would do for them, and both are rebuffed.
6. Even though
these patterns are so unsatisfying and are related to discord within
relationships, they are extremely
common in conflict behavior.
7. Research
suggests that personality characteristics such as extroversion and
introversion might be related to the
use of this pattern; in general, the extroverts
pursue, and the introverts withdraw.
D. Symmetrical Negotiation
1. Symmetrical
negotiation is the one positive pattern discussed.
2. In this
pattern, each partner mirrors the other’s negotiating behaviors.
a) They listen to each other and
reflect back what they have heard.
b) They offer suggestions for
dealing with the conflict and we are willing to talk as much or as
little as necessary
to come to a mutually satisfying resolution of the
conflict.
XVIII. Choices for Conflict Management: Working It Out
A. Lighten Up and Reframe
1. Lightening up refers to your ability to stay
cool-headed when others get “hot.”
2. The techniques which help you to do this include
staying in the present and acknowledging that you have
heard what your relational
partner just said.
3. You can also reframe by changing something that
has a negative connotation to something with a more positive
connotation.
4. Lightening up might involve your asking permission
to state your views.
5. Keep your nonverbal communication genuine and
avoid sarcasm.
B. Presume Good Will and Express
Good Will
1. Go into each conflict interaction believing that
you and your partner both want to come to a constructive resolution.
2. Build rapport by focusing on the areas where you
do agree.
3. Reach out to your partner and expect that your
partner will do the same for you.
4. While you are engaging in conflict, tell your
partner the things about him or her that you respect. Keep it
real,
but mix in praise with your
complaints.
C. Ask Questions
1. Focus on the other.
2. After you both have had a chance to speak, ask
your partner if he or she has anything further to add.
3. Reflect back what you have heard stated and ask if
you got it correctly.
D. Listen
1. A conflict is difficult to manage unless we spend
time listening to the other.
2. Remember to practice all of the behaviors
associated with effective listening.
3. Listening to another person is more than just
hearing the words spoken; it’s a way to show the other that the
conflict
is important to resolve and that
the relationship is valuable in your life.
E. Practice Cultural Sensitivity
1. Be mindful and tune into your own culture’s norms
and assumptions first before evaluating others.
2. Slow down your judgments of others; suspend your
evaluations until you have had a chance to engage in an internal
dialogue.
Chapter Ten
Communicating in Close Relationships
Chapter Outline
XIX. Introduction
A. Relationships give importance and meaning to
people’s lives.
B. We are all social beings, and we need
relationships to satisfy our desires for connection and community.
1. Maslow’s
(1968) Hierarchy of Needs is an illustration of how people’s needs are
ranked in order of importance.
2. Maslow
believed that people are basically good and unselfish but need to
satisfy certain lower-level needs before
they can demonstrate their goodness.
3. Maslow
places our social needs on the third level, just after physical and
safety needs.
C. Some people assert that friendships and close
relationships can improve some of society’s social problems.
1. Social
contacts increase trust and understanding, improving race relations.
D. Another benefit of close relationships is that
they can improve health. A growing body of research is showing
this link.
E. However, the presence of other people in our lives
is not solely responsible for our health and happiness; the quality of
our relationships plays a crucial
role.
F. Clearly, communication is central to relationships.
G. Relationships are constructed through
communication, and our judgments about our interactions shape both the
consequences of our relationships
and our overall satisfaction with them.
H. Similarly, relationships are sustained through
communication.
I. The type of relationship people have is reflected
in and created by talk.
J. Research supports the notion that intimate
partners talk to each other with less consideration than they accord
less intimate friends and acquaintances.
XX. Understanding Close Relationships: What Do We
Mean, Anyway?
A. Some people suggest that close relationships
consist of specific characteristics.
1. The content
of the interactions: What people talk about and do together.
2. The
diversity of interactions: The number of different experiences people
have together.
3. The
qualities of the interactions: Do the partners shout, talk lovingly,
and so forth?
4. The relative
frequency of the interactions: Are the interactions repetitive or more
variable?
5. The nature
of the interactions: Are the interactions complementary or reciprocal
or some combination?
6. The quality
of power in the interactions: Do the partners agree on the power
distribution?
7. The intimacy
of the interaction: How much self-disclosure do the partners engage
in? Self-disclosing makes relationship
partners feel closer to each other.
8. The
partners’ perceptions of the interactions: Are the partners’
perceptions in agreement? How do they see each other
and the outside world?
9. The
commitment reflected in the interactions: Do the partners each see the
other as committed to the relationship?
10. The
satisfaction expressed in the interactions: How closely do their
interactions fit their ideal?
11. The above
characteristics allow us to see a relationship as a bond between two
people that is reflected in their
interaction patterns and their
perceptions of these patterns.
B. Are Relationships Performances?
1. Baxter and
Braithwaite (2002) assert that marriages are cultural performances.
2. What they
mean by this is that relationships consist of the ongoing process
between the partners.
a) These exchanges include myriad
communication practices as well as public discourse.
3. Thus,
relationships are both defined and enacted in the culture that
surrounds them.
C. Are Relationships In Our Heads?
1. Some
research examines the notion of relationship scripts, which are
cognitive structures that contain a pattern for the
key events that we expect in a relationship.
a) People seem to have both narrow
scripts and broad scripts.
2. William
Wilmot (1995) also takes this approach, arguing that close
relationships exist when both participants have a
mental construct of the relationship.
a) These mental images occur on at
least two levels.
(1) At the basic level, people are simply aware of
each other and the fact that they are in a relationship with one
another.
(2) Several things happen to establish the mental
construct of the relationship in the second level.
(a) The
communication between the partners becomes patterned, and they can
imagine with some predictive
accuracy what the other will say or do in a variety
of situations.
(b) The
partners perceive a past, present, and future together. They are
able to bring the past forward into
the present and future by holding a mental image of
what the partner has done in the past and generalizing it
to the present or the future.
(c) People
label their relationship.
D. Are Relationships in Our Language?
1. Language
influences our sense of close relationships.
2. Giving a
relationship a label helps us to feel “in relationship” to another.
a) Some relationships don’t have
convenient labels.
b) Language has not always kept
pace with our relationships.
3. Another way
that relationships exist in language relates to figurative language.
4. Figurative
language – specifically metaphors and similes – help us understand
relationships by comparing them to other phenomena.
a) In such linguistic comparisons,
the qualities of the phenomenon to which a relationship is linked shed
light on the
qualities of
the relationship itself.
5. Metaphors
and figurative language offer a vocabulary for understanding our
relationships but they also shape our understanding.
a) They throw some elements of the
relationship into sharper relief than others and downplay other
elements.
6. Researchers
argue that metaphors do affect thinking and, further, that they also
influence our communication in relationships.
7. Researchers
have criticized corporate metaphors because of the way they affect our
thinking about the family.
E. Are Relationships Face to Face?
1. Most of the
research on close relationships focuses on partners who see each other
face to face.
2. Many people
maintain long-distance relationships, but even in such relationships,
the expectation is that at some point,
the partners will interact in person.
3. Two types of
relationships contradict the assumption that to qualify as a close
relationship, the partners have to
interact face to face.
a) Online Relationships
(1) With the increasing use of the Internet, many
relationships begin online and evolve into face-to-face relationships,
whereas others
remain online without becoming face to face.
(2) Online relationships can provide a sense of
closeness even if the relationship partners never actually meet in
person.
(3) Some would argue that not seeing the other face
to face can even intensify the relationship because words
have strong powers to connect
others.
(a)
Computer-mediated communication may be more direct, which results in
greater conversational effectiveness
by the partners.
(4) Online relationships also offer a greater
opportunity for deception and fantasy, which may make them illusory
and even dangerous.
b) Parasocial
Relationships
(1) A parasocial relationship
consists of a one-way relational tie with a media personality or
character
that reminds
of face-to-face interaction.
(a) Frequent viewers of soap operas often establish
parasocial relationships with the characters.
(b) You can also have parasocial relationships with
public personalities whom you frequently watch in
the media, such as a local
newscaster or a movie star.
(2) Everyone in a close
relationship defines it somewhat differently.
(3) Scholars who study the subject
also take different perspectives.
(a) Some view close relationships as social
institutions, embedded in cultural norms, whereas others
see them as psychological
structures or scripts that provide guidelines for the individuals
involved.
(b) Overarching both these viewpoints is the notion
that language and communication behaviors
define and maintain close
relationships.
(c) Technology affects our definition of close
relationships, even thought eh research on relationship
development in online and
parasocial relationships continues to evolve.
XXI. Explaining Communication in Close Relationships:
What’s It All About?
A. Systems Theory: We’re All Connected
1. When trying
to understand communication in close relationships, some people find it
helpful to compare relationships to
something else.
2. In systems
theory relationships are compared to living systems, which have six
important properties. Understanding how
each of these properties works allows researchers to
apply that knowledge to how communication in relationships works.
a) Wholeness means that you can’t
understand a system by simply picking it apart and understanding each
of its parts
in isolation
from one another.
(1) The relationship between people is like a third
entity, which extends beyond each of the people individually.
b) Interdependence builds on the
notion of wholeness by asserting that members of systems depend on each
other
and are
affected by one another.
c) Hierarchy states that these
shifts and accommodations don’t exist in a vacuum.
(1) Lower-level systems are called subsystems.
(2) Higher-levels are call suprasystems.
d) Boundaries or openness refers
to the fact that hierarchy is formed by creating boundaries around each
separate system.
(1) Human systems are inherently open, and
information passes through these boundaries.
(2) Boundaries exist to keep information within the
subsystem.
(3) In human systems, the boundaries can never be
completely closed, so the system has the property of openness.
e) Calibration
centers on how systems set their parameters, check on themselves, and
self-correct.
(1) When systems experience an
adjustment or change, it’s the result of positive feedback.
(2) When systems stay the same,
the feedback is judged as negative feedback.
f) Equifinality
means the ability to achieve the same goals (or ends) by a variety of
means.
3. Systems
theory doesn’t explain all communication with our relational partners;
it isn’t specific enough to give us answers to many questions.
4. Systems
theory does give us a good overall impression of how relationships work
and how communication behaviors function within relationships.
B. Dialectics Theory: It’s a Push-Pull Thing
1. This
approach focuses on the tensions that relational partners feel as a
result of desiring both opposing poles of a contradiction.
2. Dialectic
thinking rejects either/or approaches in favor of both/and.
3. Common
Relational Dialectics
a) The contradiction between
autonomy and connection centers on our desire to be independent or
autonomous
while
simultaneously wanting to feel a connection with our partner.
b) The second dialectic, between
openness and protection, revolves around our desire for
self-disclosures,
which makes us
transparent to another, and our desire for withholding disclosures,
which keeps us safe from another’s disapproval.
c) The tensions between novelty
and predictability manifests in our simultaneous desires for excitement
and stability.
4. These tree
basic contradictions or dialectics are all seen as dynamic. This
means that the interplay between the two
opposites pole permeates the life of a relationship
and is never fully resolved.
5. Additional
Dialectics Found in Friendships
a) The tension between judgment
and acceptance involves criticizing a friend as opposed to accepting a
friend for who he or she is.
(1) Williams Rawlins (1992) found that people were
often torn between offering (unwanted) advice and accepting a
friend’s behavior.
b) Affection and instrumentality
poses a tension between framing your friendship with someone as an end
in itself
(affection) or
seeing it as a means to another end (instrumentality).
(1) This dialectic suggests that in close
friendships, people want to both just enjoy their friends and get some
help from them.
c) These two tensions were
considered internal dialectics because they focus on how the partners
communicate with one another.
d) The next two dialectics,
labeled external dialectics have to do with how friends negotiate the
more public aspects of their friendship.
e) The dialectic between public
and private specifically centers on how much of the friendship is
demonstrated in public and
what parts are
kept private.
(1) Some emblems of friendship are fine for public
consumption while other things might be kept between them.
f) The dialectic between the ideal
and real reveals the tension between an idealized vision of friendship
and the real friends that one has.
(1) We get these mental images in large part from
popular culture.
6. Strategies
for Managing Relational Dialectics
a) Despite the constant presence
of these contradictions, people in relationships devise strategies for
dealing with the tensions that
they cause.
b) There are several methods that
people se in managing relational dialectics.
(1) Some people may respond to dialectic tension
through cyclic alternation, which means choosing different poles of the
contradiction at different times
in the life of the relationship.
(2) A second approach is segmentation, or
highlighting each of the polar opposites in different settings.
(3) A third strategy, selection, calls for making a
choice between the oppositions.
(a) In this
approach, the true dialectic nature of the tensions is ignored, and the
partners feature just one of their interactions.
(4) The final strategy is integration because it
involves some type of synthesis between the opposites.
(a) Integration
takes three forms.
7. The
dialectics approach is rather general.
8. Although it
provides a framework for understanding how people struggle with
oppositions in relationships and helps us
understand some communication behavior as strategies
for dealing with these tensions, it doesn’t clearly predict which
strategies people will use, nor does it tell us why
some relationships are more stressed than others by these tensions.
9. Dialectics
theory is a good starting place for revealing some of the undercurrents
that guide communication in close relationships.
C. Social Exchange Theories: If You Rub My Back, I’ll
Rub Yours
1. Rather than
providing a large framework for understanding communication in close
relationships, social exchange theories
are a bit more specific and point us more directly
toward testable predictions about the topic.
2. Social
exchange isn’t just a single theory; instead, several theories all
advance the same general assumptions of social exchange.
3. Assumptions
of Social Exchange
a) The heart of social exchange
thinking lies in the concepts of costs and rewards.
(1) Costs constitute those things in relational life
that people judge as negative.
(2) Rewards are those parts of being in a
relationship that are pleasurable to people.
b) Social
exchange theories assume that all people do mental calculations about
the cons and the rewards
they experience in relationships.
4. Theory of
Interdependence
a) Thibaut and Kelley’s (1959)
theory of interdependence builds on these assumptions and adds an
ingredient from
systems theory
– that is, the idea that relationships are interdependent.
(1) Whatever one person does in a relationship
affects the other and their relationship as a whole.
(2) Thibaut and Kelley added a calculation to their
theory to explain why people stay or leave relationships.
The general principle of social
exchange says that people stay in relationships where rewards outweigh
costs.
(a) Some
researchers have used this theory as an explanation for why women stay
in abusive relationships.
D. Stage Models: One Step at a Time
1. Stage models
are concerned with how relationships develop and how communication
changes as we deepen or weaken our
relational ties with another.
2. Although
Mark Knapp’s (1978) stage model was built from a social exchange
perspective, his work differs from social
exchange theories in that it further clarifies how
the movement in relationships takes place and how communication
characterizes relational growth and decay.
3. Knapp’s
model provides five stages of coming together and five stages of coming
apart.
a) The model is useful for all
kinds of relationships because it provides for relationships that end
after only a couple of
stages as well
as relationships that do not move beyond an early stage.
b) The model explains the movement
of friendships as well as love relationships.
4. Some people
have criticized all stage models for presenting a linear picture of
relationship development.
5. This is a
review of each of the stages in Knapp’s model.
a) Initiating: Getting Started
(1) The first stage of the coming together part of
the model is where a relationship begins.
(2) In the initiating stage, two people notice one
another and indicate to each other that they are interested in making
contact.
(3) Initiation depends on attraction, which can be
seen as either short-term or long-term.
(a) Short-term
attraction, a judgment of relationship potential, propels us into the
initiation stage.
(b) Long-term
attraction, which makes you want to continue a relationship and move
through the subsequent
stages, sustains and maintains relationships.
(4) Sometimes the things that attract you to someone
in the short term may be the things that turn you off in the long term.
(5) Both types of attraction are based on several
elements.
(6) Especially initially, people are attracted to
others who fit their cultural ideal of attractiveness, but they will
probably
initiate relationships with
others who tend to match their own level of attractiveness.
(7) It’s more likely that we’ll be attracted to those
who area in physical proximity to us than to those who are
some distance, because it’s more
difficult to enter the initiating stage with someone who is far away.
(8) We are also motivated to initiate conversations
with those who share some of our own attributes, values, and opinions.
(a) Yet, too
much similarity can be boring, so we seek some complementarity in our
relationships as well.
(9) We are attracted to others who seem attracted to
us or who reciprocate our interest.
10) Some of our relationships stay in the initiating
stage.
(a) You could
have a long-term relationship that never moves out of initiating.
b)
Experimenting: Finding Out More
(1) The second stage,
experimenting, is where people become acquainted by gathering
information about one another.
(2) They engage in small talk –
interactions that are relaxed, peasant, uncritical, and casual.
(3) Many of our relationships stay
in the experimenting stage.
(4) Even people in close
relationships spend time in this stage, perhaps in an effort to
understand their partner more,
to pass the time, or to avoid uncomfortable feelings
stirred up by a more intense conversation.
c)
Intensifying: I Think I Like You
(1) This stage begins to move the
relationship to a closeness not seen in the previous stages.
(2) Intensifying refers to the
intensification of intimacy in the relationship.
(3) During this stage, partners
self-disclose, forms of address become more informal, and people may
use
nicknames or
some form of endearment to address one another.
(4) Relational partners begin to
speak of a “we” or “us.”
d) Integrating:
Becoming a Couple
(1) In this fourth stage, the
partners seem to coalesce.
(2) Integrating has also been
called “coupling” because it represents the two people forming a clear
identity as a couple.
(3) This coupling is often
acknowledged by the pair’s social circles, the pair cultivates friends
together, and they
are treated as a unit by their friends.
(4) They are invited to places
together, and information shared with one is expected to be shared with
the other.
e) Bonding:
Let’s Tell the World
(1) The final stage in the coming
together part of the model is bonding, which refers to a public
commitment
of the relationship.
(2) Bonding is easier in some
types of relationships than in others.
f)
Differentiating: We’re Not the Same
(1) The first stage in the coming
apart section of the model, differentiating refers to how couples begin
to notice
ways in which
they differ.
(2) Individuality is
highlighted.
(3) People switch from “we” to “I”
in this stage and focus more on themselves as individuals than on the
relationship.
g)
Circumscribing: I Don’t Want to Talk about It
(1) The next stage,
circumscribing, refers to restraining communication behaviors so fewer
topics are raised,
more issues
are out of bounds, and the couple actually interacts less.
(2) This stage is characterized by
silences and comments that limit communication.
h) Stagnating:
We’re in a Rut
(1) The third stage of coming
apart, stagnating, consists of extending circumscribing so far that the
coupe
no longer
talks much.
i) Avoiding:
Keep Away
(1) If a relationship stagnates
for too long, the partners may decide that the relationship is
unpleasant.
(2) As a result, they move to
avoiding, which attempts to take the participants out of the same
physical environment.
(3) Partners make excuses for why
they can’t see one another.
(4) Sometimes it isn’t possible to
physically avoid a partner.
j) Terminating:
It’s All Over Now
(1) This stage comes after the
relational partners have decided, either jointly or individually, to
part permanently.
(2) Terminating refers to the
process of ending a relationship.
(3) Some relationships enter
terminating almost immediately.
(4) Other relationships go through
all or most of the stages before terminating.
(5) Some relationships endure in
one stage or another and never go through terminating.
(6) Other relationships go through
terminating and then begin again.
XXII. Factors Affecting Communication in Relationships
A. Gender
B. Culture
XXIII. Communicating in Close Relationships: The Dark
Side
A. Some close relationships are toxic and unhealthy.
B. Some psychiatrists advocate creating a new
category of mental illness called relational disorders.
1. This
category suggests that individuals may be perfectly healthy except when
it comes to specific relationships.
2. Currently,
this movement is focusing only on family relationships.
C. One type of toxic close relationship is that of
abuse.
1. Violence and
abuse are relatively common in the United States.
2. Michael
Johnson (1995) talked about common couple violence, which includes
minor acts of violence
(like pushing and shoving) used when conflicts get
out of hand.
3. Some
researchers believe that as many as 50% of couples in the United States
experience common couple violence.
D. Another group of psychologists is examining the
concept of bad friendships.
1. Friendships
can be very painful.
2. Jealousy,
envy, anger, and a whole host of difficult emotions can be present in
friendships.
3. It may be
better to end these friendships before they damage your health.
E. In addition to relationships that area completely
toxic, all relationships can have negative phases or be characterized
for a time
by negative communication
patterns.
F. Also, sometimes positive outcomes in relationships
are accomplished by communicating in “bad’ ways.
G. The same claim has been made about swearing.
1. Swearing can
be an indicator of both bonding and acceptance.
2. Swearing is
considered bad behavior because of the negative charge that swear words
have in our society.
3. But in this
bonding function, swearing is a positive behavior for close
relationships.
XXIV. Communicating in Close Relationships: The
Bright Side
A. Positivity in communicating to
relational partners is extremely important.
B. John Gottman (2004) observed
that in happily married couples, thee is a 5 to 1 ratio between
positive and negative comments, even in conflicts.
C. When thinking about close
relationships, we usually imagine the positive results of our
communication: continued or increased
closeness,
support, romance, and connection.
D. We also think of communication
as both an indicator of our closeness with another and a means for
developing this sense of closeness.
E. Here are two behaviors that are
usually associated with the bright side of close relationships.
1. Affectionate Communication
a) Most people
agree that affectionate communication is extremely important in close
relationships.
b) Affection
can be expressed in a variety of ways – either directly or indirectly.
(1) One way people express
affection indirectly is by developing a private language that
identifies them as part of a
unique, closed
circle.
2. Private Languages
a) As a result
of sharing a history together, people in close relationships often
develop inside jokes or private idioms.
b) They may
develop new words or names to call each other, or they may come up with
new meanings for commonly
used words or phrases.
c) Note that
personal idioms arise out of a desire to say things in a different way
to mark a relationship as unique.
d) Private
languages are perhaps the most important distinction between the
communication of those in close relationships
and those who have more casual acquaintances.
XXV. Choices in Communicating in Close Relationships
A. Communication Skills for Beginning Relationships
1. Beginning a
relationship requires a fair amount of skill, although you may not
think about developing these skills.
2. There are
numerous skills needed to initiate relationships.
a) Networking
(1) Networking means finding out information about
the person from a third party.
(2) If you ease into a relationship with the help of
a third person, you are behaving efficiently and in a socially
acceptable fashion.
b) Offering
(1) Offering means putting yourself in a good
position for another to approach you.
c) Approaching
(1) Approaching means actually going up to a person
or smiling in that person’s direction to give a signal tat you
would like to initiate contact.
(2) Approaching allows the relationship to actually
begin, with both parties involved in some interaction.
d) Sustaining
(1) Sustaining means behaving in a way that keeps the
initial conversation going.
e) Affinity Seeking
(1) Affinity seeking means emphasizing the
commonalities you think you share with the other person.
(2) Sometimes affinity seeking goes hand in hand with
asking appropriate questions.
(3) People use a variety of affinity-seeking
strategies to get others to like them.
B. Communication Skills for Maintaining Relationships
1. Preventative
maintenance involves paying attention to your relationships when they
are not experiencing troubles.
a) Both partners need to attend to
this.
2. There are
several skills that are useful to maintenance.
a) Openness
(1) Openness is one half of a dialectic tension.
(2) We all want to be transparent and yet protected
in interpersonal relationships.
(a) We aren’t recommending ignoring protection, yet
it is helpful in close relationships to share feelings with a
partner
appropriately.
(3) We maintain relationships by telling our partners
how we feel about things that don’t relate to them and by sharing how
we are feeling in the
relationship.
(4) When we share our feelings, our emotional
reactions to our partner and our relationship we can strengthen our
relational ties.
b) Supportiveness
(1) A supportive communication climate, which
encourages relational growth and maintenance, is
conducive to maintaining
relationships.
(2) However, supportive climates do not happen by
chance; skillful communication is necessary to build this type of
climate.
c)
Using Humor
(1) Humor in
close relationships serves a maintenance function.
(2) Joking and
kidding are both indicators of enjoyment.
(3) Research
supports the notion that humor promotes bonding and cohesion as well as
stress management.
(4) Humor is a
way of bringing people together.
(5) Bonding
over something that’s seen as amusing by both partners helps maintain
relationships.
C. Communicating Skills for Repairing Relationships
1. When
relationships run into trouble, you and your partner are faced with the
difficult task of corrective maintenance or repair.
2. Relational
repair is the job of both partners.
3. Repair
skills are more difficult to implement than maintenance skills because
repair involves correcting a complication, whereas
maintenance is simply aimed at keeping things moving.
4. There are a
few strategies to assist in relational repair.
a) Metacommunication
(1) Metacommunication means communicating about
communication.
(2) If communication is the problem in the
relationship, the partners need to address how to improve their
communication.
b) Apology
(1) An apology is a simple statement like “I am
really sorry.”
(2) Sometimes apologies are accompanied by accounts,
or explanations for the transgression.
Chapter Eleven
Technology and Interpersonal
Communication
Chapter Outline
XXVI. Introduction
A. We have been using technology
to communication for more than 100 years.
B. We now have an assortment of
technologies available for making electronic connections.
1. We employ
these communication technologies in our personal and professional lives.
C. The members of our society have
different technological fiends of experience.
D. It appears that we can’t
acquire technology fast enough.
E. Convergence is the integration
of various technologies
1. We are living in a time where many technologies
are morphing and interacting with other technologies.
2. As a society, we have grown accustomed to
convergence.
3. We tend to expect technologies to evolve so that
they are more efficient and less cumbersome.
F. Perhaps the convergence of
technology has made us a population that brings people closer together.
G. Computer-mediated communication
(CMC) refers to the use of various technologies to facilitate
communication with others.
H. Technological determinism
suggests that technology is irreversible, inevitable, and inescapable.
XXVII. Characteristics of Communication Technology
A. Technology affects our
conversations and relationships with others.
B. Consider three characteristics
of technology:
1. Technology is pervasive.
a) When we
state that technology is pervasive, we are saying that it is everywhere.
b) We cannot
escape nor ignore technology in our lives.
c) Because
technology is everywhere, we rely on it as a matter of course.
2. Technology is paradoxical.
a) Technology
is paradoxical, meaning that it is conflicting, inconsistent, and
ironic.
b) Consider
what communication theorist Marshall McLuhan (1964) called the global
village.
(1) McLuhan coined this term to
describe how communication technology ties the world into one
political, e
conomical,
social, and cultural system.
(2) Technology has the ability to
bring people together.
c) The paradox
is evident; the term global suggests an expansive view of the world,
whereas the term village suggests a small community.
3. Technology is powerful.
a) When we say
that technology is powerful, we mean that it influences people, events,
and entire cultures.
b) Technology
can affect how people think, what they think about, when they develop
relationships, and how they process
their emotions with others.
XXVIII. The Accessibility of Technology
A. Accessibility refers to the
availability of technology to everyone.
B. Accessibility helps eliminate
the technological gap that exists between people and between cultural
communities.
1. Some have called this gap the “digital divide.”
2. Many commonly refer to this as the battle between
the information “haves and have-nots.”
3. On a global scale, researchers estimate that about
90% of Internet use occurs in richer and industrialized countries.
C. Additional racial and
geographic differences concerning Internet use further illustrate the
digital divide.
D. The digital divide is evident
with nearly all communication technology.
1. Even telephones vary in their accessibility.
2. Across the world, vast differences in telephone
accessibility exist.
E. What does accessibility to
communication technology have to do with interpersonal communication?
1. If everyone does not have access to all
technology, language barriers may exist.
a) Consistent
communication without equal access to technology is difficult.
b) What many
may take for granted may not be universally accepted nor understood
because of accessibility issues.
2. Accessibility to communication technology has many
positive benefits.
a) It increase
safety, creates a sense of play and improves psychological well-being
between and among people.
XXIX. The Internet: Connecting Now
A. When we send electronic
communication, our information is transported by the Internet, which is
an extended network of small
computer
networks interconnected with each other.
B. The Internet has been called a
“network of networks” because of its embedded connections and because
it “has changed the
way people
work, learn, play, and communicate” (Barnes, 2003, p. 3).
C. Background on the Internet
1. The Internet was called the “information
superhighway” when it first appeared in the late 1970s, but this
metaphor has lost its luster.
2. So many have raveled this electronic highway that
it is in need of significant attention and repair.
3. Although the Internet didn’t live up to the
super-high expectations, it continues to be an important presence in
communication technology.
4. The number of people connected to the Internet has
grown exponentially.
a) Worldwide,
approximately 934 million people use the Internet, including about 200
million in Canada and the United States.
b) Just under
half of adults in the United States accessed the Internet in 2000; in
2003, that number has grown to 59%.
c) In the
United States, 22% of those over the age 65 go online compared to 75%
in the 30- to -49 age bracket.
d) The regions
of the country with the highest rates of Internet use are along the
Pacific seaboard and the Atlantic seaboard.
D. The Dark Side of the Internet:
Proceed with Caution
1. Communication technologies such as the Internet
should be approached cautiously.
2. Like nearly any technology, there is always the
opportunity for something to go wrong.
3. It is impossible to control for web content,
because anyone can put up a website.
4. A lot of stranger danger lurks on the Internet.
5. Here are three cautionary issues to consider when
using the Internet.
a) Little
Accountability
(1) It’s easy to develop a web
page. All you have to do is figure out a possible web address,
find out if the
name has been
taken, and follow through accordingly.
(2) There must be
accountability. Accountability is being responsible.
(3) Without Internet
accountability, we have the potential to be misguided, misinformed, and
manipulated.
(4) When using the Internet, you
are cautioned to embrace accountability when at all possible.
b) Fostering
Hate
(1) Certainly, websites have the
potential to positively affect your conversations and relationships
with others.
(2) The dark side of communication
technologies suggests that hate on the Internet is alive and
proliferating.
(3) Hate speech can be defined as
extremely offensive language that is directed toward a particular group
of people.
(4) Although hate speech is
protected by First Amendment rights, such extremist communication has
the
potential to negatively affect another’s
communication.
(5) Websites that use hate speech
have proliferated over the years.
(6) Because offensive points of
view are protected by First Amendment free-speech rights, hate speech
on the
Internet is
probably here to stay.
c) Flaming
(1) At times, relationships with others online can
get tense.
(2) Flaming occurs when people exchange malicious,
hostile, or insulting comments.
(3) This lack of civility is like electronic road
rage – it has the capacity to escalate.
E. The Bright Side of the
Internet: New Opportunities
1. Generally speaking, we can communicate with people
we might not have been able to communicate with otherwise.
2. Such communication is quick and seamless, and even
those with little technological know-how can quickly learn to
communicate via the
web.
XXX. Communication Technology and Interpersonal
Communication
A. Communication between and among
individuals is forever changed because of technology.
B. People are now able to
initiate, maintain, and terminate conversations and relationships
through technological means.
C. The effects of technology on
our interpersonal communication are unprecedented, unstoppable, and
unpredictable.
XXXII. Choices for Improving Online Communication
Skills
A. Sender Skills for Electronic
Messages
1. Be Succinct When Necessary
a) Learn to
abbreviate your thoughts.
b) The longer
the message, the more the receiver will be inclined to emphasize parts
of your message that may not deserve such attention.
c) Stay on
point.
2. Write Literally
a) Regardless
of whether communication is electronic or face-to-face, we must be
precise in our wording to others.
b) Using
concrete and precise language avoids ambiguous and convoluted thoughts.
c) Senders of
email messages need to be especially careful in communicating feelings;
an emoticon or articon isn’t always sufficient.
3. Stay polite
a) Although
it’s easy for us to suggest politeness, it’s frequently difficult to
practice.
b) When someone
communicating online is passionate about a topic, he or she may blunder
and be offensive.
c) Keep in mind
the permanency of the written word and the fact that communication is
irreversible; after we write
something mean or offensive, we can’t take it back.
d) Courtesy and
deference when communicating online are far more constructive than
rudeness.
e) We suggest
that you temper your eagerness to make a point by recalling the power
of words and their lasting effect
upon both senders and receivers.
4. Take a Deep Breath
a) Figuratively
speaking, taking a deep breath means thinking about what you want to
write before you actually write it and
press “Send.”
b) In
electronic discussions, we always recommend taking a deep breath before
responding too quickly or taking action
without first thinking about the ramifications.
B. Receiver Skills for Electronic
Messages
1. Check In with the Sender
2. Show Empathy When Possible
3. Listen beyond the Words
C. Sender and Receiver Skills for Electronic Messages
1. Take
Responsibility for Your Own Words
a) Many people tend to forget that
they “own” the words they choose to use.
b) Whether we are in front of a
person or a computer screen, we need to take responsibility for what we
say or write.
2. Recall the
Challenge of Online Communication
a) Both senders and receivers of
electronic messages must always remember that this type of
communication is
frequently
ambiguous and fraught with misinterpretation.
b) Be careful of using
abbreviations that are not universally understood.
c) Think before stating too much
too soon; others may be put off by your level of comfort.
d) Finally, don’t assume that your
words will be taken as you intended.