Final Flashcards
Study for Final
What is Affection Exchange Theory?
A theory that explains how affection is a key component of relational connections. The theory addresses how affection is shared and what its impact is on partners.
How do people communicate affection (Affection Exchange Theory)?
1) Non-verbal expressions
2) Verbal Expressions
3) Expressions of support
What are the five postulates of Affection Exchange Theory?
1) Affection needs and capacity are innate
2) Feeling affection and expressing affection are related but not the same
3) Affectionate communication increases human survival and fertility
4) People vary in their tolerance for affection, so different relationships need to be judged in their specific context
5) People don’t like affection behaviors that violate their tolerances
Why does affectionate communication contribute to survival and fertility?
1) It helps create connected relationships, improving access to material and emotional resources
2) Expressing affection increases reproductive opportunities by demonstrating one’s suitability as a parent
3) Exchanging affection feels good and not receiving affection feels bad
What as Affection Deprivation (Affection Exchange Theory)?
The desire to have more tactile affectionate communication than one is currently getting.
What is relational dialectics theory?
A theory that builds on the work of Bakhtin. It explains how the natural tensions (dialectics) of relationships between people are managed through coordinated dialogue, and how communication is used to manage similarity and difference within relationships.
What is a discursive struggle (relational dialectics theory)?
A discursive struggle is the process one goes through to alleviate dialectical tensions within the self.
What does it mean that relationships are both dialogical and dialectical (relational dialectics theory)?
It means that relationships have natural tensions and that those tensions are managed through coordinated dialogue.
What is social penetration theory?
This theory examines the process of increasing disclosure and intimacy within a relationship. It explains that people are constantly managing the tension between openness/public persona and privacy, and that they must negotiate permeable and impermeable boundaries as a result.
What is social exchange?
Social exchange is the process of making decisions about human interaction that are balanced between the costs and the rewards. People generally disclose information when the rewards outweigh the costs.
What is a schema in the context of Family Patterns of Interaction?
A schema is a way of looking at something.
It is comprised of an organized set of memories, or a mental map based on past experience
What are the three levels of schema (Family Patterns of Interaction)?
1) What we know about relationships in general
2) What we know about family relationships as a type
3) What we know about our specific relationships with family members.
How do we create family schemas (Family Patterns of Interaction)?
We create mini-schemas for each relationship based on the three levels of schema, then we compile those schemas into larger family schemas
What are the four types of family schemas (Family Patterns of Interaction)?
1) Consensual (high conversation, high conformity)
2) Pluralistic (high conversation, low conformity)
3) Protective (low conversation, high conformity)
4) Laissez-Faire (low conversation, low conformity)
What are the characteristics of a consensual family schema?
People in consensual families tend to have traditionalist views of family relationships, including spousal roles and parental authority. There is a lot of communication, so people feel heard and appreciated.
What are the characteristics of a pluralistic family schema?
Partners in these families tend to have independent marriages with non-traditional divisions of labor. Family members operate more independently, however, high levels of conversation keep people communicating and this leads to familial satisfaction.
What are the characteristics of a protective family schema?
Protective families do not talk about things very much, yet they expect high levels of conformity. Spouses tend to exist in separate marriages where they stick to traditional roles because it is expected, not because it is agreed to. Low levels of communication cal lead people to feel stifled, which means these marriages tend to break up over time.
What are the characteristics of a laissez-faire family schema?
People in these families don’t talk and they don’t expect anyone to conform. These marriages are dysfunctional because they have neither conversation to connect partners nor traditional roles to fall back on. Because people don’t have anything tying them together, these families fall apart.
What is the narrow ridge?
Martin Buber defines the narrow ridge as an I-Thou dialogue where participants are both clearly expressing their own ideas and listening carefully to others while honoring them and their ideas. This sort of dialogue is a genuine exchange among equals, and allows for the most productive exchange of ideas.
What is social penetration theory?
Social penetration theory studies how we increase disclosure and intimacy in conversations. It is related to social exchange theory, which believes that people make decisions based on costs and rewards. I
What is self-disclosure (social penetration theory)?
Information you reveal about yourself that people wouldn’t know otherwise. Self-disclosure can lead to reciprocity, where there is a mutual exchange.
Why is social penetration theory considered a descriptive theory?
Because social penetration theory describes relationships but does not prescribe action.
What is a comparison level and/or a comparison level alternative (social penetration theory)?
A comparison level is a mental benchmark that you can use to compare the costs and rewards of your relationship to see what it should be. A comparison level alternative happens when you make a direct comparison of the costs and rewards of one specific relationship to that of another specific relationship
What is the difference between an I-It view of the other and an I-Thou view?
And I-It relationship occurs when we think of ourselves as important and we we think of others as things to be labeled, manipulated and steered for our benefit.
An I-Thou relationship happens when we see both ourselves and others as important whole persons who cannot be reduced to a simple characterization. There is an idea that we have to stand by what is important to us, acknowledge life experiences, as well as the ideas and feelings of others, and that we believe that people have an inherent dignity that should be honored.
What does Buber mean by dialogue?
Buber thinks of dialogue as a manifestation of the I-Thou relationship where participants walk the narrow ridge. True dialogue can only take place in the I-Thou relationship
What are the three types of interaction within the I-It relationship?
1) Monologue - where one person dominates/monopolizes the conversation to the exclusion of the other
2) Technical dialogue - a conversation that centers around information rather than participants’ experiences
3) Disguised Monologue - a conversation where participants talk around the issues without honestly and directly engaging with either the self or the other in their complexity
What is a dialectic?
A push-pull tension between opposing forces.
What are the three common dialectics people express within relationships?
1) Integration (connection) vs Separation (autonomy)
2) Expression (open-book) vs Nonexpression (closed book)
3) Stability (predictability) vs. Change (novelty)
Everyone expresses a different level of each of these, and balancing these factors in relationship is normal.
What is a Self-Other Face Dialectic (Identity Management Theory)?
This dialectic is the push-pull tension that happens when we both want to support the other person’s identity and assert our own identity. This is most apparent in intercultural relationships where identities are clearly disparate and those disparities must be managed.
What is Identity Management Theory?
A theory explaining how identities are established, maintained, and changed within relationships as a result of constant renegotiation between participants. As a result we are always asking questions like ‘who are we’ and ‘what is the nature of our relationship’?
Why does Identity Management Theory matter in everyday life?
It supports the idea that you are your five best friends…essentially, people’s identities are formed by and through association with other people. We become more like the people we hang out with.
What is Interpersonal Deception Theory?
Interpersonal Deception Theory is a way of understanding how people handle deception, or the deliberate manipulation of information/behavior/image to manipulate others within relationships.
What is leakage (Interpersonal Deception Theory)?
A small non-strategic behavior that indicates that deception is occurring, such as a poker tell. “Telltale” signs are not always reliable, however, due to other factors such as nervousness.
What are the three primary factors influencing the difficulty to detect and/or conceal deception behavior (Interpersonal deception theory)?
1) Truth bias (feeling like we need to tell the truth)
2) Immediacy (being face to face with the person)
3) Conversational demands (how much are we trying to balance while carrying out the deception?)
What does ‘interact’ mean in the context of interaction analysis?
Interact is the act of one person followed by the act of another. These are classified along the content dimension (the content of the communication) and the relationship dimension (relationship indicators in the communication).
Why does Fisher describe interaction analysis as decision emergence (interaction analysis)?
Because almost all communications in a task group are related to a decision proposal, and as a result interact statements are classified in terms of how they respond to said proposal.
What are the four stages of group development in interaction analysis?
1) Orientation - when things are being clarified and POVs beginning to be expressed
2) Conflict - the dissent phase when people begin to solidify their attitudes and polarize themselves in their opinions. Members disagree, and engage in persuasion and evaluation, and may form coalitions with allies
3) Emergence - coalitions disappear and cooperation begins to emerge as people soften their viewpoints
4) Reinforcement - where group decision solidifies and is reinforced by members. People are in agreement and comments are almost uniformly favorable
What is the inputs-processes-outputs model of groups?
This is a way of describing the process groups go through as they are taking information in, processing that information, and having that information change them. It is a cyclical three step process.
1) Input - Information comes into the group
2) Process - the group examines and processes the information
3) Output - the results circulate back out to affect others and affect the group
Information generated from process and outputs can become input.
What is synergy?
Synergy is group effort.
What is the difference between intrinsic and effective synergy?
Intrinsic synergy is the amount of group effort that has to be directed towards interpersonal issues.
Effective synergy is the effort available to tackle the actual task.
Synergy is limited within the group.
Conflict increases intrinsic synergy which then takes away from effective synergy.
How do the three clusters of difference interact (Effective Intercultural Workgroup Theory)?
All cultures are defined by the way they happen to evince three clusters of difference.
1) Individualism vs. collectivism (is the culture focused on the individual or the group?)
2) Independent vs. Interdependent self-construal (do people in the culture think of themselves as independent an unique or as connected through relationship?)
3) Self face vs. Other Face vs. Mutual face (are people in the culture worried about their own image, others’ image, or the image of the relationship?)
What is a bona fide group?
Any self-formed, naturally occurring group
What are the characteristics of bona fide groups?
Bona fide groups have permeable boundaries defining what is in and what is out of the group. These boundaries are fluid and constantly changing, and must be negotiated through communication and interaction. This is particularly important as old members leave and new members come in and must be socialized.
Bona fide groups are interdependent with the environment. They are influenced by their environment and they in turn influence that same environment.
What is liminality (bona fide group theory)?
A sense that the group is in transition and it is not sure how it relates to its history or the institutions it is part of. This can create a feeling of being in a suspended state.
What is the core of bona fide group perspective?
Groups cannot be separated from their environments, but are simultaneously both a product of and a determinate force within that environment.
What is Groupthink theory?
Groupthink theory is a way of thinking the costs of high cohesiveness within a given group.
What is cohesiveness (groupthink)?
Cohesiveness is the degree of mutual interest about and between members in a group. It is based on the idea that people like to be on the same page about what their goals are and what they are trying to do. Cohesiveness boosts mutual rewards by giving people a sense of shared priorities and purpose, making people feel productive. People then put energy into maintaining cohesiveness. It has a downside, however, because it can cause people to feel morally superior to outsiders, as well as prompt them to believe stereotypes about those outsiders. It also gives the illusion of invulnerability (we all agree so we must be right) and encourages people to self-censor when they do not agree with the group.
What are the costs of cohesiveness in groupthink theory?
Groups with excessively high cohesiveness get the illusion of unanimity, and can fail in their tasks because they neglect critical thinking and do not adequately examine their actions/decisions.
What are the six negative outcomes of groupthink?
1) Limited discussion that does not consider full range of creative possibilities
2) Over-acceptance of first favored position, which prevents that position from being adequately examined from possible problems
3) No reexamination of disfavored alternatives, even if those alternatives are superior
4) Over-reliance on internal knowledge/No consultation of expert and/or outside opinions
5) Selective information gathering that only concentrates on supporting the favored plan, leading to insufficient data
6) Excessive confidence, leading group members to neglect forming contingency plans or plan for the possibility of failure
What is Interaction-Process Analysis?
This is a theory of small group communication that examines the kinds of messages people exchange in groups as well as the way these messages shape roles and personalities of group members and effect the overall character of the group.
How can people show positive and/or mixed attitudes towards others in Interaction-Process Analysis?
1) Being friendly
2) Dramatizing (telling stories)
3) Agreeing with one another
How can people show negative and/or mixed attitudes towards others in Interaction-Process Analysis?
1) Disagreeing with one another
2) Showing tension with one another
3) Being unfriendly to one another
