IPC SAMENVATTING
HC1 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF IPC AND NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
Literatuur: Hargie 1,2 & Stone intro, 1
Video: The still face experiment
IPC processes determine:
Mutual understanding, agreement vs. disagreement, mutual relationship,
achievement of goals
People with good interpersonal skills have:
Less stress, higher self-efficacy
More satisfaction in intimate relationships
More friends, less depression / loneliness / anxiety
Interventions and advice
Communication within companies (internal comm.)
Communication companies with customers (example: webcare)
Healthcare: e.g., doctor-patient communication, e-health
Also related to own effectivity
Transactional model is better model of communication.
= cooperative / collaboration, ongoing process, adapting, create mutual meaning
Coordinated Management of Meaning (Pearce & Cronen, 1980)
Transactive
Joint action
Interdependence, reciprocity
Interpretations about meanings and intentions on both sides
Much is left unsaid
Language is ambiguous
example
Derek Bentley (England, 1952)
“Let him have it”
Interpretations also play a role on conversation- and relationship level
Misinterpretations
Example: first meet
(unintentional) touch / eye contact
Sexual overperception bias: the tendency to believe that others are more sexually
interested in you than they actually are (Haselton, 2003)
o Particularly found for men (not women)
Link #metoo?
,How do we understand each other?
“it is a common misperception that language use has primarily to do with words and what
they mean. It does not. It has primarily to do with people and what they mean. It is
essentially about speakers’ intentions? (Clark & Schober, 1992)
How do we come to understand each other’s intentions?
Influence of: context, medium, behavior of conversation partners
Context and mutual understanding
Meaning of verbal and nonverbal behavior
Context dimensions:
Set induction
Physical environment
Temporal factors (time)
Social psychological factors
o Interpersonal relationship (roles, status, history)
o Communication history (common ground)
Culture
Type of situation (e.g., scripts = expectancies you have of certain situations)
Behavior and mutual understanding
Behavior of conversation partners determines the course of conversations
interdependence
The medium and mutual understanding
Medium determines which (interactive) behavior is possible, which signals go back and forth
Important topics in IPC:
Constraints and affordance of different media
Media richness
Social presence
NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
Purposes of nonverbal communication
1. Replacing, complementing and modifying verbal communication
2. Regulating conversations
3. Conveying personal and social identity
4. Contextualizing interaction
5. Negotiating relationships
,Negotiating relationships:
Nonconscious mimicry = copy each other’s nonverbal behavior
Chameleon effect (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999)
Mimicry occurs automatically (unconscious, no awareness, unintentional,
uncontrollable)
With more mimicry: interaction experienced as more pleasant, interaction partner
judged as nicer
o Example: waitress receives more tips when subtly mimicking customers
Cf. Communication Accommodation Theory
Neurological explanation: mirror neurons
o Perceiving an action activates motor cortex “motor readiness” to perform
the same action
Nonverbal complementary (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003)
What happens with power related nonverbal behavior? (status, dominance)
Mimicry of complementarity?
o Dominant body posture: taking…
Experiment 1 results: participants tend to spontaneously take complementary body
posture (dominant / submissive)
Experiment 2 results: with complementary (opposite posture): interaction
experienced as more pleasant, partner judged as nicer, with similarity in posture
(mimicry) interaction is experienced as relatively unpleasant.
Negotiating hierarchy
Nonverbal ‘status’ position
Submissive:
o Hedges
o Hesitations
o Tag questions (toch?)
o Higher vocal pitch, low volume
o Eye gaze: divert
o Turn taking, not interrupting
Interpersonal circumplex models
It also depends on personality and context
Prolong eye contact (vs. gaze aversion): a sign of dominance
o Gaze contest
Onderzoek: dispositionally dominant persons “automatically lock eyes” with angry
faces
o Faces presented subliminally (outside awareness) on computer screen
o Participants with a dominant personality take longer to look away from angry
faces
, HC1 BOEKNOTITIES
Hargie 1 + 2, Stone intro + 1
Message = content of communication
Medium = means of conveying the message
Presentational: voice, body, face
Representational: books, paintings, architecture, photographs
Technological/mechanical: internet, phone, television, radio
Channel = that which connects the medium
Vocal-auditory: channel which carries speech
Gestural-visual: channel which facilitates much nonverbal communication
Chemical-olfactory: channel accommodating smell
Cutaneous-tactile: channel which enables us to make interpersonal use of touch
Code = system of meaning shared by a group
Noise = any interference with the success of the communicative act that distorts or degrades
the message, meaning taken is not that intended
Feedback = if the message has been successfully received and the impact that it has had
Context = physical, social, chronological, cultural, relational
Personal characteristics
Attitude
Affective: how one feels about the target
Behavioral: one’s predisposition to respond in a certain way towards the target
Cognitive: one’s knowledge or beliefs about the target
Personality = complex of unique traits and characteristics of an individual
Appearance
Age: patronizing communication with the elderly
Simplification strategies: basic vocabulary, simple, structure
Clarification strategies: loud, slow, repetition
Diminutives: saying “honey”, “love”, “dear”
Demeaning emotional tone: verwaand
Secondary baby talk: talking as if they are a baby
Avoidance: discussing the older person in their presence with a relative indirectly
Overly controlling: being impatient
Gender
