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Samenvatting Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication
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Summary of slides + own lesson notes. Course taught by Professor Charlotte De Backer in academic year '22-'23.
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INTERPERSONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIONINTRODUCTION
WHAT IS INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION?
Quantitative approach
• Between 2 people
• Dyad (2 individuals)
• Dyadic communication
Qualitative approach: interpersonal ó impersonal communication
• Uniqueness
• Irreplaceability
• Interdependence
• Disclosure
• Intrinsic rewards
UNIQUENESS
Impersonal Communication
• Social rules: smile, be polite, let others talk, etc.
• Social roles: sales vs. customer, boss vs. employer, teacher vs. student
• Example: How you talk to someone who sells your bread, and who sells your clothes
Interpersonal Communication
• Unique rules
• Unique roles
• Example: How you talk to your sister, how you talk to your brother
IRREPLACEABILITY
Interpersonal communication defines closeness
• How closer, how more irreplaceable
• ! Even the closest relationships can become very impersonal over time
INTERDEPENDENCE
= Shared background
= Shared future (similar goals, plans etc.)
• Interdependence can both be a pleasure or a burden
• Interdependence defines our identity: who we are
depends on our interpersonal bonds
• Interdependence defines our communication:
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, DISCLOSURE
Interpersonal relations = relations of TRUST
• More personal = more trust
• More trust = more disclosure
INTRINSIC REWARDS
Impersonal communication
• Non-receiver related goals
• E.g. You attend class to get a degree, not to please a lecturer
Interpersonal communication
• Goal is to influence receiver
• Good or bad
• Intentional, less-intentional or unintentional ???
I AND THOU
Martin Buber: I and Thou ® It ******You******Thou
I-It relations: talk about object
• Treating others as objects
• E.g. “can you pick me up”, “can you do this/that”
I-You: interpersonal
I-Thou relations: exclusive
• Respectful relations: no persuasion or control
• We respect the fact that others are free to act
• When you fully accept and appreciate the other; when we see them as unique
human beings with personal feelings, desires, when we can let go of wanting to
manipulate them in one direction or the other; when you tell your message and let
the other completely free to decide how to react to this message
2
, NON-VIOLENT COMMUNICATION
How do you communicate in ways that feel good for all parties involved?
Focus on NEEDS
• Communicate your NEEDS
• Listen to the NEEDS of others
• You need to be aware of your own needs
o what do you want in life?
o what do you need from that other person?
• Can be grouped in
o Well-being (peace)
o Connection (love)
o Self-expression (joy)
• Are UNIVERSAL: every human being has these
needs, but not everyone has these needs met.
Needs are not FEELINGS
Feelings are bodily felt experiences and tell us about our
needs being met or not met, and about what we are
observing, thinking and wanting.
A list of Universal Needs
and our feelings
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, 1. THE FUNDAMENTAL THEORETICAL APPROACHES
HUMAN UNIVERSALS
For each topic we will start by looking if there are features that appear(ed) in all humans
across time and culture. à Requires an evolutionary psychological approach
NEED THEORIES
Self-determination Theory
People have deeply evolved psychological needs to be
• Competent
• Autonomous
• Related to others
Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs
ERG-Theory
All humans have needs of:
• Existence: we have a need to exist, e.g. if I hold my breath, I have a need to breathe
again, I don’t want to die (corresponds to Maslow’s physiological and safety needs)
• Relatedness: we have a need to relate to others (refers to Maslow’s social needs)
• Growth: we have a need to grow (refers to Maslow’s esteem and self-actualization)
ARE WANTS, NEEDS AND DESIRES THE SAME?
I want cookies now.
I need shelter, food, love.
I have many desires.
Needs refer to what is required to survive. Wants and desires refer to what we hope to get /
accomplish with no threat to our survival; things that make life even better, that can
improve the situation, but you don’t really need to survive.
They may overlap: if you desire a safe place to hide from danger, your desire is a need.
Needs are desires necessary for survival
The terms needs and desires are going to be mixed: when we talk about desires in this
course, it means the basic desires that we need to survive.
4
,The paradigm we will use to study our needs is that of “Human Universals” / Evolutionary
Psychology.
HUMAN UNIVERSALS
= human traits that occur across times and cultures
• Long list
• Result of culture?
Some examples focusing on communication (all of these we will discuss in this course)
Attachment, Body adornment, Cooperation & Conflict, Dance, Emotions & Facial communication
thereof, Food Preferences, Gossip, Hairstyles, Insults, Jokes, Kin groups, Language, Manipulate social
relations, Norms, Overestimating objectivity of thought, Private inner life, Quietness (silence),
Resistance to abuse, Self-control, Tabooed foods, Units of time, Vocal contrasts, Weapons
Brown’s ideas contrast the blank slate approach
There is a “view that the mind is fundamentally a "blank slate" and that the study of culture can be
conducted with little or no attention to the human mind (or to the individual).”- Brown, 2004, p.7
• The mind ¹ the brain
• Brain = physical organ
• Mind = what the brain produces: thoughts, feelings, consciousness, behavior etc.
But Brown says: the brain is not blank, it’s not just culture that forms the brain, certain
elements are already there the moment that you are born.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
Tooby & Cosmides – primer: the brain as a Swiss army knife
1. The brain is a physical system that produces; thoughts, feelings, consciousness,
behavior (i.e. the mind) …
2. …designed by natural selection…
o Selection = context
It is a process, it’s everything around you, it’s everything
that influences you.
§ Environment
§ Ecology
§ Other living things
§ Other human beings
§ Etc.
o Selection is a BLIND process
§ Has no goals
§ Only keeps what works in a certain environment
§ Eliminates the bad, but does not create “the optimal”
5
, o Selection is always a step behind
§ What worked in the past
o Selection pressures
§ Natural Selection
• Survival
• Relates to problems/success of survival
• E.g. the war, the earthquake: people die because things
happen in nature that we do not always have control over
§ Social Selection
• Survival dependent on others
• Relates to problems/success of group living
• E.g. murdering: people die because others can be mean
§ Sexual Selection
• Reproduction
• Relates to problems/success of reproduction
• E.g. the partner you chose influences the features of the
next generation
3. … composed of many functionally specialized circuits…
4. … formed over the course of our species’ evolutionary history…
5. …that largely operates outside of our awareness (many of the things we need, the
brain does without bothering us, e.g. breathing).
CONTEXTS MATTER IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Nature / nurture debates: waste of time? ® Most often nature and nurture
Ancestral context = our human history, past of many generations ago
• Influences which mental mechanisms were selected
• Nature
• Shared with all, human universals
6
,Mental Mechanisms have a specific adaptive function
= a reason why the mechanism was selected in the past
• NOT ‘one mechanism for all’
• Each Mental Mechanism solves a unique “adaptive problem” (2 features)
o Recurred over and over again over the course of a species’ evolutionary
history
o Problems whose solution affected the probability of survival / reproduction
E.g. Selecting a habitat, Finding food, Avoiding predators, Avoiding disease-causing agents,
Form alliances/friendships, Reading intentions of others, Detecting kin, Finding a mate,
Guarding a mate, Secure offspring, Care for offspring, And many others.
Do not confuse functions and effects
Mental Mechanisms have a specific function but
can have many effects; it is important to separate
mental mechanisms’ specific functions from their
numerous potential effects.
• Mental mechanisms are designed to solve
problems; they have a function.
• But a mental mechanism can also lead to
other behavior, and thus lead to different
effects.
E.g. What is the function of rain?
Rain allows water that has evaporated from the sea to get back onto the
land. The function of rain is not to make people wet. The fact that we get wet
is an effect.
E.g. What is the function of ears?
Ears evolved to gather sound waves. Today many ears support glasses, or
masks, or pencils etc. Is it a (n adaptive) function of the ear to support
glasses, masks, pencils? NO The (adaptive) function of the ear is to gather
sound waves, but ears happen to be useful to support glasses, masks, pencils
etc.; this is a side-effect.
E.g. What is the function of the mechanism to keep our balance?
It enabled humans to walk upright (adaptive function). But it can
be used for many more (fun) purposes it was not selected for in
the past.
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, Ontological / life history context = growing up, your personal history
• Fine-tuned these mental mechanisms: some became more/less sensitive, and you
may learn that new contextual features can also trigger mental mechanisms
• Nurture
• Shared with none, makes us unique
• This explains individual differences: every individual behaves differently at different
times
E.g. a mental mechanism not activated (yet): Theory of Mind
= being able to ‘read’ the minds of others; making interpretations of what
may be going on in someone else’s head
Activates spontaneously around the age of 4-5
In some people Theory of Mind does not activate
E.g. a mental mechanism that operates in many ways: Falling in love
= desire to have a deep connection to other people.
Adaptive? Sure: surviving all by yourself is very hard in any context
All humans experience love, but how we experience love can be very
different (the people you fall in love with are not the same as the people
your friends fall in love with).
Situational context = at the moment of action, now
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