Summary of the knowledge clips from the course communication and leadership. This course is given on Utrecht University and is from the social track of the master Social, health and organisational psychology.
Also includes some pictures and explanations / definitions.
Communication & leadership
Web lectures week 1
1.1 Introduction
Effective interaction in theory and practice.
Focus on effective interaction / communication.
Interpersonal and (small) groups.
Processes of influence.
Skills in context (person & environment).
1.2 Five axioms of human communication
Pragmatics of human communication:
- Syntactics: transmitting information.
- Semantics: meaning of communication.
- Pragmatics: behavioral effects of communication (= psychology).
The 5 axioms:
1. One cannot not communicate.
a. Thus, the problem is not ‘to communicate or not to communicate’ but ‘to
communicate effectively or not to communicate effectively’.
2. Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect such that the latter
classifies the former and is therefore a metacommunication.
3. The nature of a relationship is contingent upon the punctuation of the
communicational sequences between the communicants.
4. Human beings communicate both digitally and analogically.
5. All communicational interchanges are either symmetrical or complementary,
depending on whether they are based on equality or difference.
In easier way:
1. We cannot not communicate.
2. Content and relationship level.
3. Punctuation.
4. Digital and analogic.
5. Symmetrical or complementary.
1.3 Mindset
2 different mindsets:
1. Fixed mindset (entity theory): intelligence (or ability) is a fixed trait.
a. Fixed mindset students adopt performance goals -> looking smart is most
important.
b. Fixed mindset students say that effort is negative, it should come naturally.
2. Growth mindset (incremental theory): intelligence is a malleable quality, a potential
that can be developed.
a. Growth mindset students adopt learning goals -> learning is most important.
b. Growth mindset students say that effort is positive, work hard, effort is key.
What mindsets do
Strategies when anticipating failure:
- Fixed mindset:
, o Self-handicapping: external explanation for your failure.
o Feedback avoidance: you don’t want to know how you did.
- Growth mindset: assume they have ‘not yet’ mastered the relevant skill and keep
going.
Strategies after failure:
- Fixed mindset students:
o Helplessness: believe that you are unable to control or change the situation,
so they do not try, even when opportunities for change are available.
o Self-serving bias: tendency to attribute our successes to internal, personal
factors and our failures to external, situational factors.
o Downward comparison: comparing ourselves to those who are worse off than
us on the comparison point.
- Growth mindset students:
o Mastery-oriented: having the goal of learning and mastering the task
according to self-set standards (focused on developing new skills, improving
and acquiring knowledge).
o Upward comparison: compare ourselves to someone who is (perceived to be
performing) better than we are.
Zone of proximal development view of mindsets
Study #1 on students making a transition to 7th grade
- Students with a growth mindset improve in their math grade.
- Student with a fixed mindset stay on the same level.
Study on how mindsets are communicated
Each student worked on a non-verbal IQ test & was given one kind of praise.
There were 3 different groups:
1. Intelligence praise: ‘wow, that’s a really good score, you must be smart at this.’
2. Effort praise: ‘wow, that’s a really good score, you must have tried really hard.’
3. Control group: ‘wow, that’s a really good score.’
, Results:
- When praised intelligent, children
select performance goals over
learning goals.
- When praised with effort, children
select learning goals over
performance goals.
Other results:
- On trial 1 (before failure) all 3 groups (effort praise, control and intelligence praise)
perform equally well.
- On trial 3 (after failure) the effort praise group performs a lot better on the
intelligence test than the intelligence praise group.
Also:
- Children who were effort praised wanted to know strategy information.
- While children who were intelligence praised wanted to know performance
information (how good they did relatively to others).
Also:
- Children who were intelligence praised lied more about their scores (being smarter /
better than children in effort praise and control group -> these 2 groups scored equal)
Study #2 on students making a transition to 7th grade
Results:
- The growth mindset group math grades go up after the intervention.
- The math grades of the control group go down a little bit after intervention.
Also:
- In the growth mindset grouped more people increased their motivation compared to
the control group.
A study of mindset and management decisions
- When having a growth mindset, perceived self-efficacy stays high, while with a stable
identity belief this perceived self-efficacy goes down.
- With a growth mindset, people set goals for themselves, while entity mindset
individuals did less.
- Efficient use of analytic
strategies kept growing
with a growth mindset,
while with fixed mindset
went down.
- Organizational productivity
stayed high with people
who think skills are
acquirable (growth
mindset), while it went
down with people with
fixed mindset.
Web lectures week 2
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