Chapter 2 - Overview of Interpersonal Communication Flashcards
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self-actualization Esteem Love and belonging Safety Physiological
the basic level, humans must have physiological needs met, such as
breathing, food, water, sex, homeostasis, sleep, and excretion
safety needs
which include the safety of the body, family, resources, morality, health, and employment.
love and belonging needs
which encompasses friendship, sexual intimacy, and family
esteem needs
which includes self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, and respect by others.
Self-actualization
Self-actualization leads to creativity, morality,
spontaneity, problem-solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts
What purposes does interpersonal communication achieve?
- Meet Personal Needs
* Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
What purposes does interpersonal communication achieve?
- Meet personal needs
- Communicating and meeting personal needs
- Learning about self and others
- Self-concept
- Self-esteem
- Building and maintaining relationships
- Reducing uncertainty about others
How do we get to know new people?
- Uncertainty Reduction Theory
- People want to know what other people will say and do
- Cognitive uncertainty
- Behavioral uncertainty •Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese posit that we try to eliminate unknowns when we first meet a new person
- Reduce uncertainty
- Reduce anxiety
types of strategies to learn more about someone and reduce uncertainty
- Passive strategies
- Active strategies
- Interactive strategies
What makes interpersonal communication happen?
- Sender or source
- Receiver
- Message
- Channel
- Feedback
- Environment
- Noise
Sender or source
- Initiates communication
- Creates the message or content (encoding)
- Selecting the transmission channel
- Individual characteristics shape message construction
Receiver
- Decodes the message
- Using five senses
- Message reception and understanding is shaped by:
- The environment in which the message is transmitted
- Receiver’s attitudes, beliefs, opinions, values, history, prejudices, etc.
- If the receiver fails to understand the message, then communication did not occur
- Communication partners simultaneously serve as senders and receivers
How do we communicate? Channel:
- The pathway or medium in which messages are conveyed
- Impacts the communication message, its reception, and receiver feedback
- Traditional channels
- New media channels
How do we know communication is successful (feedback)?
- Information shared back to the sender, which keeps communication going
- Provided internally or externally
- Positive, negative, neutral, or ambiguous
How do we know communication is successful (environment)?
- The context or situation in which communication occurs
- Affects communication with others
- Can be related to fields of experience or a person’s past experiences or background
- Environments may overlap or remain independent of each other
How does the context impact communication? NOISE?
- Anything that hinders or distorts the message being sent or received
- No noise = the message is received and understood
- Noise = negatively impacts the message in some way
- Types of noise
- Physical noise
- Psychological noise
- Semantic noise
- Physiological noise
Perceptions
The process of acquiring, interpreting, and organizing information via one’s five sense
Stages of perception
- Attending
- Organizing
- Interpreting
Attending perception
- Attending is the act of focusing on specific objects or stimuli in the world around you
- Selective perception: Attending to a specific thing while ignoring other things
- How do we decide what to attend to?•Things that are extreme, intense, exceptional, or extraordinary
- Things that are different, unusual, or contradictory
- Things that are repetitive
- Things that are personally motivating or important
- One’s emotional state
Schemes used to classify perceptions
- Physical constructs
- Role constructs
- Social behaviors
- Psychological constructs
How do we evaluate information?
Interpreting:
The act of assigning meaning to a stimulus in order to evaluate and understand its worth: •Personal experience •Relational involvement •Expectations •Assumptions •Relational satisfaction
How can we conceptually organize the communication process?
Model:
- Model:
- A simplified representation of a system
- Often a graphic
- Highlighting crucial components and important connections
- Models help people understand how real-world communication interactions occur
- Eliminates unnecessary components to increase clarity
- Aid in decision making
- Explain, control, and predict events based on past observations
What kind of models pertain to interpersonal communication?
Action models
interaction models
transaction models