Interpersonal Communication
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WEEK1
LECTURE 1
The significance of IPC
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 on intimate relationships
Interventions and advice
Communication within companies (internal comm)
Communication companies with costumers (webcare)
Healthcare doctor-patient relationship
Own effectivity
The source- receiver model (linear)
Coordinated Management of Meaning (Pearce & Cronen, 1980)
Conversation as:
Transactive
Joint action
Interdependence, reciprocity
Interpretations about meaning and intentions on both sides
Much is left unsaid
Language is ambiguous!
Derek Bentley)
"Let him have it"
MISINTERPRETATION
Example:
(unintentionally) touch/eye contact.
, Sexual overperception bias: the tendency to believe that others are more sexually interested in you
than they actually are (Haselton, 2003)
particularly found for men (not women)
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 others' intentions?
Important topics in IPC:
Common ground / grounding
Perspective taking (own perspective vs the other's)
Egocentrism vs the third story
Self disclosure
Context and mutual understanding
Context dimensions:
Set induction
Physical environment
Temporal factors
Social psychological factors
Interpersonal relationship (roles, status, history)
Communication history (common ground)
Culture
Type of situation (e.g. 'scripts')
Behavior and mutual understanding
Behavior of conversations partners determines the course of conversations
Interdependance
Important topics in IPC:
Non-verbal behavior: haptics, kinesics, posture, gaze etc.
(Non) verbal dominance: turn taking (interrupting, silence)
Questioning (open vs closed, leading probing)
Reflecting, reinforcement
Listening
Response styles: assertiveness, aggression
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
Replacing, complementing and modifying verbal communication
Regulating conversations
Conveying personal and social identity
Contextualising interactions
Negotiation relationship
Negotiation relationships
-Non-conscious Mimicry
Facial mimicry: imitation of facial expression
Speech linguistic style matching
Emotion/ mood contagion
Behavior matching
Non-verbal Mimicry
Mimicry occurs automatically (unconscious, no awareness, unintentional, uncontrollable)
With more mimicry: interaction experienced as more pleasant, interaction partner judged as nicer.
Cf. Communication Accommodation Theory (ICW), Howie Giles (diverging)
Neurological explanation: Mirror neurons
Perceiving an action activates motor cortex --> "motor readiness" to perform the same action.
Nonverbal complementarity
Tiedens & Fragale (2003)
What happens with power related nonverbal behavior? (status, dominance)
, Mimicry of complementarity?
Dominant body posture: taking up a lot of space (posture explansion)
Submissive body posture: taking up little space. make yourself smaller (postural constriction)
Participants works together on task with confederate who adopts either dominant or submissive body
posture
Experiment 1: confederate positioned in 1 of 2 body postures. Participant acts spontaneously
Results:
Participants tend to spontaneously take complementary body posture:
Confederate dominant > participant adopts submissive posture (small body span)
Confederate submissive > participant adopts dominant posture (large body span)
Experiment 2: both confederate are participant are positioned in 1 and 2 body postures
One dominant other submissive (=complementary)
Both dominant, or both submissive (=similarity)
Results:
With complementary (opposite posture): interaction experienced as more pleasant, partner judged as
nicer
With similarity in posture (cf. mimicry), interaction is experienced as relatively unpleasant.
Negotiation hierarchy
Nonverbal "status" position
Submissive:
Hedges ("sort of, maybe")
Hesitations
Tag questions (touch?)
Higher vocal pitch, low volume
Turn taking: not interrupting
Eye gaze: divert