Midterm Flashcards
interpersonal communication
dynamic form of communication between two (or more) people in which messages exchanged significantly influence their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and relationships
Interpersonal communication competence
consistently communicating in ways that are appropriate, effective, and ethical
ethics
set of moral principles that guide our behavior toward others
attachment styles
o Secure attachment
o Preoccupied attachment
o Dismissive attachment
o Fearful attachment
Secure attachment
- low on both anxiety and avoidance
- comfortable w/ intimacy and seek close ties w/ others
Preoccupied attachment
- high in anxiety and low in avoidance
- desire closeness but are plagued w/ fear of rejection
Dismissive attachment
- low anxiety but high avoidance
- view close relationships as comparatively unimportant, instead prizing self-reliance
Fearful attachment
- high in both attachment anxiety AND avoidance
- fear rejection and shun relationships
Looking glass self
defining our self-concepts through thinking about how others see us
Self-concept
mental image of your skills, abilities, knowledge, competencies, and personality
self-esteem
evaluation of your self-concept
self-fulfilling prophecies
predictions about future interactions that lead us to behave in ways that ensure the interaction unfolds as we predicted
perception process
Selection – involves focusing attention on certain sights, sounds, tastes, touches, or smells in our environment
Organization – once something is selected, you structure it into a coherent pattern in your mind
Interpretation – assigning meaning to information we have selected
Attributions
created explanations for others’ comments or behaviors
interpersonal impressions
mental pictures of who people are and how we feel about them
gestalts
general sense of person that’s either positive or negative
halo effect/horn effect
tendency to positively/negatively interpret what someone says or does b/c we have a positive/negative Gestalt of them
algebraic impressions
carefully evaluating each new thing we learn about a person
stereotyping
overly simplistic interpersonal impressions
primary emotions
- joy
- sadness
- fear
- surprise
- disgust
- anger
managing emotions after they occur
- Suppression – inhibiting thoughts, arousal, and outward behavioral displays of emotion
- Venting – allowing emotions to dominate our thoughts and explosively expressing them
preventing emotions
- Encounter avoidance – staying away from people, places, or activities that you know will provoke emotions you don’t want to experience
- Encounter structuring – intentionally avoiding specific topics that you know will provoke unwanted emotion during encounters w/ others
- Attention focus – intentionally devoting attention only to aspects of event or encounter that you know will not provoke undesired emotion
- Deactivation – systematically desensitizing yourself to emotional experience
reappraising emotions
actively changing how you think about meaning of emotion-eliciting situations so emotional impact is changed
emotional intelligence
ability to interpret emotion accurately and to use this info to manage emotions, communicate them competently, and solve relationship problems
- Acute understanding of own emotions
- Ability to see things from others’ perspectives and have sense of compassion regarding others’ emotional states
- Aptitude for constructively managing own emotions
- Capacity for harnessing emotional states in ways that create competent decision making, communication, and relationship problem solving
personality traits
- openness
- conscientiousness
- extraversion
- agreeableness
- neuroticism
display rules
guidelines for when, where, and how to manage emotion displays appropriately
- Listening styles
habitual patterns of listening behaviors, which reflect attitudes, beliefs, and predispositions about listening
Action-oriented listeners
want brief, to-the-point, and accurate information to make decisions or initiate courses of action
Time-oriented listeners
prefer brief and concise encounters
People-oriented listeners
view listening as opportunity to establish commonalities between themselves and others
Content-oriented listeners
prefer to be intellectually challenged by messages they receive during interpersonal encounters and enjoy receiving complex and provocative information
Selective listening
taking in only those parts of a message that are immediately salient during an interpersonal encounter and dismissing the rest
Eavesdropping
intentionally listen in on private conversations
Pseudo-listening
pretending to listen while preoccupied or bored
Aggressive listening
listening to find opportunity to attack speaker
Narcissistic listening
- self-absorbed listening
- redirects conversation to own interests
recalling
remembering info after you’ve received, attended to, understood, and responded to it
functions of listening
- comprehend
- discern
- analyze
- appreciate
- support
Characteristic of verbal communication
- Symbolic
- governed by rules
- flexible
- cultural
- evolves
verbal communication
– exchange of spoken or written language w/ others during interactions
Constitutive rules
define word meaning: they tell us which words represent which objects
Regulative rules
govern how we use language when we verbally communicate
Personal idioms
words and phrases that have unique meanings to them
Dialects
variations on language of large groups in particular culture
“I” language
phrases that emphasize ownership of your feelings, opinions, and beliefs
language shaping thought
- Linguistic determinism – view that language defines boundaries of our thinking
- Linguistic relativity – different cultures perceive and think about the world in different ways
connotative meaning
additional understandings of word’s meaning based on situation and knowledge we and our communication partners share
denotative meaning
literal meaning of words, as agreed on by members of culture
deception
when people deliberately use uninformative, untruthful, irrelevant, or vague language for purpose of misleading others
communication apprehension
fear or anxiety w/ interaction, which keeps someone from being able to communicate cooperatively
high-context culture
people presume that others w/i culture will share their viewpoints and thus perceive situations in same way
low-context culture
people tend NOT to presume that others share their beliefs, attitudes, and values
