SPCH 010
Interpersonal communication 

Week 3

Culture
​Culture: The relatively specialized lifestyle of a group of people. This includes: values, beliefs, ways of behaving and communicating, artifacts. 
Universal Level: Characteristics that are shared by all humans (biological traits)
Individual Level: characteristics that are unique to a particular individual.
Collective Level: certain values, attitudes and, consequently, behavior, are shared with other members of a group (culture, subculture)
Enculturation: learning culture into which you were born
Acculturation: learning a new culture.
Social identity: the part of the self-concept that is based on group membership.
Co-culture: a group whose values, beliefs or behaviors set it apart from the larger culture, similarities such as age, race, nationality, religion, or activity.
Subculture: group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs to, often maintaining some of its principles such as hippies, goths and bikers.
Salience: the weight we attach to a particular person or phenomenon.
Low-context culture: Language expresses thoughts, feelings, and ideas as directly as possible (individualistic cultures).
High context culture: Relies heavily on subtle, often nonverbal cues to maintain social harmony. Indirect and vague (collectivistic cultures).

Cultural traits:

• Power distance
• Individualism (open choices) /collectivism(prescribed choices)
• uncertainty avoidance high(desire for stable and predictable) trade security for conformity.
• achievement (assertiveness and ambition/group membership)
• high (authoritarian)-and low (not punished for challenging authority)-context cultures

Interpersonal Trust. 

• Trust can be defined as non opportunistic behavior.
• A person whom we trust will not take advantage of a situation to promote his own interest.

Verbal Communication styles

• Directness and Indirectness
• Elaborateness and succinctness
• Formality and Informality

Developing Intercultural Communication Competence

• Motivation and Attitude/ Desire
• Tolerance for ambiguity/Living with uncertainty
• Open mindedness
  • ​Beware of ethnocentrism
  • Beware of prejudice
  • Beware of stereotyping
• Knowledge and skill
  • Mindfullness
  • Passive observation/active strategies
  • Use appropriate self-disclosure

Week 4

The Self/Identity
​American philosopher W. D. Ross offered a partial answer to this question by arguing that human beings have certain moral duties—obligations that are self-evident at first glance. Among these are the duties of:
1. Fidelity: to keep promises
2. Reparation: to make up for any wrongs committed
3. Gratitude: to feel and express appreciation for the kindness of others
4. Beneficence: to promote goodness and help others
5. Self-improvement: to become the best person we possibly can
6. Justice: to distribute goods fairly, according to what others have earned and deserve
7. Non-maleficence: to refrain from injuring others and to prevent injury

Communication and the Self

• self-concept and self-esteem - SC is who you think you are, the relatively stable set of perceptions you hold of yourself. SE involves evaluation of self-worth.
• biological and social roots of the self - your personality: characteristic ways that you think and behave across a variety of situations. Tends to be stable throughout your life and often grows more pronounced over time. to a degree, part of our genetic makeup.
  • socialization and the self-concept: how others shape our self-concept
  • reflected appraisal: a self-concept we develop that reflects the way we believe others see us.
  • significant others: people whose opinions we especially value
  • comparison: evaluating ourselves in terms of how we compare with others
  • reference groups: those which we compare ourselves against, which play an important role in shaping our view of ourselves
• characteristics of the self-concept (is subjective) why people sell themselves short:
  • distorted self-evaluation
  • obsolete information
  • distorted feedback
  • emphasis on perfection
  • social expectations
  • The self concept resists change
    • cognitive conservatism: to seek and attend to information that conforms to an existing self-concept.
    • self delusion and lack of growth
• culture, gender, and identity: communication apprehension, individualism vs collectivism, sex and gender, 
• the self-fullfiling prophecy and communication - occurs when a person's expectations of an event and his/her subsequent behavior based on those expectations make the event more likely to occur than would otherwise have been true
  1. Holding an expectation (for yourself (self-imposed) or others)
  2. Behaving in accordance with that expectation
  3. The expectation coming to pass
  4. Reinforcing the original expectations
• changing your self-concept: have a realistic perception of yourself, have realistic expectations, have the will to change

I walk a tightrope of unique design.
I teeter, falter, recover and bow.
You applaud.
I run forward, backward, hesitate and bow.
You applaud.
If you don’t applaud I’ll Fall.
Cheer me! Hurray me!
Or you push me
Down.
—Lenni Shender Goldstein

Self-love, My liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
—Shakespeare,
King Henry V

Presenting the Self: Communication as Identity management

• public and private selves, the perceived self is a reflection of the self-concept. The person you believe yourself to be in moments of honest self-examination. In contrast, there is the presenting self: the public image, the way we want others to view us - the face. Typically a socially approved image.
• characteristics of identity management - we strive to construct multiple identities, in the course of even a single day, most people perform a variety of roles. The ability to construct multiple identities in one element of communication competence. It is collaborative, it can be deliberate or unconscious, it varied by situation, and people differ in their degree of identity management.
• why manage identities? To start and manage relationships, to gain compliance of others, to save others' face, and to explore new selves.
  
• how do we manage identities?
  
  • face-to-face impression. Dimensions of identity management:
    
    • choice of setting: physical items we use to influence how others view us
    • appearance: to fit the part (tattoos)
    • Manner, such as what someone says, along with nonverbal behaviors
  • mediated communication such as a resume, letter,gifts, media. Gives you more control 

​

• Identity management and honesty

Week 5

Perception
The perception Process:

• Selection - Salience =intense stimuli, repetitious stimuli, contrast or change, and motives determine what information we select from our environment. It also means ignoring other cues.
• Organization - making sense of stimuli by noticing some data that stands out like optical illusions (perceptual schema). Categories such as physical ie gender, attractiveness, weight, age, social roles, interaction style, pshychological traits and Memberships. Cons are stereotyping.  
  • punctuation: describes the determination of causes and effects in a series of interactions.
• Interpretation - how we interpret: degree of involvement with the other person, personal experience, assumptions about human behavior, attitudes, expectations, knowledge, self concept, and relationship satisfaction.
• Negotiation - a big part of sense-making athat occurs between and among people as they influence on another's perceptions and try to achieve a shared perspective. 
  • Narratives: an exchange of stories we use to describe our personal worlds. Shared narratives don't have to be accurate to be powerful. 

Influences on Perception

• Physiological Influences - Although the same events exist "out there" each of us receives different images because of our unique perceptual hardware such as senses, age, health & fatigue, hunger, biological cycles, and psychological challenges (like AD/HD).
• Cultural Differences - the gap between people from different backgrounds. 
  • ethnocentrism: the attitude that one's own culture is superior to others. 
• Social Roles such as: gender roles, occupational roles, and relationship roles.

Common tendencies in Perception

• We Judge Ourselves more charitably than others self-serving bias in attempt to convince ourselves and others that the positive face we show the world is true.
• We cling to first impressions: halo effect is the tendency to form an overall positive impression of a person on the basis of one positive characteristic - usually comes physical attractiveness.
• We assume that others are similar to us
• We are influenced by the obious

Perception Checking 

• Elements of perception checking
  • nonverbal congruency: a perception check can succeed only if your nonverbal behavior reflects the open-mindedness of your words (glares or accusing tone)
  • cultural rules: straight forward approach of perception checking has the best chance of working in low-context cultures (ones in which members use language as directly as possible)
  • face saving: Along with clarifying meaning, perception checking can be a face-saving way to raise an issue without directly threatening or attacking the other person.
• Perception Checking considerations

Empathy, Cognitive complexity, and communication

• Empathy - the ability to re-create another person's perspective, to experience the world from the other's point of view.
  • perspective taking: an attempt to take on the viewpoint of another person. This requires a suspension of judgement so that for the moment you set aside your own opinions.
  • emotional dimension: helps us get closer to experiencing other's feelings, to gain a sense of their fear, joy, sadness, etc. 
  • concern: for the welfare of the other person, where we genuinely care about their well-being.
• Cognitive complexity - the ability to construct a variety of frameworks for viewing an issue.

The pillow method: a problem has four sides and a middle.

1. ​I'm right, you're wrong : detailing this position takes little effort and provides little new information
2. You're right, I'm wrong: Finding flaws in your position and trying to support the other's position requires discipline and a certain amount of courage
3. Both right, both wrong: it should be clear that there is some merit in both points of view and that each side has its demerits. Taking a more evenhanded look at the issue can lead you to be less critical and more understanding of another's point of view. it also helps find commonalities between your position and the other's.
4. The issue isn't as important as it seems: the impact of even the most traumatic events usually lessens over time. we learn to accept them and get on with it.
5. There is truth in all four perspectives

Midterm sample questions to study

1.We gain an idea of who we are from the way other react us.
A. True
 
2. In scientific jargon, any interference with communication is termed
noise
A. True
   
3. According to the qualitative definition, all two-person interaction is interpersonal.
 B. False
 
4. In interpersonal contexts, the content dimension is more important that the relational dimension of
a message.
  B. False
 
5. Which of the following allows us to use the terms
dyadic communication and interpersonal communication interchangeably?

1. quantitative

 
6. An example of psychological noise is
C. insecurity
 
7. Which of the following is not a valid reason for studying communication?
B. wanting to manipulate weakness in others
 
8. Your first encounter at a job interview is affected by the interviewer's scowling facial expression. Which characteristic of communication best describes the situation?
C. Communication is a transactional process.
 
9. Environments are also referred to as:
A. contexts
 
10. Marshall McLuhan's “global village” metaphor suggests:
A. members of every nation are connected by communication technology
 
11. In North American culture categories such as age, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, physical disabilities and religion are all considered
C. co-cultures
 
12. Rather than classifying some exchanges as intercultural and others as free from cultural influences, it's more accurate to talk about
A. degrees of cultural significance
 
13. Low-context cultures tend to value and emphasize
A. straight talk and assertiveness
 
14. If a group of preschool children play in a park and do not notice that their parents come from different countries or that they speak different languages, they are experiencing:
B. minimal salience on culture
 
15. The view that self-concept can be seen as a product of the messages you've received throughout
your life is known as
A. reflected appraisal
 
16. Which of the following is supported by research related to how the self-concept develops?
A. Self-concept does not exist at birth.
B. Self-concept is almost totally a product of social interaction.
C. Children recognize “self” as distinct from surroundings at about age 6 or 7 months.
D. All of the above are supported.
 
17. Which of the following is NOT an alternative to self-disclosure?
D. hinting
18. We attach meaning to our experiences using which of the following?
B. selection, organization, interpretation
 
19. Which step of perception is based on the fact that we notice some messages and ignore others?
A. selection
 
20. In Western cultures, such as the United States, silence is most often viewed as
B. an embarrassment
 
21. Treating people as individuals instead of assuming they possess the same characteristics as every
other member of the group to which you assign them is called
B. decategorizing
 
22. Empathy requires
A. open-mindedness
B. commitment
C. imagination
D. all of the above

Group Presentation

Notes Weeks 10+