Communication and Perception

Question 1

What is the interpersonal gap?

Answer 1

Gap between what the sender intends to communication and what the listener perceives.
We assume that our messages have the impact that we intended. However, more often than we may realize, we face an INTERPERSONAL GAP in which senders intentions differ from the effect on the receiver.

Question 2

The sender:

Answer 2

• Private knowledge on what they wish to convey.
• Encode into verbal and non-verbal actions.
• Potential interference (sender’s mood, social skills, distractions in environment)

Question 3

Receiver

Answer 3

• Decode speaker’s actions.
• Potential inference.
• Interpretation (private – subjective interpretation)

Question 4

Non-verbal communication

Answer 4

Numerous different channels through which information can be transmitted. Communication is multi-modal; people can say only one word at a time, yet send numerous cues simultaneously.
Non-verbal behaviour aids to provide more information that helps the receiver in interpreting the message/actions.
Truth behind one’s words usually lies in their non-verbal communication.
Numerous different channels through which information can be transmitted.
* Eyes + Gazing (eye contact)
* Body movements (e.g., hand gestures, posture)
* Paralanguage (e.g., pitch, volume)
* Interpersonal distance

Question 5

Facial Expressions

Answer 5

Can convey mood and emotion. Can be controlled (intensify, minimize, neutralize, mask). Intensify (amplify), so that we appear to be experiencing stronger feelings than we really are. Minimize (suppress). Neutralize (hide/withhold from showing true emotions all together). Mask: show different emotion.
But: hard to control, truth often leaks out (if only just for a half a second).
Micro-expressions (authentic flashes of our real emotions).

Question 6

Verbal communications

Answer 6

• Vital part of communication
• Extensively involved in developing closeness
  what we say with our words – is of course also a vital part of communication and relationships, and it is extensively involved in the development of closeness/intimacy in the first place.

Question 7

Self-disclosure

Answer 7

A lab experiment to generate closeness -> participants randomly paired up, answer fixed set of questions.
Imagine that as part of a psychology experiment, you are randomly paired up with another participant in the study that you don’t know, and you both answer questions that lead you to gradually reveal more and more personal information about yourself. The questions aren’t intimate at first.
Revealing personal information to someone lese generates closeness.
* after the pairs had answered all these questions, they felt closer to each other. In fact, I heard that one pair from Art Aron’s study actually got married later on! So, it seems to have worked very well for them!

Question 8

What questions of ‘fast-friends’ procedure is used?

Answer 8

Aron’s 36 questions. * Participants in closeness generation task felt closer than those engaging in small-talk or unstructured getting-acquainted task.
* Mode of communication (face-to-face vs. video-chat) didn’t matter.

Question 9

Too much disclosure?

Answer 9

Disclosure can be ‘too much too soon’ – patience and turn taking. Saying too much too soon can be risky, as it can violate others’ expectations and can even burden others. Rather, partners tend to be better off being somewhat patient and taking turns in disclosing (not one holding a long monologue) so they can patiently discover the level of disclosure each prefers, and perhaps the generation of closeness that comes with it.
Closeness develops on:
1. Meaningful disclosure
2. Other responds with interest and empathy
3. Other perceived as responsive

Question 10

Responsiveness

Answer 10

Attentive and supportive recognition of one person’s needs and interests by another.
Perceived partner responsiveness:
* Feeling understood
* Feeling valued, respected, and validated.
* Feeling cared for
Basis of secure, well-functioning, and highly satisfying relationships.

Question 11

How accurate are we at reading others?

Answer 11

• ‘moderately’ accurate (r = .32)
• Room for interpretation
• Nater & Zell have reviewed many different research findings and concluded that people can be “moderately” accurate in perceiving each other, with on average a correlation of .32 between what one person reports and what another observes (but this can vary greatly). So, this still leaves a lot of room for interpretation:
  How do we arrive at interpretation of others and how do our perceptions affect relationships?

Question 12

Perceptions and Related Social Cognitive processes

Answer 12

Social Cognition: Cognitive processes that process social information. Basically means: How we think about close relationships. And how our cognitions guide the way we feel and behave in relationships.
* The attributions we make.
* Positive illusions – seeing through rose-coloured glasses.
* Individual differences in relationship beliefs.

Question 13

Attributions

Answer 13

explanations we use to understand each other’s behaviour.
* Internal (cause is due to the person)
* External (cause is due to something else)

Question 14

Relationship Attributions

Answer 14

Sometimes your partners are good to you, and sometimes they aren’t. How do you explain good vs. bad behaviour? How do these attributions influence the way you feel?
Explaining good behaviour:
* e.g., Your partner brings you a box of chocolates for no particular reason.
* Internal attribution: S/he always knows just what to get me – s/he is so thoughtful!
* External attribution: S/he got them from someone at work today and is just re-gifting them to me.
Explaining bad behaviour:
* e.g., Your partner snaps at you for being 5 minutes late.
* Internal attribution: S/he is such an impatient and irritable person.
* External attribution: S/he must have had a really hard day at work.

Question 15

Satisfaction

Answer 15

Satisfaction influences attributions of partner’s behaviours.
* Satisfied people make internal attributions for partners’ good behaviour, external for partners’ bad behaviour.
* Unsatisfied people make external attributions for partners’ good behaviour, internal for partners’ bad behaviour.
Those attributions also affect satisfaction

Question 16

Relationship enhancing?

Answer 16

People who make internal attributions for partners’ good behaviour, external attributions for partners’ bad behaviour become happier. (Relationship enhancing)

Question 17

Distress Maintaining

Answer 17

People who make external attributions for partners’ good behaviour, internal attributions for partners’ bad behaviour become more unhappy. (Distress maintaining)

Question 18

Positive illusions

Answer 18

Emphasize partners’ positive qualities, minimize faults. Judge partners more favorably than they judge themselves.
Advantages of Positive Illusions
* Related to increased relationship satisfaction and stability.
* Give benefit of the doubt
* Minimizes conflict.
* Partner feels good and more secure.
Partner fulfilling prophecy -> our partners may ‘live up’ to our idealised image of them.
Are positive illusions always beneficial?
* Depends on how unrealistic illusions are minor illusions smooth social interaction, major illusions minimize problems. Partner’s may feel pressure to ‘live up to ideals.

Question 19

Positive illusions vs self-verification

Answer 19

In what situations are positive illusions more beneficial than self-verification?
* When relationships are ‘new’ (e.g., dating or newly married couples).
In what situations is self-verification more beneficial for relationships than positive illusions?
* Longer term relationships – feeling understood.
* When it is related to aspects of self-concept that very important.

Question 20

Relationship beliefs

Answer 20

A third powerful way in which people can interpret other people and their relationship together is through certain beliefs that individuals hold.
Beliefs -> ideas or theories about what the world is like
* Destiny Beliefs -> people are either compatible or they are not.
* Growth Beliefs -> relationship challenges can be overcome.
Destiny beliefs are all around us. Almost every single romantic movie. Song lyrics. You could go online right now and find something in a couple of seconds.

Question 21

Relationship Outcomes of destiny belief

Answer 21

People with destiny beliefs are initially happier with their relationships.
But when faced with conflict, satisfaction declines. Especially sensitive to signs that their relationship is “not meant to be.”
Disengage from the relationship when there is a problem.

Question 22

Growth Belief outcomes

Answer 22

• People with growth beliefs are constructive, optimistic, and committed in the face of conflicts.
• Fewer one-night stands, dating a partner for a longer period of time.
• Try to maintain the relationship when there is a problem.

Question 23

Destiny vs growth beliefs

Answer 23

• Destiny beliefs can be associated with lower satisfaction when couples face challenges.
• Growth beliefs tend to be associated with more satisfaction overall because they may help couples work through challenges.

Question 24

Communication and Perception

Answer 24

• Power of self-disclosure in generating closeness.
• Power of perceptions, attributions, and beliefs in shaping interactions and relationships.

Question 25

Narrowing the Gap

Answer 25

Expect others to read our minds.
Don’t realise how bad we can be at reading people’s minds.
* Studies on romantic partners and college roommates showed that as relationships progressed, accuracy did not increase, but (over) confidence did.

Question 26

Solving the problem

Answer 26

Egocentric simulations (aka projection)
How we interpret others is mostly driven by how we ourselves would think, feel, and behave—what would motivate us, how we would feel in a situation, and how we would react.

Question 27

How to narrow the gap?

Answer 27

• Time, effort, perspective taking (but still top-down biases that colour perceptions).
• Take some time & effort, be informed, try to take other’s perspective, but can only help “so much” because also top-down biases that colour what we see/interpret (construal based-biases):
• Actively encode information.
  -Actively try to encode information differently, takes time and careful attention/awareness. For example, we can try to rely less on our own beliefs, our preconceptions, or stereotypes (which you’ll learn more later in this module) when interpreting other’s thoughts and experiences. However, these top-down biases tend to influence our perceptions on a quite automatic level, making it difficult to intervene.
• Construe oneself at higher level of abstraction (see ourselves as we see others)
  -metaphorically taking a bigger picture look at themselves that is more consistent with how they are viewed by others: try to construe oneself at a higher level of abstraction, focused on central, defining features of oneself, rather than on low-level, concrete details or idiosyncrasies. (Seeing yourself as you see others, whom you also don’t know all the details about). This seems to work better at increasing accuracy than just trying to take someone else’s perspective.