Interpersoonlijke communicatie
Lecture 1:
Interpersonal communication determines mutual understanding, agreement vs.
disagreement, mutual relationships, achievement of goals, etc.
People with good interpersonal skills tend to have less stress, a higher self-efficacy
and more satisfaction in intimate relationships (eg. more friends, less depression/loneliness)
Internal communication: communication within companies.
The source-receiver model (linear)
- Person 1 → channel, encode → person 2 → decode
(eg. person 1 wants to break up with person 2)
The transactional model
- Person 2 gives a reaction onto the message person 1 delivered (eg. confusion,
asking for explanation) → noise exists, what p1 says, influences p2 & vice versa.
Interpretations: when two (or more) people are talking, each of them has a different
perspective → how does someone receive the message, how does someone interpret the
message?
Language plays an important role here: if someone screams or raises their voice at
someone else, the other person will interpret the message way differently than when it’s
spoken with a normal tone.
A message or question can be interpreted as positive or negative:
eg. Person 1: “You probably had a fantastic time with him again today?”
Possible outcomes:
● Positive: “yeah I had, thanks for asking!”
● Negative: “That question sounds rather sarcastic, are you jealous?”
Misinterpretations: plays a role during non-verbal communication (eg. sudden touch of
someone or eye contact at an awkward moment → can be interpreted as intentional, while
it’s not.)
eg. A woman and man are talking about football. The man suddenly touches the woman on
her arm without any intention. The woman interprets this as a sexual intention and pushes
him away.
According to Clark and Schober: “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 the speakers' intentions.”
Important topics in IPC:
- Common ground/grounding
- Perspective taking (own perspective vs. other’s)
- Egocentrism/third story
- Self disclosure
,How do we understand each other’s intentions?
- Influence of context: is it appropriate for someone of the opposite sex to place their
hand on your lower back when it’s 11AM after a coffee date or 2AM in a club?
(physical environment), who puts the hand on your back, what is the relationship
between you two? Is it appropriate when your partner of 2 years does it or a random
friend?
Set induction: how an interaction starts: what is the tone, what are the
intentions, etc.
First date script (Pryor & Merluzzi):
● Male arrives
● Female greets male at door
● Female introduces date to parents or roommate
● Male and female discuss plans and make small talk
● They go to a movie
● They get something to eat or drink
● Male takes female home
● If interested, he remarks about a future date
● They kiss
● They say goodbye and go home
- Influence of the behaviour of conversation partners: behaviour of conversation
partners determines the course of conversations.
Important topics in IPC:
- Non verbal behaviour: haptics, kinesics, posture, gaze, etc.
- (Non) verbal dominance: turn taking in talking (interrupting, silences, talking
about own perspectives)
- Questioning (open vs. closed, leading, probing)
- Reflecting, reinforcement
- Listening
- Response styles: assertiveness vs. aggression
When you listen to another person, you try to understand what the other thinks → mutual
understanding.
- Influence on the medium: medium determines which (interactive) behaviour is
possible, which signals go back and forth.
Important topics in IPC:
- Constraints and affordances of different media
- Media richness
- Social presence
Nonverbal behaviour mimicry (Chameleon Effect):
● Experimental manipulation: Person 1 (= Confederate) ‘shakes foot’ and person 2 (=
Participant) ‘rubs face’ during an interaction = independent variable.
● Hidden camera records interaction: person 3 (= Coder) counts the frequency of ‘foot
shakes’ and ‘face rubs’ = dependent variable.
,Explanation table: The moment the first person (confederate) rubs their face, person 2
(participant) tends to start rubbing their face as well, whereas some people start shaking
their foot.
When you turn it around and the confederate starts shaking their foot, the participant tends
to start shaking their foot more than they would rub their face.
The results show that people tend to copy the action of someone else rather than doing
something different. This is called the Chameleon Effect.
Nonverbal mimicry: mimicking certain moves of another person, especially a person who is
also part of an interaction/a conversation. Mimicry occurs automatically (unconscious,
unaware)
With more mimicry, we tend to experience the interaction as more pleasant and the
interaction partner is marked as nicer. (eg. a waitress receives a higher tip by slightly
mimicking the customer’s behaviour)
Nonverbal complementarity: mimicking the other person’s body posture.
- Dominant body posture: taking up a lot of space, making yourself bigger. (eg. sitting
up straight, looking up)
- Submissive body posture: taking a small space of room, making yourself smaller. (eg.
crumpled up, looking down)
Nonverbal complementarity:
● Experiment I: participant works together on a task with a confederate who adopts
either dominant or submissive body posture → confederate positioned in 1 or 2 body
postures, the participant acts spontaneously.
, Confederate dominant, participant adopts submissive body posture.
Confederate submissive, participant adopts dominant body posture.
Results E1:
Participants tend to spontaneously take complementary body posture (opposite as
the confederate).
Interaction is experienced as more pleasant and the partner is judged as nicer.
● Experiment II: both confederate and participant are positioned in 1 or 2 body
postures.
One dominant, other submissive (= complementarity)
Both dominant, or both submissive (= similarity)
Results E2:
With complementarity (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: dominant body posture shows dominance
in a conversation or hierarchy.
● Submissive:
- Hedges (“sort of”, “maybe”)
- Hesitations
- Tag questions (eg. “right?”)
- Higher vocal pitch, low volume
- Turn taking: not interrupting
- Eye gaze: divert (looking away) → prolonged eye contact is a sign of
dominance.
Interpersonal circumplex models:
Every value on this scale is the opposite of each other. When one is dominant (+), the value
on the other side is submissive (-).
