Theories of Interpersonal Communication Flashcards
Interpersonal Communication
- IPC occurs between two interdependent people.
- IPC is used to initiate, define, maintain, or further a relationship.
- IPC involves both the content and quality of messages.
Systems Perspective
- Communication is how systems are created and sustained.
- A system is a group of individuals who interrelate to form a whole.
Nonsummativity
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Interdependence
System members depend on each other.
Homeostasis
The system’s tendency to maintain stability, which can be functional or dysfunctional.
Equifinality
Multiple ways to achieve the same goal.
The Palo Alto Group
Developed a model for human communication grounded in systems thinking.
Five axioms of communication (The Palo Alto Group)
- Impossibility of not communicating
- Content and relationship levels
- Punctuation
- Digital and analogic codes
- Symmetrical or complementary communication:
Impossibility of not communicating
All behavior has the potential to be communicative, regardless of intent.
Content and relationship levels
Communication has both a message (content) and information about the relationship between communicators.
Punctuation
Communicators punctuate sequences of behavior, assigning causes and effects, which can lead to conflict.
Analogic codes
Resemble the object they represent (e.g., crying).
Symmetrical or complementary communication
Symmetrical communication involves similar behavior, while complementary communication involves different behavior.
Politeness Theory
Explains what individuals do when others behave unexpectedly.
- Systems approaches can be influence of larger social institutions.
Macro
Systems approaches can be influence of individuals.
Micro
Systems are embedded in a hierarchy.
- Subsystem
- Suprasystem
Subsystem
- A smaller part of the group as a whole
- The defensive line of a football team or the parents in a family
Suprasystem
- Is the larger system within which the system operates
- The National Football League is a suprasystem for an individual football team, and the extended kinship network.
Positive synergy
Group achieves more
Negative synergy
Group achieves less
Uncertainty Reduction Theory
- Developed in 1975
- Addresses the basic process of how we gain knowledge about other people.
- According to the theory, people have difficulty with uncertainty.
- To help predict behavior, they are motivated to seek information about the people with whom they interact.
- The theory argues that strangers, upon meeting, go through specific steps and checkpoints in order to reduce uncertainty about each other and form an idea of whether they like or dislike each other.
Social Exchange Theory
- Falls under the symbolic interaction perspective.
- The theory describes, explains, and predicts when and why people reveal certain information about themselves to others.
- Uses Thibaut and Kelley’s (1959) theory of interdependence.
- “Relationships grow, develop, deteriorate, and dissolve as a consequence of an unfolding social-exchange process, which may be conceived as a bartering of rewards and costs both between the partners and between members of the partnership and others”.
- Argues that the major force in interpersonal relationships is the satisfaction of both people’s self-interest.
Symbolic Interaction
- Comes from the socio-cultural perspective in that it relies on the creation of shared meaning through interactions with others.
- People form meaning and structure in society through interactions.
- Three main concepts in this theory: Society (Social acts which involve an initial gesture, response, and a result), Self (Self - image comes from interaction with others), and Mind (One defines objects in terms of how one might react to them).
Relational Dialectics Theory
- Dialectical approach to interpersonal communication: Notions of contradiction, change, praxis, and totality
- Deals with how meaning emerges from the interplay of competing discourses.
- Communication between two parties invokes multiple systems of meaning that are in tension with each other.
- Argues that these tensions are both inevitable and necessary.
- Three Relational Dialectics: Connectedness vs. separateness (No relationship can be enduring unless the individuals involved within it have opportunities to be alone.), Certainty vs. uncertainty (A sense of assurance and predictability but also desire variety, spontaneity and mystery), and Openness vs. closedness (Pressure to reveal personal information, opposed by a natural desire to retain some level of personal privacy).
Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory
- Two individuals engaging in an interaction each construct their own interpretation and perception of what a conversation means, then negotiate a common meaning by coordinating with each other.
- Rules: Constitutive Rules (Rules of meaning used by communicators to interpret or understand an event or message) and Regulative Rules (Rules of action used to determine how to respond or behave)
Social Penetration Theory
- Conceptual framework that describes the development of interpersonal relationships.
- Include verbal/nonverbal exchange, interpersonal perceptions, and interactions with the environment.
- The behaviors vary based on the different levels of intimacy in the relationship.
- Onion Theory: This analogy suggests that like an onion, personalities have “layers”. The outside layer is what the public sees, and the core is one’s private self. When a relationship begins to develop, the individuals in the relationship may undergo a process of self-disclosure, progressing more deeply into the “layers”.
- 5 Layers: Orientation Stage, Exploratory Affective Stage, Affective Stage, Stable Exchange, and De - Penetration
Identity Management Theory
- Explains the establishment, development, and maintenance of identities within relationships, as well as changes to identities within relationships.
- Establishing identities, Cultural influence, and Relational stages of identity management
Communication Privacy Management Theory
- Concerned with how people negotiate openness and privacy in relation to communicated information.
- This theory focuses on how people in relationships manage boundaries which separate the public from the private.
- Boundaries, Co - ownership of information, and Boundary turbulence
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
- Argues that humans are consistency seekers and attempt to reduce their dissonance, or cognitive discomfort.
- Individuals encounter new information or new experiences, they categorize the information based on their preexisting attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs.
- If the new encounter does not fit their preexisting assumptions, then dissonance is likely to occur.
Expectancy Violations Theory
- Addresses the relationship between non-verbal message production and the interpretations people hold for those non-verbal behaviors.
- Individuals hold certain expectations for non-verbal behavior that are based on social norms, past experience and situational aspects of that behavior.
- Arousal, Reward valence, and Proxemics
