The Social Psychology of Communication
1. What do we talk about?
Communication Goals – Action Assembly Theory - Greene, 1984 (p289-294)
Action assembly theory describes the production of behavior in two essential processes: the
retrieval of procedural elements from long-term memory, and the organization of these
elements to form an output representation of action to be taken.
For example, assembly is considered a top-to-bottom process that begins with more general
strategy and goes to a more specific idea about communicating the specific message.
The idea of procedural record is at the center of action assembly. These records contain
information about action, outcomes, and situations. These records are locked in the
individual's memory where it remembers past behaviors for the future.
The theory says that when watch people communicate it looks complex and like chaos. But
that is an illusion, it says that all those complex things are buildup from smaller units of
action outcome contingencies -> People have ideas about when I do this, this will happen. >
people have ideas about how other people will react to them. We know this from experience,
but also from movies etc (modeling). So we have a lot of action outcome contingencies in our
procedural memory. When we want something, we make a goal. Based of all the options in
our procedural memory, all relevant action outcome contingencies light up. Then, I take into
account the conceptual memory and combine this with a set of outcome contingencies and
will think about how my goal can come true. So there is a need and a goal, you get the right
contingencies in the right context all before you communicate. Then when you say the
sentence it looks simple and just a new sentence, but it is all buildup from action-outcome
contingencies from your procedural memory in your head.
Speech Events – Goldsmith et al., 1996
The aim of this study is to develop a descriptive taxonomy of dyadic speech events in
everyday relating and employ it to explore functions of interpersonal communication.
,Speech events are the building blocks of interpersonal communication (units of joint social
activity) -> potential useful concept to understand the constitutive function of communication.
The taxonomy of speech events appears to be organized along three dimensions:
formal/goal-directed
important/deep/involving
positive valence
Everyday relating appears to be dominated by six kinds of talk events:
gossip
making plans
joking around
catching up
small talk
recapping the day’s events
Primary Goals – Dillard et al., 1989 (p19-24)
In this paper it is argued that an individual’s activities, prior to and during an interpersonal
influence attempt, may be explained by his or her goals.
1. Primary or influence goals which instigate the influence process
In interpersonal influence attempts, the desire to bring about behavioral change in
a target person is the primary goal. This paper considers that influence goals may
very in strength. The attractiveness of the influence goal determines the source’s
desire to bring abut the sought-after behavioral change in the target.
2. Secondary goals which shape it
This second general class of goals includes objectives of several sorts that derive
directly from more general motivations that are recurrent in a person’s life.
1. Identity goals: internal standards of behavior which may or may not
overlap with expectations about how others would or should behave. They
derive from one’s moral standards, principles for living, and personal
preferences concerning one’s own conduct.
2. Interaction goals: have to do with social appropriateness. They represent
the source’s desire to manage his or her impression successfully.
3. Resource goals: focus is on increasing or maintaining valued assets.
Relational assets
Material assets
Physical assets
4. Arousal management goals: it is assumed that persons have a desire to
maintain a state of arousal which falls within certain idiosyncratically
preferred boundaries.
Distinguishing primary and secondary goals
- Primary or influence goals are considered the more central of the two classes because
they define interpersonal influence situations.
, - Awareness of a primary goal stimulates a consideration of secondary goals.
It is important to note that the notion of influence goals alone has no substance. Rather, that
content must be drawn form the substance of one or more of the secondary goals. Influence
goals are secondary goals which have become temporarily dominant.
Coaching – Abrahams & Michie, 2008
This research aimed to develop and test a theory-linked taxonomy of generally applicable
behavior change techniques. The researches defined a set of theory-linked BCTs that can be
used to characterize and differentiate between intervention designers, adopters, and reviewers.
It is shown that psychologists can reliably judge inclusion and exclusion of these techniques
from published articles and intervention manuals and have illustrated how inclusion of these
techniques can be linked to theory testing. This work demonstrates the feasibility of
characterizing interventions in terms of common BCTs and provides a model for
standardizing published descriptions of intervention content in terms of defined techniques
that can be linked to mediating processes implied by theory. Standard categorization of
intervention content could facilitate theoretical development by clarifying which techniques,
or combination of techniques, are associated witch effective behavior change within and
across behavioral domains. Standardization would also facilitate the design of effective
behavior change interventions and accurate replication of intervention content.
This paper provides a crucial first step toward establishing a common language in terms of
which intervention designers, reviewers, and practitioners can clearly specify the content of
behavior change interventions across domains and so clarify content differences between
them. Adoption of such a taxonomy of BCTs could also facilitate theory testing through meta-
analytic review of intervention effectiveness. In combination with this work, three related
steps could accelerate progress in the science of behavior change.
1. A supplement to the consort and trend statements could require authors to list BCTs
included in their interventions, specifying links between included techniques and
theoretical frameworks used to conceptualize potential change mechanisms.
2. Authors could be required to describe all intervention features listed by Davidson et al.
3. Standardized intervention manuals should be prepared for all published intervention
evaluations so that researchers and practitioners can discover how techniques
constituting the content design of interventions were operationalized in practice.
2 How do we speak?
Paralanguage/Prosody – Poyatos, 2002
Paralanguage = the nonverbal voice qualities, voice modifiers and independent utterances
produced or conditioned in the areas covered by the supraglottal cavities, the laryngeal cavity
and the infraglottal cavities, down to the abdominal muscles, as well as the intervening
momentary silences, which we use consciously or unconsciously supporting, or contradicting
