i am assignment on self perception

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6.3 Improving Perception

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Discuss strategies for improving self-perception.
• Discuss strategies for improving perception of others.
• Employ perception checking to improve perception of self and others.

So far, we have learned about the perception process and how we perceive. Now we will turn to a discussion of how to improve our perception by becoming aware of how schema, socializing forces, self-fulfilling prophecies, and negative patterns of thinking can distort our ability to describe and evaluate ourselves. How we perceive others can be improved by developing better listening and empathetic skills, becoming aware of stereotypes and prejudice, developing self-awareness through self-reflection, and engaging in perception checking.

Improving Self-Perception

Our self-perceptions can and do change. Recall from module 1 that we have an overall self-concept and self-esteem that are relatively stable, and we also have context-specific self-perceptions. Context-specific self-perceptions vary depending on the person with whom we are interacting, our emotional state, and the subject matter being discussed. Becoming aware of the process of self-perception and the various components of our self-concept will help you understand and improve your self-perceptions.

Since self-concept and self-esteem are so subjective and personal, it would be inaccurate to say that someone’s self-concept is “right” or “wrong.” Instead, we can identify negative and positive aspects of self-perceptions as well as discuss common barriers to forming accurate and positive self-perceptions. We can also identify common patterns that people experience that interfere with their ability to monitor, understand, and change their self-perceptions. Changing your overall self-concept or self-esteem is not an easy task given that these are overall reflections on who we are and how we judge ourselves that are constructed over many interactions. A variety of life-changing events can relatively quickly alter our self-perceptions. Think of how your view of self changed when you moved from high school to college. Similarly, other people’s self-perceptions likely change when they enter into a committed relationship, have a child, make a geographic move, or start a new job.

Aside from experiencing life-changing events, we can make slower changes to our self-perceptions with concerted efforts aimed at becoming more competent communicators through self-monitoring and reflection. As you actively try to change your self-perceptions, do not be surprised if you encounter some resistance from significant others. When you change or improve your self-concept, your communication will also change, which may prompt other people to respond to you differently. Although you may have good reasons for changing certain aspects of your self-perception, others may become unsettled or confused by your changing behaviors and communication. Remember, people try to increase predictability and decrease uncertainty within personal relationships. For example, many students begin to take their college education more seriously during their junior and senior years. As these students begin to change their self-concept to include the role of “serious student preparing to graduate and enter the professional world,” they likely have friends that want to maintain the “semiserious student who doesn’t exert much consistent effort and prefers partying to studying” role that used to be a shared characteristic of both students’ self-concepts. As the first student’s behavior changes to accommodate this new aspect of his or her self-concept, it may upset the friend who was used to weeknights spent hanging out rather than studying. Let’s now discuss some suggestions to help avoid common barriers to accurate and positive self-perceptions and patterns of behavior that perpetuate negative self-perception cycles.

Avoid Reliance on Rigid Schema

As we learned earlier, schemata are sets of information based on cognitive and experiential knowledge that guide our interaction. We rely on schemata almost constantly to help us make sense of the world around us. Sometimes schemata become so familiar that we use them as scripts, which prompts mindless communication and can lead us to overlook new information that may need to be incorporated into the schema. It’s important to remain mindful of new or contradictory information that may warrant revision of a schema. Being mindful is difficult, however, especially since we often unconsciously rely on schemata. Think about how when you’re driving a familiar route you sometimes fall under “highway hypnosis.” Despite all the advanced psychomotor skills needed to drive, such as braking, turning, and adjusting to other drivers, we can pull into a familiar driveway or parking lot having driven the whole way on autopilot. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. But have you slipped into autopilot on a familiar route only to remember that you are actually going somewhere else after you’ve already missed your turn? This example illustrates the importance of keeping our schemata flexible and avoiding mindless communication.

Be Critical of Socializing Forces

In module 1 we learned that family, friends, sociocultural norms, and the media are just some of the socializing forces that influence our thinking and therefore influence our self-perception. These powerful forces serve positive functions but can also set into motion negative patterns of self-perception. Two examples can illustrate the possibility for people to critique and resist socializing forces in order to improve their self-perception. The first deals with physical appearance and notions of health, and the second deals with cultural identities and discrimination.

We have already discussed how the media presents us with narrow and often unrealistic standards for attractiveness. Even though most of us know that these standards don’t represent what is normal or natural for the human body, we internalize these ideals, which results in various problems ranging from eating disorders, to depression, to poor self-esteem. A relatively overlooked but controversial and interesting movement that has emerged partially in response to these narrow representations of the body is the fat acceptance movement. The fat acceptance movement has been around for more than thirty years, but it has more recently gotten public attention due to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Kirstie Alley, who after years of publicly struggling with weight issues have embraced a view that weight does not necessarily correspond to health. Conflicting scientific studies make it difficult to say conclusively how strong the correlation is between weight and health, but it seems clear that a view that promotes healthy living and positive self-esteem over unconditional dieting is worth exploring more given the potential public health implications of distorted body image and obesity.

Cultural influences related to identities and difference can also lead to distorted self-perceptions, especially for people who occupy marginalized or oppressed identities. While perception research has often been used to support the notion that individuals who are subjected to discrimination, like racial and ethnic minorities, are likely to have low self-esteem because they internalize negative societal views, this is not always the case (Armenta & Hunt, 2009). In fact, even some early perception research showed that minorities do not just passively accept the negative views society places on them. Instead, they actively try to maintain favorable self-perceptions in the face of discriminatory attitudes. Numerous studies have shown that people in groups that are the targets of discrimination may identify with their in-group more because of this threat, which may actually help them maintain psychological well-being. In short, they reject the negative evaluations of the out-group and find refuge and support in their identification with others who share their marginalized status.

Beware of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Self-fulfilling prophecies are thought and action patterns in which a person’s false belief triggers a behavior that makes the initial false belief actually or seemingly come true (Guyll et al., 2010). For example, let’s say a student’s biology lab instructor is a Chinese person who speaks English as a second language. The student falsely believes that the instructor will not be a good teacher because he speaks English with an accent. Because of this belief, the student doesn’t attend class regularly and doesn’t listen actively when they do attend. Because of these behaviors, the student fails the biology lab, which then reinforces their original belief that the instructor wasn’t a good teacher.

Although the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies was originally developed to be applied to social inequality and discrimination, it has since been applied in many other contexts, including interpersonal communication. This research has found that some people are chronically insecure, meaning they are very concerned about being accepted by others but constantly feel that other people will dislike them. This can manifest in relational insecurity, which is again based on feelings of inferiority resulting from social comparison with others perceived to be more secure and superior. Such people often end up reinforcing their belief that others will dislike them because of the behaviors triggered by their irrational belief. For example, an insecure person assumes that his date will not like him. During the date he doesn’t engage in much conversation, discloses negative information about himself, and exhibits anxious behaviors. Because of these behaviors, his date forms a negative impression and suggests they not see each other again, reinforcing his original belief that the date wouldn’t like him. The example shows how a pattern of thinking can lead to a pattern of behavior that reinforces the thinking, and so on. Luckily, experimental research shows that self-affirmation techniques can be successfully used to intervene in such self-fulfilling prophecies. Thinking positive thoughts and focusing on personality strengths can stop this negative cycle of thinking and has been shown to have positive effects on academic performance, weight loss, and interpersonal relationships (Stinston et al., 2011).

Create and Maintain Supporting Interpersonal Relationships

Aside from giving yourself affirming messages to help with self-perception, it is important to find interpersonal support. Although most people have at least some supportive relationships, many people also have people in their lives who range from negative to toxic. When people find themselves in negative relational cycles, whether it is with friends, family, or romantic partners, it is difficult to break out of those cycles. But we can all make choices to be around people that will help us be who we want to be and not be around people who hinder our self-progress. This notion can also be taken to the extreme, however. It would not be wise to surround yourself with people who only validate you and do not constructively challenge you, because this too could lead to distorted self-perceptions.

Beware of Distorted Patterns of Thinking and Acting

You already know from our discussion of attribution errors that we all have perceptual biases that distort our thinking. Many of these are common, and we often engage in distorted thinking without being conscious of it. Learning about some of the typical negative patterns of thinking and acting may help us acknowledge and intervene in them. One such pattern involves self-esteem and overcompensation.

People with low self-esteem may act in ways that overcompensate for their feelings of low self-worth and other insecurities. Whether it’s the businessman buying his midlife crisis Corvette, the “country boy” adding monster tires to his truck, or the community leader who wears several carats of diamonds everywhere she goes, people often turn to material possessions to try to boost self-esteem (Figure 6.12). While these purchases may make people feel better in the short term, they may have negative financial effects that can exacerbate negative self-perceptions and lead to interpersonal conflict. People also compensate for self-esteem with their relational choices. A person who is anxious about his career success may surround himself with people who he deems less successful than himself. In this case, being a big fish in a small pond helps some people feel better about themselves when they engage in social comparison.

People can also get into a negative thought and action cycle by setting unrealistic goals and consistently not meeting them. Similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy, people who set unrealistic goals can end up with negative feelings of self-efficacy, which as we learned earlier, can negatively affect self-esteem and self-concept. As we learned in module 3, the goals we set should be challenging but progressive, meaning we work to meet a realistic goal, then increase our expectations and set another goal, and so on.

Some people develop low self-esteem because they lack accurate information about themselves, which may be intentional or unintentional. A person can intentionally try to maintain high self-esteem by ignoring or downplaying negative comments and beliefs and focusing on positive evaluations. While this can be a good thing, it can also lead to a distorted self-concept. There is a middle ground between beating yourself up or dwelling on the negative and ignoring constructive feedback about weaknesses and missing opportunities to grow as a person. Conversely, people who have low self-esteem or negative self-concepts may discount or ignore positive feedback.

Overcoming Barriers to Perceiving Others

There are many barriers that prevent us from competently perceiving others. While some are more difficult to overcome than others, they can all be addressed by raising our awareness of the influences around us and committing to monitoring, reflecting on, and changing some of our communication habits. Whether it is our lazy listening skills, lack of empathy, or stereotypes and prejudice, various filters and blinders influence how we perceive and respond to others.

Develop Empathetic Listening Skills

Effective listening is not easy, and most of us do not make a concerted effort to overcome common barriers to listening. Our fast-paced lives and cultural values that emphasize speaking over listening sometimes make listening feel like a chore. But we shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to make someone else feel better and to open our perceptual field to new sources of information. Empathetic listening can also help us expand our self- and social awareness by learning from other people’s experiences and taking on different perspectives. Empathetic listening is challenging because it requires cognitive and emotional investment that goes beyond the learning of a skill set.

If one person’s biggest problem is getting enough money together to buy a new cell phone and another person’s biggest problem is getting enough money together to get much needed medication, each of these people is likely experiencing a similar amount of stress. As an outsider, we might look at this example and think about how a cell phone isn’t necessary to live but the medication is. But everyone’s reality is his or her own reality, and when you can concede that someone’s reality isn’t like yours and you are OK with that, then you have overcome a significant barrier to becoming more aware of the perception process.

Beware of Stereotypes and Prejudice

Stereotypes  are sets of beliefs that we develop about groups, which we then apply to individuals from that group. Stereotypes are schemata that are taken too far, as they reduce and ignore a person’s individuality and the diversity present within a larger group of people. Stereotypes can be based on cultural identities, physical appearance, behavior, speech, beliefs, and values, among other things, and are often caused by a lack of information about the target person or group (Guyll et al., 2010). Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral, but all run the risk of lowering the quality of our communication.

While the negative effects of stereotypes are pretty straightforward in that they devalue people and prevent us from adapting and revising our schemata, positive stereotypes also have negative consequences. For example, the “model minority” stereotype has been applied to some Asian cultures in the United States. Seemingly positive stereotypes of Asian Americans as hardworking, intelligent, and willing to adapt to “mainstream” culture are not always received as positive and can lead some people within these communities to feel objectified, ignored, or overlooked.

Stereotypes can also lead to double standards that point to larger cultural and social inequalities. There are many more words to describe a sexually active female than a male, and the words used for females are disproportionately negative, while those used for males are more positive. Since stereotypes are generally based on a lack of information, we must take it upon ourselves to gain exposure to new kinds of information and people, which will likely require us to get out of our comfort zones. When we do meet people, we should base the impressions we make on describable behavior rather than inferred or secondhand information. When stereotypes negatively influence our overall feelings and attitudes about a person or group, prejudiced thinking results.

Prejudice is negative feelings or attitudes toward people based on their identity or identities. Prejudice can have individual or widespread negative effects. At the individual level, a hiring manager may not hire a young man with a physical disability (even though that would be illegal if it were the only reason), which negatively affects that one man. However, if pervasive cultural thinking that people with physical disabilities are mentally deficient leads hiring managers all over the country to make similar decisions, then the prejudice has become a social injustice. In another example, when the disease we know today as AIDS started killing large numbers of people in the early 1980s, response by some health and government officials was influenced by prejudice (Figure 6.13). Since the disease was primarily affecting gay men, Haitian immigrants, and drug users, the disease was prejudged to be a disease that affected only “deviants” and therefore didn’t get the same level of attention it would have otherwise. It took many years, investment of much money, and education campaigns to help people realize that HIV and AIDS do not prejudge based on race or sexual orientation and can affect any human.

Engage in Self-Reflection

A good way to improve your perceptions and increase your communication competence in general is to engage in self-reflection. If a communication encounter doesn’t go well and you want to know why, your self-reflection will be much more useful if you are aware of and can recount your thoughts and actions.

Self-reflection can also help us increase our cultural awareness. Our thought process regarding culture is often “other focused,” meaning that the culture of the other person or group is what stands out in our perception. However, the old adage “know thyself” is appropriate, as we become more aware of our own culture by better understanding other cultures and perspectives. Developing cultural self-awareness often requires us to get out of our comfort zones. Listening to people who are different from us is a key component of developing self-knowledge. This may be uncomfortable, because our taken-for-granted or deeply held beliefs and values may become less certain when we see the multiple perspectives that exist.

We can also become more aware of how our self-concepts influence how we perceive others. We often hold other people to the standards we hold for ourselves or assume that their self-concept should be consistent with our own. For example, if you consider yourself a neat person and think that sloppiness in your personal appearance would show that you are unmotivated, rude, and lazy, then you are likely to think the same of a person you judge to have a sloppy appearance. Asking questions like “Is my impression based on how this person wants to be, or how I think this person should want to be?” can lead to enlightening moments of self-reflection. Asking questions in general about the perceptions you are making is an integral part of perception checking, which we will discuss next.

Perception Checking

Perception checking  is a strategy to help us monitor our reactions to and perceptions about people and communication. There are some internal and external strategies we can use to engage in perception checking. In terms of internal strategies, review the various influences on perception that we have learned about in this module and always be willing to ask yourself, “What is influencing the perceptions I am making right now?” Even being aware of what influences are acting on our perceptions makes us more aware of what is happening in the perception process. In terms of external strategies, we can use other people to help verify our perceptions.

The cautionary adage “Things aren’t always as they appear” is useful when evaluating your own perceptions. Sometimes it’s a good idea to bounce your thoughts off someone, especially if the perceptions relate to some high-stakes situation. But not all situations allow us the chance to verify our perceptions. Preventable crimes have been committed because people who saw something suspicious didn’t report it even though they had a bad feeling about it. Of course, we have to walk a line between being reactionary and being too cautious, which is difficult to manage.

Perception checking helps us slow down perception and communication processes and allows us to have more control over both. Perception checking involves being able to describe what is happening in a given situation, provide multiple interpretations of events or behaviors, and ask yourself and others questions for clarification. Some of this process happens inside our heads, and some happens through interaction. Let’s take an interpersonal conflict as an example.

Stefano and Patrick are roommates. Stefano is in the living room playing a video game when he sees Patrick walk through the room with his suitcase and walk out the front door. Since Patrick didn’t say or wave good-bye, Stefano has to make sense of this encounter, and perception checking can help him do that. First, he needs to try to describe (not evaluate yet) what just happened. This can be done by asking yourself, “What is going on?” In this case, Patrick left without speaking or waving good-bye. Next, Stefano needs to think of some possible interpretations of what just happened. One interpretation could be that Patrick is mad about something (at him or someone else). Another could be that he was in a hurry and simply forgot, or that he didn’t want to interrupt the video game. In this step of perception checking, it is good to be aware of the attributions you are making. You might try to determine if you are overattributing internal or external causes. Lastly, you will want to verify and clarify. So, Stefano might ask a mutual friend if she knows what might be bothering Patrick or going on in his life that made him leave so suddenly. Or he may also just want to call, text, or speak to Patrick. During this step, it’s important to be aware of punctuation. Even though Stefano has already been thinking about this incident, and is experiencing some conflict, Patrick may have no idea that his actions caused Stefano to worry. If Stefano texts and asks why he’s mad (which wouldn’t be a good idea because it’s an assumption) Patrick may become defensive, which could escalate the conflict. Stefano could just describe the behavior (without judging Patrick) and ask for clarification by saying, “When you left today you didn’t say bye or let me know where you were going. I just wanted to check to see if things are OK.”

The steps of perception checking as described in the previous scenario are as follows:

Step 1: Describe the behavior or situation without evaluating or judging it.

Step 2: Think of some possible interpretations of the behavior, being aware of attributions and other influences on the perception process.

Step 3: Verify what happened and ask for clarification from the other person’s perspective. Be aware of punctuation, since the other person likely experienced the event differently than you.

• We can improve self-perception by avoiding reliance on rigid schemata, thinking critically about socializing institutions, intervening in self-fulfilling prophecies, finding supportive interpersonal networks, and becoming aware of cycles of thinking that distort our self-perception.
• We can improve our perceptions of others by developing empathetic listening skills, becoming aware of stereotypes and prejudice, and engaging in self-reflection.
• Perception checking is a strategy that allows us to monitor our perceptions of and reactions to others and communication.

Discussion Questions

• Which barrier(s) to self-perception do you think present the most challenge to you and why? What can you do to start to overcome these barriers?
• Which barrier(s) to perceiving others do you think present the most challenge to you and why? What can you do to start to overcome these barriers?
• Give an example of how perception checking might be useful to you in academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.

Remix/Revisions featured in this section

• Small editing revisions to tailor the content to the Psychology of Human Relations course.
• Changed formatting for photos to provide links to locations of images and CC licenses.
• Added doi links to references to comply with APA 7 th edition formatting reference manual.

Attributions

CC Licensed Content, Original Modification, adaptation, and original content.  Provided by : Stevy Scarbrough. License : CC-BY-NC-SA

CC Licensed Content Shared Previously Communication in the Real World. Authored by: University of Minnesota. Located at:   https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/chapter/2-4-improving-perception/ License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

Armenta, B. E. Hunt, J. S. (2009). Responding to societal devaluation: Effects of perceived personal and group discrimination on the ethnic group Identification and personal self-esteem of Latino/Latina adolescents.  Group Processes and Intergroup Relations,  12(1), 11–12. 23-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430208098775

Guyll, M., Madon, S., Prieto L., & Scherr, K. C. (2010). The potential roles of self-fulfilling prophecies, stigma consciousness, and stereotype threat in linking Latino/a ethnicity and educational outcomes, Social Issues,  66(1), 113-130. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01636.x

Katz, M. (2009, July 16). Tossing out the diet and embracing the Fat,  The New York Times , http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/health/nutrition/16skin.html .

Stinson, D. A., Logel, C., Shepherd, S., & Zanna, M. P. (2011). Rewriting the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection: Self-affirmation improves relational security and social behavior up to 2 months later. Psychological science, 22 (9), 1145–1149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417725

Psychology of Human Relations Copyright © by Stevy Scarbrough is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Perception and the Self

Who are you? Have you ever sat around thinking about how you fit into the larger universe. A simple exercise helps to get at the heart of this question. 1 Use the worksheet in the workbook and answer “Who am I?” with the worksheet numbered 1 to 20. Results from this activity generally demonstrate five distinct categories about an individual: social group an individual belongs to, ideological beliefs, personal interests, personal ambitions, and self-evaluations . All of these five categories are happening at what is called the intrapersonal-level. Intrapersonal refers to something that exists or occurs within an individual’s self or mind.

This chapter focuses on understanding perception and the self and how they relate to communication.  Intrapersonal communication refers to communication phenomena that exist within or occurs because of an individual’s self or mind. The chapter highlights how in addition to personality, one’s biologically based temperament also plays an important role in how they interact with others interpersonally. Temperament is identifiable at birth, whereas, personality is something that develops over one’s lifespan. Although we cannot change the biological aspects of our temperament, we can learn how to adjust our behaviors in light of our temperaments.

Perception Processes

Learning Objectives

• Describe and explain the three stages of the perception process.
• Differentiate between self-concept and self-esteem.
• Explain what is meant by Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self.
• Define and differentiate between the terms personality and temperament.
• List and explain the different social, personal, and relational dispositions which affect dispositions.

As you can see from Figure 1, how you view something is also how you will describe and define it. Your perception of something will determine how you feel about it and how you will communicate about it. In Figure 1, do you see it as a six or a nine? Why did you answer the way that you did?

Your perceptions affect who you are, and they are based on your experiences and preferences. If you have a horrible experience with a restaurant, you probably won’t go to that restaurant in the future. You might even tell others not to go to that restaurant based on your personal experience. Thus, it is crucial to understand how perceptions can influence others.

Sometimes the silliest arguments occur with others because we don’t understand their perceptions of things. Thus, it is important to make an effort to see things the way that the other person does. In other words, put yourself in their shoes and see it from their perspective before jumping to conclusions or getting upset. That person might have a legitimate reason why they are not willing to concede with you.

Many of our problems in the world occur due to perception , or t he process of acquiring, interpreting, and organizing information that comes in through your five senses. When we don’t get all the facts, it is hard to make a concrete decision. We have to rely on our perceptions to understand the situation. In this section, you will learn tools that can help you understand perceptions and improve your communication skills. As you will see in many of the illustrations on perception, people can see different things. In some of the pictures, some might only be able to see one picture, but there might be others who can see both images, and a small amount might be able to see something completely different from the rest of the class.

Many famous artists over the years have played with people’s perceptions. Figure 2a, 2b, and 2c are an example of three artists’ use of twisted perceptions. In the first picture, The Rubin Vase, there is what appears to either be a vase (the white part) or two people looking at each other (the black part). This simple image is both two images and neither image at the same time. The second work is called “All is Vanity.” In this painting, you can see a woman sitting staring at herself in the mirror. At the same time, the image is also a giant skull. Lastly,  “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law,” shows two different images, one of a young woman and one of an older woman. These visual images are helpful reminders that we don’t always perceive things in the same way as those around us. There are often multiple ways to view and understand the same set of events.

When it comes to interpersonal communication, each time you talk to other people, you present a side of yourself. Sometimes this presentation is a true representation of yourself, and other times it may be in inauthentic version of yourself. People present themselves how they want others to see them. Some people present themselves positively on social media, and they have wonderful relationships. Then, their followers or fans get shocked to learn when those i

mages are not true to what is presented. If we only see one side of things, we might be surprised to learn that things are different. The perception process has three stages: attending, organizing, and interpreting.

The first step of the perception process is to select what information you want to pay attention to or focus on, which is called attending . We attend to things based on how they look, feel, smell, touch, and taste. At every moment, you are obtaining a large amount of information. So, how do you decide what you want to pay attention to and what you choose to ignore? People will tend to pay attention to things that matter to them. Usually, we pay attention to things that are louder, larger, different, and more complex to what we ordinarily view.

Due to our limited cognitive abilities we are always focusing on a particular things and ignoring other things in a process called selective perception . For instance, when you are in love, you might pay attention to only that special someone and not notice anything else. The same thing happens when we end a relationship, and we are devasted, we might see how everyone else is in a great relationship, but we aren’t.

There are a couple of reasons why you pay attention to certain things more so than others: We often pay attention to something is because it is extreme or intense. In other words, it stands out of the crowd and captures our attention, like an extremely good looking person at a party or a big neon sign in a dark, isolated town. We can’t help but notice these things because they are exceptional or extraordinary in some way. Second, we pay attention to things that are different or contradicting. We are quick to notice something that we are not used to or something that no longer exists for you. For instance, if you had someone very close to you pass away, then you might pay more attention to the loss of that person than to anything else. Some people grieve for an extended period because they were so used to having that person around, and things can be different since you don’t have them to rely on or ask for input.

The third thing that we pay attention to is something that repeats over and over again. Think of a catchy song or a commercial that continually repeats itself. We might be more alert to it since it repeats, compared to something that was only said once. The fourth thing that we will pay attention to is based on our motives. If we have a motive to find a romantic partner, we might be more perceptive to other attractive people than normal, because we are looking for romantic interests. Another motive might be to lose weight, and you might pay more attention to exercise advertisements and food selection choices compared to someone who doesn’t have the motive to lose weight. Our motives influence what we pay attention to and what we ignore.

The last thing that influences our selection process is our emotional state. If we are in an angry mood, then we might be more attentive to things that get us angrier. As opposed to, if we are in a happy mood, then we will be more likely to overlook a lot of negativity because we are already happy. Selective perception doesn’t involve just paying attention to certain cues. It also means that you might be overlooking other things. For instance, people in love will think their partner is amazing and will overlook a lot of their flaws. This is normal behavior. We are so focused on how wonderful they are that we often will neglect the other negative aspects of their behavior.

Look again at the three images in Figure 2. What were the first things that you saw when you looked at each picture? Could you see the two different images? Which image was more prominent? When we examine a picture or image, we engage in organizing it in our head to make sense of it and define it. After we select the information that we are paying attention to, we have to make sense of it in our brains. Information can be organized in different ways. After we attend to something, our brains quickly want to make sense of this data. We quickly want to understand the information that we are exposed to and organize it in a way that makes sense to us.

There are four types of schemes that people use to organize perceptions. 2  First, physical constructs are used to classify people (e.g., young/old; tall/short; big/small). Second, role constructs are social positions (e.g., mother, friend, lover, doctor, teacher). Third, interaction constructs are the social behaviors displayed in the interaction (e.g., aggressive, friendly, dismissive, indifferent). Fourth, psychological constructs are the dispositions, emotions, and internal states of mind of the communicators (e.g., depressed, confident, happy, insecure). We often use these schemes to better understand and organize the information that we have received. We use these schemes to generalize others and to classify information.

Let’s pretend that you came to class and noticed that one of your classmates was wildly waving their arms in the air at you. This will most likely catch your attention because you find this behavior strange. Then, you will try to organize or makes sense of what is happening. Once you have organized it in your brain, you will need to interpret the behavior.

Interpreting

The final stage of the perception process is interpreting . In this stage of perception, you are attaching meaning to understand the data. So, after you select information and organize things in your brain, you have to interpret the situation. As previously discussed in the above example, your friend waves their hands wildly (attending), and you are trying to figure out what they are communicating to you (organizing). You will attach meaning (interpreting). Does your friend need help and is trying to get your attention, or does your friend want you to watch out for something behind you?

We interpret other people’s behavior daily. Walking to class, you might see an attractive stranger smiling at you. You could interpret this as a flirtatious behavior or someone just trying to be friendly. Scholars have identified some factors that influence our interpretations: 3

Attribution Error

Attribution error is defined as the tendency to explain another individual’s behavior in relation to the individual’s internal tendencies rather than an external factor. 13 For example, if a friend is late, we might attribute this failure to be on time as the friend being irresponsible rather than running through a list of external factors that may have influenced the friend’s ability to be on time such as an emergency, traffic, read the time wrong, etc. It is easy to make an error when trying to attribute meaning to the behaviors of others.

Personal Experience

Personal experience also impacts our interpretation of events. What prior experiences have you had that affect your perceptions? Maybe you heard from your friends that a particular restaurant was really good, but when you went there, you had a horrible experience, and you decided you never wanted to go there again. Even though your friends might try to persuade you to try it again, you might be inclined not to go, because your past experience with that restaurant was not good.

Another example might be a traumatic relationship break up. You might have had a relational partner that cheated on you and left you with trust issues. You might find another romantic interest, but in the back of your mind, you might be cautious and interpret loving behaviors differently, because you don’t want to be hurt again.

Involvement

Degree of involvement impacts your interpretation. The more involved or deeper your relationship is with another person, the more likely you will interpret their behaviors differently compared to someone you do not know well. For instance, let’s pretend that you are a manager, and two of your employees come to work late. One worker just happens to be your best friend and the other person is someone who just started and you do not know them well. You are more likely to interpret your best friend’s behavior more altruistically than the other worker because you have known your best friend for a longer period. Besides, since this person is your best friend, this implies that you interact and are more involved with them compared to other friends.

Expectations

Expectations that we hold can impact the way we make sense of other people’s behaviors. For instance, if you overheard some friends talking about a mean professor and how hostile they are in class, you might be expecting this to be true. Let’s say you meet the professor and attend their class; you might still have certain expectations about them based on what you heard. Even those expectations might be completely false, and you might still be expecting those allegations to be true.

Assumptions

We make assumptions about human behavior. Imagine if you are a personal fitness trainer, do you believe that people like to exercise or need to exercise? Your answer to that question might be based on your assumptions. If you are a person who is inclined to exercise, then you might think that all people like to work out. However, if you do not like to exercise but know that people should be physically fit, then you would more likely agree with the statement that people need to exercise. Your assumptions about humans can shape the way that you interpret their behavior. Another example might be that if you believe that most people would donate to a worthy cause, you might be shocked to learn that not everyone thinks this way. When we assume that all humans should act a certain way, we are more likely to interpret their behavior differently if they do not respond in a certain way.

Relational Satisfaction

Last relational satisfaction will make you see things very differently. Relational satisfaction is how satisfied or happy you are with your current relationship. If you are content, then you are more likely to view all your partner’s behaviors as thoughtful and kind. However, if you are not satisfied in your relationship, then you are more likely to view their behavior has distrustful or insincere. Research has shown that unhappy couples are more likely to blame their partners when things go wrong compared to happy couples. 14

Who Are You?

Self-concept.

According to Baumeister (1999), self-concept implies “the individual’s belief about [their self], including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.” 4 An attribute is a characteristic, feature, or quality or inherent part of a person, group, or thing.

In 1968, social psychologist Norman Anderson came up with a list of 555 personal attributes. 5 He had research participants rate the 555 attributes from most desirable to least desirable. The top ten most desirable characteristics were:

• Understanding
• Trustworthy
• Intelligent
• Open-Minded

Conversely, the top ten least desirable attributes were:

• Dishonorable

When looking at this list, do you agree with the ranks from 1968? In a more recent study, conducted by Jesse Chandler using an expanded list of 1,042 attributes, 6 the following pattern emerged for the top 10 most positively viewed attributes:

• Compassionate
• Good-Natured

And here is the updated list for the top 10 most negatively viewed attributes:

• Evil-Minded
• Untrustworthy

Some of the changes in both lists represent changing times and the addition of the new terms by Chandler. For example, the terms sincere, honest, and trustworthy were just essential attributes for both the 1968 and 2018 studies. Conversely, none of the negative attributes remained the same from 1968 to 2018. The negative attributes, for the most part, represent more modern sensibilities about personal attributes.

The Three Selves

Carl Rogers argued an individual’s self-concept is made of three distinct things: self-image, self-worth, and ideal-self. 7

An individual’s self-image is a view that they have of themselves. If we go back and look at the attributes that we’ve listed in this section, think about these as laundry lists of possibilities that impact your view of yourself. For example, you may view yourself as ethical, trustworthy, honest, and loyal, but you may also realize that there are times when you are also obnoxious and mean. For a positive self-image, we will have more positive attributes than negative ones. However, it’s also possible that one negative attribute may overshadow the positive attributes, which is why we also need to be aware of our perceptions of our self-worth.

Self-worth is the value that you place on yourself. In essence, self-worth is the degree to which you see yourself as a good person who deserves to be valued and respected. Unfortunately, many people judge their self-worth based on arbitrary measuring sticks like physical appearance, net worth, social circle/clique, career, grades, achievements, age, relationship status, likes on Facebook, social media followers, etc.… Interested in seeing how you view your self-worth? Then take a minute and complete the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale . 8 According to Courtney Ackerman, there are four things you can do to help improve your self-worth: 9

• You no longer need to please other people.
• No matter what people do or say, and regardless of what happens outside of you, you alone control how you feel about yourself.
• You have the power to respond to events and circumstances based on your internal sources, resources, and resourcefulness, which are the reflection of your true value.
• Your value comes from inside, from an internal measure that you’ve set for yourself.

The final characteristic of Rogers’ three parts to self-concept is the ideal-self. 10 The ideal-self is the version of yourself that you would like to be, which is created through our life experiences, cultural demands, and expectations of others. The real-self, on the other hand, is the person you are. The ideal-self is perfect, flawless, and, ultimately, completely unrealistic. When an individual’s real-self and ideal-self are not remotely similar, someone needs to think through if that idealized version of one’s self is attainable. It’s also important to know that our ideal-self is continuously evolving. How many of us wanted to be firefighters, police officers, or astronauts as kids? Some of you may still want to be one of these, but most of us had our ideal-self evolve.

The “Looking-Glass” Self

Charles Horton Cooley’s looking-glass self argues: “Each to each a looking-glass / Reflects the other that doth pass” 11 Although the term “looking-glass” isn’t used very often in today’s modern tongue, it means a mirror. Cooley argues, when we are looking to a mirror, we also think about how others view us and the judgments they make about us. Cooley posed three postulates:

• Actors learn about themselves in every situation by exercising their imagination to reflect on their social performance.
• Actors next imagine what those others must think of them. In other words, actors imagine the others’ evaluations of the actor’s performance.
• The actor experiences an affective reaction to the imagined evaluation of the other. 12

Figure 3 presents an illustration of this basic idea. You have a figure standing before four glass panes. In the left-most mirror, the figure has devil horns; in the second, a pasted on a fake smile; in the third, a tie; and in the last one, a halo. Maybe the figure’s ex sees the devil, his friends and family think the figure is always happy, the figure’s coworkers see a professional, and the figure’s parents/guardians see their little angel. Along with each of these ideas, there are inherent judgments. And, not all of these judgments are necessarily accurate, but we still come to understand and know ourselves based on our perceptions of these judgments.

Ultimately, our self-image is shaped through our interactions with others, but only through the mediation of our minds. At the same time, because we perceive that others are judging us, we also tend to shape our façade to go along with that perception. For example, if you work in the customer service industry, you may sense that you are always expected to smile. Since you want to be viewed positively, you plaster on a fake smile all the time no matter what is going on in your personal life. At the same time, others may start to view you as a happy-go-lucky person because you’re always in a good mood.

Thankfully, we’re not doing this all the time, or we would be driving ourselves crazy. Instead, there are certain people in our lives about whose judgments we worry more than others. Imagine you are working in a new job. You respect your new boss, and you want to gain their respect in return. Currently, you believe that your boss doesn’t think you’re a good fit for the organization because you are not serious enough about your job. If you perceive that your boss will like you more if you are a more serious worker, then you will alter your behavior to be more in line with what your boss sees as “serious.” In this situation, your boss didn’t come out and say that you were not a serious worker, but we perceived the boss’ perception of us and their judgment of that perception of us and altered our behavior to be seen in a better light.

Self-Esteem

One of the most commonly discussed intrapersonal communication ideas is an individual’s self-esteem, with many academic and popular press books on the topic. Self-esteem is an individual’s subjective evaluation of their abilities and limitations. Let’s break down this definition into sizeable chunks.

Subjective Evaluation

The definition states that someone’s self-esteem is an “individual’s subjective evaluation.” The word “subjective” emphasizes that self-esteem is based on an individual’s emotions and opinions and is not based on facts. For example, many people suffer from what is called the impostor syndrome, or they doubt their accomplishments, knowledge, and skills, so they live in fear of being found out a fraud. These individuals have a constant fear that people will figure out that they are “not who they say they are.” Research in this area generally shows that these fears of “being found out” are not based on any kind of fact or evidence. Instead, these individuals’ emotions and opinions of themselves are fueled by incongruent self-concepts. Types of people who suffer from imposter syndrome include physicians, CEOs, academics, celebrities, artists, and pretty much any other category. Again, it’s important to remember that these perceptions are subjective and not based on any objective sense of reality. Imagine a physician who has gone through four years of college, three years of medical school, three years of residency, and another four years of specialization training only to worry that someone will find out that they aren’t that smart after all. There’s no objective basis for this perception; it’s completely subjective and flies in the face of facts.

In addition to the word “subjective,” we also use the word “evaluation” in the definition of self-esteem. By evaluation, we mean a determination or judgment about the quality, importance, or value of something. We evaluate how we interact with others, the work we complete, and we evaluate ourselves and our specific abilities and limitations. Our lives are filled with constant evaluations.

When we discuss our abilities, we are referring to the acquired or natural capacity for specific talents, skills, or proficiencies that facilitate achievement or accomplishment. First, someone’s abilities can be inherent (natural) or they can be learned (acquired). For example, if someone is 6’6”, has excellent reflexes, and has a good sense of space, they may find that they have a natural ability to play basketball that someone who is 4’6”, has poor reflex speed, and has no sense of space simply does not have. That’s not to say that both people cannot play basketball, but they will both have different ability levels. They can both play basketball because they can learn skills necessary to play basketball: shooting the ball, dribbling, rules of the game, etc. In a case like basketball, professional-level players need to have a combination of both natural and acquired abilities.

Limitations

In addition to one’s abilities, it’s always important to recognize that we all have limitations. A 4’6″ basketball player might be quite good at the game, but physically they will not be able to dunk the ball on a standard-height rim. We all have limitations on what we can and cannot do. When it comes to your self-esteem, it’s about how you evaluate those limitations. Do you realize your limitations and they don’t bother you? Or do your limitations prevent you from being happy with yourself? When it comes to understanding limitations, it’s important to recognize the limitations that we can change and the limitations we cannot change. One problem that many people have when it comes to limitations is that they cannot differentiate between the types of limitations.

Self-Esteem and Communication

You may be wondering by this point about the importance of self-esteem in interpersonal communication. Self-esteem and communication have a reciprocal relationship (as depicted in Figure 4). Our communication with others impacts our self-esteem, and our self-esteem impacts our communication with others. As such, our self-esteem and communication are constantly being transformed by each other.

As such, interpersonal communication and self-esteem cannot be separated. Now, our interpersonal communication is not the only factor that impacts self-esteem, but interpersonal interactions are one of the most important tools we have in developing our selves.

Self-Compassion

Some researchers have argued that self–esteem as the primary measure of someone’s psychological health may not be wise because it stems from comparisons with others and judgments. As such, Kristy Neff has argued for the use of the term self-compassion. 16

Self-Compassion stems out of the larger discussion of compassion. Compassion then is about the sympathetic consciousness for someone who is suffering or unfortunate. Self-compassion “involves being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate one’s suffering and to heal oneself with kindness. Self-compassion also involves offering nonjudgmental understanding to one’s pain, inadequacies and failures, so that one’s experience is seen as part of the larger human experience.” 18 Neff argues that self-compassion can be broken down into three distinct categories: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness (Figure 5).

Self-Kindness, Common Humanity, and Mindfulness

Self-kindness is simply extending the same level of care and understanding to ourselves as we would to others. Instead of being harsh and judgmental, we are encouraging and supportive. Instead of being critical, we are empathic towards ourselves. Now, this doesn’t mean that we just ignore our faults and become narcissistic (excessive interest in oneself), but rather we realistically evaluate ourselves. S econd, self-compassion is common humanity, or “seeing one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating.” 19   No one is perfect. No one is ever going to be perfect. We all make mistakes (some big, some small). We’re also all going to experience pain and suffering in our lives. Being self-compassionate is approaching this pain and suffering and seeing it for what it is, a natural part of being human. “The pain I feel in difficult times is the same pain you feel in difficult times. The circumstances are different, the degree of pain is different, but the basic experience of human suffering is the same.” 21 The final factor of self-compassion is mindfulness. Naff defines mindfulness as  “holding one’s painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with them.” 22 Essentially, Naff argues that mindfulness is an essential part of self-compassion, because we need to be able to recognize and acknowledge when we’re suffering so we can respond with compassion to ourselves.

Don’t Feed the Vulture

One area that we know can hurt someone’s self-esteem is what Sidney Simon calls “vulture statements.” According to Simon,

Vulture (‘vul-cher) noun. 1: any of various large birds of prey that are related to the haws, eagles and falcons, but with the head usually naked of feathers and that subsist chiefly or entirely on dead flesh. 23

Unfortunately, all of us have vultures circling our heads or just sitting on our shoulders. In Figure 3.5, we see a young woman feeding an apple to her vulture. This apple represents all of the negative things we say about ourselves during a day. Many of us spend our entire days just feeding our vultures and feeding our vultures these self-deprecating, negative thoughts and statements. Admittedly, these negative thoughts “come from only one place. They grow out of other people’s criticisms, from the negative responses to what we do and say, and the way we act.” 24 We have the choice to either let these thoughts consume us or fight them. According to Richmond and colleagues the following are characteristic statements that vultures wait to hear so they can feed:

• Oh boy, do I look awful today; I look like I’ve been up all night.
• Oh, this is going to be an awful day.
• I’ve already messed up. I left my students’ graded exams at home.
• Boy, I should never have gotten out of bed this morning.
• Gee whiz. I did an awful job of teaching that unit.
• Why can’t I do certain things as well as Mr. Smith next door?
• Why am I always so dumb?
• I can’t believe I’m a teacher; why, I have the mentality of a worm.
• I don’t know why I ever thought I could teach.
• I can’t get anything right.
• Good grief, what am I doing here? Why didn’t I select any easy job?
• I am going nowhere, doing nothing; I am a failure at teaching.
• In fact, I am a failure in most things I attempt. 25

Dealing with the Vulture

Do any of these vulture statements sound familiar to you? If you’re like us, I’m sure they do. Part of self-compassion is learning to recognize these vulture statements when they appear in our minds and evaluate them critically. Ben Martin proposes four ways to challenging vulture statements (negative self-talk):

• What is my evidence for and against my thinking?
• Are my thoughts factual, or are they just my interpretations?
• Am I jumping to negative conclusions?
• How can I find out if my thoughts are actually true?
• Are there any other ways that I could look at this situation?
• What else could this mean?
• If I were being positive, how would I perceive this situation?
• Is this situation as bad as I am making out to be?
• What is the worst thing that could happen? How likely is it?
• What is the best thing that could happen?
• What is most likely to happen?
• Is there anything good about this situation?
• Will this matter in five years?
• Is thinking this way helping me to feel good or to achieve my goals?
• What can I do that will help me solve the problem?
• Is there something I can learn from this situation, to help me do it better next time? 26

So, next time those vultures start circling you, check that negative self-talk. When we can stop these patterns of negativity towards ourselves and practice self-compassion, we can start plucking the feathers of those vultures. The more we treat ourselves with self-compassion and work against those vulture statements, the smaller and smaller those vultures get. Our vultures may never die, but we can make them much, much smaller.

Personality and Perception in Intrapersonal Communication

Personality is defined as the combination of traits or qualities—such as behavior, emotional stability, and mental attributes—that make a person unique. Before we delve into personality, let’s take a quick look at two common themes in this area of research: nature or nurture and temperament.

Nature or Nurture

One of the oldest debates in the area of personality research is whether a specific behavior or thought process occurs within an individual because of their nature (genetics) or nurture (how they were raised). The first person to start investigating this phenomenon was Sir Francis Galton back in the 1870s. 28 In 1875, Galton sought out twins and their families to learn more about similarities and differences. As a whole, Galton found that there were more similarities than differences: “There is no escape from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture when the differences of nurture do not exceed what is commonly to be found among persons of the same rank of society and in the same country.” 29 However, the reality is that Galton’s twin participants had been raised together, so parsing out nature and nurture (despite Galton’s attempts) wasn’t completely possible. Although Galton’s anecdotes provided some interesting stories, that’s all they amounted to.

Minnesota Twins Raised Apart

So, how does one determine if something ultimately nature or nurture? The next breakthrough in this line of research started in the late 1970s when Thomas J. Bouchard and his colleagues at Minnesota State University began studying twins who were raised separately. 30 This research started when a pair of twins, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, were featured in an article on February 19, 1979, in the Lima News in Lima, Ohio. 31 Jim and Jim were placed in an adoption agency and separated from each other at four weeks of age. They grew up just 40 miles away from each other, but they never knew the other one existed. Jess and Sarah Springer and Ernest and Lucille Lewis were looking to adopt, and both sets of parents were told that their Jim had been a twin, but they were also told that his twin had died. Many adoption agencies believed that placing twins with couples was difficult, so this practice of separating twins at birth was an inside practice that the adoptive parents knew nothing about. Jim Lewis’ mother had found out that Jim’s twin was still alive when he was toddler, so Jim Lewis knew that he had a twin but didn’t seek him out until he was 39 years old. Jim Springer, on the other hand, learned that he had been a twin when he was eight years old, but he believed the original narrative that his twin had died.

As you can imagine, Jim Springer was pretty shocked when he received a telephone message with his twin’s contact information out of nowhere one day. The February 19 th article in the Lima News was initially supposed to be a profile piece on one of the Springers’ brothers, but the reporter covering the wedding found Lewis and Springer’s tale fascinating. The reporter found several striking similarities between the twins: 32

• Their favorite subject in school was math
• Both hated spelling in school
• Their favorite vacation spot was Pas Grille Beach in Florida
• Both had previously been in law enforcement
• They both enjoyed carpentry as a hobby
• Both were married to women named Betty
• Both were divorced from women named Linda
• Both had a dog named “Toy”
• Both started suffering from tension headaches when they were 18
• Even their sons’ names were oddly similar (James Alan and James Allan)

This sensationalist story caught the attention of Bouchard because this opportunity allowed him and his colleagues to study the influence rearing had on twins in a way that wasn’t possible when studying twins who were raised together.

Over the next decade, Bouchard and his team of researchers would seek out and interview over 100 different pairs of twins or sets of triplets who had been raised apart. 33 The researchers were able to compare those twins to twins who were reared together. As a whole, they found more similarities between the two twin groups than they found differences. This set of studies is one of many that have been conducted using twins over the years to help us understand the interrelationship between rearing and genetics.

Twin Research in Communication

In the field of communication, the first major twin study published was conducted by Cary Wecht Horvath in 1995. 34 Horvath compared 62 pairs of identical twins and 42 pairs of fraternal twins to see if they differed in terms of their communicator style , or “the way one verbally, nonverbally, and paraverbally interacts to signal how literal meaning should be taken, filtered, or understood.” 35 Identical twins’ communicator styles were more similar than those of fraternal twins. Hence, a good proportion of someone’s communicator style appears to be a result of genetic makeup. However, this is not to say that genetics was the only factor at play about one’s communicator style.

Other research in the field of communication has examined how a range of different communication variables are associated with genetics when analyzed through twin studies: 36 , 37 , 38

• Interpersonal Affiliation
• Aggressiveness
• Social Anxiety
• Audience Anxiety
• Self-Perceived Communication Competence
• Willingness to Communicate
• Communicator Adaptability

Despite similarities across many categories, it would be wrong to argue that all of our communication is biological. We cannot dismiss the importance that genetics plays in our communicative behavior and development, but social and environmental factors are just as important in shaping communication. For example, imagine we have two twins that were separated at birth. One twin is put into a middle-class family where she will be exposed to a lot of opportunities. The other twin, on the other hand, was placed with a lower-income family where the opportunities she will have in life are more limited. The first twin goes to a school that has lots of money and award-winning teachers. The second twin goes to an inner-city school where there aren’t enough textbooks for the students, and the school has problems recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. The first student has the opportunity to engage in a wide range of extracurricular activities both in school (mock UN, debate, student council, etc.) and out of school (traveling softball club, skiing, yoga, etc.). The second twin’s school doesn’t have the budget for extracurricular activities, and her family cannot afford out of school activities, so she ends up taking a job when she’s a teenager. Now imagine that these twins are naturally aggressive. The first twin’s aggressiveness may be exhibited by her need to win in both mock UN and debate; she may also strive to not only sit on the student council but be its president. In this respect, she demonstrates more prosocial forms of aggression. The second twin, on the other hand, doesn’t have these more prosocial outlets for her aggression. As such, her aggression may be demonstrated through more interpersonal problems with her family, teachers, friends, etc.… Instead of having those more positive outlets for her aggression, she may become more physically aggressive in her day-to-day life. In other words, both biological dispositions and context are very important to  communicative behaviors.

Temperament Types

Temperament is the genetic predisposition that causes an individual to behave, react, and think in a specific manner. The notion that people have fundamentally different temperaments dates back to the Greek physician Hippocrates, known today as the father of medicine, who first wrote of four temperaments in 370 BCE: Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic, and Melancholic. Although closely related, temperament and personality refer to two different constructs. Jan Strelau explains that temperament and personality differ in five specific ways:

• Temperament is biologically determined where personality is a product of the social environment.
• Temperamental features may be identified from early childhood, whereas personality is shaped in later periods of development.
• Individual differences in temperamental traits like anxiety, extraversion-introversion, and stimulus-seeking are also observed in animals, whereas personality is the prerogative of humans.
• Temperament stands for stylistic aspects. Personality for the content aspect of behavior.
• Unlike temperament, personality refers to the integrative function of human behavior. 39

In 1978, David Keirsey developed the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, a questionnaire that combines the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator with a model of four temperament types developed by psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer in the early 20th century. 40 In reality, there are many four-type personality systems that have been created over the years. Table 1 provides just a number of the different four-type personality system that are available on the market today. Each one has its quirks and patterns, but the basic results are generally the same.

Table 1. Comparing 4-Personality Types

None of the research examining the four types has found clear sex differences among the patterns. Females and males are seen proportionately in all four categories. Keirsey argues that the consistent use of the four temperament types (whatever terms we use) is an indication of the long-standing tradition and complexity of these ideas. 41

Personality and The Big Five

Unlike temperament, which has been argued to have a biological root, personality is a more flexible combination of socially derived and assessed traits held by a person. One of the most commonly discussed personality frameworks is the Big Five. 42   Figure 6 shows the Big Five.

Openness refers to “openness to experience,” or the idea that some people are more welcoming of new things. These people are willing to challenge their underlying life assumptions and are more likely to be amenable to differing points of view. Table 2 explores some of the traits associated with having both high levels of openness and having low levels of openness.

Table 2. Openness

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is the degree to which an individual is aware of their actions and how their actions impact other people. Table 3 explores some of the traits associated with having both high levels of conscientiousness and having low levels of conscientiousness.

Table 3. Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Extraversion is the degree to which someone is sociable and outgoing. Table 4 explores some of the traits associated with having both high levels of extraversion and having low levels of extraversion.

Table 4. Extraversion

Agreeableness

Agreeableness is the degree to which someone engages in prosocial behaviors like altruism, cooperation, and compassion. Table 5 explores some of the traits associated with having both high levels of agreeableness and having low levels of agreeableness.

Table 5. Agreeableness

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is the degree to which an individual is vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and emotional instability. Table 6 explores some of the traits associated with having both high levels of neuroticism and having low levels of neuroticism.

Table 6. Neuroticism

Social, Personal, and Relational Dispositions

Social-personal dispositions refer to general patterns of mental processes that impact how people socially relate to others or view themselves. Communication dispositions impact how people interact with others, some are more personal and cognitive others have greater impact on how we interact with others. 63   As you read here, if you feel like you’re facing a challenge to your social-personal mental wellbeing, we encourage you to visit https://coms-idea.ku.edu/find-support to locate resources on our campus (or seek resources on your campus if you are not at KU).

Loneliness is an individual’s emotional distress that results from a feeling of solitude or isolation from social relationships. Loneliness can generally be discussed as existing in one of two forms: emotional and social. Emotional loneliness results when an individual feels that he or she does not have an emotional connection with others. We generally get these emotional connections through our associations with loved ones and close friends. If an individual is estranged from their family or doesn’t have close friendships, then he or she may feel loneliness as a result of a lack of these emotional relationships. Social loneliness , on the other hand, results from a lack of a satisfying social network. Imagine you’re someone who has historically been very social. Still, you move to a new city and find building new social relationships very difficult because the people in the new location are very cliquey. The inability to develop a new social network can lead someone to feelings of loneliness because he or she may feel a sense of social boredom or marginalization.

Loneliness tends to impact people in several different ways interpersonally. Some of the general research findings associated with loneliness have demonstrated that these people have lower self-esteem, are more socially passive, are more sensitive to rejection from others, and are often less socially skilled. Interestingly, lonely individuals tend to think of their interpersonal failures using an internal locus of control and their interpersonal successes externally. 64

Depression is a psychological disorder characterized by varying degrees of disappointment, guilt, hopelessness, loneliness, sadness, and self-doubt, all of which negatively impact a person’s general mental and physical wellbeing. Depression (and all of its characteristics) is very difficult to encapsulate in a single definition. If you’ve ever experienced a major depressive episode, it’s a lot easier to understand what depression is compared to those who have never experienced one. Depressed people tend to be less satisfied with life and less satisfied with their interpersonal interactions as well. Research has shown that depression negatively impacts all forms of interpersonal relationships: dating, friends, families, work, etc. We will periodically come back to depression as we explore various parts of interpersonal communication.

Ovid’s story of Narcissus and Echo has been passed down through the ages. The story starts with a Mountain Nymph named Echo who falls in love with a human named Narcissus. When Echo reveals herself to Narcissus, he rejects her. In true Roman fashion, this slight could not be left unpunished. Echo eventually leads Narcissus to a pool of water where he quickly falls in love with his reflection. He ultimately dies, staring at himself, because he realizes that his love will never be met.

The modern conceptualization of narcissism is based on Ovid’s story of Narcissus. Today researchers view narcissism as a psychological condition (or personality disorder) in which a person has a preoccupation with one’s self, an inflated sense of one’s importance, and longing of admiration from others. Highly narcissistic individuals are completely self-focused and tend to ignore the communicative needs and emotions of others. In fact, in social situations, highly narcissistic individuals strive to be the center of attention.

Vangelisti and colleagues examined a purely communicative form of narcissism they deemed conversational narcissism. 65 Conversational narcissism is an extreme focusing of one’s interests and desires during an interpersonal interaction while completely ignoring the interests and desires of another person: Vangelisti et al. found several attributes of conversationally narcissistic behavior. Conversational narcissists inflate their self-importance via bragging, refusing to listen to criticism, praising one’s self, etc. They may talk so fast others cannot interject, shift the topic to their self, interrupting others, etc. Conversational narcissists often attempt to show-off or entertain others to turn the focus on themselves. Some behaviors include primping or preening, dressing to attract attention, being or laughing louder than others, positioning one’s self in the center, etc. Lastly, conversational narcissists tend to have impersonal relationships. During their interactions with others, conversational narcissists show a lack of caring about another person and a lack of interest in another person. Some common behaviors include “glazing over” while someone else is speaking, looking impatient while someone is speaking, looking around the room while someone is speaking, etc. As you can imagine, people engaged in interpersonal encounters with conversational narcissists are generally highly unsatisfied with those interactions.

Empathy is the ability to recognize and mutually experience another person’s attitudes, emotions, experiences, and thoughts. Highly empathic individuals have the unique ability to connect with others interpersonally, because they can truly see how the other person is viewing life. Individuals who are unempathetic generally have a hard time taking or seeing another person’s perspective, so their interpersonal interactions tend to be more rigid and less emotionally driven. Generally speaking, people who have high levels of empathy tend to have more successful and rewarding interactions with others when compared to unempathetic individuals. Furthermore, people who are interacting with a highly empathetic person tend to find those interactions more satisfying than when interacting with someone who is unempathetic.

Self-Monitoring

The last of the personal-social dispositions is referred to as self-monitoring. In 1974 Mark Snyder developed his basic theory of self-monitoring , which proposes that individuals differ in the degree to which they can control their behaviors following the appropriate social rules and norms involved in interpersonal interaction. 67 In this theory, Snyder proposes that there are some individuals adept at selecting appropriate behavior in light of the context of a situation, which he deems high self-monitors. High self-monitors want others to view them in a precise manner (impression management), so they enact communicative behaviors that ensure suitable or favorable public appearances. On the other hand, some people are merely unconcerned with how others view them and will act consistently across differing communicative contexts despite the changes in cultural rules and norms. Snyder called these people low self-monitors.

Interpersonally, high self-monitors tend to have more meaningful and satisfying interpersonal interactions with others. Conversely, individuals who are low self-monitors tend to have more problematic and less satisfying interpersonal relationships with others. In romantic relationships, high self-monitors tend to develop relational intimacy much faster than individuals who are low self-monitors. Furthermore, high self-monitors tend to build lots of interpersonal friendships with a broad range of people. Low-self-monitors may only have a small handful of friends, but these friendships tend to have more depth. Furthermore, high self-monitors are also more likely to take on leadership positions and get promoted in an organization when compared to their low self-monitoring counterparts. Overall, self-monitoring is an important dispositional characteristic that impacts interpersonal relationships.

Argumentativeness/Verbal Aggressiveness

Starting in the mid-1980s, Dominic Infante and Charles Wigley defined verbal aggression as “the tendency to attack the self-concept of individuals instead of, or in addition to, their positions on topics of communication.” 80 Notice that this definition specifically is focused on the attacking of someone’s self-concept or an individual’s attitudes, opinions, and cognitions about one’s competence, character, strengths, and weaknesses. For example, if someone perceives themself as a good worker, then a verbally aggressive attack would demean that person’s quality of work or their ability to do future quality work. In a study conducted by Terry Kinney, 81 he found that self-concept attacks happen on three basic fronts: group membership (e.g., “Your whole division is a bunch of idiots!”), personal failings (e.g., “No wonder you keep getting passed up for a promotion!”), and relational failings (e.g., “No wonder your spouse left you!”).

Now that we’ve discussed what verbal aggression is, we should delineate verbal aggression from another closely related term, argumentativeness. According to Dominic Infante and Andrew Rancer, argumentativeness is a communication trait that “predisposes the individual in communication situations to advocate positions on controversial issues, and to attacking verbally the positions which other people take on these issues.” 82 You’ll notice that argumentativeness occurs when an individual attacks another’s positions on various issues; whereas, verbal aggression occurs when an individual attacks someone’s self-concept instead of attack another’s positions. Argumentativeness is seen as a constructive communication trait, while verbal aggression is a destructive communication trait.

Individuals who are highly verbally aggressive are not liked by those around them. 83 Researchers have seen this pattern of results across different relationship types. Highly verbally aggressive individuals tend to justify their verbal aggression in interpersonal relationships regardless of the relational stage (new vs. long-term relationship). 84 In an interesting study conducted by Beth Semic and Daniel Canary, the two set out to watch interpersonal interactions and the types of arguments formed during those interactions based on individuals’ verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness. 85 The researchers had friendship-dyads come into the lab and were asked to talk about two different topics. The researchers found that highly argumentative individuals did not differ in the number of arguments they made when compared to their low argumentative counterparts. However, highly verbally aggressive individuals provided far fewer arguments when compared to their less verbally aggressive counterparts. Although this study did not find that highly argumentative people provided more (or better) arguments, highly verbally aggressive people provided fewer actual arguments when they disagreed with another person. Overall, verbal aggression and argumentativeness have been shown to impact several different interpersonal relationships, so we will periodically revisit these concepts throughout the book.

In a set of three different volumes, John Bowlby theorized that humans were born with a set of inherent behaviors designed to allow proximity with supportive others. 95 These behaviors were called attachment behaviors, and the supportive others were called attachment figures. Inherent in Bowlby’s model of attachment is that humans have a biological drive to attach themselves with others. For example, a baby’s crying and searching help the baby find their attachment figure (typically a parent/guardian) who can provide care, protection, and support. Infants (and adults) view attachment as an issue of whether an attachment figure is nearby, accessible, and attentive? Bowlby believed that these interpersonal models, which were developed in infancy through thousands of interactions with an attachment figure, would influence an individual’s interpersonal relationships across their entire life span. According to Bowlby, the basic internal working model of affection consists of three components. 96 Infants who bond with their attachment figure during the first two years develop a model that people are trustworthy, develop a model that informs the infant that he or she is valuable, and develop a model that informs the infant that he or she is effective during interpersonal interactions. As you can easily see, not developing this model during infancy leads to several problems.

If there is a breakdown in an individual’s relationship with their attachment figure (primarily one’s mother), then the infant would suffer long-term negative consequences. Bowlby called his ideas on the importance of mother-child attachment and the lack thereof as the Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis . Bowlby hypothesized that maternal deprivation occurred as a result of separation from or loss of one’s mother or a mother’s inability to develop an attachment with her infant. This attachment is crucial during the first two years of a child’s life. Bowlby predicted that children who were deprived of attachment (or had a sporadic attachment) would later exhibit delinquency, reduced intelligence, increased aggression, depression, and affectionless psychopathy – the inability to show affection or care about others.

In 1991, Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz expanded on Bowlby’s work developing a scheme for understanding adult attachment. 97 In this study, Bartholomew and Horowitz proposed a model for understanding adult attachment. On one end of the spectrum, you have an individual’s abstract image of themself as being either worthy of love and support or not. On the other end of the spectrum, you have an individual’s perception of whether or not another person will be trustworthy/available or another person is unreliable and rejecting. When you combine these dichotomies, you end up with four distinct attachment styles (as seen in Figure 7).

The first attachment style is labeled secure ,  because these individuals believe that they are loveable and expect that others will generally behave in accepting and responsive ways within interpersonal interactions. Not surprisingly, secure individuals tend to show the most satisfaction, commitment, and trust in their relationships. The second attachment style, preoccupied , occurs when someone does not perceive themself as worthy of love but does generally see people as trustworthy and available for interpersonal relationships. These individuals would attempt to get others to accept them. The third attachment style, fearful  (sometimes referred to as fearful avoidants), 98 represents individuals who see themselves as unworthy of love and generally believe that others will react negatively through either deception or rejection. These individuals simply avoid interpersonal relationships to avoid being rejected by others. Even in communication, fearful people may avoid communication because they simply believe that others will not provide helpful information or others will simply reject their communicative attempts. The final attachment style, dismissing , reflects those individuals who see themselves as worthy of love, but generally believes that others will be deceptive and reject them in interpersonal relationships. These people tend to avoid interpersonal relationships to protect themselves against disappointment that occurs from placing too much trust in another person or making one’s self vulnerable to rejection.

Key Takeaways

• Perception involves attending, organizing, and interpreting.
• Our sense of self including self-image, self-worth, and ideal self are manifestations of what we think of ourselves and how we think others see us (the looking glass self)
• Personality and temperament have many overlapping characteristics, but the basis of them is fundamentally different. Personality is the product of one’s social environment and is generally developed later in one’s life. Temperament, on the other hand, is one’s innate genetic predisposition that causes an individual to behave, react, and think in a specific manner, and it can easily be seen in infants.
• The Big Five or OCEAN model describes common personality traits.
• Social, personal, and relational dispositions affect how we communicate with others.

affectionless psychopathy

The inability to show affection or care about others.

argumentativeness

Communication trait that predisposes the individual in communication situations to advocate positions on controversial issues, and to attack verbally the positions which other people take on these issues.

communication apprehension

The fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons.

communication dispositions

General patterns of communicative behavior.

dismissing attachment

Attachment style posed by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz describing individuals who see themselves as worthy of love, but generally believe that others will be deceptive and reject them in interpersonal relationships.

A psychological disorder characterized by varying degrees of disappointment, guilt, hopelessness, loneliness, sadness, self-doubt, all of which negatively impact a person’s general mental and physical wellbeing.

emotional loneliness

Form of loneliness that occurs when an individual feels that he or she does not have an emotional connection with others.

The ability to recognize and mutually experience another person’s attitudes, emotions, experiences, and thoughts.

extraversion

An individual’s likelihood to be talkative, dynamic, and outgoing.

fearful attachment

Attachment style posed by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz describing individuals who see themselves as unworthy of love and generally believe that others will react negatively through either deception or rejection.

The version of yourself that you would like to be, which is created through our life experiences, cultural demands, and expectations of others.

intrapersonal

Something that exists or occurs within an individual’s self or mind.

intrapersonal communication

Communication phenomena that exist within or occurs because of an individual’s self or mind.

introversion

An individual’s likelihood to be quiet, shy, and more reserved.

locus of control

An individual’s perceived control over their behavior and life circumstances.

An individual’s emotional distress that results from a feeling of solitude or isolation from social relationships.

Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

Hypothesis posed by John Bowby that predicts that infants who are denied maternal attachment will experience problematic outcomes later in life.

A psychological condition (or personality disorder) in which a person has a preoccupation with one’s self.

personality

The combination of traits or qualities such as behavior, emotional stability, and mental attributes that make a person unique.

preoccupied attachment

Attachment style posed by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz describing individuals who do not perceive themselves as worthy of love, but do generally see people as trustworthy and available for interpersonal relationships.

responsiveness

The degree to which an individual considers other’s feelings, listens to what others have to say, and recognizes the needs of others during interpersonal interactions.

secure attachment

Attachment style posed by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz describing individuals who believe that they are lovable and expect that others will generally behave in accepting and responsive ways within interpersonal interactions.

self-concept

An individual’s belief about themself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.

self-conscious shyness

Feeling conspicuous or socially exposed when dealing with others face-to-face.

self-esteem

An individual’s subjective evaluation of their abilities and limitations.

The view an individual has of themself.

self-monitoring

The theory that individuals differ in the degree to which they can control their behaviors in accordance with the appropriate social rules and norms involved in interpersonal interaction.

The degree to which you see yourself as a good person who deserves to be valued and respected.

social loneliness

Form of loneliness that occurs from a lack of a satisfying social network.

social-personal dispositions

General patterns of mental processes that impact how people socially relate to others or view themselves.

temperament

The genetic predisposition that causes an individual to behave, react, and think in a specific manner.

verbal aggression

The tendency to attack the self-concept of individuals instead of, or in addition to, their positions on topics of communication.

willingness to communicate

An individual’s tendency to initiate communicative interactions with other people.

The process of acquiring, interpreting, and organizing information that comes in through your five senses.

The act of focusing on specific objects or stimuli in the world around you

Due to our limited cognitive abilities we are always focusing on a particular things and ignoring other things

Organizing is making sense of the stimuli or assigning meaning to it.

Interpretation is the act of assigning meaning to a stimulus and then determining the worth of the object (evaluation).

The tendency to explain another individual’s behavior in relation to the individual’s internal tendencies rather than an external factor.

• Describe the importance of research
• Explain different information types
• Introduce lateral reading as a research tool and technique
• Describe types of plagiarism and explain best practices in citation

What does the word “research” conjure up for you? Do you think about sitting in a library and sorting through books or searching online? Do you picture a particular type of person?

While these images aren’t incorrect (of course libraries are connected with research), “research” can feel like an intimidating process. When does it begin? Where does it happen? When does it stop?

It’s helpful to understand what  research  is – the process of discovering new knowledge and investigating a topic from different points of view. Research is a  process ; it’s an ongoing dialogue with information. But, as you know, not all information is neutral, and not all information is ethical. Part of the research process, then, is evaluating information to determine what knowledge is ethical and best suited for your argument.

This chapter will focus on the research process and the development of  critical thinking  skills—or decision-making based on evaluating and critiquing information— to identify, sort, and evaluate (mostly) scholarly information. To begin, we outline why research matters, followed by insights about locating information, evaluating information, and avoiding plagiarism.

Why Research?

Research gets a bad rap. It can feel like a boring, tedious, and overwhelming process. In our current information age, we are guilty of conducting a quick search, finding what we want to read, and moving on. Many of us rarely sit down, allocate time, and commit to digging deep and researching different perspectives about an idea or argument.

But we should.

When conducting research, you get to ask questions and actually find answers. If you have ever wondered what the best strategies are when being interviewed for a job, research will tell you. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a NASCAR driver, an astronaut, a marine biologist, or a university professor, once again, research is one of the easiest ways to find answers to questions you’re interested in knowing.

Research can also open a world you never knew existed. We often find ideas we had never considered and learn facts we never knew when we go through the research process. Maybe you want to learn how to compose music, draw, learn a foreign language, or write a screenplay; research is always the best step toward learning anything.

As public speakers, research will increase your confidence and competence. The more you know, the more you know. The more you research, the more precise your argument, and the clearer the depth of the information becomes.

Where to Start

Because you’ve done exploratory research (as discussed in Chapter 3), you will likely have basic, foundational information about your argument. With that basic information in mind, ask: “what question am I answering? What should I be looking  for?  What do I need?”

Your specific purpose statement or a working thesis are good places to start. Remember the college textbook affordability example from Chapter 3? To refresh, the specific purpose is: “to persuade my audience to support campus solutions to rising textbook costs.” Research can help zero in on a working thesis by a) finding support for our perspective and b) identifying any specific campus solution that we could advocate for.

When we begin researching, we have three initial questions that arise from our specific purpose: has the cost of college textbooks increased over time? What are the causes? And what are the opportunities to address rising textbook costs in a way that can improve access relatively quickly at your institution?

These are just our  starting  questions. It’s likely that we’ll revise and research for information as we learn more. As Howard and Taggart point out in their book  Research Matters , research is not just a one-and-done task (2010). As you develop your speech, you may realize that you want to address a question or issue that didn’t occur to you during your first round of research, or that you’re missing a key piece of information to support one of your points.

Use these questions, prior experience, and insight from exploratory brainstorming to determine what to search and where to start. If you still feel overwhelmed, that’s OK. Start somewhere (or ask a librarian for help), and use the insights below about information types as a guide.

Locating  Effective  Research

Once you have a general idea about the basic needs you have for your research, it’s time to start tracking information down. Thankfully, we live in a world that is swimming with information.

As you search, you will naturally be drawn to tools and information types that are already familiar to you. Like most people, you will likely use Google as your first search strategy. As you know, Google isn’t a source, per se: it’s a search engine. It’s the vehicle that, through search terms and savvy wording, will direct you to sources related to those terms.

What information types would you expect to see in your Google search results? We are guessing your list would include: news, blogs, Wikipedia, dictionaries, and social media.

While Google is a great tool, all informational roads don’t lead to Google. Learning about different information types and different ways to access information can expand your search portfolio.

Information Types

As you begin looking for research, an array of information types will be at your disposal.

When you access a piece of information, you should determine what you are looking at. Is it a blog? an online academic journal? an online newspaper? a website for an organization? Will these information types be useful in answering the questions that you’ve identified?

Common helpful information types include websites, scholarly articles, books, and government reports, to name a few. To determine the usefulness of an information type, you should familiarize yourself with what those sources are and their goals.

Information types are often categorized as either academic or nonacademic.

Nonacademic information sources  are sometimes also called popular press information sources; their primary purpose is to be read by the general public. Most nonacademic information sources are written at a sixth to eighth-grade reading level, so they are very accessible. Although the information often contained in these sources can be limited, the advantage of using nonacademic sources is that they appeal to a broad, general audience.

Alternatively,  academic sources  are often (not always) peer-reviewed by like-minded scholars in the field. Academic publications can take longer to publish because academics have established a series of checklists that are required to determine the credibility of the information. Because of this process, it takes a while! That delay can result in nonacademic sources providing information before scholarly academics have tested or studied the phenomena.

In addition, be cognizant of  who  produces information and who that information is produced for. Table 4.1 simplistically illustrates the producer and audience of our short list of information types.

This is not an exhaustive list of information types. Others include: encyclopedias, periodicals or blogs. For more insight on information types, check  here .

With any information type, the dichotomy of producer/audience helps us with evaluating the information. As you’ve learned from our discussion of public speaking, the audience informs the message. If you have a clearer idea of who the content is written for, you can determine if that source is best for your research needs.

Having a better understanding of information types is important, but open and closed information systems dictate which source material we have access to.

Open/Closed Information Systems

An  open system  describes information that is publicly available and accessible. A  closed system  means information is behind a paywall or requires a subscription.

Let’s consider databases as an example. It’s likely that you’ve searched your library’s database. Databases provide full text periodicals and works that are regularly published. This is a great tool because it can provide you links to scholarly articles, news reports, e-books, and more.

“Does that make databases an open system?” you may be asking. Access to databases is purchased by libraries. The articles and books contained in databases are licensed by publishers to companies, who sell access to this content, which is not freely available elsewhere. So, databases are part of a closed system. The university provides you access, but non-university folks would reach a paywall.

Table 4.2 illustrates whether different information types are like to be openly available or behind a paywall in a closed system. Knowing if an information is type is open or closed might influence your tools and search strategies used to discover and access the information.

Information isn’t always free. If you are confronted with a closed system, you will have to determine if that information is crucial or if you can access similar information through an openly accessible system.

Having a better understanding of information types and access will assist you in locating research for your argument. We continue our discussion below by diving into best practices for locating and evaluating research.

Evaluating Research

Going deeper through lateral reading.

Imagine that you’re online shopping. You have a pretty clear idea of what you need to buy, and you’ve located the product on a common site. In a perfect world, you could trust the product producer, the site, and the product itself and, without any research, simply click and buy. If you’re like us, however, being a knowledgeable consumer means checking product reviews, looking for similar products, and reading comments about the company. Once we have a deeper understanding of the product and process, then we buy!

Argument research is similar. Feeling literate about the information types described above is key, but inaccurate or untrustworthy content still emerges.

In response, we recommend  lateral reading  – fact-checking source claims by reading other sites and resources.

Lateral reading emerged after a group of  Stanford researchers  pitted undergraduates, professors with their Ph.D.s in history, and journalists against each other in a contest to see who could tell if information was fake or real (Wineburg, McGrew, 2017). The results? Journalists identified fake information every time, but the Ph.D.s and undergraduates struggled to sniff out the truth.

Why is this?

Well, journalists rarely read much of the article or website they were evaluating before they dove into researching it. They would read the title and open a new tab to check out if anyone else had published something on the same topic. Reading what other people had written gave the journalists some context or background knowledge on the topic, better positioning them to judge the argument and evidence made. They would circle back to the original article, identify the author, and open more tabs to verify the identity of the author and their credentials to write the piece. Once the journalists were satisfied with this, they had enough background information to start judging the argument of the original piece. Essentially, journalists would read the introduction and pick out big ideas or the argument, people, specific facts, and the evidence referenced in the first paragraph.

Mike Caulfield (2017), a professor who specializes in media literacy, read the Stanford study and identified steps to evaluate sources. One of those steps is to read laterally, and three  ad d itional steps include :

• Check for previous work : Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.
• Go upstream to the source:  Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
• Circle back:  If you get lost, hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over, knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

Let’s apply lateral reading to the college textbook affordability topic from Chapter 3 with the specific purpose to “to persuade my audience to support campus solutions to rising textbook costs.”

You decide to search “textbook affordability” into Google. Google identifies approximately 1 million sources – whoa. Where do you start? Click on one those stories, “ Triaging T e xtbook Costs ” – a 2015 publication from Inside Higher Ed. From it, you learn about research on the rising costs of textbooks over time, how some students navigate those costs, and something called “open educational resources” (OER) as a strategy for reducing costs. You’ll use lateral reading to follow up on some of the sources linked in the story and do a little more research to fact check this single source. By searching “OER,” you can verify that yes, many universities are turning to open educational resources to combat textbook affordability. Now, you can dive deeper into OERs as a potential solution to the problem.

Lateral reading is a great tool to verify information and learn more without getting too bogged down. However, your research doesn’t stop there. As you begin compiling information source types around your argument, verify the credibility and make sure you’re taking notes.

Questioning Selected Source Information

Practicing lateral reading will provide you better insight on what diverse sources say about your argument. Through that process, you’ll likely find multiple relevant sources, but is that source best for your argument? Perhaps, but ask yourself the following questions before integrating others’ ideas or research into your argument:

• What’s the date?  Remember that timeliness plays a key role in establishing the relevance of your argument to your audience. Although a less timely source may be beneficial, more recent sources are often viewed more credibly and may provide updated information.
• Who is the author / who are the authors?  Identify the author(s) and determine their credentials. We also recommend “Googling” an author and checking if there are any red flags that may hint at their bias or lack of credibility.
• Who is the publisher?  Find out about the publisher. There are great, credible publishers (like the Cato Institute), but fringe or for-profit publishers may be providing information that overtly supports a political cause.
• Do they cite others’ work?  Check out the end of the document for a reference page. If you’re using a source with no references, it’s not automatically “bad,” but a reputable reference page means that the author has evidence to support their insights. It helps establish if  that  author has done their research, too.
• Do others cite the work?  Use the lateral reading technique from above to see if other people have cited this work, too. Alternatively, if, as you research, you see the same piece of work over and over, it’s likely seen as a reputable source within that field. So check it out!

It can feel great to find a key piece of information that supports your argument. But a good idea is more than well-written content. To determine if that source is credible, use the questions above to guarantee that you’re selecting the best research for your idea.

Remember: this is a lot of stuff to keep track off. We suggest jotting down notes as you go to keep everything straight. Your notes could be a pad of paper next to your laptop or a digital notepad – whatever works best for you.

This may seem obvious, but it is often overlooked. Poor note taking or inaccurate notes can be devastating in the long-term. If you forget to write down all the source information, backtracking and trying to re-search to locate citation information is tedious, time-consuming, and inefficient. Without proper citations, your credibility will diminish. Keeping information without correct citations can have disastrous consequences – as discussed below.

While issues of plagiarism are mostly present in written communication, the practice can also occur in oral communication and in communication studies courses. It can occur when speakers misattribute or fail to cite a source during a speech, or when they are preparing outlines or notecards to deliver their speeches and fail to cite sources.

According to the National Communication Association (NCA), “ethical communication enhances human worth and dignity by fostering truthfulness, fairness, responsibility, personal integrity, and respect for self and others” and truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason as essential to the integrity of communication (“Credo for Ethical Communication,” 2017).  This would imply that through oral communication, there is an expectation that you will credit others with their original thoughts and ideas through citation. One important way that we speak ethically is to use material from others correctly. Occasionally we hear in the news media about a politician or leader who uses the words of other speakers without attribution or of scholars who use pages out of another scholar’s work without consent or citation.

But, why does it matter if a speaker or writer commits plagiarism? Why and how do we judge a speaker as ethical? Why, for example, do we value originality and correct citation of sources in public life as well as the academic world, especially in the United States? These are not new questions, and some of the answers lie in age-old philosophies of communication.

Although there are many ways that you could undermine your ethical stance before an audience, the one that stands out and is committed most commonly in academic contexts is plagiarism. A dictionary definition of plagiarism would be “the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person” (Merriam-Webster, 2015). Plagiarism is often thought of as “copying another’s work or borrowing someone else’s original ideas” (“What is Plagiarism?”, 2014). Plagiarism also includes:

• Turning in someone else’s work as your own;
• Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit;
• Failing to put quotation marks around an exact quotation correctly;
• Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation;
• Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit;
• Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not.

Plagiarism exists outside of the classroom and is a temptation in business, creative endeavors, and politics. However, in the classroom, your instructor will probably take the most immediate action if he or she discovers your plagiarism either from personal experience or through using plagiarism detection (or what is also called “originality checking”) software.

In the business or professional world, plagiarism is never tolerated because using original work without permission (which usually includes paying fees to the author or artist) can end in serious legal action. So, you should always work to correctly provide credit for source information that you’re using.

Types of Plagiarism

There are many instances of speakers or authors presenting work they claim to be original and their own when it is not. Plagiarism is often done accidentally due to inexperience. To avoid this mistake, let’s work through two types of plagiarism: stealing and sneaking. Sometimes these types of plagiarism are intentional, and sometimes they occur unintentionally (you may not know you are plagiarizing). However, as everyone knows, “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking it.”

No one wants to be the victim of theft; if it has ever happened to you, you know how awful it feels. When someone takes an essay, research paper, speech, or outline completely from another source, whether it is a classmate who submitted it for another instructor, from some sort of online essay writing service, or from elsewhere, this is an act of theft. The wrongness of the act is compounded when someone submits that work in its entirely and labels it as their own.

Most colleges and universities have a policy that penalizes or forbids “self-plagiarism.” This means that you can’t use a paper or outline that you presented in another class a second time. You may think, “How can this be plagiarism if the source is in my works cited page?” The main reason is that by submitting it to your instructor, you are still claiming it is original, first-time work for the assignment in that particular class. Your instructor may not mind if you use some of the same sources from the first time it was submitted, but he or she expects you to follow the instructions for the assignment and prepare an original assignment. In a sense, this situation is also a case of unfairness, since the other students do not have the advantage of having written the paper or outline already.

Instead of taking work as a whole from another source, an individual might copy two out of every three sentences and mix them up so they don’t appear in the same order as in the original work. Perhaps the individual will add a fresh introduction, a personal example or two, and an original conclusion. This kind of plagiarism is easy today due to the Internet and the word processing functions of cutting and pasting.  It also most often occurs when someone has waited too long to start a project and it seems easier to cut and paste portions of text than it is to read, understand, and synthesize information into their own words.

You might not view this as stealing, thinking, “I did some research. I looked some stuff up and added some of my own work.” Unfortunately, this is still plagiarism because no source was credited, and the individual “misappropriated” the expression of the ideas as well as the ideas themselves.

Avoiding Plagiarism

To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit to the words, research, or insights of others. When you’re integrating supporting research or using a key idea or theory, let the audience know! As you add research into your outline, you can either:

• Use direct quotes: this means that you’re including information from a source verbatim.
• Paraphrase: express the source’s idea but not verbatim.
• Summarize: explain the main ideas or arguments from the source’s findings.

Citing others will bolster your credibility because it demonstrates that you have in-depth knowledge about the topic.

In English classes, you’ve likely used style guides (like MLA or APA) to ethically cite research in an essay. Continue this practice. Regardless of how you’re integrating that research – verbatim or paraphrasing—the source reference should appear both in the writing and through an oral citation.

Key Takeaway

Having a strong research foundation will give your speech interest and credibility. This chapter has shown you how to access information but also how to find reliable information and evaluate it.

This process may seem exhausting at first, but you likely already are doing this in your everyday life. We simply are asking you to be a bit more aware of and practice lateral reading. Doing so will help you better understand the context and judge the veracity of an author’s argument and their evidence. It will also likely give you plenty of new evidence to inform your own argument.

Attribution:

Sections of this chapter were taken from  Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers   by Mike Caulfield.

Sections of this chapter were adapted from  Speak up, Speak Out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking . ISBN: 13: 9781946135254 License: CC BY-NC-SA

Conflict is a normal and natural part of life. However, learning how to manage conflict in our interpersonal relationships is very important for long-term success in those relationships. This chapter looks at how conflict functions and provide several strategies for managing interpersonal conflict.

Chapter Learning Objectives

• Differentiate between the terms conflict, disagreement, and argument.

9.1 Understanding Conflict

For our purposes, it is necessary to differentiate a conflict from a disagreement. 1 A disagreement is a difference of opinion and often occurs during an argument , or a verbal exchange between two or more people who have differing opinions on a given subject or subjects. It’s important to realize that arguments are not conflicts, but if they become verbally aggressive, they can quickly turn into conflicts. One factor that ultimately can help determine if an argument will escalate into a conflict is an individual’s tolerance for disagreement. James McCroskey and colleagues defined tolerance for disagreement as whether an individual can openly discuss differing opinions without feeling personally attacked or confronted. 2 , 3 People that have a high tolerance for disagreement can easily discuss opinions with pretty much anyone and realize that arguing is perfectly normal and, for some, even entertaining. People that have a low tolerance for disagreement feel personally attacked any time someone is perceived as devaluing their opinion. From an interpersonal perspective, understanding someone’s tolerance for disagreement can help in deciding if arguments will be perceived as the other as attacks that could lead to verbally aggressive conflicts. However, not all conflict is necessarily verbally aggressive nor destructive.

The term “conflict” is actually very difficult to define. Simplistically, conflict is an interactive process occurring when individuals or groups have opposing or incompatible actions, beliefs, goals, ideas, motives, needs, objectives, obligations resources and/or values. First, conflict is interactive and inherently communicative. Second, two or more people or even groups of people must be involved. Lastly, there are a whole range of different areas where people can have opposing or incompatible opinions. For this generic definition, we provided a laundry list of different types of incompatibility that can exist between two or more individuals or groups. Is this list completely exhaustive? No. But we provided this list as a way of thinking about the more common types of issues that are raised when people engage in conflict. From this perspective, everything from a minor disagreement to a knock-down, drag-out fight would classify as a conflict.

Two Perspectives on Conflict

As with most areas of interpersonal communication, no single perspective exists in the field related to interpersonal conflict. There are generally two very different perspectives that one can take. On the one hand, you had scholars who see conflict as a disruption in a normal working system, which should be avoided. On the other hand, some scholars view conflict as a normal part of human relationships. 4 Let’s look at each of these in this section.

Perspective 1: Conflict Disrupt Working Systems

The first major perspective of conflict was proposed by McCroskey and Wheeless who described conflict as a negative phenomenon in interpersonal relationships:

Conflict between people can be viewed as the opposite or antithesis of affinity. In this sense, interpersonal conflict is the breaking down of attraction and the development of repulsion, the dissolution of perceived homophily (similarity) and the increased perception of incompatible differences, the loss of perceptions of credibility and the development of disrespect. 6

From this perspective, conflict is something inherently destructive. McCroskey and Richmond went further and argued that conflict is characterized by antagonism, distrust, hostility, and suspicion. 7

This negative view of conflict differentiates itself from a separate term, disagreement, which is simply a difference of opinion between two or more people or groups of people. Richmond and McCroskey note that there are two types of disagreements: substantive and procedural. 8 A substantive disagreement is a disagreement that people have about a specific topic or issue. Basically, if you and your best friend want to go eat at two different restaurants for dinner, then you’re engaging in a substantive disagreement. On the other hand, procedural disagreements are “concerned with procedure, how a decision should be reached or how a policy should be implemented.” 9 So, if your disagreement about restaurant choice switches to a disagreement on how to make a choice (flipping a coin vs. rock-paper-scissors), then you’ve switched into a procedural disagreement.

In this view, conflict is a disagreement plus negative affect; not only do you disagree with someone else, you don’t like the other person. It’s the combination of a disagreement and dislike that causes a mere disagreement to turn into a conflict. Ultimately, conflict is a product of how one communicates this dislike of another person during the disagreement. People in some relationships end up saying very nasty things to one another during a disagreement because their affinity for the other person has diminished. When conflict is allowed to continue and escalate, it “can be likened to an ugly, putrid, decaying, pus-filled sore.” 10

From this perspective, conflicts are ultimately only manageable; whereas, disagreements can be solved. Although a disagreement is the cornerstone of all conflicts, most disagreements don’t turn into conflicts because there is an affinity between the two people engaged in the disagreement.

Perspective 2: Conflict is a Normal Part of Human Communication

The second perspective of the concept of conflict is very different from the first one. As described by Cahn and Abigail, conflict is a normal, inevitable part of life. 11 Cahn and Abigail argue that conflict is one of the foundational building blocks of interpersonal relationships. One can even ask if it’s possible to grow in a relationship without conflict. Managing and overcoming conflict makes a relationship stronger and healthier. Ideally, when interpersonal dyads engage in conflict management (or conflict resolution), they will reach a solution that is mutually beneficial for both parties. In this manner, conflict can help people seek better, healthier outcomes within their interactions.

In this view, conflict is neither good nor bad, but it’s a tool that can be used for constructive or destructive purposes. Conflict can be very beneficial and healthy for a relationship. Let’s look at how conflict is beneficial for individuals and relationships:

• Conflict helps people find common ground.
• Conflict helps people learn how to manage conflict more effectively for the future.
• Conflict provides the opportunity to learn about the other person(s).
• Conflict can lead to creative solutions to problems.
• Confronting conflict allows people to engage in an open and honest discussion, which can build relationship trust.
• Conflict encourages people to grow both as humans and in their communication skills.
• Conflict can help people become more assertive and less aggressive.
• Conflict can strengthen individuals’ ability to manage their emotions.
• Conflict lets individuals set limits in relationships.
• Conflict lets us practice our communication skills.

When one approaches conflict from this vantage point, conflict can be seen as a helpful resource in interpersonal relationships. However, both parties must agree to engage in prosocial conflict management strategies for this to work effectively.

Interpersonal Conflict

According to Cahn and Abigail, interpersonal conflict requires four factors to be present:

• the conflict parties are interdependent ,
• they have the p erception that they seek incompatible goals or outcomes or they favor incompatible means to the same ends,
• the perceived incompatibility has the potential to adversely affect the relationship leaving emotional residues if not addressed, and
• there is a sense of urgency about the need to resolve the difference. 12

Let’s look at each of these parts of interpersonal conflict separately.

People are Interdependent

According to Cahn and Abigail, “ interdependence occurs when those involved in a relationship characterize it as continuous and important, making it worth the effort to maintain.” 13 From this perspective, interpersonal conflict occurs when we are in some kind of relationship with another person. For example, it could be a relationship with a parent/guardian, a child, a coworker, a boss, a spouse, etc. In each of these interpersonal relationships, we generally see ourselves as having long-term relationships with these people that we want to succeed. Notice, though, that if you’re arguing with a random person on a subway, that will not fall into this definition because of the interdependence factor. We may have disagreements and arguments with all kinds of strangers, but those don’t rise to the level of interpersonal conflicts.

Differing Goals, Differing Means to the Same End

An incompatible goal occurs when two people want different things. For example, imagine you and your best friend are thinking about going to the movies. They want to see a big-budget superhero film, and you’re more in the mood for an independent artsy film. In this case, you have pretty incompatible goals (movie choices). You can also have incompatible means to reach the same end. Incompatible means, in this case, “occur when we want to achieve the same goal but differ in how we should do so.” 14 For example, you and your best friend agree on going to the same movie, but not about at which theatre you should see the film.

Negative Effects When Unaddressed

Next, interpersonal conflicts can lead to very negative outcomes if the conflicts are not managed effectively. Here are some examples of conflicts that are not managed effectively:

• One partner dominates the conflict, and the other partner caves-in.
• One partner yells or belittles the other partner.
• One partner uses half-truths or lies to get her/his/their way during the conflict.
• Both partners only want to get their way at all costs.
• One partner refuses to engage in conflict.

Again, this is a sample laundry list of some of the ways where conflict can be mismanaged. When conflict is mismanaged, one or both partners can start to have less affinity for the other partner, which can lead to a decreasing in liking, decreased caring about the relational partner, increased desire to exit the relationship, increased relational apathy, increased revenge-seeking behavior, etc. All of these negative outcomes could ultimately lead to conflicts becoming increasingly more aggressive (both active and passive) or just outright conflict avoidance. We’ll look at both of these later in the chapter.

Role of Urgency in Resolving Conflict

Lastly, there must be some sense of urgency to resolve the conflict within the relationship. The conflict gets to the point where it must receive attention, and a decision must be made or an outcome decided upon, or else. If a conflict reaches the point where it’s not solved, then the conflict could become more problematic and negative if it’s not dealt with urgently.

Now, some people let conflicts stir and rise over many years that can eventually boil over, but these types of conflicts when they arise generally have some other kind of underlying conflict that is causing the sudden explosion. For example, imagine your spouse has a particularly quirky habit. For the most part, you ignore this habit and may even make a joke about the habit. Finally, one day you just explode and demand the habit must change. Now, it’s possible that you let this conflict build for so long that it finally explodes. It’s kind of like a geyser. According to Yellowstone National Park, here’s how a geyser works:

The looping chambers trap steam from the hot water. Escaped bubbles from trapped steam heat the water column to the boiling point. When the pressure from the trapped steam builds enough, it blasts, releasing the pressure. As the entire water column boils out of the ground, more than half the volume is this steam. The eruption stops when the water cools below the boiling point. 15

In the same way, sometimes people let irritations or underlying conflict percolate inside of them until they reach a boiling point, which leads to the eventual release of pressure in the form of a sudden, out of nowhere conflict. In this case, even though the conflict has been building for some time, the eventual desire to make this conflict known to the other person does cause an immediate sense of urgency for the conflict to be solved.

9.2 Emotions and Feelings

• Explain the interrelationships among emotions and feelings.
• Describe emotional awareness and its importance to interpersonal communication.
• Differentiate between “I” and “You” statements.
• Explain the concept of emotional intelligence.

To start our examination of the idea of emotions and feelings and how they relate to harmony and discord in a relationship, it’s important to differentiate between emotions and feelings. Emotions are our reactions to stimuli in the outside environment. Emotions, therefore, can be objectively measured by blood flow, brain activity, and nonverbal reactions to things. Feelings , on the other hand, are the responses to thoughts and interpretations given to emotions based on experiences, memory, expectations, and personality. So, there is an inherent relationship between emotions and feelings, but we do differentiate between them. Table 9.1 breaks down the differences between the two concepts.

Table 9.1 The Differences of Emotions and Feelings

It’s important to understand that we are all allowed to be emotional beings. Being emotional is an inherent part of being a human. For this reason, it’s important to avoid phrases like “don’t feel that way” or “they have no right to feel that way.” Again, our emotions are our emotions, and, when we negate someone else’s emotions, we are negating that person as an individual and taking away their right to emotional responses. At the same time, though, no one else can make you “feel” a specific way. Our emotions are our emotions. They are how we interpret and cope with life. A person may set up a context where you experience an emotion, but you are the one who is still experiencing that emotion and allowing yourself to experience that emotion. If you don’t like “feeling” a specific way, then change it. We all have the ability to alter our emotions. Altering our emotional states (in a proactive way) is how we get through life. Maybe you just broke up with someone, and listening to music helps you work through the grief you are experiencing to get to a better place. For others, they need to openly communicate about how they are feeling in an effort to process and work through emotions. The worst thing a person can do is attempt to deny that the emotion exists.

Think of this like a balloon. With each breath of air you blow into the balloon, you are bottling up more and more emotions. Eventually, that balloon will get to a point where it cannot handle any more air in it before it explodes. Humans can be the same way with emotions when we bottle them up inside. The final breath of air in our emotional balloon doesn’t have to be big or intense. However, it can still cause tremendous emotional outpouring that is often very damaging to the person and their interpersonal relationships with others.

Other research has demonstrated that handling negative emotions during conflicts within a marriage (especially on the part of the wife) can lead to faster de-escalations of conflicts and faster conflict mediation between spouses. 16

Emotional Awareness

Sadly, many people are just completely unaware of their own emotions. Emotional awareness , or an individual’s ability to clearly express, in words, what they are feeling and why, is an extremely important factor in effective interpersonal communication. Unfortunately, our emotional vocabulary is often quite limited. One extreme version of of not having an emotional vocabularly is called alexithymia , “ a general deficit in emotional vocabulary—the ability to identify emotional feelings, differentiate emotional states from physical sensations, communicate feelings to others, and process emotion in a meaningful way.” 17 Furthermore, there are many people who can accurately differentiate emotional states but lack the actual vocabulary for a wide range of different emotions. For some people, their emotional vocabulary may consist of good, bad, angry, and fine. Learning how to communicate one’s emotions is very important for effective interpersonal relationships. 18 First, it’s important to distinguish between our emotional states and how we interpret an emotional state. For example, you can feel sad or depressed, but you really cannot feel alienated. Your sadness and depression may lead you to perceive yourself as alienated, but alienation is a perception of one’s self and not an actual emotional state. There are several evaluative terms that people ascribe themselves (usually in the process of blaming others for their feelings) that they label emotions, but which are in actuality evaluations and not emotions. Table 9.2 presents a list of common evaluative words that people confuse for emotional states.

Table 9.2 Evaluative Words Confused for Emotions

Instead, people need to avoid these evaluative words and learn how to communicate effectively using a wide range of emotions. Tables 9.3 and 9.4 provide a list of both positive and negative feelings that people can express. Go through the list considering the power of each emotion. Do you associate light, medium, or strong emotions with the words provided on these lists? Why? There is no right or wrong way to answer this question. Still, it is important to understand that people can differ in their interpretations of the strength of different emotionally laden words. If you don’t know what a word means, you should look it up and add another word to your list of feelings that you can express to others.

Table 9.3 Positive Emotions

Table 9.4 Negative Emotions

The Problem of You Statements

According to Marshall Rosenberg, the father of nonviolent communication, “You” statements ultimately are moralistic judgments where we imply the wrongness or badness of another person and the way they have behaved. 19 When we make moralistic judgments about others, we tend to deny responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Remember, when it comes to feelings, no one can “make” you feel a specific way. We choose the feelings we inhabit; we do not inhabit the feelings that choose us. When we make moralistic judgments and deny responsibility, we end up in a constant cycle of defensiveness where your individual needs are not going to be met by your relational partner. Behind every negative emotion is a need not being fulfilled, and when we start blaming others, those needs will keep getting unfilled in the process. Often this lack of need fulfillment will result in us demanding someone fulfill our need or face blame or punishment. For example, “if you go hang out with your friends tonight, I’m going to hurt myself and it will your fault.” In this simple sentence, we see someone who disapproves of another’s behaviors and threatens to blame their relational partner for the individual’s behavior. In highly volatile relationships, this constant blame cycle can become very detrimental, and no one’s needs are getting met.

However, just observing behavior and stating how you feel only gets you part of the way there because you’re still not describing your need. Now, when we talk about the idea of “needing” something, we are not talking about this strictly in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, though those are all entirely appropriate needs. At the same time, relational needs are generally not rewards like tangible items or money. Instead, Marshall Rosenberg categorizes basic needs that we all have falling into the categories: autonomy, celebration, play, spiritual communion, physical nurturance, integrity, and interdependence (Table 9.5). As you can imagine, any time these needs are not being met, you will reach out to get them fulfilled. As such, when we communicate about our feelings, they are generally tied to an unmet or fulfilled need. For example, you could say, “I feel dejected when you yell at me because I need to be respected.” In this sentence, you are identifying your need, observing the behavior, and labeling the need. Notice that there isn’t judgment associated with identifying one’s needs.

Table 9.5 Needs

Table 9.6 Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire

Research Spotlight

• Positive dyadic coping involves the provision of problem- and emotion-focused support and reducing the partner’s stress by a new division of responsibilities and contributions to the coping process.
• Common dyadic coping (i.e., joint dyadic coping) includes strategies in which both partners jointly engage to reduce stress (e.g., exchange tenderness, joint problem-solving).
• Negative dyadic coping comprises insufficient support and ambivalent or hostile intervention attempts (e.g., reluctant provision of support while believing that the partner should solve the problem alone). 23

In the Wollny et al. (2000) study, the researchers studied 136 heterosexual couples. Trait EQ was positively related to relationship satisfaction. Trait EQ was positively related to positive dyadic coping and common dyadic coping but not related to negative dyadic coping.

Wollny, A., Jacobs, I., & Pabel, L. (2020, 2020/01/02). Trait emotional intelligence and relationship satisfaction: The mediating role of dyadic coping. The Journal of Psychology, 154 (1), 75-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2019.1661343

Letting Go of Negative Thoughts

We often refer to these negative thoughts as vulture statements (as discussed in Chapter 3 ). 24 Some of us have huge, gigantic vultures sitting on our shoulders every day, and we keep feeding them with all of our negative thoughts. Right when that thought enters your head, you have started to feed that vulture sitting on your shoulders.

Unfortunately, many of us will focus on that negative thought and keep that negative thought in our heads for a long period. It’s like have a bag full of carrion, and we just keep lifting it to the vulture, who just keeps getting fatter and fatter, weighing you down more and more.

Every time we point out a negative thought instead of harping on that thought, we take a pause and stop feeding the vulture. Do this long enough, and you will see the benefits to your self-concept. Furthermore, when we have a healthy self-concept, we also have stronger interpersonal relationships. 25

Positive Emotions During Conflict

Researchers have found that serious relationship problems arise when those in the relationship are unable to reach beyond the immediate conflict and include positive as well as negative emotions in their discussions. In a landmark study of newlywed couples, for example, researchers attempted to predict who would have a happy marriage versus an unhappy marriage or a divorce, based on how the newlyweds communicated with each other. Specifically, they created a stressful conflict situation for couples. The researchers then evaluated how many times the newlyweds expressed positive emotions and how many times they expressed negative emotions in talking with each other about the situation.

When the marital status and happiness of each couple were evaluated over the next six years, the study found that the strongest predictor of a marriage that stayed together and was happy was the degree of positive emotions expressed during the conflict situation in the initial interview. 26

In happy marriages, instead of always responding to anger with anger, the couples found a way to lighten the tension and to de-escalate the conflict. In long-lasting marriages, during stressful times or in the middle of conflict, couples were able to interject some positive comments and positive regard for each other. When this finding is generalized to other types of interpersonal relationships, it makes a strong case for having some positive interactions, interjecting some humor, some light-hearted fun, or some playfulness into your conversation while you are trying to resolve conflicts.

• Emotions are our physical reactions to stimuli in the outside environment; whereas, feelings are the responses to thoughts and interpretations given to emotions based on experiences, memory, expectations, and personality.
• Emotional awareness involves an individual’s ability to recognize their feelings and communicate about them effectively. One of the common problems that some people have with regards to emotional awareness is a lack of a concrete emotional vocabulary for both positive and negative feelings. When people cannot adequately communicate about their feelings, they will never get what they need out of a relationship.
• One common problem in interpersonal communication is the overuse of “You” statements. “I” statements are statements that take responsibility for how one is feeling. “You” statements are statements that place the blame of one’s feelings on another person. Remember, another person cannot make you feel a specific way. Furthermore, when we communicate “you” statements, people tend to become more defensive, which could escalate into conflict.
• Emotional intelligence is the degree to which an individual has the ability to perceive (recognizing emotions when they occur), understand (the ability to understand why emotions and feelings arise), communicate (articulating one’s emotions and feelings to another person), and manage emotions and feelings (being able to use emotions effectively during interpersonal relationships).
• Think of an extreme emotion you’ve felt recently. Explain the interrelationships between that emotion, your thoughts, and your feelings when you experienced that extreme emotion.
• Complete the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. What areas are your strengths with regard to EQ? What areas are your weaknesses? How can you go about improving your strengths while alleviating your weaknesses?
• Think of a conflict you’ve had with a significant other in your relationship. How many of the statements that were made during that conflict were “You” statements as compared to “I” statements? How could you have more clearly expressed your feelings and link them to your needs?
• Define the term “influence” and explain the three levels of influence.
• Define the word “power” and explain the six bases of power.

One of the primary reasons we engage in a variety of interpersonal relationships over our lifetimes is to influence others. We live in a world where we constantly need to accomplish a variety of goals, so being able to get others to jump on board with our goals is a very important part of social survival. As such, we define influence when an individual or group of people alters another person’s thinking, feelings, and/or behaviors through accidental, expressive, or rhetorical communication. 27 Notice this definition of influence is one that focuses on the importance of communication within the interaction. Within this definition, we discuss three specific types of communication: accidental, expressive, or rhetorical.

First, we have accidental communication, or when we send messages to another person without realizing those messages are being sent. Imag

ine you are walking through your campus’ food court and notice a table set up for a specific charity. A person who we really respect is hanging out at the table laughing and smiling, so you decide to donate a dollar to the charity. The person who was just hanging out at the table influenced your decision to donate. They could have just been talking to another friend and may not have even really been a supporter of the charity, but their presence was enough to influence your donation. At the same time, we often influence others to think, feel, and behave in ways they wouldn’t have unconsciously. A smile, a frown, a head nod, or eye eversion can all be nonverbal indicators to other people, which could influence them. There’s a great commercial on television that demonstrates this. The commercial starts with someone holding the door for another person, then this person turns around and does something kind to another person, and this “paying it forward” continues through the entire commercial. In each incident, no one said to the person they were helping to “pay it forward,” they just did.

The second type of communication we can have is expressive or emotionally-based communication . Our emotional states can often influence other people. If we are happy, others can become happy, and if we are sad, others may avoid us altogether. Maybe you’ve walked into a room and seen someone crying, so you ask, “Are you OK?” Instead of responding, the person just turns and glowers at you, so you turn around and leave. With just one look, this person influenced your behavior.

The final type of communication, rhetorical communication , involves purposefully creating and sending messages to another person in the hopes of altering another person’s thinking, feelings, and/or behaviors. Accidental communication is not planned. Expressive communication is often not conscious at all. However, rhetorical communication is purposeful. When we are using rhetorical communication to influence another person(s), we know that we are trying to influence that person(s).

French & Raven’s Five Bases of Power

When you hear the word “power,” what comes to mind? Maybe you think of a powerful person like a Superhero or the President of the United States. For social scientists, we use the word “power” in a very specific way. Power is the degree that a social agent (A) has the ability to get another person(s) (P) to alter their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors. First, you have a social agent (A), which can come in a variety of different forms: another person, a role someone embodies, a group rule or norm, or a group or part of a group. 32 Next, we have the person(s) who is being influenced by the goal to be a specific change in thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors. When we discussed influence above, we talked about it in terms of communication: accidental, expressive, and rhetorical. When we deal with power, we are only dealing in the realm of rhetorical communication because the person exerting power over another person is consciously goal-directed.

Probably the most important people in the realm of power have been John French and Bertram Raven. In 1959, French and Raven identified five unique bases of power that people can use to influence others (coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent). 33 At the time of their original publication, there was a sixth base of power that Raven attempted to argue for, informational. Although he lost the battle in the initial publication, subsequent research by Raven on the subject of the bases of power have all included informational power. 34 Let’s examine each of these five bases of power.

Informational

The first basis of power is the last one originally proposed by Raven. 35 Informational power refers to a social agent’s ability to bring about a change in thought, feeling, and/or behavior through information. For example, since you initially started school, teachers have had informational power over you. They have provided you with a range of information on history, science, grammar, art, etc. that shape how you think (what constitutes history?), feel (what does it mean to be aesthetically pleasing?), and behave (how do you properly mix chemicals in a lab?). In some ways, informational power is very strong, because it’s often the first form of power with which we come into contact. In fact, when you are taught how to think, feel, and/or behave, this change “now continues without the target necessarily referring to, or even remembering, the [influencer] as being the agent of change.” 36

Coercive and Reward

The second base of power is coercive power , which is the ability to punish an individual who does not comply with one’s influencing attempts. On the other end of the spectrum, we have reward power (3 rd base of power), which is the ability to offer an individual rewards for complying with one’s influencing attempts. We talk about these two bases of power together because they are two sides of the same coin. Furthermore, the same problems with this type of power apply equally to both. Influence can happen if you punish or reward someone; however, as soon as you take away that punishment or reward, the thoughts, feelings, and/or behavior will reverse back to its initial state. Hence, we refer to both coercive and reward power as attempts to get someone to comply with influence, because this is the highest level of influence one can hope to achieve with these two forms of power.

The fourth base of power is legitimate power , or influence that occurs because a person (P) believes that the social agent (A) has a valid right to influence P, and P has an obligation to accept A’s attempt to influence P’s thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors. French and Raven argued that there were two common forms of legitimate power: cultural and structural. Cultural legitimate power occurs when a change agent is viewed as having the right to influence others because of their role in the culture. For example, in some cultures, the elderly may have a stronger right to influence than younger members of that culture. Structural legitimate power, on the other hand, occurs because someone fulfills a specific position within the social hierarchy. For example, your boss may have the legitimate right to influence your thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors in the workplace because they are above you in the organizational hierarchy. 37

The fifth base of power is expert power , or the power we give an individual to influence us because of their perceived knowledge. For example, we often give our physicians the ability to influence our behavior (e.g., eat right, exercise, take medication, etc.) because we view these individuals as having specialized knowledge. However, this type of influence only is effective if P believes A is an expert, P trusts A, and P believes that A is telling the truth.

One problem we often face in the 21 st Century involves the conceptualization of the word “expert.” Many people in today’s world can be perceived as “experts” just because they write a book, have a talk show, were on a reality TV show, or are seen on news programs. 38 Many of these so-called “experts” may have no reasonable skill or knowledge but they can be trumpeted as experts. One of the problems with the Internet is the fundamental flaw that anyone can put information online with only an opinion and no actual facts. Additionally, we often engage in debates about “facts” because we have different talking heads telling us different information. Historically, expert power was always a very strong form of power, but there is growing concern that we are losing expertise and knowledge to unsubstantiated opinions and rumor mongering.

At the same time, there is quite a bit of research demonstrating that many people are either unskilled or unknowledgeable and completely unaware of their lack of expertise. This problem has been called the Dunning–Kruger effect , or the tendency of some people to inflate their expertise when they really have nothing to back up that perception. 39 As you can imagine, having a lot of people who think they are experts spouting off information that is untrue can be highly problematic in society. For example, do you really want to take medical advice from a TV star? Many people do. While we have some people who inflate their expertise, on the other end of the spectrum, some people suffer from imposter syndrome, which occurs when people devalue or simply do not recognize their knowledge and skills. Imposter syndrome is generally a problem with highly educated people like doctors, lawyers, professors, business executives, etc. The fear is that someone will find out that they are a fraud.

The final base of power originally discussed by French and Raven is referent power , or a social agent’s ability to influence another person because P wants to be associated with A. Ultimately, referent power is about relationship building and the desire for a relationship. If A is a person P finds attractive, then P will do whatever they need to do to become associated with A. If A belongs to a group, then P will want to join that group. Ultimately, this relationship exists because P wants to think, feel, and behave as A does. For example, if A decides that he likes modern art, then P will also decide to like modern art. If A has a very strong work ethic in the workplace, then P will adopt a strong work ethic in the workplace as well. Often A has no idea of the influence they are having over P. Ultimately, the stronger P desires to be associated with A, the more referent power A has over P.

Influence and Power

By now, you may be wondering about the relationship between influence and power. Research has examined the relationship between the three levels of influence and the six bases of power. Coercive, reward, and legitimate power only influence people at the compliance level. Whereas, informational, expert, and referent power have been shown to influence people at all three levels of influence: compliance, identification, and internalization. 40 When you think about your own interpersonal influencing goals, you really need to consider what level of influence you desire a person’s change in thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors to be. If your goal is just to get the change quickly, then using coercive, reward, and legitimate power may be the best route. If, however, you want to ensure long-term influence, then using informational, expert, and referent power are probably the best routes to use.

Unsurprisingly, older siblings were more likely to engage in power displays with their younger siblings to get what they wanted. However, younger siblings were more likely to appeal to a third party (usually an adult) to get their way.

The researchers also noted that when it came to getting a desired piece of the farm to play with, older siblings were more likely to use coercive power. Younger siblings were more likely to employ legitimate power as an attempt to achieve a compromise.

Abuhatoum, S., & Howe, N. (2013). Power in sibling conflict during early and middle childhood. Social Development, 22 (4), 738–754. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12021

• Herbert Kelman noted that there are three basic levels of influence: compliance (getting someone to alter behavior), identification (altering someone’s behavior because they want to be identified with a person or group), and internalization (influence that occurs because someone wants to be in a relationship with an influencer).
• French and Raven have devised six basic bases of power: informational, coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent. First, we have informational power, or the power we have over others as we provide them knowledge. Second, we have coercive power, or the ability to punish someone for noncompliance. Third, we have reward power, or the ability to reward someone for compliance. Fourth we have legitimate power, or power someone has because of their position within a culture or a hierarchical structure. Fifth, we have expert power, or power that someone exerts because they are perceived as having specific knowledge or skills. Lastly, we have referent power, or power that occurs because an individual wants to be associated with another person.
• Think of a time when you’ve been influenced at all three of Kelman’s levels of influence. How were each of these situations of influence different from each other? How were the different levels of influence achieved?
• A mother wants her child to eat his vegetables.
• A police officer wants to influence people to slow down in residential neighborhoods.
• The Surgeon General of the United States wants people to become more aware of the problems of transsaturated fats in their diets.
• A friend wants to influence his best friend to stop doing drugs.

9.4 Conflict Management Strategies

• Differentiate between conflict and disagreement.
• Explain the three common styles of conflict management.
• Summarize the STLC Model of Conflict.

Many researchers have attempted to understand how humans handle conflict with one another. The first researchers to create a taxonomy for understanding conflict management strategies were Richard E. Walton and Robert B. McKersie. 41 Walton and McKersie were primarily interested in how individuals handle conflict during labor negotiations. The Walton and McKersie model consisted of only two methods for managing conflict: integrative and distributive. Integrative conflict is a win-win approach to conflict; whereby, both parties attempt to come to a settled agreement that is mutually beneficial. Distributive conflict is a win-lose approach; whereby, conflicting parties see their job as to win and make sure the other person or group loses. Most professional schools teach that integrative negotiation tactics are generally the best ones.

Table 9.7 ABC’s of Conflict Management

Alan Sillars, Stephen, Coletti, Doug Parry, and Mark Rogers created a taxonomy of different types of strategies that people can use when avoiding conflict. Table 9.8 provides a list of these common tactics. 42

Table 9.8 Avoidant Conflict Management Strategies

For our purposes, we have opted to describe those who engage in distributive conflict as battlers because they often see going into a conflict as heading off to war, which is most appropriately aligned with the distributive conflict management strategies. Battlers believe that conflict should take on an approach where the battler must win the conflict at all costs without regard to the damage they might cause along the way. Furthermore, battlers tend to be very personalistic in their goals and are often highly antagonistic towards those individuals with whom they are engaging in conflict. 43

Alan Sillars, Stephen, Coletti, Doug Parry, and Mark Rogers created a taxonomy of different types of strategies that people can use when using distributive conflict management strategies. Table 9.9 provides a list of these common tactics. 44

Table 9.9 Distributive Conflict Management Strategies

Collaborators

The last type of conflicting partners are collaborators. There are a range of collaborating choices, from being completely collaborative in an attempt to find a mutually agreed upon solution, to being compromising when you realize that both sides will need to win and lose a little to come to a satisfactory solution. In both cases, the goal is to use prosocial communicative behaviors in an attempt to reach a solution everyone is happy with. Admittedly, this is often easier said than done. Furthermore, it’s entirely possible that one side says they want to collaborate, and the other side refuses to collaborate at all. When this happens, collaborative conflict management strategies may not be as effective, because it’s hard to collaborate with someone who truly believes you need to lose the conflict.

Alan Sillars, Stephen, Coletti, Doug Parry, and Mark Rogers created a taxonomy of different types of strategies that people can use when collaborating during a conflict. Table 9.10 provides a list of these common tactics. 45

Table 9.10 Integrative Conflict Management Strategies

Before we conclude this section, we do want to point out that conflict management strategies are often reciprocated by others. If you start a conflict in a highly competitive way, do not be surprised when your conflicting partner mirrors you and starts using distributive conflict management strategies in return. The same is also true for integrative conflict management strategies. When you start using integrative conflict management strategies, you can often deescalate a problematic conflict by using integrative conflict management strategies. 46

STLC Conflict Model

Ruth Anna Abigail and Dudley Cahn created a very simple model when thinking about how we communicate during conflict. 47 They called the model the STLC Conflict Model because it stands for stop, think, listen, and then communicate.

The first thing an individual needs to do when interacting with another person during conflict is to take the time to be present within the conflict itself. Too often, people engaged in a conflict say whatever enters their mind before they’ve really had a chance to process the message and think of the best strategies to use to send that message. Others end up talking past one another during a conflict because they simply are not paying attention to each other and the competing needs within the conflict. Communication problems often occur during conflict because people tend to react to conflict situations when they arise instead of being mindful and present during the conflict itself. For this reason, it’s always important to take a breath during a conflict and first stop.

Sometimes these “time outs” need to be physical. Maybe you need to leave the room and go for a brief walk to calm down, or maybe you just need to get a glass of water. Whatever you need to do, it’s important to take this break. This break takes you out of a “reactive stance into a proactive one.” 48

Once you’ve stopped, you now have the ability to really think about what you are communicating. You want to think through the conflict itself. What is the conflict really about? Often people engage in conflicts about superficial items when there are truly much deeper issues that are being avoided. You also want to consider what possible causes led to the conflict and what possible courses of action you think are possible to conclude the conflict. Cahn and Abigail argue that there are four possible outcomes that can occur: do nothing, change yourself, change the other person, or change the situation.

First, you can simply sit back and avoid the conflict. Maybe you’re engaging in a conflict about politics with a family member, and this conflict is actually just going to make everyone mad. For this reason, you opt just to stop the conflict and change topics to avoid making people upset. One of our coauthors was at a funeral when an uncle asked our coauthor about our coauthor’s impression of the current President. Our coauthor’s immediate response was, “Do you really want me to answer that question?” Our coauthor knew that everyone else in the room would completely disagree, so our coauthor knew this was probably a can of worms that just didn’t need to be opened.

Second, we can change ourselves. Often, we are at fault and start conflicts. We may not even realize how our behavior caused the conflict until we take a step back and really analyze what is happening. When it comes to being at fault, it’s very important to admit that you’ve done wrong. Nothing is worse (and can stoke a conflict more) than when someone refuses to see their part in the conflict.

Third, we can attempt to change the other person. Let’s face it, changing someone else is easier said than done. Just ask your parents/guardians! All of our parents/guardians have attempted to change our behaviors at one point or another, and changing people is very hard. Even with the powers of punishment and reward, a lot of time change only lasts as long as the punishment or the reward. One of our coauthors was in a constant battle with our coauthors’ parents about thumb sucking as a child. Our coauthor’s parents tried everything to get the thumb sucking to stop. They finally came up with an ingenious plan. They agreed to buy a toy electric saw if their child didn’t engage in thumb sucking for the entire month. Well, for a whole month, no thumb sucking occurred at all. The child got the toy saw, and immediately inserted the thumb back into our coauthor’s mouth. This short story is a great illustration of the problems that can be posed by rewards. Punishment works the same way. As long as people are being punished, they will behave in a specific way. If that punishment is ever taken away, so will the behavior.

Lastly, we can just change the situation. Having a conflict with your roommates? Move out. Having a conflict with your boss? Find a new job. Having a conflict with a professor? Drop the course. Admittedly, changing the situation is not necessarily the first choice people should take when thinking about possibilities, but often it’s the best decision for long-term happiness. In essence, some conflicts will not be settled between people. When these conflicts arise, you can try and change yourself, hope the other person will change (they probably won’t, though), or just get out of it altogether.

The third step in the STLC model is listen. Humans are not always the best listeners. As we discussed in Chapter 7 , listening is a skill. Unfortunately, during a conflict situation, this is a skill that is desperately needed and often forgotten. When we feel defensive during a conflict, our listening becomes spotty at best because we start to focus on ourselves and protecting ourselves instead of trying to be empathic and seeing the conflict through the other person’s eyes.

One mistake some people make is to think they’re listening, but in reality, they’re listening for flaws in the other person’s argument. We often use this type of selective listening as a way to devalue the other person’s stance. In essence, we will hear one small flaw with what the other person is saying and then use that flaw to demonstrate that obviously everything else must be wrong as well.

The goal of listening must be to suspend your judgment and really attempt to be present enough to accurately interpret the message being sent by the other person. When we listen in this highly empathic way, we are often able to see things from the other person’s point-of-view, which could help us come to a better-negotiated outcome in the long run.

Communicate

Lastly, but certainly not least, we communicate with the other person. Notice that Cahn and Abigail put communication as the last part of the STLC model because it’s the hardest one to do effectively during a conflict if the first three are not done correctly. When we communicate during a conflict, we must be hyper-aware of our nonverbal behavior (eye movement, gestures, posture, etc.). Nothing will kill a message faster than when it’s accompanied by bad nonverbal behavior. For example, rolling one’s eyes while another person is speaking is not an effective way to engage in conflict. One of our coauthors used to work with two women who clearly despised one another. They would never openly say something negative about the other person publicly, but in meetings, one would roll her eyes and make these non-word sounds of disagreement. The other one would just smile, slow her speech, and look in the other woman’s direction. Everyone around the conference table knew exactly what was transpiring, yet no words needed to be uttered at all.

During a conflict, it’s important to be assertive and stand up for your ideas without becoming verbally aggressive. Conversely, you have to be open to someone else’s use of assertiveness as well without having to tolerate verbal aggression. We often end up using mediators to help call people on the carpet when they communicate in a fashion that is verbally aggressive or does not further the conflict itself. As Cahn and Abigail note, “People who are assertive with one another have the greatest chance of achieving mutual satisfaction and growth in their relationship.” 49

Mindfulness Activity

• Set intentions. What do you want to be discussed during this interaction? What do you want to learn from the other person? What do you want to happen as a result of this conversation? Set your intentions early and check-in along to way to keep the conversation on point.
• Stay present to the situation. Try to keep assumptions at bay and ask open-ended questions to better understand the other person’s perspective and experiences.
• Stay aware of your inner reactions. Disrupt the automatic feedback loop between your body and your thoughts. Acknowledge distressing or judgmental thoughts and feelings without reacting to them. Then check them against the facts of the situation.
• Take one good breath before responding. A brief pause can mean all the difference between opting for a thoughtful response or knee-jerk reaction.
• Use reflective statements. This is a tried and true strategy for staying present. It allows you to fully concentrate on what the other person is saying (rather than form your rebuttal) and shows the other person you have an interest in what they are actually saying. This will make them more likely to reciprocate!
• Remember, it’s not all about you . The ultimate objective is that both parties are heard and find the conversation beneficial. Try to actively take the other person’s perspective and cultivate compassion (even if you fundamentally do not agree with their position). This makes conflict escalation much less likely.
• Investigate afterward. What do you feel now that the conversation is over? What was the overall tone of the conversation? Do you feel like you understand the other person’s perspective? Do they understand yours? Will this require further conversation or has the issue been resolved? Asking these questions will help you to hone your practice for the future. 50

For this activity, we want you to think back to a recent conflict that you had with another person (e.g., coworker, friend, family member, romantic partner, etc.). Answer the following questions:

• If you used the STLC Model for Conflict, how effective was it for you? Why?
• If you did not use the STLC Model for Conflict, do you think you could have benefited from this approach? Why?
• Looking at Rush’s seven strategies for engaging in mindful conflict, did you engage in all of them? If you didn’t engage in them all, which ones did you engage in, and which ones didn’t you engage in? How could engaging in all seven of them helped your conflict management with this person?
• If you haven’t already, take a moment to think about the questions posed in #7 of Rush’s list. What can you learn from this conflict that will help prepare you for future conflicts with this person or future conflicts more broadly?
• A conflict occurs when two people perceive differing goals or values, and if the two parties do not reach a solution, the interpersonal relationship could be seriously fractured. An argument, on the other hand, is a difference of opinion that occurs between two people during an argument. The primary difference between a conflict and an argument involves the emotional volatility of the situation. However, individuals with a low tolerance for disagreement may perceive any form of argument as interpersonal conflict.
• In this section, we discussed three basic forms of conflict management: integrative (collaborators), distributive (battlers), and avoidance (avoiders). Integrative conflict occurs when two people attempt a win-win situation where the conflict parties strive to find a mutually beneficial solution to a problem. Distributive conflict occurs when one or both conflict parties desire a win-lose orientation where they will win and the other person will lose. Lastly, we have avoidance, which occurs when an individual either tries to avoid a conflict altogether or leaves the conflict field.
• Dudley Cahn and Ruth Anna Abigail’s STLC method for communication is very helpful when working through conflict with others. STLC stands for stop, think, listening, and communicate. Stop and time to be present within the conflict itself and prepare. Think through the real reasons for the conflict and what you want as an outcome for the conflict. Listen to what the other person says and try to understand the conflict from their point-of-view. Communicate in a manner that is assertive, constructive, and aware of your overall message.
• Think of a time when a simple disagreement escalated to a conflict. What happened? Why did this escalation occur?
• During conflict, do you think it’s appropriate to use all three forms of conflict management? Why?
• Think of a recent interpersonal conflict that you had that went badly. How could you have implemented the STLC Model of Conflict to improve what happened during that conflict?

accidental communication

When an individual sends messages to another person without realizing those messages are being sent.

alexithymia

A general deficit in emotional vocabulary—the ability to identify emotional feelings, differentiate emotional states from physical sensations, communicate feelings to others, and process emotion in a meaningful way.

A verbal exchange between two or more people who have differing opinions on a given subject or subjects.

Conflict management style where an individual attempt to either prevent a conflict from occurring or leaves a conflict when initiated.

coercive power

The ability to punish an individual who does not comply with one’s influencing attempts.

When an individual accepts an influencer’s influence and alters their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors.

An interactive process occurring when conscious beings (individuals or groups) have opposing or incompatible actions, beliefs, goals, ideas, motives, needs, objectives, obligations, resources, and/or values.

disagreement

A difference of opinion between two or more people or groups of people.

distributive conflict

A win-lose approach, whereby conflicting parties see their job as to win and make sure the other person or group loses.

Dunning–Kruger effect

The tendency of some people to inflate their expertise when they really have nothing to back up that perception.

emotional awareness

An individual’s ability to clearly express, in words, what they are feeling and why.

The physical reactions to stimuli in the outside environment.

emotional intelligence

An individual’s appraisal and expression of their emotions and the emotions of others in a manner that enhances thought, living, and communicative interactions.

expert power

The ability of an individual to influence another because of their level of perceived knowledge or skill.

expressive communication

Messages that are sent either verbally or nonverbally related to an individual’s emotions and feelings.

The responses to thoughts and interpretations given to emotions based on experiences, memory, expectations, and personality.

identification

When an individual accepts influence because they want to have a satisfying relationship with the influencer or influencing group.

When an individual or group of people alters another person’s thinking, feelings, and/or behaviors through accidental, expressive, or rhetorical communication.

informational power

A social agent’s ability to bring about a change in thought, feeling, and/or behavior through information.

integrative conflict

A win-win approach to conflict, whereby both parties attempt to come to a settled agreement that is mutually beneficial.

interdependence

When individuals involved in a relationship characterize it as continuous and important.

internalization

When an individual adopts influence and alters their thinking, feeling, and/or behaviors because doing so is intrinsically rewarding.

legitimate power

Influence that occurs because a person (P) believes that the social agent (A) has a valid right (generally based on cultural or hierarchical standing) to influence P, and P has an obligation to accept A’s attempt to influence P’s thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors.

The degree that a social agent (A) has the ability to get another person(s) (P) to alter their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors.

procedural disagreements

Disagreements concerned with procedure, how a decision should be reached or how a policy should be implemented.

referent power

A social agent’s (A) ability to influence another person (P) because P wants to be associated with A.

reward power

The ability to offer an individual rewards for complying with one’s influencing attempts.

rhetorical communication

Purposefully creating and sending messages to another person in the hopes of altering another person’s thinking, feelings, and/or behaviors.

substantive disagreement

A disagreement that people have about a specific topic or issue.

tolerance for disagreement

The degree to which an individual can openly discuss differing opinions without feeling personally attacked or confronted.

“you” statements

Moralistic judgments where we imply the wrongness or badness of another person and the way they have behaved.

Chapter Wrap-Up

As we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, conflict in interpersonal relationships is inevitable. The only way relationships can truly grow is through conflict, so learning how to manage conflict effectively is essential for successful interpersonal relationships.

9.5 Chapter Exercises

Real-world case study.

Paul has been in a yearlong relationship with his boyfriend Bill. Paul really loves the idea of being in love, but he’s just not in love with Bill at all. Unfortunately, on Valentine’s Day, he made the mistake of telling Bill that he loved him even though he just doesn’t. As far as Paul is concerned, he could end the relationship today.

Bill, on the other hand, fell madly in love with Paul almost immediately after they started hanging out and going to the gym together. One day when Bill and Paul were hanging out watching TV, he looked at Paul and told him that he loved him. Bill immediately noticed that Paul looked like a deer in headlights and let him off easy saying, “There’s no need to say it back if you’re not ready to do so.”

Ultimately, the relationship became more like a really good friendship than a romantic relationship. The two hung out and went to dinner and saw movies, but were never really intimate with one another at all. Paul kept up the charade because he kind of liked some of the perks of being in a relationship. He liked having someone to hang out with all the time. He liked having someone who cleaned his house and cooked for him. He liked having someone who would look after his cats when he went on vacation.

Over time, Bill started to realize that something was wrong with the relationship. One day when he and Paul were talking about the future, he told Paul, “I want to be everything for you.” He immediately saw that once again Paul looked like a deer trapped in headlights. Over time, Bill started noticing that Paul was getting more and more distant. He really loved Paul, but he started to realize that it really wasn’t being reciprocated the same way. Instead of saying something, he just shook the thoughts out of his mind and kept going.

• Would you classify this as a healthy relationship?
• Why do you think Paul has such a hard time being honest with Bill?
• Why do you think Bill was so determined to make the relationship work when it was clearly not being reciprocated?
• How would you describe the emotional quality of this relationship?
• How do you think this couple would engage in conflict?

End-of-Chapter Assessment

• need for cognition
• argumentativeness proneness
• conflict avoidance
• high tolerance for disagreement
• playing games
• aggressive behavior
• “If you flirt with one more person, I’m going to hurt myself, and it will be your fault.”
• “I hate it when you flirt with other people.”
• “I feel lonely when you flirt with other people because I need emotional safety.”
• “You make me feel like a piece of trash when you flirt with other people.”
• distributive
• competitive
• collaborative
• integrative
• The terms disagreement and argument are often confused with one another. For our purposes, the terms refer to unique concepts. A disagreement is a difference of opinion between two or more people or groups of people; whereas, an argument is a verbal exchange between two or more people who have differing opinions on a given subject or subjects.
• There are two general perspectives regarding the nature of conflict. The first perspective sees conflict as a disruption to normal working systems, so conflict is inherently something that is dangerous to relationships and should be avoided. The second perspective sees conflict as a normal, inevitable part of any relationship. From this perspective, conflict is a tool that can either be used constructively or destructively in relationships.
• According to Cahn and Abigail, interpersonal conflict consists of four unique parts: 1) interdependence between or among the conflict parties, (2) incompatible goals/means, (3) conflict can adversely affect a relationship if not handled effectively, and (4) there is a sense of urgency to resolve the conflict.

Sadly, many people are just completely unaware of their own emotions. Emotional awareness , or an individual’s ability to clearly express, in words, what they are feeling and why, is an extremely important factor in effective interpersonal communication. Unfortunately, our emotional vocabulary is often quite limited. One extreme version of of not having an emotional vocabularly is called alexithymia , “a general deficit in emotional vocabulary—the ability to identify emotional feelings, differentiate emotional states from physical sensations, communicate feelings to others, and process emotion in a meaningful way.” 17 Furthermore, there are many people who can accurately differentiate emotional states but lack the actual vocabulary for a wide range of different emotions. For some people, their emotional vocabulary may consist of good, bad, angry, and fine. Learning how to communicate one’s emotions is very important for effective interpersonal relationships. 18 First, it’s important to distinguish between our emotional states and how we interpret an emotional state. For example, you can feel sad or depressed, but you really cannot feel alienated. Your sadness and depression may lead you to perceive yourself as alienated, but alienation is a perception of one’s self and not an actual emotional state. There are several evaluative terms that people ascribe themselves (usually in the process of blaming others for their feelings) that they label emotions, but which are in actuality evaluations and not emotions. Table 9.2 presents a list of common evaluative words that people confuse for emotional states.

Many researchers have attempted to understand how humans handle conflict with one another. Walton and McKersie created a taxonomy to understand conflict, they were primarily interested in how individuals handle conflict during labor negotiations. 41 The Walton and McKersie model consisted of only two methods for managing conflict: integrative and distributive. Integrative conflict is a win-win approach to conflict; whereby, both parties attempt to come to a settled agreement that is mutually beneficial. Distributive conflict is a win-lose approach; whereby, conflicting parties see their job as to win and make sure the other person or group loses. Most professional schools teach that integrative negotiation tactics are generally the best ones.

The third stage in Thomas’s model is actual  behavior . As a result of the conceptualization process, parties to a conflict attempt to implement their resolution mode by competing or accommodating in the hope of resolving problems. A major task here is determining how best to proceed strategically. That is, what tactics will the party use to attempt to resolve the conflict? Thomas has identified five modes for conflict resolution: (1) competing, (2) collaborating, (3) compromising, (4) avoiding, and (5) accommodating (see  Table 1 ).

The choice of an appropriate conflict resolution mode depends to a great extent on the situation and the goals of the party  (see  Figure 2 ). According to this model, each party must decide the extent to which it is interested in satisfying its own concerns—called  assertiveness —and the extent to which it is interested in helping satisfy the opponent’s concerns—called  cooperativeness . Assertiveness can range from assertive to unassertive on one continuum, and cooperativeness can range from uncooperative to cooperative on the other continuum.

Once the parties have determined their desired balance between the two competing concerns—either consciously or unconsciously—the resolution strategy emerges. For example, if a union negotiator feels confident she can win on an issue that is of primary concern to union members (e.g., wages), a direct competition mode may be chosen (see the upper left-hand corner of  Figure 2 ). On the other hand, when the union is indifferent to an issue or when it actually supports management’s concerns (e.g., plant safety), we would expect an accommodating or collaborating mode (on the right-hand side of the figure).

What is interesting in this process is the assumptions people make about their own modes compared to their opponents’. For example, in one study of executives, it was found that the executives typically described themselves as using collaboration or compromise to resolve conflict, whereas these same executives typically described their opponents as using a competitive mode almost exclusively (Thomas & Pondy, 1967). In other words, the executives underestimated their opponents’ concerns as uncompromising. Simultaneously, the executives had flattering portraits of their own willingness to satisfy both sides in a dispute.

Stage 4: Outcome.  Finally, as a result of efforts to resolve the conflict, both sides determine the extent to which a satisfactory resolution or outcome has been achieved. Where one party to the conflict does not feel satisfied or feels only partially satisfied, the seeds of discontent are sown for a later conflict, as shown in the preceding figure. One unresolved conflict episode can easily set the stage for a second episode. Action aimed at achieving quick and satisfactory resolution is vital; failure to initiate such action leaves the possibility (more accurately, the probability) that new conflicts will soon emerge.

Abigail and Cahn created a very simple model when thinking about how we communicate during conflict. 47 They called the model the STLC Conflict Model because it stands for stop, think, listen, and then communicate.

• Explain the process of grouping information
• Introduce organizational patterns
• Describe outlining best practices
• Identify strategies for effective introduction and conclusions

Selecting and constructing an advocacy can be tough. But as we’ve discussed, a well-reasoned, researched, and constructed argument is key to effectively crafting and conveying information. The process, however, doesn’t stop there. The next step is determining how to organize and outline that information so that the audience can follow along.

Organizing information and reflecting on the best way to communicate an idea isn’t unique to a public speech; we do it all the time in private. Consider the following scenario:

Two friends – Anne and Stevie – have been dealing with interpersonal conflict. They can’t get along. Stevie decides that it’s time to sit down  and tell  Anne   how they’re feeling, but first,  she  jot s  some notes. “Where to start?”  she  think s , and tr ies  to consider how  she  want s  to breach the topic. “From the first time I was upset?” “Should I talk generally about the main 2 issues that keep bothering  me ?”  “ How do I start?”

Stevie is trying to process how to organize the information that she’ll present to Anne – the main audience member. She’s also processing the best way to start – or to introduce – that information to her friend, and outlining key ideas that she wants to remember.

The same is true for preparing arguments in a speech. Having your information in a well-organized manner can make or break audience understanding of your content. In this chapter, we discuss ways to effectively categorize your information that will a) support your thesis statement, and b) increase audience comprehension of that information. To accomplish these tasks, we will introduce different organizational patterns, tips for outlining, and strategies for crafting your introduction and conclusion. Before you can select an organizational pattern, you should first work to group your information.

Have you ever organized a garage sale? The first step, before putting up signs or pricing items, is to go through your closets and garage and create “piles” of items that you want to sell: children’s items, tools, kitchen items, furniture, trash, etc. Researchers have found that “chunking” information, that is, the way it is grouped, is vital to audience understanding, learning, and retention of information (Beighly, 1954; Bodeia, Powers, & Fitch-Hauser, 2006; Daniels & Whitman, 1981).

As we listen, we have limits as to how many categories of information we can keep in mind. In public speaking, use approximately 3 categories to group your information. 2-3 main points – or groups – is safe territory, and you should avoiding having more than 5 main points for an audience to track.

“How does this work in practice?” you may be asking. “How do I group information to find my categories?”

Use your research and your brainstorming tactics! As you research, look at the articles and websites you read and say, “That information relates to what I read over here” and, “That statistic fits under the idea of . . .” You are looking for similarities and patterns. Think back to the yard sle example – you would group according to customer interest and the purpose of each item. As you learn more about your topic and expand your expertise, the patterns and groups will become clearer.

Once you locate a pattern, that information can likely be grouped into your speech’s main points. Return to your thesis statement and determine what groups are more suitable to support your specific purpose. If you continue to find more groups, you may want to limit and narrow your topic down further.

Finally, because your audience will understand you better and perceive you as organized, you will gain more credibility as a speaker if you are organized, assuming you also have credible information and acceptable delivery (Slagell, 2013; Sharp & McClung, 1966).

After you group, the next step is determining what type of organizational pattern works best.

Patterns of Organization

At this point, you should see how much your audience needs organized ideas. You also know that as you do research, you will group together similar pieces of information from different sources. As you group your research information, you will want to make sure that your grouped content is adhering to your specific purpose statement.

Interestingly, there are some standard ways of organizing these categories, which are called “ patterns of organization.”  Our list isn’t exhaustive, but we provide insight on 5 organizational patterns with a few embedded examples. In each example, only the three to five main sections or “points” (Roman numerals) are given, without the other essential parts of the outline. But don’t worry—we’ll cover outlines later in this chapter.

Chronological

A  chronological organizational pattern  groups information based on time order or in a set chronology—first this occurred, then this, then this, then that. The use of a chronological pattern is appropriate when the argument needs to be traced linearly or for speeches that instructor or demonstrate. For a speech about creating a meaningful and memorable protest poster, providing the instructions in order will allow audience members to actively deploy that information after the speech.

One of the problems with chronological speeches is the tendency to create a long list of activities rather than categorizing the content. It is important to chunk the information into three to five groups so that the audience has a framework. For example, in a speech about the history of the Civil Rights Movement, your “grouping” or “chunking” might be:

• The movement saw African-Americans struggling for legal recognition before the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
• The movement was galvanized and motivated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• The movement saw its goals met in the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

It would be easy in the case of the Civil Rights Movement to list the many events that happened over decades, but that could be overwhelming for the audience. In this grouping of events, the audience is focused on the three events that pushed it forward.

You can see that chronological is a highly-used organizational structure, since one of the ways our minds work is through time-orientation—past, present, future. Another common thought process is movement in space or direction, which is called the  spatial pattern . For example:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the three regional cooking styles of Italy.

• In the mountainous region of the North, the food emphasizes cheese and meat.
• In the middle region of Tuscany, the cuisine emphasizes grains and olives.
• In the southern region and Sicily, the diet is based on fish and sea-food.

In this example, the content is moving from northern to southern Italy, as the word “regional” would indicate. If you were to actually study Italian cooking in depth, sources will say there are twenty regions, but “covering” twenty regions in a speech is not practical, so research can help you limit and determine which regions would be more appropriate.

For a more localized application, consider this example:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the geographic layout of the Midwest Science March.

• The main vein of the protest took place on the Kansas City Plaza.
• Vendor booths promoting educational opportunities about science were grouped at Washington Square.
• Counter-protesting was predominantly south of the river.

A spatial organizational pattern can assist audiences in visualizing your main points by grouping based on a spatial or geographic layout.

Topical/Categorical

The  topical organizational pattern  groups information into key categories. Many subjects will have main points that naturally divide into “types of,” “kinds of,” “sorts of,” or “categories of.” Other subjects naturally divide into “parts of the whole.” For example:

Specific purpose: To support the proposition that capital punishment should be abolished in the United States.

I.Capital punishment does not save money for the justice system.

II.Capital punishment does not deter crime in the United States historically.

III.Capital punishment has resulted in many unjust executions.

Another principle of organization to think about when using topical organization is “climax” organization. That means putting your strongest argument or most important point last when applicable. In the example above, “unjust executions” is a bigger reason to end a practice than the cost, since an unjust execution means the loss of an innocent life and a violation of our principles. If you believe Main Point III is the strongest argument of the three, putting it last builds up to a climax.

When using a topical pattern, you want to keep your categories simple, clear, and distinct by reducing repetition or blurriness between the groupings.

Cause/Effect Pattern

In a  cause/effect pattern,  the main points of a topic start with the cause, followed by the effect. If the specific purpose mentions words such as “causes,” “origins,” “roots of,” “foundations,” “basis,” “grounds,” or “source,” it is a causal order; if it mentions words such as “effects,” “results,” “outcomes,” “consequences,” or “products,” it is an effect order. If it mentions both, it would be cause/effect order. This example shows a cause/effect pattern:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the causes and effects of schizophrenia.

I.Schizophrenia has genetic, social, and environmental causes.

II.Schizophrenia has educational, relational, and medical effects.

This pattern can be helpful for an audience to understand how and/or why something has occurred. If your topic looks at a key problem, tracing how that problem originated may be worthwhile, even necessary, for an audience to track the outcomes.

Problem-Solution Pattern

The  problem-solution pattern  is closely related to cause/effect, but it also includes advocating for a key solution. This is a common organizational strategy used to persuade because a speaker is often asking the audience to address a problem with a concrete course of action. When you want to persuade someone to act, the first reason is usually that something is wrong!

We use a problem-solution pattern in everyday exchanges. If you and your friends were hungry (a problem), you’d invite them to dinner (the solution). However, if they’d recently eaten you might identify a secondary problem—you miss their company, for example.

Alternatively, let’s say that you want school board members to provide more funds for music at the three local high schools in your county. Ask yourself: What is missing because music or the arts are not funded? What is the problem? How is that a problem something that the school board should intervene to resolve? How does funding those programs resolve the problems that you’ve identified? For example:

Specific Purpose: To persuade the members of the school board to take action to support the music program at the school.

• There is a problem with eliminating extracurricular music programs in high schools.
• Students who do not have extracurricular music in their lives have lower SAT scores.
• Schools that do not have extracurricular music programs have more instances of community violence.
• The solution is to provide $200,000 in the budget to sustain extra-curricular music in our high schools.
• $120,000 would go to bands. This would be enough money to hire additional instructors and reserve after-school spaces.
• $80,000 would go to choral programs.

Of course, this is a simple outline and you would need to provide evidence to support the arguments, but it shows how problem-solution works. Psychologically, it makes more sense to use problem-solution rather than solution-problem. The audience will be more motivated to listen if you address needs, deficiencies, or problems in their lives rather than giving them solutions first.

After identifying an organizational pattern, an outline will assist you to compile information into that pattern. An  outline  provides a visual structure where you can compile information into a well-organized document. There are two primary types of outlines that we will discuss: preparation outlines and speaking outlines.

Preparation Outlines

Preparation outlines are comprehensive outlines that include all of the information in your speech. These are often full-sentences and include in-text citations and a reference page (if necessary). If someone were to read your outline, there should be enough depth to provide a skeleton of what will be accomplished.

Generally, we recommend starting from this outline format:

This is just a start, and each main point may have more than one piece of evidence, for example.

Like we mentioned, an outline is a visual structure, and it can aid you in determining where you need more or less information. For example, if you work on a problem/solution speech, your outline may visually demonstrate that most of your research is located under the “problem” main point, signaling to you that more “solution” research is required. Outlines also assist in reminding speakers to warrant all of their claims.

You should think of the outline as the blueprint for your speech. It is not the speech—that is what comes out of your mouth in front of the audience. The outline helps you prepare and, as such, they are a living document that you can adjust, add, and delete. We recommend beginning to add information to an outline right away. You don’t, however, often speak from that outline. Instead, you’ll use a speaking outline.

Speaking Outlines

A speaking outline is a keyword outline used to deliver a speech – often extemporaneous. As we’ll discuss in our chapters on delivering an aesthetic experience, the notes that you use to speak can aid or hinder in an effective delivery. A keyword outline – which you’ll use to rehearse and deliver – will allow greater embodiment and engagement with the audience. As you practice, you will be able to summarize the full preparation outline down to more usable notes. In those notes, create a set of abbreviated notes for the actual delivery. The more materials you take up with you to speak, the more you will be tempted to look at them rather than have eye contact with the audience, reducing your overall engagement.

Your speaking notes should be in far fewer words than the preparation, arranged in key phrases, and readable for you. Your speaking outline should provide cues to yourself to “slow down,” “pause,” or “change slide.” Our biggest suggestion is to make the notes workable for you.

Finally, always double check that your speaking outline includes your oral citations. An authors name and publication date are difficult to remember, so add all references directly into your notes.

Connective Statements and Internal Organization

At this point, you may be realizing that preparing for public speaking does not always follow a completely linear process. In writing your speech, you might begin outlining with one organizational pattern in mind, only to re-craft the main points into a new pattern after more research has been conducted. These are all OK options.

Wherever your process takes you, however, you will need to make sure that each section of your speech outline is connected – what we call connective statements.  Connective statements  are broad terms that encompass several types of statements or phrases. They are generally designed to help “connect” parts of your speech to make it easier for audience members to follow. Connectives are tools for helping the audience listen, retain information, and follow your structure.

Connectives perform a number of functions:

• Remind the audience of what has come before;
• Remind the audience of the central focus or purpose of the speech;
• Forecast what is coming next;
• Help the audience have a sense of context in the speech—where are we? (this is especially useful in a longer speech of twenty minutes or so);
• Explain the logical connection between the previous main idea(s) and next one, or previous subpoints and the next one;
• Explain your own mental processes in arranging the material as you have;
• Keep the audience’s attention through repetition and a sense of movement.

Connectives can include internal summaries, signposting or internal previews. Each of these terms all help connect the main ideas of your speech for the audience, but they have different emphases and are useful for different types of speeches.

Types of connectives and examples

Internal summaries  emphasize what has come before and remind the audience of what has been covered.

“So far I have shown how the designers of King  Tut’s  burial tomb used the antechamber to scare away intruders and the second chamber to prepare royal visitors for the experience of seeing the sarcophagus.”

Internal previews  let your audience know what is coming up next in the speech and what to expect with regard to the content of your speech.

“In this next part of the presentation I will share with you what the truly secret and valuable part of the King  Tut’s  pyramid: his burial chamber and the treasury.”

Transitions  serve as bridges between seemingly disconnected (but related) material, most commonly between your main points. At a bare minimum your transition is saying, “Now that we have looked at (talked about, etc.) X, let’s look at Y.”

Signposts  emphasize the physical movement through the speech content and let the audience know exactly where they are. Signposting can be as simple as “First,” “Next,” “Lastly” or using numbers such as “First,” “Second,” Third,” and “Fourth.” Signposts can also be lengthier, but in general signposting is meant to be a brief way to let your audience know where they are in the speech. It may help to think of these like the mile markers you see along interstates that tell you where you are or like signs letting you know how many more miles until you reach your destination.

Connectives are an important way to assist the audience in understanding a) where you’re going, b) where you are, and c) where you’ve been. We recommend labeling them directly in your outline to make sure that they’re integrated and clear.

Introductions and Conclusions

Now that you have a deeper understanding of organizational patterns and placing your information into an outline, let’s discuss introductions and conclusions. We recommend writing these sections after you have a substantial amount of the main body constructed in your outline.

Introductions and conclusions serve to frame the speech and give it a clearly defined beginning and end. They help the audience to see what is to come in the speech, and then let them mentally prepare for the end. In doing this, introductions and conclusions provide a “preview/review” of your speech as a means to reiterate to your audience what you are talking about. Because speeches are auditory and live, you need to make sure that audiences remember what you are saying.

The general rule is that the introduction and conclusion should each be about 10% of your total speech, leaving 80% for the body section. It can be tempting to have longer introductions, but that often leaves less time to introduce key research and warrant your ideas through the main points.

Structuring the Introduction

With that in mind, there are five basic elements that you will want to incorporate into your introduction and speech outline. Element 1: Get the Audience’s Attention

The first major purpose of an introduction is to gain your audience’s attention and make them interested in what you have to say. The first words of a speech should be something that will perk up the audience’s ears. Starting a speech with “Hey everybody. I’m going to talk to you today about soccer” has not tried to engage the individuals in the audience who don’t care about soccer.

To create interest, the key is selecting an option that’s appropriate and relevant to your specific audience. You will also want to choose an attention-getting device appropriate for your speech topic. Ideally, your attention-getting device should have a relevant connection to your speech. Below are a number of possibilities for crafting an attention getter.

Anecdotes and Narratives

An anecdote is a  brief  account or story of an interesting or humorous event. Notice the emphasis here is on the word “brief.” An example of an anecdote used in a speech about the pervasiveness of technology might look something like this:

In July 2009, a high school girl named Miranda Becker was walking along a main boulevard near her home on Staten Island, New York, typing in a message on her cell phone. Not paying attention to the world around her, she took a step and fell right into an open  construction  hole.

Notice that the anecdote is short and has a clear point. From here the speaker can begin to make their point about how technology is controlling our lives.

A personal story is another option here. You may consider starting your speech with a story about yourself that is relevant to your topic. Some of the best speeches are ones that come from personal knowledge and experience. If you are an expert or have firsthand experience related to your topic, sharing this information with the audience is a great way to show that you are credible during your attention getter.

Startling Statement/Statistic/Fact

Another way to start your speech is to surprise your audience with startling information about your topic. Often, startling statements come in the form of statistics and strange facts. The goal of a good startling statistic is that it surprises the audience and gets them engaged in your topic. For example, if you’re giving a speech about oil conservation, you could start by saying, “A Boeing 747 airliner holds 57,285 gallons of fuel.” You could start a speech on the psychology of dreams by noting, “The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.”

A strange fact, on the other hand, is a statement that does not involve numbers but is equally surprising to most audiences. For example, you could start a speech on the gambling industry by saying, “There are no clocks in any Las Vegas casino.”

Although startling statements are fun, it is important to use them ethically. First, make sure that your startling statement is factual. Second, make sure that your startling statement is relevant to your speech and not just thrown in for shock value.

A Rhetorical Question

A rhetorical question is a question to which no actual reply is expected. For example, a speaker talking about the history of Mother’s Day could start by asking the audience, “Do you remember the last time you told your mom you loved her?” In this case, the speaker does not expect the audience to shout out an answer, but rather to think about the questions as the speech goes on.

Another way to capture your listeners’ attention is to use the words of another person that relate directly to your topic. Maybe you’ve found a really great quotation in one of the articles or books you read while researching your speech. If not, you can also use a number of Internet or library sources that compile useful quotations from noted individuals. Quotations are a great way to start a speech, so let’s look at an example that could be used during the opening of a commencement address:

The late actress, fashion icon, and social activist Audrey Hepburn once noted that, “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible’!”

Element 2: Establish or Enhance Your Credibility

Whether you are informing, persuading, or entertaining an audience, they will expect you to know what you’re talking about. The second element of an introduction is to let your audience know that you are a knowledgeable and credible source for this information. To do this, you will need to explain how you know what you know about your topic.

For some people, this will be simple. If you are informing your audience about a topic that you’ve researched or experienced for years, that makes you a fairly credible source. You probably know what you are talking about. Let the audience know! For example, “I’ve been serving with Big Brothers Big Sisters for the last two years.”

However, you may be speaking on a subject with which you have no history of credibility. If you are just curious about when streetlights were installed at intersections and why they are red, yellow, and green, you can do that. But you will still need to give your audience some sort of reason to trust your knowledge. Since you were required to do research, you are at least more knowledgeable on the subject that anyone else in the class.

Element 3: Establish Relevance through Rapport

The next element of your introduction will be to establish rapport with your audience. Rapport is basically a relationship or connection you make with your audience. In everyday life, we say that two people have a rapport when they get along really well and are good friends. In your introduction, you will want to explain to your audience why you are giving them this information and why it is important or relevant to them. You will be making a connection through this shared information and explaining to them how it will benefit them.

Element 4: State your Thesis

The fourth major function of an introduction after getting the audience’s attention is to reveal the purpose of your speech to your audience. Have you ever sat through a speech wondering what the basic point was? Have you ever come away after a speech and had no idea what the speaker was talking about? An introduction should make the topic, purpose, and central idea clear.

When stating your topic in the introduction, be explicit with regard to exactly what your topic is. Spell it out for them if you have to. If an audience is unable to remember all your information, they should at least be able to walk away knowing that the purpose of your presentation was.

Element 5: Preview Your Main Points

Just like previewing your topic, previewing your main points helps your audience know what to expect throughout the course of your speech and prepares them for what you are going to speak on. Your preview of main points should be clear and easy to follow so that there is no question in your audience’s minds what they are. Long, complicated, or verbose main points can get confusing. Be succinct and simple: “Today, in our discussion of Abraham Lincoln’s life, we will look at his birth, his role a president, and his assassination.” From that there is little question as to what specific aspects of Lincoln’s life the speech will cover. However, if you want to be extra sure they get it, you can always enumerate them by using signposts: “In discussing how to make chocolate chip cookies, first we will cover what ingredients you need, second we will talk about how to mix them, and third we will look at baking them.”

What these five elements do is prepare your audience for the bulk of the speech (i.e. the body section) by letting them know what they can expect, why they should listen, and why they can trust you as a speaker. Having all five elements starts your speech off on much more solid ground that you would get without having them.

Structuring the Conclusion

Similar to the introduction, the conclusion has three specific elements that you will want to incorporate in order to make it as strong as possible.

Given the nature of these elements and what they do, these should generally be incorporated into your conclusion in the order they are presented below.

Element 1: Get the Audience’s Attention

Introductions preview your main points; the conclusion provides a review. One of the biggest differences between written and oral communication is the necessity of repetition in oral communication. Your audience only has one opportunity to catch and remember the points you are trying to get across in your speech, so the review assists in repeating key ideas that support your thesis statement.

Because you are trying to remind the audience of your main points, you want to be sure not to bring up any new material or ideas. For example, if you said, “There are several other issues related to this topic, such as…but I don’t have time for them,” that would make the audience confused and perhaps wonder why you did not address those in the body section. The hardcore facts and content are in the body.

Element 2: Restate the Thesis

Make sure to re-state your thesis because this is the main argument that you’re leaving the audience with. While this may come before or after the review of your main points, it’s important because it often directs the audience and reminds them why they’re present. Concluding without reiterating your thesis statement requires the audience to remember an idea from the introduction – which can feel like a long time ago.

Element 3: Clincher

The third element of your conclusion is the clincher, or something memorable with which to conclude your speech. The clincher is sometimes referred to as a concluding thought. These are the very last words you will say in your speech, so you need to make them count.

In many ways the clincher is the inverse of the attention-getter. You want to start the speech off with something strong, and you want to end the speech with something strong. To that end, similar to what we discussed above with attention getters, there are a number of ways you can make your clincher strong and memorable.

For the conclusion, make sure your purpose – informative, persuasive, entertaining – is honored.

Making Information Easy to Remember: Presentation Aids

In many, if not all of the classes you have taken, your instructors have used presentation aids.   Projectors, PowerPoint, models, and even the whiteboard are all examples of visual aids.  In addition, demonstrations of how to do things, like how to glove and gown in a surgical tech class, are examples of using visual aids. In a Music Technology course, the instructor will use recorded examples so students can better hear the concepts at work. This is also an example of a presentation aid. Similarly, in your speeches, you will use presentation aids to help your intended audience better understand and remember information.

Definition and Purpose

Presentation aids are a form of supporting materials, and they are simply visual and/or auditory examples and tools used to help your intended audience better understand and remember the key ideas in your speech.

Presenters use visual aids to get and hold the audience’s attention, help clarify ideas and concepts, provide examples and reinforce ideas, and contribute to the credibility of the speaker.  There are lots of connections between presentation aids and nonverbal messages, such as gestures, which we covered in chapter 5.

Creating your Presentation Aids

When it comes to creating your presentation aids, the main points we have been emphasizing still hold true: strive for clarity, and keep the intended audience in mind.  With all of the technology tools we have available, it can be tempting to try to create something fancy or visually exciting, but remember that you don’t want your presentation aids to distract from your speech. You want them to enhance your speech, and often simple is better.  In addition, be sure to only use the presentation aids you need; don’t include presentation aids just because they are available. As always, the key is clarity.

Most students use a PowerPoint for their visual aid, because they are easy to create, and they are easy for the audience to see, regardless of where they are sitting in the classroom.  Consider our demonstration speech example covering how to make a nutritious smoothie.  While the person presenting this speech could bring in the ingredients and the tools to use as presentation aids, it would be hard for anyone sitting towards the back of the room to actually see what is going on. In addition, the presenter would have to bring a lot of things with them, and it would require time to set up for the speech. A better approach would be to take pictures of the tools, ingredients, and process and put those pictures in a PowerPoint.  Those pictures could also be combined with text to help the audience understand. Not only would this approach better allow the audience to see, it would free up the presenter to focus on delivering the speech, rather than trying to create the smoothie in front of the audience.

When creating a PowerPoint (or any other readily available presentation format), you can use one of the readily available templates.  All of the set up work has been done in these templates, which will make it easier for you to focus on creating the presentation aid, rather than designing it.  Other things to keep in mind are to be consistent in your font choice, although you may alternate between font sizes for header text versus body text. Speaking of text, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with excessive amounts of text. You shouldn’t be reading the slides to the audience, and there shouldn’t be so much text the audience is reading the slide while you are speaking; the text on the slides should simply serve as category holders.  In addition, it is very helpful to animate the text on the slides so it only appears as you need it. That way the audience isn’t reading ahead to point number 4 while you’re still talking about point number 1.

Another helpful thing to do with PowerPoint is to insert a blank slide when you are talking but not referencing something on the screen. That way the audience isn’t looking at what’s coming next or what you just talked about while you’re introducing a new idea. Inserting a blank slide is simple, and doing so adds a nice professional polish to your speech.

A note on using video: the guideline for using video is that it can be no longer than 30 seconds of the speech. Having said that, using video can make it much more complicated to deliver the speech instead of simplifying. Consider what you will do while the video is playing: will you simply stand there and watch it with the audience? Will you be pausing it to point things out? Will you need to rewind it to point things out? While it certainly isn’t incorrect to use a video, keep in mind that  you  need to be delivering the speech, not the video.  As such, you need to carefully consider whether you want to invest some of the time you have in showing a video and whether it is going to be helpful to your audience in terms of understanding. Again, it is not incorrect to use video, but using video well is more complicated than it might first appear.

Rehearsal with Presentation Aids

When it comes to using your presentation aids, rehearsal with the presentation aid is key. You don’t want it to seem like you are looking at your PowerPoint for the first time when you open it in front of the class. Know how to make your PowerPoint full screen, advance the slides, etc.  In addition, you need to make sure you can access your presentation aid if you don’t have it on a thumb drive. Be sure you can open it on a campus computer, or the technology that you’re using to display it will interface with the classroom computer, before the day of the speech.  Also keep in mind that if you are using something like Google drive, you may be prompted to receive a code and enter it before you can access your materials on the classroom computer.

The important thing is to make sure that your presentation aids are available, as you obviously don’t want to have to deliver your speech without them, and it can be nerve-racking to have the class sit and watch while you try to figure out the technology. It is essential that you are prepared both to access and use your presentation aids.

A few more things regarding presentation aids: your presentation aids are not your delivery outline! Your presentation aids shouldn’t be something you are turning around and talking to (unless that is appropriate for where you are in your speech). Your focus is on talking to your audience, not your presentation aid.  Similar to what was emphasized before regarding delivery, you want to rehearse delivering the speech (as opposed to memorizing it), and the rehearsal of delivering the speech includes rehearsing with your presentation aids.

Delivering your Speech

Finally, we will cover some ideas and strategies for delivering your speech.

Paralanguage

One important idea from chapter 5 is the use of paralanguage.  Remember that paralanguage is the vocal but nonverbal dimension of speech. It involves things like inflection, stresses, volume, rate, pauses, rhythm, and creating variety.

The simplest and most direct thing to remember is that variety is important. What this means is that you want to avoid the delivery of your speech sounding repetitive. Probably the most common thing is falling into a repetitive rhythmic pattern. This occurs when the speech starts to sound something like this: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah pause blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah pause, etc.

When the speech delivery sounds like this, it seems like the person is reading until they run out of breath, taking a breath, and then reading some more. It creates a steady rhythm that can distract the listener from the words and message, and it also can make the message hard to hear because it tends to lead to breaks in the middle of sentences in places where you normally wouldn’t have breaks.  This often comes from trying to memorize the speech, rather than practicing delivering the speech.  When it comes to paralanguage, the important thing is to remember that you want your delivery to feel conversational. When you have a conversation, you will naturally fall into inflection patterns, stresses, pauses, etc. That will provide the variety that you need to keep your paralanguage interesting, and it really points to the importance of practicing delivering the speech rather than trying to memorize the speech.

One other important thing regarding paralanguage is to articulate clearly and effectively. This involves not speaking too fast or too slow, and it also means we need to pay attention to enunciating clearly. In casual conversation, we sometimes tend to blend words together; for example, “do you know what I am saying?” tends to sound more like “gnome saying?,” and “what time is it?” sounds more like “what timezit?”  Those expressions can be fine in casual conversation, but in a speech, we want to be sure we are articulating clearly and enunciating our words fully to best help our audience understand and hear our message.

It can be helpful to add notes about paralanguage on your delivery outline, such as “slow down here,” or “be sure to really accent these words,” etc.

Eye, Facial, and Body Communication

When it comes to eye communication, you definitely want to make eye contact with your audience (without staring at any one person too long). This includes your instructor; sometimes students begin delivering their speech to the instructor, which is a natural thing to do, but you want to make sure you’re making eye contact with your entire audience.  This obviously means you don’t want to be reading from your notes too much, and you don’t want to have your back turned to the audience and be reading or speaking to your PowerPoint slides.  As with paralanguage, variety is important: you want to look around the room, making eye contact with your audience, and occasionally looking at your notes and/or your PowerPoint as appropriate.

Similarly, with facial communication, you will want some variety, and you will want to try to avoid a negative expression or a scowl.  If you are passionate about your topic and prepared, your facial expressions will most likely just be natural and reflect that passion. However, it can be helpful to add some notes to your delivery outline if this is something you struggle with.

Finally, consider what you will do with your body when you deliver the speech. Moving around while delivering the speech can feel much more challenging than making eye contact, and, fortunately, unless it is an integral part of your speech, it is often unnecessary. When it comes to your body movement and body communication, the two most important things are to have good posture and to avoid hiding behind something. When it comes to posture, sometimes students try to make themselves “smaller” by slumping, which doesn’t work well for projecting confidence. In addition, it makes it harder to breathe well and speak well.  Regarding hiding, sometimes students are tempted to stand behind the lectern/computer station, which is something you want to avoid. Stand where your audience can see you fully so you can communicate most effectively.

Using your Delivery Outline

Finally, when it comes to using your delivery outline, you want to be subtle (this is really a part of eye contact, as discussed earlier).  You aren’t reading your speech – never use your preparation outline for your delivery outline – so you shouldn’t be staring at your delivery outline. Know your speech well, be rehearsed, and use your delivery outline to prompt you or remind you of specific quotes and things regarding the delivery of the speech itself. As with all parts of delivery, the goal is to have the use of notes feel natural.

Sometimes students focus on the delivery outline/note cards because doing so is more comfortable than looking at the audience, but this is not a good strategy. Communicate with your audience by looking at them, rather than your notes.

When it comes to delivery and rehearsal, the key thing is that you are rehearsing the actual delivery of the speech, not trying to memorize it.  There is a big difference between having a speech memorized and having practiced the delivery of the speech, and students often find giving a speech is much more stressful if they have only tried to memorize it, rather than focusing on rehearsing the actual delivery.

The organization and outlining of your speech may not be the most interesting part to think about, but without it, great ideas will seem jumbled and confusing to your audience. Even more, good connectives will ensure your audience can follow you and understand the logical connections you are making with your main ideas, introduction, and conclusion.

A boy displays an umbrella to his seated classmates for a session of Show and Tell

Extending the same level of care and understanding to ourselves as we would to others

Being touched by the suffering of others, opening one’s awareness to others’ pain and not avoiding or disconnecting from it, so that feelings of kindness toward others and the desire to alleviate their suffering emerge.

Families are one of the essential relationships that all of us have in our lifetimes. Admittedly, there are a wide range of family types: adopted families, foster families, stepfamilies, nuclear families, and the families we make. According to the latest research from the US Census Bureau , there are a wide range of different types of households in the United States today:

• Family households (83.48 Million)
• Married couple households (61.96 Million)
• Married couple households with own children (31.29 Million)
• Married couple households without own children (30.67 Million)
• Male householder, with own children (3.81 Million)
• Male householder, without own children (2.67 Million)
• Female householder, with own children (12.33 Million)
• Female householder, without own children (2.72 Million)

This chapter is going to explore the different types of family relationships and then end by looking at marriage.

11.1 Family Relationships

• Differentiate among various definitions of the word “family.”
• Describe the term “family communication patterns” and the two basic types of family communication patterns.
• Explain family systems theory and its utility for family communication researchers.

We interact within our families and begin learning our family communication pattern from the time we are born. Families are comparable to cultures in that each family has its own values, rituals, customs, beliefs, values, and practices. Interactions with other families reveal that there are vast differences between families. You may notice that the family down the street yells at each other almost constantly. Yelling is their baseline interaction, whereas another family never raises their voices and may seem to speak so infrequently that it appears that they have nothing to talk about within their family unit. These differences and our tendency as humans to make comparisons cause individuals to assess the value of the various styles of family communication.

Defining Family

One of the biggest challenges for family researchers has been to define the “family.” The ambiguity of the term “family” has often been seen in the academic literature. The definition of the family developed by Ernest W. Burgess was the first widely used definition by academics. 1 The term “family” was described as “two or more persons joined by ties of marriage, blood, or adoption; constituting a single household; interacting and communicating with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, brother and sister; and creating and maintaining a common culture.” 2 According to Burgess a family must be legally tied together, live together, interact together, and maintain a common culture together. The first three aspects of Burgess’ definition are pretty easy to conceptualize, but the concept of common culture deserves further explanation. Common culture consists of those communication interactions (day-to-day communication) and cultural tools (communication acts learned from one’s culture previous to the marriage) that each person brings into the marriage or family. Burgess’ definition of the family was useful because he was the first to examine the family structure’s attempt to maintain a common culture, but it also has many serious problems that cannot be ignored. Burgess’ definition of the word “family” excludes single parent families, commuter families, bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgendered/transsexual families, and families who do not choose to, or are unable to, have children.

After examining the flaws of Burgess’ definition of the word “family,” an anthropologist, George Peter Murdock, attempted to define the family, “Social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults.” 3 Once again, this definition only allows for heterosexual couples who have children to be considered a family because of the “socially approved” sexual relationship clause.

Another problem with this definition deals with the required inclusion of children for a couple to be labeled as a family. Many couples are unable to have children. Yet other couples opt not to have children. Does this really mean that they are not families? Couples, with or without children, should be considered as family units. All in all, this definition gave more direction than the Burgess one, but it is still extremely ambiguous and exclusive.

Another anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski, was looking at tribal familial structures all over the world at the turn of the century and defined the family as having 1) boundaries, 2) common residence, and 3) mutual affection for one another. 4 Malinowski’s definition deals primarily with the fact that in different cultures around the world, a family member may include anyone from the immediate family of origin who gave birth to a person, to any member of the society into which one is born. Many African tribes see the tribe as being the family unit, and the tribe takes it upon itself to raise the children.

The United States’ societal concept of the term “family” became very rigid during the 1950s when the family was depicted by social norms and the media as a mother, father, 2.5 offspring, and the family dog living together behind a white picket fence in the suburbs. 5 Though this is currently what many Americans picture as the typical 1950s’ family, the reality was considerably different. According to Steven Mintz and Susan Kellog the family structure was very weak in the 1950s. 6 Women started using tranquilizers as a method for dealing with normal household duties, and the divorce rate skyrocketed when compared with the 1940s. Currently, only around seven percent of U.S. families participate in the so-called “traditional” 1950s-style family. 7

During the 1970s, a variety of psychologists attempted to define the term “family.” Arthur P. Bochner defined the family as “an organized, naturally occurring relational interaction system, usually occupying a common living space over an extended time, and possessing a confluence of interpersonal images which evolve through the exchange of messages over time.” 8 , 9 Though this definition is broad enough to allow for a variety of relationships to be considered families, the definition is too vague. It has allowed almost anything to be considered a family. Take, for example, individuals who live in a dormitory setting either at a college or in the military. The first part of Bochner’s definition of family is that it has an organized, naturally occurring relational interaction system. In essence, this means that any group that has organization and interacts through various relationships accomplishes part of what it means to be a family. People who live in dormitories interact through various relationships on a regular basis. Whether it be relating with one’s roommate or with the other people who live in the rooms next to you, people in dorms do interact. Dormitories are generally highly organized. People are required to listen to complex directors and Resident Assistants (on a collegiate level). Also, with the myriad of dormitory softball teams and other activities, interaction occurs regularly.

The second part of Bochner’s definition of the family deals with occupying a common living space for an extended period. People who live in college dormitories do so for around a year. To many transient people, this can be seen as an extended period. The extended time clause is very awkward simply because of its ambiguity.

The last aspect of Bochner’s definition of the family deals with the possession of interpersonal images that evolve through communication. Many people who live in the same space will start to acquire many stories and anecdotes concerning those people with whom they are in close proximity.

A family has an ongoing relationship that is constantly functioning even when the individuals are forced to live apart from the family of origin. Once again, here is a definition that does not allow for a concise explanation that can be easily applied when analyzing a family unit.

To understand the concept of a family, the definitions should be combined in such a way that all types of family structures (e.g., single parent, LGBTQIA, non-married parents, etc.) are included. For our purposes a family is defined as two or more people tied by marriage, blood, adoption, or choice; living together or apart by choice or circumstance; having interaction within family roles; creating and maintaining a common culture; being characterized by economic cooperation; deciding to have or not to have children, either own or adopted; having boundaries; and claiming mutual affection. This does not necessarily say that all types of families are healthy or legal, but that all cohabiting groups that consider themselves to be families should be researched as such to understand the specific interactions within the group. Though one may disagree with a specific family group, understanding the group through a family filter can lend itself to a better understanding than could be reached by analyzing the group through an organizational filter. To understand this definition of family, an analysis of the various aspects of this study’s definition shall be done to help clarify this definition.

Marriage, Blood, Adoption, or Choice

The first part of the definition says that a family is “two or more people tied by marriage, blood, adoption, or choice.” This part of the definition allows for a variety of family options that would not be accepted otherwise. This definition also allows for children who become part of a foster family to have a family that they can consider their own, even if they are switched from family to family. Non-married couples who consider themselves a family should also be researched as such. This aspect of the definition does open itself to some family types that are seen as illegal (e.g., family members marrying each other). This definition does not attempt to create a legal definition of family as much as it attempts to create a definition under which the family can be studied. As mentioned earlier, not all forms of family are necessarily healthy or legal. This part of the definition opens the field of family study while the remaining criteria narrow the focus so that not just any group can call itself a family.

Cohabitation

The second part of the definition of family indicates that the cohabitants may live together or apart by choice or circumstance. There are a variety of married couples who are not able to live in the same place because of occupation. According to Naomi Gerstel and Harriet Engel Goss, a commuter family is such a family:

The existence of marriages in which spouses separate in the service of divergent career demands at least suggests a need to question both the presupposition that coresidence is necessary for marital viability and its corollary that husbands and wives necessarily share economic fates. Dubbed “commuter,” “long-distance” or “two location” families, these marriages entail the maintenance of two separate residences by spouses who are apart from one another for periods ranging from several days per week to months at a time. 10

These marriages, seen as nontraditional by many, are becoming an increasingly more common occurrence within the United States. Any member of the military who is stationed in the United States and sent to other parts of the world without their family experiences the problems caused by commuter marriages. Just because these families are not able to live under the same roof does not mean that they are not a family.

Family Roles

The third criterion of the definition of “family” suggests that the persons interact within family roles. These roles include such terms as mom, dad, son, daughter, wife, husband, spouse, and offspring. When an adult decides to be the guardian either by birth, adoption, or choice, the adult has taken on the role of a father or mother. When a group takes on the roles of parental figures and child figures, they have created a family system within which they can operate. Some of these roles can be related to the understanding of extended family as well, such as grandmother, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, and the like. These roles and the rules that cultures associate with them have a definite impact on how a family will function.

Common Culture

The fourth aspect, creating a common culture, stems directly from Burgess’ definition. 11 Couples bring other aspects (communicative acts, history, cultural differences, etc.) of their lives into the family to create the new subculture that exists in the new family. This can be done whether you have two men, a mother and daughter, or a husband and wife. When a couple joins to create a family unit, they are bringing both of their cultural backgrounds to the union, thus creating a unique third family culture that combines the two initial family cultures.

Economic Cooperation

The fifth trait of a family deals with economic cooperation, or the general pooling of family resources for the benefit of the entire family. Economic cooperation is typically thought of in the context of nuclear families, but in commuter families, both units typically pool their resources in order to keep both living establishments operational. Even though the family is unable to live together, the funds from both parties are used for the proper upkeep and maintenance of each location. In many instances, overseas military men and women will send their paychecks to their families back in the states because they will not need the money while they are out at sea or abroad, and their families still have bills that must get paid. Economic cooperation allows families who have dual earners to establish a more egalitarian relationship between the spouses since no one person is seen as the worker and the other as the non-worker.

The sixth component of the definition of a family deals with children as a component of a family. Many researchers (Burgess, 1926; Murdock, 1949; Bailey, 1988) have said that for a family to exist, it must have offspring. 12 This would mean that a couple who is infertile and only wants to raise children if they are biologically related would not be considered a family. This also prevents couples who do not desire to have children from achieving a family status. There are many unions of people who are not able to have children or do not desire to have children who are clearly families.

Established Boundaries

The seventh characteristic of a family deals with the need for the family to establish boundaries. Family boundaries is a concept that stems from family systems theory. According to Janet Beavin Bavelas and Lynn Segal, boundaries are those aspects of a family that prevent the family from venturing beyond the family unit. 13 Boundaries function as a means for a family to determine the size and the scope of family interactions with the greater system or society. The family can let information into the family or exclude it from the family.

Families do not function entirely in conjunction with the system of which they are a part. Families must filter information or risk information overload. Families have naturally occurring and created boundaries that decide how a family should and should not operate. Many families create boundaries that deal with religious discussion, or they do not allow for any rejection of the family’s religious beliefs on any level. This is an example of a boundary that a family can create. Conversely, there are boundaries that a family must respect because of societal laws. Understanding these boundaries is necessary because it allows the researcher a greater understanding of the context in which the family lives.

Love and Trust

The eighth, and final, trait of a family, mutual affection, deals with the concept of love and trust that a family tends to possess to help them journey through conflict situations. Mutual affection also means that an individual must have a desire to be within the family or possess the freedom to leave the family system when they are of age. Families are not coercive entities but entities in which all participants can make personal decisions freely belong. Leaving the family system does not guarantee that a member of a family will be able to lose all connections to the family itself. Besides, the family will have had an impact on members that will affect them even if they leave the family of origin and cut all ties.

Understanding the definitions presented about the family and their obvious limitations will help the understanding of the usefulness of this new definition. Too often, definitions of the word “family” have been so narrow in scope that only some families were studied, and thus the research into the family came from only a very narrow and rigid perspective. Defining what constitutes a family is a difficult task, but without a clear definition, the study of family communication cannot be done effectively.

Family Communication Patterns

Two communication researchers, Jack M. McLeod and Steven H. Chaffee, found that most models of families relied on dichotomous ideas (e.g., autocratic/democratic, controlling/permissive, modern/traditional; etc.). 14 Instead of relying on these perspectives, McLeod and Chaffee realized that family communication happens along two different continuums: socio-orientation and concept-orientation. In a series of further studies, David Ritchie and Mary Anne Fitzpatrick identified two family communication patterns: conformity orientation and conversation orientation. 15 , 16

Socio-Orientation

To McLeod and Chaffee, socio-oriented (conformity oriented) families are indicated by “the frequency of (or emphasis on) communication that is designed to produce deference, and to foster harmony and pleasant social relationships in the family.” 17 Families high in socio-orientation tend to communicate a similarity of attitudes, beliefs, and values. Similarity and harmony are valued while conflict s avoided. Family members maintain interdependence within a hierarchical structure. One of the authors comes from a family where similarity and harmony were valued to the extent that any amount of disagreement was frowned upon. The parent never (literally) argued or disagreed in front of the children. Despite the desires of her parents, the personalities of the children soon emerged and revealed that neither child could go along with total similarity and harmony. One child dealt with this difference by learning to keep his opinions to himself. The other sibling, who happened to be the oldest child, never learned to keep her opinion to herself. Her communication style simply did not align with the conformity orientation friction was the result. You may have similar experiences if your communication style is different from your family’s communication orientation.

Concept-Orientation

To McLeod and Chaffee, concept-oriented (conversation oriented) families use “positive constraints to stimulate the child to develop his own views about the world. and to consider more than one side of an issue.” 18 High concept-orientation families engage in open and frequent communication. Family life and interactions are perceived to be pleasurable. Self-expression is encouraged when attempting to make family decisions. Parents/guardians and children communicate in such a way that parents/guardians socialize and educate their children. Understanding the communication pattern within a family can lead to the ability to adapt to the family communication pattern rather than consistently communicating in a manner that is uncomfortable within the family structure.

Four Combinations

To further explain the concepts of socio- and concept-orientations, Jack M. McLeod and Steven H. Chaffee broke the combinations into four specific categories (Figure 11.2).

The first family communication pattern is the consensual family, which is marked by both high levels of socio- and concept-orientation (high conversation and conformity). The term “consensual” is used here because there is a tendency in these families to strive for or have pressure for agreement between parents/guardian and children. Children are encouraged to think outside the book as long as it doesn’t impact the parents/guardians’ power or the family hierarchy. However, “These conflicting pressures may induce the child to retreat from the parent/guardian-child interaction. There is some evidence of ‘escape’ by consensual children, such as strikingly heavy viewing of television fantasy programs.” 19

The second type of family communication pattern is the protective family, which is marked by high levels of socio-orientation and low levels of concept-orientation (high conformity, low conversation). In these families, there tends to be a strong emphasis on child obedience and family harmony. As such, children are taught that they should not disagree with their parents/guardians openly or engage in conversations where differences of opinion may be found. McLeod and Chaffee noted that parents/guardians strive to protect their children from any kind of controversy, which may actually make them more vulnerable to outside pressures and persuasion because they have not been taught how to be critical thinkers.

Pluralistic

The third type of family communication pattern is pluralistic, which is the opposite of the protective family and marked by high levels of concept-orientation and low levels of socio-orientation (low conformity, high conversation). In these families, “The emphasis in this communication structure seems to be on mutuality of respect and interests: the combination of an absence of social constraint plus a positive impetus to self-expression should foster both communication and competence.” 20 Some parents/guardians worry that this type of openness of thought actually creates problems in their children, but McLeod and Chaffee noted that these families have children who say they are more likely to want to grow up and be like their parents/guardians than the other three types.

Laissez-faire

The final family communication pattern, laissez-faire, is marked by both low concept- and socio-orientations (low conversation, low conformity). In these families, there tends to be a lack of parent-child interaction or co-orientation. Instead, these children are more likely to be influenced by external factors like the media, peers, and other forces outside of the family unit. McLeod and Chaffee said that these children are more like a control group in an experiment because of the hands-off nature of their communicative relationships with their patterns. As such, it’s somewhat difficult to discuss the effectiveness of this study of family communication.

In a 2018 study by Kelly G. Odenweller & Tina M. Harris, the researchers set out to examine the relationship between family communication patterns and adult children’s racial prejudice and tolerance. The researchers used a mostly college-age sample of 190 adults.

Parental use of socio-oriented family communication patterns was positively related to an adult child’s reported levels of prejudiced and bias towards their own group, and negatively related to being racially tolerant. As for concept-orientation, there were no relationships found at all.

Ultimately, a parent’s conformity oriented family communication style can affect their children’s racial biases.

Odenweller, K. G., & Harris, T. M. (2018). Intergroup socialization: The influence of parents’ family communication patterns on adult children’s racial prejudice and tolerance. Communication Quarterly, 66 (5), 501–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2018.1452766

Family Systems Theory

At the turn of the 20 th Century, philosophers started questioning how humans organize things and our understanding of organizing. Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory conceptualized what has become known as general systems theory. 22 Bertalanffy defined a system as “ sets of elements standing in interrelation.” 23 A classic mechanical system is a non-digital watch. Figure 11.3 shows the basic layout of a watch’s innards.

In this illustration, we see how the balance wheel causes the fork pin to move, which turns the escapement wheel. The escapement wheel turns the third wheel (seconds), which turns the second wheel, which turns the first wheel (minutes), which turns the reduction gear, which turns the hour wheel. All of these different parts must work together to tell time. If a problem arises at any part of this process, then it will affect the entire system and our ability to tell time accurately.

So, how does this ultimately help us understand family communication? A psychiatrist named Murray Bowen developed family systems theory in the 1950s while working at the National Institute of Mental Health, which stemmed from the work of general systems theory discussed by Bertalanffy. 24 Like Bertalanffy, Bowen’s theory started by examining how everything exists within nature and was governed by natural processes. Two of these processes, individuality and togetherness, became central to these ideas. 25 Individuality is a “universal, biological life force that propels organisms toward separateness, uniqueness, and distinctiveness.” 26 Togetherness , on the other hand, is “ the complementary, universal, biological life force that propels organisms toward relationship, attachment, and connectedness.” 27 This essential dialectical tension creates an organism’s differentiation, or its drive to be both individualistic while maintaining intimate connections with others in the larger environment. This more ecological view of how humans exist becomes a central tenant of Bowen’s family systems theory. Bowen argues that human behavior was not greatly determined by social-construction or intra-psychically generated. Instead, Bowen believes that a great deal of human behavior is habitual and rooted in billions of years of evolutionary history.

In his earliest work, Bowen examined schizophrenic patients, so he was interested in the development and treatment of schizophrenia. Instead of focusing just on the schizophrenic patient, Bowen started analyzing the broader range of relationships within the individual family units. Ultimately, Bowen argued that schizophrenia might be an individual diagnosis, but is in reality, “a symptom manifestation of an active process that involves the entire family.” 28 Dr. Bowen goes on to rationalize, “When schizophrenia is seen as a family problem, it is not a disease in terms of our usual way of thinking about disease… When the family is viewed as a unit, certain clinical patterns come into focus that are not easily seen from the more familiar individual frame of reference.” 29 In essence, when we stop to think about a family as a system, it’s much easier to understand the manifestations of behaviors of family members.

Characteristics of Family Systems

Over the years, numerous researchers have furthered the basic ideas of Murray Bowen to further our understanding of family systems. Part of this process has been identifying different characteristics of family systems. According to Kathleen Galvin, Fran Dickson, and Sherilyn Marrow, 30 there are seven essential characteristics of family systems: interdependence, wholeness, patterns/regularities, interactive complexity, openness, complex relationships, and equifinality.

Interdependence

The term interdependence means that changes in one part of the system will have ramifications for other parts of the system. For example, if one of the gears in your watch gets bent, the gear will affect the rest of the watch’s ability to tell time. In this idea, the behaviors of one family member will impact the behaviors of other family members. To combine this idea with family communication patterns described earlier, parents/guardians that are high in socio-orientation and low in concept-orientation will impact that children’s willingness and openness to communicate about issues of disagreement.

On the larger issue of pathology, numerous diseases and addictions can impact how people behave and interact. If you have a family who has a child diagnosed with cancer, the focus of the entire family may shift to the care of that one child. If the parents/guardians rally the family in support, this diagnosis could bring everyone together. On the other hand, it’s also possible that the complete focus of the parents/guardians turns to the ill child and the other children could feel unattended to or unloved, which could lead to feelings of isolation, jealousy, and resentment.

The idea of wholeness or holism is to be able to see behaviors and outcomes within the context of the system. To understand how a watch tells time, you cannot just look at the fork pin’s activity and understand the concept of time. In the same way, examining a single fight between two siblings cannot completely let you know everything you need to know about how that family interacts or how that fight came to happen. How siblings interact with one another can be manifestations of how they have observed their parents/guardians handle conflict or even extended family members like aunts/uncles, grandparents, and cousins.

Holism is often discussed in opposite to reductionism. Reductionists believe that the best way to understand someone’s communicative behavior is to break it down into the simplest parts that make up the system. For example, if a teenager exhibits verbal aggression, a reductionist would explain the verbally aggressive behavior in terms of hormones (specifically testosterone and serotonin). Holistic systems thinkers don’t negate the different parts of the system, but rather like to take a larger view of everything that led to the verbally aggressive behavior. For example, does the teenager mirror their family’s verbally aggressive tendencies? Basically, what other parts of the system are at play when examining a single behavioral outcome.

Patterns/Regularities

Families, like any natural organism, like balance and predictability. To help with this balance and predictability, systems (including family systems) create a complex series of both rules and norms. Rules are dictates that are spelled out. Many children grow up hearing, “children are to be seen and not heard.” This rule dictates that in social situations, children are not supposed to make noise or actively communicate with others. Norms, on the other hand, are patterns of behavior that are arrived at through the system. For example, maybe your mother has a home office, and everyone knows that when she is in her office, she should not be disturbed.

Of course, one of the problems with patterns and regularities is that they become deeply entrenched and are not able to be changed or corrected quickly or easily. When a family is suddenly faced with a crisis event, these patterns and regularities may prevent the family from actively correcting the course. For example, imagine you live in a family where everyone is taught not to talk about the family’s problems with anyone outside the family. If one of the family members starts having problems, the family may try to circle the wagons and ultimately not get the help it needs. This is an example of a situation that happened to one of our coauthors’ families. In this case, one of our coauthor’s cousins became an alcoholic during his teen years. We’ll call him Jesse. Very few people in the immediate family even know about Jesse’s problems. Jesse’s mother was a widely known community leader, so there was a family rule that said, “don’t make mom or our family look bad.” When Jesse’s parents found out about his alcoholism (though a DUI), they circled the wagons and tried to deal with the problem as a family. Unfortunately, dealing with a disease like alcoholism by closing ranks is not the best way to get someone treatment. One night Jesse’s mother was called out to an accident at a local night club where a drunk driver had hit several people. When Jesse’s mother showed up, it was only then that she learned that the drunk driver had been her son.

In this case, the rule about protecting the family’s image had become so ingrained, that the family hadn’t taken all of the steps necessary to get Jesse the help he needed. Although no one died in the accident, one young woman hit by Jesse was paralyzed for the rest of her life. Jesse ended up going to prison for several years.

Interactive Complexity

The notion of interactive complexity stems back to the original work conducted by Murray Bowen on family systems theory. In his initial research looking at schizophrenics, a lot of families labeled the schizophrenic as “the problem” or “the patient,” which allowed them to put the blame for family problems and interactions on the schizophrenic. Instead, Bowen realized that schizophrenia was one person’s diagnosis in a family system where there were usually multiple issues going on. Trying to reduce everything down to the one label, essentially letting everyone else “off the hook” for any blame for family problems, was not an accurate portrayal of the family.

Instead, it’s important to think about interactions as complex and stemming from the system itself. For example, all married couples will have disagreements. Some married couples take these disagreements, and they become highly contentious fights. These fights are often repetitious and seen over and over again. Mary asks Anne to take out the trash. The next day Mary sees that the trash hasn’t been taken out yet. Mary turns to Anne at breakfast and says, “are you ever going to take out the trash?” Anne quickly replies, “Stop nagging me already. I’ll get it done when I get it done.” Before too long, this becomes a fight about Anne not listening to Mary from Mary’s point-of-view, while the conversation becomes about Mary’s constant nagging from Anne’s point-of-view. Before long, the argument devolves into an argument about who started the conflict in the first place. Galvin, Dickson, and Marrow argue that trying to determine who started the conflict is not appropriate from a systems perspective, instead, researchers should focus on “current patterns serves to uncover ongoing complex issues.” 31

The next major characteristic of systems is openness. The term openness refers to how permissive system boundaries are to their external environment. Some families have fairly open boundaries. In essence, these families allow for a constant inflow of information from the external environment and outflow of information to the external environment. Other families are considerably more rigid about system boundaries. For example, maybe a family is deeply religious and does not allow television in the home. Furthermore, the family only allows reading materials that come strictly from their religious sect and actively prevent any ideas that may threaten their religious ideology. In this case, the family has a very rigid and closed boundary. When families close themselves off from the external environment, they essentially isolate themselves. Children who are reared in highly isolated family systems often have problems interacting with other children when they come into contact with them in the external environment (like school). Some families will choose to homeschool their children as another tool to close the family system to foreign ideas and influences.

Complex Relationships

It’s important to remember that all family systems also have multiple subsystems. One of the areas that Murray Bowen became very interested in was how family subsystems develop and function during times of crisis. In Bowen’s view, a couple may be the basic unit within an emotional relationship. Still, any tension between the couple will usually result in one or both parties turning to others. If there are not others within the family itself, partners will bring in external people into the instability. For example, James and Ralph just got married. After a recent argument, Ralph ended up talking to his best friend, Shelly, about the argument (11.4). Bowen argues a two-person system under stress will draw in a third party to provide balance, which ultimately creates a two-helping-one or a two-against-one dynamic. It’s also possible that James decides to talk to his mother, Polly, which creates a different triangle.

Families are filled with relationship triangles. We could describe Ralph and James as parents and Shell and Polly as their daughters just as easily. These triangles are always being created and defined within a family unit when there is instability between two people. During times of crisis, these triangles take on a solution to the instability in the two-person relationship. Unfortunately, this “solution” is either two-helping-one or a two-against-one. 32 Basically, in a triangle, there are now two people on one side and one on the other, so it gives a sense of balance. The more family members we start to examine, the more complicated these triangle structures can become.

Equifinality

The final characteristic of family systems is equifinality. Equifinality is defined as the ability to get to the same end result using multiple starting points and paths. Going back to the basic definition of “family” discussed earlier in this chapter, there are many different ways for people to form relationships that are called families. Within family systems theory, the goal is to see how different family systems achieve the same outcomes (whether positive or negative).

• Although there are numerous definitions for the term “family,” this book uses the following definition: two or more people tied by marriage, blood, adoption, or choice; living together or apart by choice or circumstance; having interaction within family roles; creating and maintaining a common culture; being characterized by economic cooperation; deciding to have or not to have children, either own or adopted; having boundaries; and claiming mutual affection. The family structure is represented by single-mothers, single-fathers, two-parents, and adults living together without children. The idea of family has shifted away from the notion that a family is made up of a mother, father, and children.
• Jack M. McLeod and Steven H. Chaffee originally coined the term “family communication patterns” and broke the concept into two different patterns of family communicative behavior: socio-orientation and concept-orientation. Concept-orientation is the pattern of family communication where freedom of expression is encouraged, and communication is frequent, and family life is pleasurable. Conversely, socio-orientation is the pattern of family communication where similarly is valued over individuality and self-expression, and harmony is preferred over expression of opinion.
• Murray Bowen’s family systems theory is an extension of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory. Bowen argued that human behavior is not determined by social-construction or intra-psychically generated, but is habitual and rooted in billions of years of evolutionary history. As such, to understand how someone behaves or communicates today, it’s important to see how this behavior/communication can be understood through generations of family members.

11.2 Sibling Types

• Explain the two main concepts Shirley McGuire, Susan M. McHale, and Kimberly Updegraff found in research related to siblings.
• Differentiate among Shirley McGuire, Susan M. McHale, and Kimberly Updegraff’s different sibling relationship types.
• Describe different ways that siblings maintain their relationships.

After examining the literature related to siblings, Shirley McGuire, Susan M. McHale, and Kimberly Updegraff realized that two main concepts were commonly discussed in the literature: hostility and warmth. 43 Sibling hostility was characterized by such sibling behaviors as causing trouble, getting into fights, teasing/name-calling, taking things without permission, etc… 44 Sibling warmth , on the other hand, was characterized by sibling behaviors such as sharing secrets, helping each other, teaching each other, showing physical affection, sharing possessions, etc… 45 Research has shown us that warmth and hostility have an impact on sibling relationships. For example, individuals who have higher levels of sibling warmth are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. 46 Individuals who have sibling relationships that are high in hostility are more likely to report higher levels of aggression, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. 47

Sibling Relationship Types

McGuire, McHale, and Updegraff knew that these two dimensions were distinct from one another, so they set out to create a typology of sibling relationships based on hostility (high vs. low) and warmth (high vs. low). You can see this typology in Figure 11.10.

The first type of sibling relationship is the harmonious relationship. Harmonious sibling relationships are characterized by low levels of hostility and high levels of warmth. In these relationships, the siblings get along very well and have very low levels of problematic conflict. Often siblings in this category get along so well that they are very close friends in addition to being siblings. When it comes to long-term outcomes, harmonious siblings were found to have lower feelings of loneliness and higher self-esteems. 48 Research has also found gender effects. When sibling pairs are both female, they are more likely to report harmonious relationships than the other three sibling relationship types. At the same time, the combination of gender and birth-order also makes a difference. Males who are the firstborn are less likely to report harmonious sibling relationships. 49

The opposite sibling type of the harmonious sibling is the hostile sibling relationship, which is characterized by high levels of hostility and low levels of warmth. These relationships are marked by high levels of conflict between the siblings, which can often be highly physically and verbally aggressive. Furthermore, individuals in hostile sibling relationships are more likely to internalize internalizing of problems along with lower academic success, social competence, and feelings of self-worth. 50 These siblings often perceive their siblings as rivals within the family unit, so there is an inherent competition for scarce resources. Often these resources are related to parental attention, respect, and love.

Affect-Intense

The third sibling type is the affect-intense relationship. Affect-intense sibling relationships are marked by both high levels of hostility and warmth. These sibling relationships are as nurturing as harmonious relationships and as dominating as hostile relationships. These relationships are also perceived as more satisfying than hostile sibling relationships. 51 In one study examining affect-intense sibling relationships, researchers found that 38% of siblings from divorced families reported their sibling relationships as affect-intense as compared to only 22% of siblings from intact families.

The last type of sibling relationship is called the uninvolved, which is characterized by low levels of both hostility and warmth. Uninvolved sibling relationships typically don’t have any of the problems associated with affect-intense or hostile sibling relationships. Still, they also do not report any of the benefits that have been found with harmonious sibling relationships. 52 Uninvolved sibling relationships also appear to develop later in life. “Perhaps the separation processes and increased focus on peers that begin during adolescence stimulate the development of an uninvolved sibling relationship.” 53

Sibling Relationship Maintenance

One area where communication scholars have been instrumental in the field of sibling relationships has been in relationship maintenance, or the communicative behaviors that one engages in to preserve a relationship with another person. In one of the earliest studies to examine sibling relationships in the field, Scott Myers and a group of students explored the relationship between relationship communication and sibling communication satisfaction, liking, and loving. 54 Equality, receptivity, immediacy, similarity, and composure were all positively related to communication satisfaction. Composure, equality, similarity, and receptivity were all positively related to sibling liking. Equality, similarity, and receptivity were positively related to loving one’s sibling. The researchers also noted that individuals who perceived their relationships as more formal reported lower levels of loving their siblings. This first study helped pave the way for future research in examining how relationship communication impacts sibling relationships.

In a follow-up study, Scott Myers and Keith Weber set out to construct a measure for analyzing how individuals use communication to maintain their sibling relationships. 55 In their research, Myers and Weber found six distinct ways that siblings maintain their relationships through communication: confirmation, humor, social support, family visits, escape, and verbal aggression

Confirmation

The first way that siblings engage in relational maintenances is through confirmation. Confirmation messages help a sibling communicate how much they value the sibling. Sometimes it’s as simple as telling a sibling, “I’m pretty lucky to have a brother/sister like you,” can be a simple way to demonstrate how much someone means to you. These types of messages help validate the other sibling and the relationship.

A second relational maintenance tool that siblings can use is humor. Being able to laugh with one’s sibling is a great way to enjoy each other’s company. Often siblings find things completely hilarious that outsiders may not understand because of the unique nature of sibling relationships. Siblings also can lovingly make fun of each other. Now, we’re not talking about making fun of someone in a demeaning or mean-spirited manner. For example, one of our coauthors has an older brother who loves to give him a hard time. Recently, our coauthor misspelled something on Facebook, and his brother was right there to point it out and give him a hard time. In some relationships, this could be viewed as criticism, but because of the nature of their relationship, our coauthor knew the incident should be taken in jest.

Social Support

The third way siblings engage in relational maintenances is through social support. Social support is an individual’s perception and the actuality that an individual is loved and cared for and has people they can turn to when assistance or help is needed. Between siblings, this could involve conversations about one’s romantic life or even about parental concerns. Another way that siblings often provide social support is by giving and seeking advice from their sibling(s).

Family Events

The fourth way that families engage in social support is through family events. Now, not all families are big on family events, but some families participate in close-knit gatherings regularly. Some siblings will avoid these events to avoid seeing their other siblings, but many siblings see these opportunities as a way to keep their sibling relationships going. One of our coauthor’s family has problems getting together each year during the holidays because of how busy their schedules are in December. Instead, our coauthor and family go on family trips. Over the years, they’ve gone to Australia, Alaska, Hawaii, The Bahamas, San Francisco, New York City, New Zealand, and many other places. Currently, they’re planning trips to Belize and back to Hawaii. The family looks forward to these vacations together. In addition to these trips, our coauthor’s father also arranges periodic family reunions for his side of the family. Once again, our coauthor and sibling often end up rooming together because both are single. Ultimately, both look forward to these reunions because it gives them a chance to catch up.

At the same time, it’s often great to attend family events, but we usually only like to attend when we know our sibling will be there. In these cases, we often use our siblings as a form of escape. In fact, some siblings will only attend family get-togethers when they know their sibling(s) will be there. We often have a range of reasons for why we need to escape when we’re interacting with our family, but we are sure glad our sibling(s) are there when we need that escape.

Verbal Aggression

The final relational maintenance strategy that siblings have been found to use is verbal aggression. Now, verbal aggression is generally not viewed as a positive tool for communication. However, some sibling pairs have realized over time that verbally aggressive behavior allows them to get their way or vent their frustrations. However, in the original study by Weber and Myers, the researchers did find that all of the other relational maintenance strategies were positively related to sibling liking, commitment, and trust, but verbal aggression was not. 56

• Shirley McGuire, Susan M. McHale, and Kimberly Updegraff examined the literature related to siblings and found that there were two common variables: hostility and warmth. Sibling hostility is characterized by such sibling behaviors as causing trouble, getting into fights, teasing/name-calling, taking things without permission, etc…. Sibling warmth, on the other hand, is characterized by sibling behaviors such as sharing secrets, helping each other, teaching each other, showing physical affection, sharing possessions, etc….
• Shirley McGuire, Susan M. McHale, and Kimberly Updegraff’s found four sibling relationship types. The four different types of sibling relationships are based on the degrees to which they exhibit the combination of hostility and warmth. First, harmonious sibling relationships are characterized by low levels of hostility and high levels of warmth. Second, hostile sibling relationships are characterized by high levels of hostility and low levels of warmth. Third, affect-intense sibling relationships are characterized by both high levels of hostility and warmth. Lastly, uninvolved sibling relationships are characterized by low levels of both hostility and warmth.
• Scott Myers and Keith Weber discovered that siblings generally maintain their relationships using several relational maintenance strategies: confirmation, humor, social support, family visits, escape, and verbal aggression.

11.4 Marriage Relationships

• Explain the three different types of marital relationships described by Mary Anne Fitzpatrick.
• Discuss the application of Mary Anne Fitzpatrick’s relational dimensions to same-sex marriages.

Earlier in this text, we discussed dating and romantic relationships. For this chapter, we’re going to focus on marriages as a factor of family communication.

Marital Types

One of the most important names in the area of family communication and marital research, in general, is a scholar named Mary Anne Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick was one of the first researchers in the field of communication to devote her career to the study of family communication. Most of her earliest research was all in the area of marriage. 57

The Relational Definitions

After creating the relational dimensions, Fitzpatrick then further broke this down into a marriage typology that included three specific remarriage types: traditional, independents, and separates. 66 Figure 11.11 illustrates how the three relational definitions were ultimately arrived at.

• Traditionals

The first relational definition that Fitzpatrick arrived at was called traditionals. Traditionals are highly interdependent, have a conventional ideology, and high levels of conflict engagement. First, traditional lives are highly intertwined in both the use of space and time, so they are not likely to feel the need for autonomous space at home or an overabundance of “me time.” Instead, these couples like to be with each other and have a high degree of both sharing and companionship. These couples are more likely to have clear routines that they are happy with. These couples are traditionals also because they do have a conventional ideology. As such, they believe that a woman should take her husband’s name, keep family plans when made, children should be brought up knowing their cultural heritage, and infidelity is never excusable. Lastly, traditionals report openly engaging in conflict, but they do not consider themselves overly assertive in their conflict with each other. Of the three types, people in traditional marriages report the greatest levels of satisfaction.

• Independents

The second relational definition that Fitzpatrick described were called independents. Independents have a high level of interdependence, have an unconventional ideology, and high levels of conflict engagement. The real difference is their unconventional values in what a marriage is and how it functions. Independents, like their traditional counterparts, have high levels of interdependency within their marriages, so there is a high degree of both sharing and companionship reported by these individuals. However, independents tend to need more “me time” and autonomous space. Independents are also less likely to stick with a clear family schedule daily. To these individuals, marriage is something that compliments their way of life and not something that constrains it. Lastly, independents are also likely to openly engage in conflict and report moderate levels of assertiveness and do not avoid conflicts.

The final relational definition that Fitzpatrick described were called separates. Separates have low interdependence, have a conventional ideology, and low levels of conflict engagement. “Separates seem to hold two opposing ideological views on relationships at the same time. Although a separate is as conventional in marital and family issues as a traditional, they simultaneously support the values upend by independents and stress individual freedom over relational maintenance.” 67 Ultimately, these couples tend to focus more on maintaining their individual identity more than relational maintenance. Furthermore, these individuals are also likely to report avoiding conflict within the marriage. These individuals generally report the lowest levels of marriage satisfaction of the three.

Same-Sex Marriages

Up to this point, the majority of the information discussed in this section has been based on research explicitly conducted looking at heterosexual marriages. In one study, Fitzpatrick and her colleagues specifically set out to examine the three relational definitions and their pervasiveness among gay and lesbians. 68 Ultimately, the researchers found “ gay males, there are approximately the same proportion of traditionals, yet significantly fewer independents and more separates than in the random, heterosexual sample. For lesbians, there were significantly more traditionals, fewer independents, and fewer separates than in the random, heterosexual sample.” 69 However, it’s important to note that this specific study was conducted just over 20 years before same-sex marriage became legal in the United States.

The reality is that little research exists thus far on long-term same-sex marriages. The legalization of same-sex marriages in July 2015 started a new period in the examination of same-sex relationships for family and family communication scholars alike. 70 As a whole, GLBT families, and marriages more specifically, is an under-researched topic. In a 2016 analysis of a decade of research on family and marriage in the most prominent journals on the subject, researchers found that only .02% of articles published during that time period directly related to LGBTQ families. 71 For scholars of interpersonal communication, the lack of literature is also problematic. In an analysis of the Journal of Family Communication , of the 300+ articles published in that journal since its inception in 2001, only nine articles have examined issues related to LGBTQ families. This is an area that future scholars, maybe even you, will decide to study.

• Mary Anne Fitzpatrick started research marriage relationships in the late 1970s. Her research found a number of specific relational dimensions that couples can take: conventional/nonconventional ideology, interdependence/autonomy, and conflict engagement/avoidance.
• Mary Anne Fitzpatrick described three specific relational definitions. First, traditional are couples who are highly interdependent, have a conventional ideology, and high levels of conflict engagement. Second, independents are couples who have a high level of interdependence, have an unconventional ideology, and high levels of conflict engagement. Lastly, separates are couples who have low interdependence, have a conventional ideology, and low levels of conflict engagement.
• Little research has examined how LGBTQIA couples interact in same-sex marriages. Research has shown that in a decade of research about family and marriage, only.02% articles had to do with LGBTQIA families. In the field of communication, out of the 300+ studies published in the Journal of Family Communication , only nine of them involved LGBTQIA families. In the one study that examined Mary Anne Fitzpatrick’s relational dimensions among same-sex couples, the researchers found that gay males had approximately the same proportion of traditionals, yet significantly fewer independents and more separates than in the random, heterosexual sample. Conversely, lesbian women there were significantly more traditionals, fewer independents, and fewer separates than in the random, heterosexual sample.
• Think about a marital relationship where you know the couple fairly well. Examining the three relational dimensions (conventional/nonconventional ideology, interdependence/autonomy, and conflict engagement/avoidance), how would you categorize this couple? Why?
• Find a copy of Mary Anne Fitzpatrick’s Relational Dimensions Instrument ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232561704_The_instrumental_and_expressive_domains_of_marital_communication ), have a married couple that you know to complete the instrument separately. How similar were their responses? How different were their responses?
• Think about a marital relationship where you know the couple fairly well. Based on what you know about this couple, would you consider them traditional, independents, or separates? Why? Please be specific with your answer to demonstrate your understanding of these three marital types.

An individual’s independence in their behaviors and thoughts within a marriage relationship.

concept-orientation

Family communication pattern where freedom of expression is encouraged, and communication is frequent and family life is pleasurable.

Two or more people tied by marriage, blood, adoption, or choice; living together or apart by choice or circumstance; having interaction within family roles; creating and maintaining a common culture; being characterized by economic cooperation; deciding to have or not to have children, either own or adopted; having boundaries; and claiming mutual affection.

A pictorial representation of a family across generations that can be used to track generations of family interactions, medical issues, psychological issues, relationship patterns, and any other variable a researcher or clinician may be interested in studying.

ideology of traditionalism

Marriages that are marked by a more historically traditional, conservative perspective of marriage.

independents

Marital definition where couples have a high level of interdependence, have an unconventional ideology, and high levels of conflict engagement.

individuality

Aspect of Murray Bowen’s family system theory that emphasizes that there is a universal, biological life force that propels organisms toward separateness, uniqueness, and distinctiveness.

launching stage

Period in a family life cycle when late adolescents leave the parental home and venture out into the world as young singles themselves.

Marital definition where couples have low interdependence, have conventional ideology, and low levels of conflict engagement.

sibling hostility

Characteristic of sibling relationships where sibling behaviors as causing trouble, getting into fights, teasing/name-calling, taking things without permission, etc…

sibling warmth

Characteristic of sibling relationships where sibling behaviors such as sharing secrets, helping each other, teaching each other, showing physical affection, sharing possessions, etc…

socio-orientation

Family communication pattern where similarity is valued over individuality and self-expression, and harmony is preferred over expression of opinion.

Sets of elements standing in interrelation.

temporal regularity

The degree to which a couple sticks to a consistent schedule in their day-to-day lives.

third-culture

When a couple negotiates their cultural background with the cultural background of their partner essentially creating a third-culture or hybrid culture between the two.

togetherness

Aspect of Murray Bowen’s family system theory that emphasizes the complementary, universal, biological life force that propels organisms toward relationship, attachment, and connectedness.

traditionals

Marital definition where couples are highly interdependent, have conventional ideology, and high levels of conflict engagement

undifferentiated space

The degree to which spouses do not see her/his/their ownership of personal belongings as much as they do ownership as a couple.

As we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, families are a central part of our lives. Thankfully, several communication scholars have devoted their careers to understanding families. In this chapter, we started by exploring the nature of family relationships with a specific focus on family communication patterns and family systems. Next, we explored the family life cycle. We then discussed the nature of sibling relationships. Lastly, we ended the chapter by discussing marriage.

11.5 Chapter Exercises

Nick and Diane were strangers flying on Continental flight 05 from London's Gatwick Airport to Houston, TX, when the terrorist attacks on 9-11 struck in the United States. Their plane, along with 38 other wide-body jets were diverted to Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada. Gander is a city of approximately 10,000 people. What the town lacked in size, the airport made up for in capacity.

Gander International Airport was at one point one of the busiest airports in the world because it was the refueling stop for all planes flying from the United States to Europe and from Europe to the United States. In fact, over the years, Gander played host to Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, President Ronald Reagan, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and many others had stop-overs at the airport. But as airlines switched to planes that had larger fuel capacities, the need for Gander as the refueling stop faded into a thing of the past.

On 9-11, 38 planes, along with 6,122 passengers and 473 flight crew members, suddenly joined the small community. As you can imagine, most cities are not prepared for a population growth of 66% in a matter of hours. Thankfully, the community members of Gander rallied and took care of those passengers and flight crew for four days in what was dubbed Operation Yellow Ribbon.

On the flight, Diane was in the front of the plane while Nick was at the back of the plane. The two had never met or even really laid eyes on each other. Both were taken to a place called Gambo, about 20 minutes outside of Gander. At the shelter there, the two met in line waiting to get blankets. One of them commented about how the blankets smelled, and the two just started talking. Nick, sensing the possibility of a new friend, ended up bunking next to Diane in the shelter. The two shared stories and trail mix. Over the next few days, the two started to fall in love.

One night, the two, along with other passengers, went to a local pub where the two became official Newfoundlanders, by drinking Screech and kissing a cod. During the midst of the festivities, a local justice of the peace made the mistake of assuming the two were a couple. When he found out they weren’t, the justice said, “I can marry the two of you.” To which Diane responded, “sure!” Admittedly, it was probably the Screech talking, but in that moment, Diane realized that she really was starting to like Nick and that she could see him romantically.

After four days, a hurricane was quickly approaching Newfoundland, so there was a short time period to get the planes off the ground once the U.S.’s airspace was reopened. On the bus heading back to the airport, Diane started to tear up, realizing that this side journey in life was ending. Nick leaned in to comfort her and kiss her on the forehead, but Diane took the opportunity to turn it into a more romantic experience.

Nick ultimately proposed to Diane over the phone in November, and the two were married on September 7, 2002, and they honeymooned in Newfoundland. Nick and Diane Marson are very much real people. You can even follow them on Twitter, @RealNickanDiane. Their story is actually one of the main plot-points in the awarding winning Broadway musical Come From Away , which explores the generosity of the people of Gander and the ones who come from away.

• What do you think it was about this situation that drew the couple together?
• How would you describe their relationship using the family life cycle?
• Why do you think Nick and Diane Marson’s story has been so captivating to millions of people around the world?
• Similarity of values
• Relatively little communication
• Self-expression
• Open communication between parent and child
• Frequent communication between parent and child
• Family life cycle
• Family system chart
• Genealogy tree
• Full nest two
• Full nest three
• Empty test one
• Empty test two

the way one verbally, nonverbally, and paraverbally interacts to signal how literal meaning should be taken, filtered, or understood

A "middleman" who passes along a message somewhere between the source and the receiver.

“openness to experience,” or the idea that some people are more welcoming of new things.

the degree to which an individual is aware of their actions and how their actions impact other people.

degree to which someone engages in prosocial behaviors like altruism, cooperation, and compassion

the degree to which an individual is vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and emotional instability.

Identity that someone takes on that is beyond themself in the creation of CMC messages.

The belief that an individual can control their behavior and life circumstances.

Have you ever said something that someone else misinterpreted as something else? Some of the most common problems in interpersonal communication stem from the use of language. For instance, two students, Kelly and James, are texting each other. Kelly texts James about meeting for dinner, and James texts “K” instead of “okay.” Kelly is worried because she thinks James is mad. She wonders why he texted “K” instead of “k,” “ok,” “yes” or “okay.” James was in a hurry, and he just texted in caps because he was excited to see Kelly.

This example gives us an understanding of how language can influence how our perceptions. Kelly and James had two different perceptions of the same event. One person was worried, and the other person was excited. This chapter examines verbal communication, embracing the idea that words are powerful. The words that we use can impact how other people perceive us and how to perceive others.

Language is a system of human communication using a particular form of spoken or written words or other symbols. Language consists of the use of words in a structured way. Language helps us understand others’ wants, needs, and desires. Language can help create connections, but it can also pull us apart. Language is vital to communication. Without language, it is very difficult to develop meaningful connections with others? Language allows us to express ourselves and obtain our goals.

Language can often be the most element in human communication. Language is made up of words, which are arbitrary symbols. In this chapter, we will learn about how words work, the functions of language, and how to improve verbal communication.

4.1 Linking Communication and Symbols

Communication is symbolic.

Have you ever noticed that we can hear or look at something like the word “cat” and immediately know what those three letters mean? From the moment you enter grade school, you are taught how to recognize sequences of letters that form words that help us understand the world. With these words, we can create sentences, paragraphs, and books like this one. The letters used to create the word “cat” and then the word itself is what communication scholars call symbols. A symbol is a mark, object, or sign that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.

Consider a word you're probably familiar with: love. The four letters that make of the word “l,” “o,” “v,” and “e,” are visual symbols that, when combined, form the word “love,” which is a symbol associated with intense regard or liking. For example, I can “love” chocolate. However, the same four-letter word has other meanings attached to it as well. For example, “love” can represent a deeply intimate relationship or a romantic/sexual attachment. In the first case, we could love our parents/guardians and friends, but in the second case, we experience love as a factor of a deep romantic/sexual relationship. So these are just three associations we have with the same symbol, love. Figure 4.1 depicts American Sign Language (ASL) letters for the word “love.” In this case, the hands themselves represent symbols for English letters, which is an agreed upon convention of users of ASL to represent “love.”

Symbols can also be visual representations of ideas and concepts. For example, look at the various symbols in Figure 1.3 of various social media icons. In this image, you see symbols for a range of different social media sites, including Facebook (lowercase “f”), Twitter (the bird), Snap Chat (the ghost image), and many others. Admittedly, the icons for YouTube and dig just use their names, but these images have become associated with these online platforms over many years.

The Symbol is Not the Thing

Now that we’ve explained what symbols are, we should probably offer a few very important guides. First, the symbol is not the thing that it is representing. For example, the word “dog” is not a member of the canine family that greets you when you come home every night. Similarly, if you explore the symbols in Figure 4.2 these symbols are not the organizations themselves. The stylized red P is not Pinterest, the lowercase blue f is not Facebook. Each of these might best be described as computer code that exists on the World Wide Web that allows us, people, to interact, but you can recognize the symbol associated with these businesses and this code.

Arbitrariness of Symbols

How we assign symbols is entirely arbitrary. For example, in Figure 4.3, we see two animals that are categorized under the symbols “dog” and “cat.” In this image, the “dog” is on the left side, and the “cat” is on the right side. The words we associate with these animals only exist because we have said it’s so for many, many years. Back when humans were labeling these animals, we could just have easily called the one on the left “cat” and the one on the right “dog,” but we didn’t. If we called the animal on the left “cat,” would that change the nature of what that animal is? Not really. The only thing that would change is the symbol we have associated with that animal.

Let’s look at another symbolic example you are probably familiar with – :). The “smiley” face or the two pieces of punctuation (colon followed by closed parentheses). This symbol may seem like it’s everywhere today, but it’s only existed since September 1982. In early September 1982, a joke was posted on an electronic bulletin board about a fake chemical spill at Carnegie Mellon University. At the time, there was no easy way to distinguish between serious versus non-serious information. A computer scientist named Scott E. Fahlman entered the debate with the following message:

Communication Is Shared Meaning

Although the assignment of symbols to real things and ideas is arbitrary, our understanding of them exists because we agree to their meaning. If we were talking and I said, “it’s time for tea,” you may think that I’m going to put on some boiling water and pull out the oolong tea. However, if I said, “it’s time for tea” in the United Kingdom, you would assume that we were getting ready for our evening meal. Same word, but two very different meanings depending on the culture one uses the term. In the United Kingdom, high tea (or meat tea) is the evening meal. Dinner, on the other hand, would represent the large meal of the day, which is usually eaten in the middle of the day. Of course, in the United States, we refer to the middle of the day meal as lunch and often refer to the evening meal as dinner (or supper).

Let’s imagine that you were recently at a party. Two of your friends had recently attended the same Broadway play together. You ask them “how the play was,” and here’s how they responded:

So, we got to the theatre 20 minutes early to ensure we were able to get comfortable and could do some people watching before the show started. The person sitting in front of us had the worst comb-over I had ever seen. Half through Act 1, the hair was flopping back in our laps like the legs of a spider. I mean, those strands of hair had to be 8 to 9 inches long and came down on us like it was pleading with us to rescue it. Oh, and this one woman who was sitting to our right was wearing this huge fur hat-turban thing on her head. It looked like some kind of furry animal crawled up on her head and died. I felt horrible for the poor guy that was sitting behind her because I’m sure he couldn’t see anything over or around that thing.

Here's is how your second friend described the experience:

I thought the play was good enough. It had some guy from the UK who tried to have a Brooklyn accent that came in and out. The set was pretty cool though. At one point, the set turned from a boring looking office building into a giant tree. That was pretty darn cool. As for the overall story, it was good, I guess. The show just wasn’t something I would normally see.

In this case, you have the same experience described by two different people. We are only talking about the experience each person had in an abstract sense. In both cases, you had friends reporting on the same experience but from their perceptions of the experience. With your first friend, you learn more about what was going on around your friend in the theatre but not about the show itself. The second friend provided you with more details about her perception of the play, the acting, the scenery, and the story. Did we learn anything about the content of the “play” through either conversation? Not really.

Many of our conversations resemble this type of experience recall. In both cases, we have two individuals who are attempting to share with us through communication specific ideas and meanings. However, sharing meaning is not always very easy. In both cases, you asked your friends, “how the play was.” In the first case, your friend interpreted this phrase as being asked about their experience at the theatre itself. In the second case, your friend interpreted your phrase as being a request for her opinion or critique of the play. As you can see in this example, it’s very easy to get very different responses based on how people interpret what you are asking.

Communication scholars often say that “meanings aren’t in words, they’re in people” because of this issue related to interpretation. Yes, there are dictionary definitions of words. Earlier in this chapter, we provided three different dictionary-type definitions for the word “love:” 1) intense regard or liking, 2) a deeply intimate relationship, or 3) a romantic/sexual attachment. These types of definitions we often call denotative definitions . However, it’s also important to understand that in addition to denotative definitions, there are also connotative definitions , or the emotions or associations a person makes when exposed to a symbol. For example, how one personally understands or experiences the word “love” is connotative. The warm feeling you get, the memories of experiencing love all come together to give you a general, personalized understanding of the word itself. One of the biggest problems that occur is when one person’s denotative meaning conflicts with another person’s connotative meaning. For example, when I write the word “dog,” many of you think of four-legged furry family members. If you’ve never been a dog owner, you may just generally think about these animals as members of the canine family. If, however, you’ve had a bad experience with a dog in the past, you may have very negative feelings that could lead you to feel anxious or experience dread when you hear the word “dog.” As another example, think about clowns. Some people see clowns as cheery characters associated with the circus and birthday parties. Other people are genuinely terrified by clowns. Both the dog and clown cases illustrate how we can have symbols that have different meanings to different people.

4.2 How Words Work

One person might call a shopping cart a buggy, and another person might call it a cart. There are several ways to say you would like a beverage, such as, “liquid refresher,” “soda,” “Coke,” “pop,” “refreshment,” or “drink.” A pacifier for a baby is sometimes called a “paci,” “binkie,” “sookie,” or “mute button.” Linguist Robin Tolmach Lakoff asks, “How can something that is physically just puffs of air, a mere stand-in for reality, have the power to change us and our world?” 1 This example illustrates that meanings are in people, and words don’t necessarily represent what they mean.

Words and Meaning

Words can have different rules to help us understand the meaning. There are three rules: semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic. 2

Semantic Rules

First, semantic rules are the dictionary definition of the word. Semantic rules are definitional meanings associated with words. However, the meaning can also change based on the context in which it is used. For instance, the word fly by itself does not mean anything. It makes more sense if we put the word into a context by saying things like, “There is a fly on the wall;” “I will fly to Dallas tomorrow;” “That girl is so fly;” or “The fly on your pants is open!” We would not be able to communicate with others if we did not have semantic rules.

Syntactic Rules

Second, syntactic rules govern how we help guide the words we use. Syntactic rules can refer to the use of grammar, structure, and punctuation to help effectively convey our ideas. For instance, we can say “Where are you” as opposed to “where you are,” which can convey a different meaning and have different perceptions. The same thing can happen when you don’t place a comma in the right place. The comma can make a big difference in how people understand a message.

A great example of how syntactic rules is the Star Wars character, Yoda, who often speaks with different rules. He has said, “Named must be your fear before banish it you can” and “Happens to every guy sometimes this does.” This example illustrates that syntactic rules can vary based on culture or background.

Another example is Figure 4.1. In this case, we learn the importance that a comma can make in written in language. In the first instance, “Let’s eat grandma!” is quite different than the second one, “Let’s eat, grandma!” The first implies cannibalism and the second a family dinner. As the image says, punctuation saves lives.

Pragmatic Rules

Third, pragmatic rules help us interpret messages by analyzing the interaction completely. We need to consider the words used, how they are stated, our relationship with the speaker, and the objectives of our communication. For instance, the words “I want to see you now” would mean different things if the speaker was your boss versus your romantic partner. One could be a positive connotation, and another might be a negative one. The same holds true for humor. If we know that the other person understands and appreciates sarcasm, we might be more likely to engage in that behavior and perceive it differently from someone who takes every word literally.

Most pragmatic rules are based on culture and experience. For instance, the term “Netflix and chill” often means that two people will hook up. Imagine someone from a different country who did not know what this meant; they would be shocked if they thought they were going to watch Netflix with the other person and just relax. Another example would be “Want to have a drink?”, which usually infers an alcoholic beverage. Another way of saying this might be to say, “Would you like something to drink?” The second sentence does not imply that the drink has to contain alcohol.

It is common for people to text in capital letters when they are angry or excited. You would interpret the text differently if the text was not in capital letters. For instance, “I love you” might be perceived differently from “I LOVE YOU!!!” Thus, when communicating with others, you should also realize that pragmatic rules can impact the message.

Words Create Reality

Language helps to create reality. Often, humans will label their experiences. For instance, the word “success” has different interpretations depending on your perceptions. Success to you might be a certain type of car or a certain amount of income. However, for someone else, success might be the freedom to do what they love or to travel to exotic places. Success might mean something different based on your background or your culture.

If a child complains that they don’t feel loved, but the parents/guardians argue that they continuously show affection by giving hugs and doing fun shared activities, who would you believe? The child might say that they never heard their parents/guardians say the word love, and hence, they don’t feel love. Though the parents/guardians and children are each talking about 'love' the way that meaning is conveyed, verbally and nonverbally, effect how each views reality.

Specific words can make a difference in how a person will receive the message. That is why leaders (and politicians) may spend time looking for the right word to capture the true essence of a message. A personal trainer might be careful to use the word “overweight” as opposed to “fat,” because the two sound drastically different. At Disney world, they call their employees “cast members” rather than workers, because it gives a perception that each person has a part in helping to run the show. Even on a resume, you might select words that set you apart from the other applicants. For instance, if you were a cook, you might say “culinary artist.” It gives the impression that you weren’t just cooking food, you were making masterpieces with food. Words matter, and how they are used will make a difference.

Words Reflect Attitudes

When we first fall in love with someone, we will use positive adjectives to describe that person. However, if you have fallen out of love with that person, you might use negative or neutral words to describe that same person. Words can reflect attitudes. Some people can label one experience as pleasant and another person can have the opposite experience. This difference is because words reflect our attitudes about things. If a person has positive emotions towards another, they might say that that person is funny, mature, and thrifty. However, if the person has negative feelings or attitudes towards that same person, they might describe them has childish, old, and cheap. These words can give a connotation about how the person perceives them.

Level of Abstraction

When we think of language, it can be pretty abstract . For example, when we say something is “interesting,” it can be positive or negative. That is what we mean when we say that language is abstract. Language can be very specific. You can tell someone specific things to help them better understand what you are trying to say by using specific and concrete examples. For instance, if you say, “You are a jerk!”, the person who receives that message might get pretty angry and wonder why you said that statement. To be clear, it might be better to say something like, “When you slammed that door in my face this morning, it really upset me, and I didn’t think that behavior was appropriate.” The second statement is more descriptive.

In 1941, linguist S.I. Hayakawa created what is called the abstraction ladder (Figure 4.2). 3 The abstraction ladder starts abstract at the top, while the bottom rung and is very concrete. In Figure 4.2, we’ve shown how you can go from abstract ideas (e.g., information) through various levels of more concrete ideas down to the most concrete idea (e.g., interpersonal communication). Ideally, you can see that as we move down the ladder, the topic becomes more fine-tuned and concrete.

In our daily lives, we tend to use high levels of abstraction all the time. For instance, growing up, your parents/guardians probably helped you with homework, cleaning, cooking, and transporting you from one event to another. Yet, we don’t typically say thank you to everything; we might make a general comment, such as a thank you rather than saying, “Thank you so much for helping me with my math homework and helping me figure out how to solve for the volume of spheres.” It takes too long to say that, so people tend to be abstract. However, abstraction can cause problems if you don’t provide enough description.

Metamessages

Metacommunication is communication about communication. 4 Yet, metamessages are relationship messages that are sent among people who they communicate. These messages can be verbal, nonverbal, direct, or indirect. For instance, if you see two friends just talking about what they did last weekend, they are also sending metamessages as they talk. Metamessages can convey affection, appreciation, disgust, ridicule, scorn, or contempt. Every time you send messages to others, notice the metamessages that they might be sending you. Do they seem upset or annoyed with certain things that you say? In this book, we encourage you to consider your own messages, it's possible you may not realize what metamessages you are sending out to others.

Words and Meanings

Words can have denotative meanings or connotative meanings. In this section, we will learn about the differences and the triangle of meaning. 5 Ogden and Richards noticed that misunderstandings occur when people associate different meanings with the same message. Their model (Figure 4.4) illustrates that there is an indirect association between a word and the actual referent or thing it represents.

As you can see, when you hear the word “dog,” it conjures up meaning for different people. The word “dog” itself is a symbol and signifier , or sound elements or other linguistic symbols that represents an underlying concept or meaning. When we hear the word “dog,” it is what we call the “signified,” or the meaning or idea expressed when someone hears the word. In this case, maybe you have a dog, and you really see that dog as your best friend, or maybe you call him your little “cuddle monster” because he always wants to be connected to you at all times. Again, meaning that we attach to the symbol is still separate from the physical entity itself. In this case, there is a real dog named Teddy, who is the referent, or the physical thing that a word or phrase denotes or stands for.

Words can have a denotative meaning, which is the dictionary definition. These are words that most people are familiar with, and they all can agree on the understanding of that word. If you asked a person what a car or a phone is, they would most likely know what you are talking about when you use those words.

Words can also have a connotative meaning, which is a subjective definition of the word. The word might mean something different from what you meant. For example, you may hear someone referring to their baby. You could fairly safely assume that the person is referring to their infant, but just as easily they could be referring to a significant other.

4.2 Functions of Language

• Distinguish the differences between instrumental and regulatory functions.
• Appreciate the interactional and imaginative functions of language.
• Examine the personal, ritual, and cultural functions of language.

Based on research examining how children learn language, it was found that children are trying to create “meaning potential.” 6 In other words, children learn language so they can understand and be understood by others. As children age, language serves different functions.

Instrumental and Regulatory Functions

Children will typically communicate in a fashion that lets parents/guardians know what they want to do. When children are born, parents/guardians have to figure out if the child is hungry, thirsty, dirty, or sick. Later, when the child acquires language, the child can let the parent/guardian know what they want by using simple words like “eat” or “drink.”

Instrumental functions use language to fulfill a need. For us to meet our needs, we need to use language that other people understand. Think about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which we previously covered--"Mom, I'm hungry!" "Ouch that hurt!" "I could use a drink." "Hold my hand." The way we talk often meets instrumental, or need-based functions.

Regulatory functions of language are to influence the behaviors of others through requests, rules, or persuasion. These functions may coincide with out needs, but they do not always. For example, you might say "go this way" or "be kind to your brother." Regulatory functions are also present in advertisements that tell us to eat healthier or exercise more using specific products.

Interactional and Imaginative Functions

Interactional functions of language are used to help maintain or develop the relationship. Interactional functions also help to alleviate the interaction. Examples might include “Thank you,” “Please,” or “I care about you.”

Imaginative functions of language help to create imaginary constructs and tell stories. This use of fantasy usually occurs in play or leisure activities. People who roleplay in video games will sometimes engage in imaginative functions to help their character be more effective and persuasive.

Personal Functions

Personal functions , or the use of language to help you form your identity or sense of self. In job interviews, people are asked, “how do you describe yourself?” For some people, this is a challenging question because it showcases what makes you who you are. The words you pick, as opposed to others, can help define who you are.

Perhaps someone told you that you were funny. You never realized that you were funny until that person told you. Because they used the word “funny” as opposed to “silly” or “crazy,” it caused you to have perceptions about yourself. This example illustrates how words serve as a personal function for us. Personal functions of language are used to express identity, feelings, and options.

Heuristic and Representational Functions

The heuristic function of language is used to learn, discover, and explore. The heuristic function could include asking several questions during a lecture or adding commentary to a child’s behavior. Another example might be “What is that tractor doing?” or “why is the cat sleeping?”

Representational functions of language are used to request or relay information. These statements are straightforward. They do not seek for an explanation. For instance, “my cat is asleep” or “the kitchen light isn’t working.”

Cultural Functions

We know a lot about a culture based on the language that the members of the group speak. 7 Some words exist in other languages, but we do not have them in English. For instance, in China, there are five different words for shame, but in the English language, we only have one word for shame. Anthropologist Franz Boas studied the Inuit people of Baffin Island, Canada, in the late 1800s and noted that they had many different words for “snow.” In fact, it’s become a myth over the years that the Inuit have 50 different words for snow. In reality, as Laura Kelly points out, there are a number of Inuit languages, so this myth is problematic because it attempts to generalize to all of them. 8

Analyzing the Hopi Native American language, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf discovered that there is not a difference between nouns and verbs. 9 To the Hopi people, their language showcases how their world and perceptions of the world are always in constant flux. The Hopi believe that everything is evolving and changing. Their conceptualization of the world is that there is continuous time. As Whorf wrote, “After a long and careful analysis the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time', or to past, present or future.” 10

A very popular theory that helps us understand how culture and language coexist is the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis . 11 This hypothesis helps us understand cultural differences in language use. The theory suggests that language impacts perceptions by showing a culture’s worldview. The hypothesis is also seen as linguistic determinism , which is the perspective that language influences our thoughts.

Sometimes, language has special rooted characteristics or linguistic relativity. Language can express not only our thoughts but our feelings as well. Language does not only represent things, but also how we feel about things. For instance, in the United States, most houses will have backyards. In Japan, due to limited space, most houses do not have backyards, and thus, it is not represented in their language. To the Japanese, they do not understand the concept of a backyard, and they don’t have a word for a backyard. All in all, language helps to describe our world and how we understand our world .

4.3 The Impact of Language

• Understand how naming and identity can influence perceptions.
• Comprehend how language can impact affiliation with others.
• Identify the difference between sexist and racist language.

By now, you can see that language influences how we make sense of the world. In this section, we will understand some of the ways that language can impact our perceptions and possibly our behavior. To be effective communicators, we need to realize the different ways that language can be significant and instrumental.

Naming and Identity

New parents/guardians typically spend a great deal of time trying to pick just the right name for their newborn. We know that names can impact other people’s perceptions. 12 Our names impact how we feel and how we behave. For instance, if you heard that someone was named Stacy, you might think that person was female, nice, and friendly, and you would be surprised if that person turned out to be male, mean, and aggressive.

People with unusual names tend to have more emotional distress than those with common names. 13 Names impact our identity because others will typically have negative perceptions of unusual names or unique spellings of names. Names can change over time and can gain acceptance. For instance, the name Madison was not even considered a female first name until the movie “Splash” in the 1980s. 14

Some names are very distinctive, which also makes them memorable and recognizable. Think about musical artists or celebrities with unique names. It helps you remember them, and it helps you distinguish that person from others.

Some of the names encompass some cultural or ethnic identity. In the popular book, Freakonomics, the authors showed a relationship between names and socioeconomic status. 15 They discover that a popular name usually starts with high socioeconomic families, and then it becomes popular with lower socioeconomic families. Hence, it is very conceivable to determine the socioeconomic status of people you associate with based on their birth date and name. Figure 4.5 shows some of the more popular baby names for girls and boys, along with names that are non-binary.

Affiliation

When we want others to associate with us or have an affiliation with us, we might change the way we speak and the words we use. All of those things can impact how other people relate to us. Researchers found that when potential romantic partners employed the same word choices regarding pronouns and prepositions, then interest also increased. At the same time, couples that used similar word choices when texting each other significantly increased their relationship duration. 16 This study implies that we often inadvertently mimic other people’s use of language when we focus on what they say.

If you have been in a romantic relationship for a long period, you might create special expressions or jargon for the other person, and that specialized vocabulary can create greater closeness and understanding. The same line of thinking occurs for groups in a gang or persons in the military. If we adapt to the other person’s communication style or converge , then we can also impact perceptions of affiliation. Research has shown that people who have similar speech also have more positive feelings for each other. 17 However, speech can also work in the opposite direction when we diverge , or when we communicate in a very different fashion. For instance, a group from another culture might speak the same dialect, even though they can speak English, in order to create distance and privacy from others.

Sexism and Racism

Before discussing the concepts of sexism and racism, we must understand the term “bias.” Bias is an attitude that is not objective or balanced, prejudiced, or the use of words that intentionally or unintentionally offend people or express an unfair attitude concerning a person’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or illness. We’ll explore more on the issue of biased language later in this chapter.

Sexism or bias against others based on their sex can come across in language. Sexist language can be defined as “words, phrases, and expressions that unnecessarily differentiate between females and males or exclude, trivialize, or diminish either sex.” 18 Language can impact how we feel about ourselves and others. For instance, there is a magazine called Working Mother , but there is not one called “Working Father.” Even though the reality is that many men who work also have families and are fathers, there are no words that tend to distinguish them from other working men. Whereas, women are distinguished when they both work and are mothers compared to other women who solely work and also compared to women who are solely mothers and/or wives.

Think about how language has changed over the years. We used to have occupations that were highly male-dominated in the workplace and had words to describe them. For instance, policemen, firemen, and chairmen are now police officers, firefighters, and chairpersons. The same can also be said for some female-dominated occupations. For instance, stewardess, secretary, and waitress have been changed to include males and are often called flight attendants, office assistants, and servers. Thus, to eliminate sexism, we need to be cautious of the word choices we use when talking with others. Sexist language will impact perceptions, and people might be swayed about a person’s capability based on the word choices.

Similarly, racism is the bias people have towards others of a different race. Racist language conveys that a racial group is superior or better than another race. Some words in English have racial connotations. Aaron Smith-McLallen, Blair T. Johnson, John Dovidio, and Adam Pearson wrote:

In the United States and many other cultures, the color white often carries more positive connotations than the color black… Terms such as “Black Monday,” “Black Plague”, “black cats” and the “black market” all have negative connotations, and literature, television, and movies have traditionally portrayed heroes in white and villains in black. The empirical work of John E. Williams and others throughout the 1960s demonstrated that these positive and negative associations with the colors black and white, independent of any explicit connection to race, were evident among Black and White children as young as 3 years old … as well as adults. 19

Currently, there is an ongoing debate in the United States about whether President Trump’s use of the phrase “Chinese Virus” when referring to the coronavirus is racially insensitive. The argument for its racial insensitivity is that the President is specifically using the term as an “other” technique to allow his followers to place blame on Chinese people for the coronavirus. Unsurprisingly, as a result of the use of the phase “Chinese Virus,” there have been numerous violent attacks against individuals of Asian descent within the United States. Notice that we don’t say people of Chinese descent here. The people that are generally inflamed by this rhetoric don’t take the time to distinguish among people they label as “other.”

It is important to note that many words do not imply any type of sexual or racial connotations. However, some people might use it to make judgments or expectations of others. For example, when describing a bad learning experience, the student might say “Black professor” or “female student” as opposed to just saying the student and professor argued. These descriptors can be problematic and sometimes not even necessary in the conversation. When using those types of words, it can create slight factors of sexism/racism.

Muted Group Theory

Muted group theory was initially developed to explain the way humans, specifically men and women, communicate. 20 The theory claims that man-made communication is, just that, “man”-made. Similar to standpoint theory, muted group theory argues that the dominant members of society, typically men, create a language and system of communication that subverts or reduces other groups, specifically women. Muted group theory has been described as feminist theory, and even this nomenclature is a great example of the claims that the theory is making. 21 The term “feminist” exists in a male-dominated culture and language and connotes a negative conception of that which it is used to describe. Even the fact that there is not a popular term used to describe those who fight for the rights and equal status of men, points to the fact that there is a problem. The word “feminist” exists because it deviates from what is perceived as the “norm.” Even the terminology we use to describe women, and a theory that calls attention to their subversion, we see as even more subversion.

Figure 4.6 represents the basic conceptualization of muted group theory. The blue circle represents the dominant group, and the solid arrow points to their perception of reality. Meanwhile, the pink circle represents the muted group, and the dashed line represents their perception of reality. Often what happens in society is that the dominant group’s perception of reality is just seen as reality. As such, the muted group’s perception of reality is seen as less than or more fanciful than the dominant group’s perception. In reality, the muted group often sees things that really do exist in a society that the dominant group either cannot see or chooses not to see based on its position in society as the dominant group.

One area in our society where we can examine muted group theory is about socioeconomic status. Here are just a few statements that wealthy people have made:

• When talking about a couple planning their wedding, “I feel sorry for them, because they have a budget.”
• “What do you mean, you don't know if you should get them? Whenever I want new clothes, I just ask my daddy for the money card.”
• The guy was looking on a website for cars, when a rich coworker asks, “why don't you just buy the car with cash so you don't have to make payments?” When the guy told his coworker he couldn’t afford to pay for a car in cash, his rich coworker replied, “Why don't you just have your parents buy it for you?”
• “If you’re making $50,000 and your salary gets down to $40,000 and you have to cut, it’s very severe to you. But it’s no less severe to these other people with these big numbers.”
• “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress. Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”
• “You don't get the vote if you don't pay a dollar in taxes. But what I really think is it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars, you get a million votes. How's that?”

The perspectives illustrated in these statements are ones that most of us cannot easily relate to. The opposite is also true. People who live in the top 1% often have very flawed perceptions of what life is like for those who don’t have piles of money sitting around. Often those in the dominant group (in this case the top 1%) have no conceptualization of what life is like for those in muted groups (the bottom 99%). As such, those in muted groups often have a much clearer perception of reality.

Some research in this theory has been done on other subverted groups such as new kids at school. 22 They found that it was normative patterns that created a system of subversion in the classroom. When a new student arrived, they inadvertently went against the popular normative habits of the class and, in doing so, ostracized themselves. Other students simultaneously asserted and solidified their dominance while lowering the status of the new student. This same thing can be seen in our male-dominated society. As women seek to make themselves known and heard, they are continually reduced, and male-centric standards are reinforced.

• Names can impact how we perceive others. It can also impact how we feel about ourselves.
• We can increase affiliation with others through converging our language to others. We can decrease affiliation with others through diverging our language with others.
• Sexism and racism can be displayed through our language choices. It is important to be aware of the words we use so that we do not come across as sexist or racist.
• Create a list of names that you have heard that are unique. What makes these names so unique and memorable? Ask friends to give you their perceptions of those names. Does that match with what you think? Why or why not?
• Engage in a normal conversation with a friend or family member. Without having them know what you are doing, slowly and subtly converge your communication style to theirs. Record your observations. Then, with the same person, try to diverge your communication style. Re-record your observations. Ask if the person noticed any communication changes. How did it make them feel? How did you feel? Why?
• Make a list of all the words in the English language that are sexist or racists. Try to research those words on the Internet and determine how these words are sexists or racists. Then, provide alternatives for these words to be more politically correct.

4.4 Types of Language

• Differentiate between informal and formal language.
• Determine the different types of informal language.
• Understand improper language and biased language.

If you read or watch different types of programming, you will probably notice that there is a difference in language use based on the environment, who you are talking to, and the reason for communicating. In this section, we will discuss the different types of language. The types of language used will impact how others view you and if they will view you positively or negatively.

Formal vs. Informal Language

You probably know by now that how we communicate in different contexts can vary greatly. For example, how you compose a text to your best friend is going to use different grammatical structures and words than when you compose an email to your professor. One of the main reasons for this difference is because of formal and informal language. Table 4.1 provides a general overview of the major differences between formal and informal language.

Table 4.1 Formal vs. Informal Language

Formal Language

When applying for a job, you will most likely use formal language in your cover letter and resume. Formal language is official and academic language. You want to appear intelligent and capable, so formal language helps you accomplish those goals. Formal language often occurs when we write. Formal language uses full sentences and is grammatically correct. Formal language is more objective and more complex. Most legal agreements are written in formal language.

Informal Language

Informal language is common, everyday language, which might include slang words. It is continuous and casual. We use informal language when we talk to other people. It is more simple. Informal language tends to use more contractions and abbreviations. If you look at your text messages, you will probably see several examples of informal language.

Jargon is the specialized or technical language of a specific group or profession that may not be understood by outsiders. 23 If you are really into cars or computers, you probably know a lot about the different parts and functions. Jargon is normally used in a specific context and may be understood outside that context. Jargon consists of a specific vocabulary that uses words that only certain people understand. The business world is full of jargon. Joanna Cutrara created a list of 14 commonly heard jargon phrases used in the business world: 24

• Low Hanging Fruit
• Open the Kimono
• Giving 110%
• Out of Pocket
• Drink the Kool-Aid
• Blue Sky Training
• Idea Shower or Thought Shower
• Moving the Goal Post
• Gain Traction

If you’re like us, chances are you’ve heard a few of these jargon phrases in your workplace. Heck, you may have even found yourself using a few of them. Your workplace may even have some specific jargon only used in your organization. Take a minute and think through all of the jargon you hear on an average day.

Colloquialisms

Colloquialisms are the use of informal words in communication. 25 Colloquialism varies from region to region. Examples might be “wanna” instead of “want to” or “gonna” instead of “going to.” It shows us how a society uses language in their everyday lives. Here’s a short list of some common colloquialisms you may have used yourself:

• Bamboozle – to deceive
• Be blue – to be sad
• Beat around the bush – to avoid a specific topic
• Buzz off – go away
• Fell through the cracks – to be neglected
• Go bananas, or go nuts – go insane or be very angry
• Gobsmacked – shocked
• Gonna – going to
• Hit a writer’s block – unable to write
• Hit the hay – to go to sleep
• Pop into my head – to have a new thought
• Sticktoitiveness – to be persistent
• Threw me for a loop – to be surprised
• Throw someone under the bus – to throw the blame on another person
• Wanna – want to
• Y’all – you all
• Yinz – you all

Slang refers to words that are employed by certain groups, such as young adults and teens. 26 Slang is more common when speaking to others rather than written. Slang is often used with people who are similar and have experience with each other. Here is a list of some common slang terms you may use in your day-to-day life:

• BAE (baby / before all else)
• On Fleek (looking perfect)
• Bye Felica (saying goodbye to someone you don’t like)
• The Tea (gossip)
• Bro (typically a male friend)
• Cash (money)
• Cheesy (cheap or tacky)
• Ship (wanting people to be in a relationship, whether real or fictional)
• Frenemy (someone who is both a friend and an enemy)
• Thirsty (being overly eager or desperate)
• Throw Shade (to insult another person)
• Woke (being acutely aware of social injustice within society)

How many of these slang words do you use? What other slang words do you find yourself using? When it comes to slang, it’s important to understand that this list is constantly evolving. What is common slang today could be completely passé tomorrow. What’s common slang in the United States is not universal in English speaking countries.

Idioms are expressions or figures of speech whose meaning cannot be understood by looking at the individual words and interpreting them literally. 27 Idioms can help amplify messages. Idioms can be used to provide artistic expression. For instance, “knowledge is power!”

Idioms can be hard to grasp for non-native speakers. As such, many instructors in the English as a Second Language world spend a good deal of time trying to explain idioms to non-native speakers. Table 4.2 presents a wide array of different idioms.

Table 4.2 Common Idioms

Cliché is an idea or expression that has been so overused that it has lost its original meaning. 28 Clichés are common and can often be heard. For instance, “light as a feather” or “happily ever after” are common clichés. They are important because they express ideas and thoughts that are popular in everyday use. They are prevalent in advertisements, television, and literature.

Improper Language

Improper language is not proper, correct, or applicable in certain situations. 29 There are two different types of improper language: vulgarity and cursing. First, vulgarity includes language that is offensive or lacks good taste. Often, vulgar is lewd or obscene. Second, cursing is language that includes evil, doom, misfortune on a person or group. It can also include curse or profane words. People might differ in their perceptions about improper language.

Biased Language

Biased language is language that shows preference in favor of or against a certain point-of-view, shows prejudice, or is demeaning to others. 30 Bias in language is uneven or unbalanced. Examples of this may include “mankind” as opposed to “humanity.”

Table 4.3 Biased Language

One specific type of biased language is called spin, or the manipulation of language to achieve the most positive interpretation of words, to gain political advantage, or to deceive others. In essence, people utilizing spin can make language choices that frame themselves or their clients in a positive way.

Ambiguous Language

Ambiguous language is language that can have various meanings. Google Jay Leno’s headlines videos. Sometimes he uses advertisements that are very abstract. For instance, there is a restaurant ad that says, “People are our best ingredient!” What comes to mind when you hear that? Are they actually using people in their food? Or do they mean their customer service is what makes their restaurant notable? When we are trying to communicate with others, it is important that we are clear in our language. We need others to know exactly what we mean and not imply meaning. That is why you need to make sure that you don’t use ambiguous language.

Euphemisms also make language unclear. People use euphemisms as a means of saying something more politely or less bluntly. For instance, instead of telling your parents/guardians that you failed a test, you might say that you did sub-optimal. People use euphemisms because it sounds better, and it seems like a better way to express how they feel. People use euphemisms all the time. For instance, instead of saying this person died, they might say the person passed away. Instead of saying that someone farted, you might say someone passed gas.

Relative Language

Relative language depends on the person communicating. People’s backgrounds vary. Hence, their perspectives will vary. I know a college professor that complains about her salary. However, other college professors would love to have a salary like hers. In other words, our language is based on our perception of our experiences. For instance, if someone asked you what would be your ideal salary, would it be based on your previous salary? Your parents? Your friends? Language is relative because of that reason. If I said, “Let’s go eat at an expensive restaurant,” what would be expensive for you? For some person, it would be $50, for another, $20, for someone else it might be $10, and yet there might be someone who would say $5 is expensive!

Static Evaluation

Often times, we think that people and things do not change, but they do change. If you ever watch afternoon talk shows, you might see people who go through amazing transformations, perhaps through weight loss, a makeover, or surgery or some sort. These people changed. Static evaluation states that things are not constant. Things vary over time, and our language should be representative of that change. For instance, Max is bad. It is important to note that Max might be bad at one time or may have displayed bad behavior, but it may not represent how Max will be in the future.

• Formal language is more careful and more mannered than everyday speech, whereas informal language is appropriate in casual conversation.
• Informal language includes (1) Jargon, or technical language; (2) Colloquialism, or informal expressions; (3) Slang, or nonstandard language; (4) Idioms, or expressions or figures of speech; (5) clichés, or sayings that are overused and predictable.

4.5 Improving Verbal Communication

• Examine ways to improve your vocabulary.
• Increase your awareness and adaptation of language.
• Realize the importance of checking for understanding.

In this chapter, you have learned the importance of language. In this last section, we will discuss ways to improve your verbal communication skills. To be a great interpersonal communicator, it is extremely important that you also know how to use language in the most effective way.

Improving Language Skills

From an early age, you probably had words that you used most frequently because you were familiar with those words. As you get older and become more educated, your vocabulary has probably expanded to help you become more successful. Language is used to help express our feelings, intentions, and comprehension of others. 32 An extensive vocabulary is a keen predictor of someone’s social status, education, and profession. Whether you like it or not, the words we use and the grammatical structure of how we use those words can impact our standing in school, work, and society. Here are some tips to help you improve your vocabulary.

Use Repetition

First, be sure to use repetition. To become familiar with a word, you need to see it over and over again. Besides, you need to use it in conversations over and over again. The more times you repeat the word, the more likely you will memorize it, and it will become part of your daily repertoire.

Group Similar Words Together

Second, group similar words together. You should never learn vocabulary by looking at a list of words. Think of words as different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It doesn’t make sense to look at each piece of the puzzle individually. Rather, you need to fit them together to see the whole picture. The same thing should occur with words. You should memorize words that have similarities in some way. For instance, create a vocabulary around a theme, such as music, or an adjective, such as beautiful.

Build Your Vocabulary

Third, it is essential to make vocabulary that is personal to you. Vocabulary can be defined as all the words understood by a person or group of people. As early as four months, a baby can start to distinguish between language sounds and other sounds. According to David Crystal, language acquisition happens quite rapidly:

• By age 2, people can recognize and speak 200 words.
• By age 3, people can recognize and speak about 2000 words.
• By age 5, people can recognize and speak about 4,000 words. 33

That means your average infant to toddler is learning three to four new words every day. Infants are hardwired to learn a language. If you want to ensure your child can speak multiple languages, it’s best to expose them to multiple languages during this crucial developmental cycle. Even though we start as infants, we continue to improve our vocabularies right through middle age:

• Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words
• Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age
• Adult test-taker vocabulary growth basically stops at middle age 34

As you can see, most native English-speaking adults have fairly substantial vocabularies, but we do see a drop in new language acquisition as people enter into their middle age. As such, it’s important to keep learning.

One way to keep learning is to find words that have meaning for you. If you have ever heard a story about survival from someone who has gone through something life-changing, they probably used words that touched you and helped you to connect to the story. In the same fashion, you should find words that can relate to your story. When we find words that have personal meaning to us, we can use those words more effectively in our own vocabulary. Here are some essential tips for building your vocabulary:

• Keep a journal of words you don’t know.
• If you don’t know a word, look it up in a dictionary.
• Learn to recognize both Latin and Greek roots of words.
• Play vocabulary games (e.g., anagrams, Boggle, crossword puzzles, scrabble, etc.).
• Make synonym and antonym word lists.
• Take a writing and/or editing course.

Lastly, you should read regularly. It doesn’t matter what you read. As long as you are reading, you will probably come across words that you are unfamiliar with. When you do come across a word you don’t know, take the time to look it up. This practice is especially important when reading academic works because they are often full of ten-thousand-dollar words. Next time you read and run across a word that you don’t know, be sure to find the definition so that you can comprehend what is being said.

We would also recommend reading articles and books that stretch you. Don’t just read books like the Twilight and Harry Potter because those are written on a junior high or middle-school reading level.

Increase Your Awareness and Adaptation of Language

After learning to improve your vocabulary, it’s also important to increase language awareness and adaptation. When we talk about language awareness , we are referring to a person’s ability to be mindful and sensitive to all functions and forms of language. 35 For our purposes, we define language adaptation as the ability to alter one’s linguistic choices in a communicatively competent manner. As such, it’s not just about being aware of language that leads to effective interpersonal interactions, but our ability to adapt our linguistic choices with different people to maximize the effectiveness of our interpersonal communication.

There are a couple of ways that people can increase their language awareness and adaptation. The first way is to engage in meaningful interpersonal communication with someone different from you. This person can be from a different country or different region of the country from you. When you speak to someone very different from you, you might notice how they use language differently or how they prefer certain words over others.

Another way might be to watch a foreign film. Check out different international films that have been nominated for an Academy Award. Most of them will be dubbed in English or have English subtitles. Pay attention to how the characters communicate with each other to create meaning. Does it give you an appreciation for how you speak?

Lastly, spend some time with a small child, preferably under the age of five. Pay attention to how the child communicates with you versus others (e.g., their friends, parents/guardians, siblings). Children under five are still acquiring words and learning to talk. When you communicate with someone who has a very limited vocabulary, it might help you see how you can adapt your language so that they will understand you.

Refers to words that relate to ideas or concepts that exist only in your mind and do not represent a tangible object.

abstraction ladder

A diagram that explains the process of abstraction.

affiliation

A connection or association with others.

ambiguous language

Language that has multiple meanings.

An attitude that is not objective or balanced, prejudiced, or the use of words that intentionally or unintentionally offend people or express an unfair attitude concerning a person’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or illness.

biased language

Language that shows preference in favor of or against a certain point-of-view, shows prejudice, or is demeaning to others.

Informal word or jargon used among a particular group of people.

Expression that has been so overused that it has lost its original meaning.

colloquialism

Informal expression used in casual conversation that is often specific to certain dialects or geographic regions of a country.

connotation

What a word suggests or implies; connotations give words their emotional impact.

Adapting your communication style to the speaker to be similar.

The dictionary definition or descriptive meaning of a word.

Spoken or written discussion of a subject.

Adapting your communication style to the speaker to be drastically different.

Replacing blunt words with more polite words.

formal language

Official or academic language.

heuristic function

The use of language to explore and investigate the world, solve problems, and learn from your discoveries and experiences.

Expression or figure of speech whose meaning cannot be understood by looking at the individual words and interpreting them literally.

imaginative function

The use of language to play with ideas that do not exist in the real-world.

informal language

Common, everyday language people use during most interpersonal interactions.

instrumental function

The use of language as a means for meeting your needs, manipulating and controlling your environment, and expressing your feelings.

interactional function

The use of language to help you form and maintain relationships.

The specialized or technical language of a specific group or profession that may not be understood by outsiders.

A system of human communication using a particular form of spoken or written words or other symbols.

language adaptation

The ability to alter one’s linguistic choices in a communicatively competent manner

language awareness

a person’s ability to be mindful and sensitive to all functions and forms of language.

linguistic determinism

The perspective that language influences thoughts.

linguistic relativity

The view that language contains special characteristics.

metamessage

The meaning beyond the words themselves.

personal function

The use of language to help you form your identity or sense of self.

bias against others on the basis of their race or ethnicity.

racist language

Language that demeans or insults people based on their race or ethnicity.

regulatory function

The use of language to control behavior.

relative language

Language that gains understanding by comparison.

representational function

The use of language to represent objects and ideas and to express your thoughts.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

A theory that suggests that language impacts perceptions. Language is ascertained by the perceived reality of a culture.

Bias of others based on their biological sex.

sexist language

Language that excludes individuals on the basis of gender or shows a bias toward or against people due to their gender.

The nonstandard language of a particular culture or subculture.

The manipulation of language to achieve the most positive interpretation of words, to gain political advantage, or to deceive others.

static evaluation

Language shows that people and things change.

All the words understood by a person or group of people.

an extreme focusing of one’s interests and desires during an interpersonal interaction while completely ignoring the interests and desires of another person

Being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate one’s suffering and to heal oneself with kindness. Self-compassion also involves offering nonjudgmental understanding to one’s pain, inadequacies and failures, so that one’s experience is seen as part of the larger human experience.

The ability to focus on and recognize your own behavior, including communication.

The type of communication that may be accomplished as interpersonal, mass, public, and organizational but that takes place in specific and well-established areas or contexts, such as politics, health, sports, and gender.

Cultural patterns of behavior influenced by cultural beliefs, values, norms, and rules based on a specific locality or within an organization.

Attachment style posed by Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz describing individuals who believe that they are loveable and expect that others will generally behave in accepting and responsive ways within interpersonal interactions.

Connecting and Relating: Why Interpersonal Communication Matters Copyright © by Cameron W. Piercy; Michael Robert Dennis; and Maura D. Corder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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16 Self-Concept Questionnaires, Activities and Tests (+PDF)

How do you answer such a complex question? It’s tough and one that psychologists have consistently sought to help us with.

‘Self-concept’ might not be a term you’re generally familiar with, but it’s one that’s well worth knowing about. It essentially refers to the way we think about ourselves, evaluate our appearance, thoughts, and behaviors, and perceive ourselves both as individuals and in comparison to others. It’s also linked to concepts of self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-image.

The term self-concept has grown in popularity owing to the way it encompasses a more robust idea of self, rather than individual terms.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Self-Compassion Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you increase the compassion and kindness you show yourself but will also give you the tools to help your clients, students or employees show more compassion to themselves.

This Article Contains:

Popular psychology definitions of self-concept, the personal self-concept questionnaire (psq), the self-concept questionnaire (scq), 3 more ways to map beliefs about the self, 3 self-concept activities & exercises, best online self-concept test, 3 more tests and assessments, handy pdf worksheets, a take-home message.

A popular definition is provided by Baumeister (1999):

The individual’s belief about himself or herself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.

Rogers (1959) suggested that self-concept has three core aspects:

• Self-Image – The view you have of yourself
• Self-Worth – How much value you have in yourself
• Ideal-Self – Who you really wish you were

Lewis (1990) also theorized that the development of individual self-concept has two key components:

• The Existential Self – The realization that you exist as separate to others.
• The Categorical Self – The realization that you exist as an individual object in the world, with distinct properties, such as your age, hair color, and gender. As we grow older, this component also begins to include psychological traits.

The Personal Self-Concept Questionnaire (PSQ) was developed by Goñi, Madariaga, Axpe & Goñi (2011) in response to the plethora of self-concept tools available. The researchers wanted to create a shorter measurement that provided an accurate representation of self-concept overall.

The questionnaire is made up of 22 statements, divided into four subcategories:

• Self-fulfillment
• Emotional self-concept

Example statements from the questionnaire include:

• To do anything, I first need other people’s approval. (Autonomy)
• I consider myself to be a very uptight and highly strung person. (Emotional Self-Concept)
• I have yet to achieve anything I consider to be important in my life. (Self-Fulfilment)
• I am a man/woman of my word. (Honesty)

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Initially developed by Saraswat (1984), the Self Concept Questionnaire is one of the more popular questionnaires when it comes to measuring self-concept.

The questionnaire itself contains 48 statements that aim to measure self-concept across six different aspects:

• Temperamental
• Educational
• Intellectual

Example statements include:

• I feel different from most people and wish I was more like them. (Social)
• I only partially believe in myself. (Temperamental)
• I feel I am a person of worth. (Moral)
• I have trouble taking criticism from other people. (Temperamental)

Participants rate their answers to the statements on a scale from 1 to 5, with one being ‘very unlike me’ and five being ‘very true of me.’ A higher score indicates a high sense of self-concept, with a lower score indicating a lower sense of self-concept.

Although the PSQ and SCQ are the two most commonly used questionnaires to measure and map self-concept, there are several other questionnaires and tools that aim to explore self-belief too.

Below are three I’ve come across in my research that might be of interest to you:

1. Academic Self-Concept Scale for Adolescents (ASCS)

The Academic Self-Concept Scale for Adolescents (Minchekar, 2019) was developed in response to the idea that many self-concept questionnaires and measures are quite broad. The researchers wanted to narrow this down and focused only on measuring self-concept concerning academic skills and performance.

The scale is broken down into eight distinct sub-categories that it measures:

• Self-Concept of Academic Ability
• Self-Concept of Academic Interests
• Self-Concept of Study
• Self-Concept of Examination
• Self-Concept of Academic Interactions
• Self-Concept of Academic Efforts
• Self-Concept of Curriculum
• Self-Concept of Academic Future

The scale contains 57 statements that ask participants to rate themselves from one to five, with one being ‘Never’ and five being ‘Always.’ Higher scores indicate a higher level of Academic Self-Concept, and participants with a higher score were found to be more confident in their academic capabilities.

The ASCS is still a relatively new tool, and you can read more about its development .

2. Harrill Self-Esteem Inventory

The Harrill Self-Esteem Inventory was developed by Counselor, Susan Harrill, as a measurement for self-esteem within self-concept. It is made up of 25 statements that participants are required to respond to.

Example statements from the inventory include:

• I feel of equal value to other people, regardless of my performance, looks, IQ, achievements, or possessions (or lack of them).
• I take responsibility for my feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions. I do not give others credit or blame for how I feel, think, or what I do.
• I learn and grow from my mistakes rather than deny them or use them to confirm my unworthiness.
• I nurture myself with kind, supportive self-talk.

Participants respond with a score between zero and four as follows:

0 = I never think, feel, or behave this way. 1 = I do less than half the time. 2 = I do 50% of the time. 3 = I do more than half the time. 4 = I always think, feel, or behave this way.

After responding to all statements, participants tally their total score, with a higher score indicating a higher level of self-esteem .

3. The Twenty Statements Test

The Twenty Statements Test (Kuhn & McPartland, 1954) was developed to specifically measure self-image as a part of self-concept, although it covers other areas of self-concept too.

The twenty questions probe participants to respond to the question ‘Who am I’ with ‘I am …’ answers. The questions are broken down into five subcategories:

• Social groups and classifications
• Ideological beliefs
• Self-evaluations

Kuhn (1960) states that the majority of responses to the questions could be divided into three groups:

• Social Roles – Responses related to external aspects of the self, for example, ‘I am a mother/daughter/teacher/doctor.’
• Personality Traits – Responses related to internal aspects of the self, for example, ‘I am funny/patient/short-tempered/kind.’
• Physical Descriptions – Responses related to image aspects of the self, for example, ‘I am tall/short/fat/thin.’

Related: 21 Self-Image Examples and Activities to Use the Theory Today

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Exploring self-concept can be a great learning and growth experience for individuals of all ages. Below are three easy to do activities for individuals or groups of any age to help learn more about self-concept.

1. ‘Who Am I?’ Exercise

This is a wonderful introductory exercise that can be used with individuals or groups. The premise is straightforward to replicate, and participants can take as long as they need to complete the initial statements, with plenty of encouragement for discussion.

You will need:

To encourage participants to think more deeply about the ideas and labels they have about themselves.

Provide each participant with a list of statements – suggested amount 15-20 – that ask them to think about who they are. Some example statements include:

• My favorite food is …
• My favorite music is …
• An important person in my life is …
• Something I dislike …
• An idea for my future I have is …

Encourage participants to answer all statements. Ask them to reflect on the answers they choose and why these are important to them. Remind them there are no wrong or right answers, just the opportunity to engage with their sense of self-concept.

2. ‘My Strengths’ Exercise

This exercise is great to encourage participants to start thinking about their self-concept of their strengths in critical areas of life. Again, it is very easy to set up and will enable some great conversations with individuals or groups.

To encourage participants to reflect on their strengths in different key areas.

Provide participants with pen and paper and ask them to divide their paper into four sections with the following headings:

• Interests/Sports
• School/Work

Next, read out some statements that could relate to each of the sections and ask participants to write down the ones they feel most relate to them. Aim for 5-6 statements for each of the four categories. Example statements include:

• I always try my best at school/work.
• I am a caring friend.
• I help out around the house.
• I like to be creative.
• I enjoy team sports.

Once participants get the idea, encourage them to reflect further on the four areas, and write down some of their unique strengths.

3. ‘Three Compliments Journal’ Exercise

This exercise is great for any individual who struggles with self-concept, and who has low self-esteem or low self-image in particular. Similar to many journal exercises; it is easy to implement and consistency is key to its success.

• Journal/notebook

To increase ideas of self-concept – in particular, self-esteem and self-image .

Participants are required to spend 5-10 minutes a day reflecting on three compliments they would give themselves about how they behaved, interacted, engaged, or looked during the day. The compliments can focus on anything they like. The idea is to reflect on the positives about themselves they might otherwise dismiss.

Example compliments could include things like:

• I liked my outfit today, and the compliments I received because of it.
• Today I was kind to the lady in the store and offered to help her with her bags.
• I’m proud of my school/work presentation. My teacher/boss said I did a great job.

Ask participants to repeat this exercise daily, for as long as they need to. Remind them it’s okay if they forget some days and it might be challenging to think of three things at first, but it will get easier over time.

How to build your self image – Proctor Gallagher Institute

There are many online self-concept tests you can take – some are paid, and some are free – and it’s important to know that these tests are only snapshots. Sampling a few different tests will give you a more robust sense of your self-concept.

One of the most popular online tests is the Self-Esteem Test from Psychology Today. This test contains a variety of statements that you will need to respond to. It should take no more than 15 mins to complete.

It is free to take, and you’ll receive a ‘snapshot’ of your results at the end. You can invest in a more in-depth result by paying a small fee.

Besides the previously mentioned assessments, we share three more tests below.

1. Robson Self-Concept Questionnaire

The Robson Self-Concept Questionnaire follows a similar pattern to the previous questionnaires explored in this article. It consists of 30 statements relating to different areas of self-concept. Example statements include:

• I’m glad I am who I am.
• I am reliable.
• It would be boring if I talked about myself.
• I have a pleasant personality.

Participants rate their responses to the statements on a scale of zero to seven with zero being ‘Completely Disagree,’ and seven being ‘Completely Agree.’ A higher score means a higher sense of self-concept.

2. Self Description Questionnaire (SDQ)

The Self-Description Questionnaire was developed by Marsh (1990), and has two formats:

• The SDQI, designed for use with primary school students.
• The SDQII, designed for use with secondary school students.

The SDQ contains 43 statements that participants are required to respond to on a scale of one to five, with one being ‘False’ and five being ‘True.’

• I worry about a lot of things.
• Overall I am a failure.
• I am honest.
• I get along well with my parents.

3. Social Style Questionnaire

This questionnaire follow a slightly different format in how to assess self-concept. Instead of singular statements that ask participants to rate their response, these questionnaire provide two statements and asks participants to select the one they feel is most like them.

The Social Style Questionnaire aims to measure how participants feel they interact with others daily.

Examples of a pair of statements from this questionnaire include:

A. I tend to tell people what is on my mind. B. I tend to keep things to myself.

A. I see myself as playful and fun-loving. B. I see myself as serious and thoughtful.

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In researching this article, I came across a wealth of PDF worksheets and exercises to help you on your way to further exploring self-concept.

Below I’ve shared some of my favorite ones:

1. Therapist Aid – About Me Sentence Completion Worksheet

This is a great introductory worksheet to encourage initial thinking around self-concept. The Sentence Completion Worksheet contains a set of statements that asks participants to reflect and explore different scenarios that made them feel a certain way.

2. Therapist Aid – Strength Exploration Worksheet

This Strength Exploration Worksheet is slightly similar to the ‘My Strengths’ exercise so that it could be used as a great accompaniment. It asks participants to reflect on their strengths in three key areas of life: relationships, profession, and personal fulfillment. Additionally, it includes a more in-depth exploration of strengths under each of the specific headings.

3. Thought Diary for Negative Self-Evaluations Worksheet

The Thought Diary Worksheet can be used as a journal/diary insert and asks participants to reflect on negative self-evaluations they may have about themselves. The worksheet is comprehensive and laid out well to encourage a step by step process through evaluating the idea of self-concept being explored.

Additional reading material includes a selection of 27 books on self-esteem .

Self-concept is such a broad area of psychology, and yet it’s a fascinating one. It really hones in one of the deeper parts of answering that question ‘Who am I?’.

Some of the questionnaires and exercises we’ve visited in this article are more general, so I hope you’ll see these as a great starting point for further exploration and personal growth around your ideas of self-concept.

Have you tried any of these exercises, or know of others that you’ve found particularly beneficial? I’d love to hear about them! Please leave a comment below.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Self Compassion Exercises for free .

• Baumeister, R. F. (1990). The nature and structure of the self: An overview. In R. Baumeister (Ed.), The self in social psychology (pp. 1-20). Philadelphia, PA, US: Psychology Press (Taylor & Francis).
• Goñi, E., Madariaga, J. M., Axpe, I., & Goñi, A. (2011). Structure of the Personal Self-Concept (PSC) Questionnaire. Retrieved from: http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/337/33719289006.pdf
• Kuhn, M. H. & McPartland, T. S. (1954). An Empirical Investigation of Self-Attitudes.
• Kuhn, M. H. (1960). Self-attitudes by age, sex and professional training. Sociological Quarterly, 1 , 39-56.
• Lewis, M. (1990). Self-knowledge and social development in early life. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality (pp. 277-300). New York: Guilford.
• Marsh, H. W. (1990). Causal ordering of academic self-concept and academic achievement: A multi-wave, longitudinal panel analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82 , 646-656.
• Minchekar, V. S. (2019). Academic Self Concept Scale for Adolescents: Development, Reliability, and Validity of ASCS. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331873419_Academic_Self_Concept_Scale_for_Adolescents_Development_Reliability_and_Validity_of_ASCS
• Rogers, C. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In (ed.) S. Koch, Psychology: A study of science. Vol. 3: Formulations of the person and the social context. New York: McGraw Hill.
• Saraswat, R. K. (1984). Manual for Self-Concept Questionnaire. Agra, India: National Psychological Corporation.

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What our readers think.

Hello there! I need personal self-concept questionnaire by Goni (2011) along with psychometric properties and permission to use it. Where I kind find it?? Please let me know. Thanks.

This scale is freely available to use and a copy of it with scoring information can be accessed here .

Hope this helps!

Warm regards, Julia | Community Manager

Hi! May I know what database is used for the automatic scoring system of Robson’s Self-concept Questionnaire? I was having a hard time understanding the manual one. Thank you!

you can use this automatic scoring system .

I hope it helps 🙂

Thank you so much for your response!

This is me again.

May I know what specifc scores the respondents should have in order to know that they have low or high self-concept?

Norms from different studies are provided for comparison. For example, a control group from Robson (1989) had a mean total score of 137.0 (SD = 20.2), while a group of patients with DSM-III Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) had a mean score of 108.0 (SD = 24.8). This information can be used to interpret individual scores in relation to these norms.

I hope this helps 🙂

Hai, how are you? I would like to have some suggestions on the questions which may help my leaners to realize their characters, their weaknesses and help them to formulate their studies. can i put those questins in MS forms in which the students will be answering themself find their Strengths and Weaknesses?

I recommend the VIA Survey of Character Strengths to assess strengths and weaknesses. It is available for free on the VIA Institute on Character website .

Hope this helps! Kind regards, Julia | Community Manager

Hi Nicole. Im Aishah.. Could u plz to advise me Self Concept Questionnaire focus on Activity Physical and Nutrition for Adolescent Student? And which website that I can get for more info? TQ so much

Thanks for your question. Unfortunately I was not able to find a Self-concept questionnaire which includes all the constructs you are looking for. However, this article dives into some of the most relevant self-concept and self-esteem questionnaires.

Additionally, this article explores some of the constructs you mentioned and their relations (self-concept, dietary patterns, and nutrition in adolescents).

I hope this helps!

Kind regards, -Caroline | Community Manager

Hi Nicole, the scales on broad positive psychology themes are very impressive. I would be happy if you could specify or share with me any self-concept scale specifically for teachers. This scale will help me to adapt or to bring out a similar scale on this topic.

Hi Baldwin,

Glad this was helpful for you! Definitely take a look at the Teacher Self-Concept Evaluation Scale by Villa and Calvete (2001): https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-491X(01)00028-1

You can download the paper with the items for free here: https://www.academia.edu/659520/Development_of_the_Teacher_Self_Concept_Evaluation_Scale_and_Its_Relation_to_Burnout

– Nicole | Community Manager

Hi Nicole Can you help me how to get permission for Robson self concept questionnaire. I am using this questionnaire for my research. I need permission. Kindly guide me

Thanks for your question. You can find the Robson Self-Concept Questionnaire here . As long as you properly reference the scale, you can use it for your research.

I hope this helps.

– Caroline | Community Manager

Do you have any on line courses which would help in building my self?

We offer a complete Masterclass series that covers themes like self-acceptance and strength development which may be of interest to you. These courses include a workbook, hours of video, and everything else you need to better understand yourself and also teach the material to others. You can find more information about these courses on our store page:

https://pro.positivepsychology.com/product/the-science-of-self-acceptance/ https://pro.positivepsychology.com/product/maximizing-strengths-masterclass/

Let me know if I can answer any questions.

Hello! Would you know if I could be given permission to use Academic Self-Concept Scale for Adolescents (ASCS)? Is there a scale intended for younger population? Can you please help me get in touch with the person/people concerned?

The ASCS can be used freely without permission from the author for research purposes.

If you’re looking for an alternative you can use with a younger crowd, Reynold’s (1988) scale has been used with youth 10 years and older: https://youthrex.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Academic-Self-concept-Scale-1.pdf

Where can I get the range for Robson Self concept questionnaire? to know if one falls in high or low self concept? thank you

Hi Cristine,

You’ll find some population norms for the scale here: https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/robson-self-concept-questionnaire/

I’m not aware of any published information stating cut-offs for high and low levels on this measure, but this website indicates that an average score on this measure (within a non-clinical population) is 140. Hopefully that helps a little.

Thank you so much for your reply! Do you know a way where I can contact Robson or people who arebaccountable for the scale?

You’ll find Robson’s contact here: https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/team/phil-robson 🙂

Hii, Can I get the professional self concept scale? will be helpful..

Hi Christina,

Professional self-concept scales tend to be specific to the role type (e.g., nurse, teacher). So can you please let me know the sort of sample you will be administering it to? Then I’ll be happy to advise 🙂

Hii I am looking for theAcademic Self-Concept Scale for Adolescents (ASCS). May you help to needful?

I cannot seem to find this scale online, but you can contact the author of this scale (Vikas Minchekar) via ResearchGate to get a copy of the questionnaire items.

I hope this helps a little!

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14.1 Social Cognition: Making Sense of Ourselves and Others

Learning objectives.

• Review the principles of social cognition, including the fundamentals of how we form judgments about other people.
• Define the concept of attitude and review the ways that attitudes are developed and changed, and how attitudes relate to behavior.

One important aspect of social cognition involves forming impressions of other people. Making these judgments quickly and accurately helps us guide our behavior to interact appropriately with the people we know. If we can figure out why our roommate is angry at us, we can react to resolve the problem; if we can determine how to motivate the people in our group to work harder on a project, then the project might be better.

Perceiving Others

Our initial judgments of others are based in large part on what we see. The physical features of other people, particularly their sex, race, age, and physical attractiveness, are very salient, and we often focus our attention on these dimensions (Schneider, 2003; Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2006).

Although it may seem inappropriate or shallow to admit it, we are strongly influenced by the physical attractiveness of others, and many cases physical attractiveness is the most important determinant of our initial liking for other people (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottmann, 1966). Infants who are only a year old prefer to look at faces that adults consider to be attractive than at unattractive faces (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaughn, 1991). Evolutionary psychologists have argued that our belief that “what is beautiful is also good” may be because we use attractiveness as a cue for health; people whom we find more attractive may also, evolutionarily, have been healthier (Zebrowitz, Fellous, Mignault, & Andreoletti, 2003).

Figure 14.1

Can you read a book by its cover? Which of these people do you think is more fun and friendly? Who is smarter or more competent? Do you think your judgments are accurate?

J.K. Califf – -19 – CC BY-SA 2.0; Sascha Kohlmann – Man, Tram – CC BY-SA 2.0; DFID – Sadia, a teacher in Abbottabad, Pakistan – CC BY-SA 2.0; Ben Raynal – Stranger #61 – CC BY-NC 2.0.

One indicator of health is youth. Leslie Zebrowitz and her colleagues (Zebrowitz, 1996; Zebrowitz, Luevano, Bronstad, & Aharon, 2009) have extensively studied the tendency for both men and women to prefer people whose faces have characteristics similar to those of babies. These features include large, round, and widely spaced eyes, a small nose and chin, prominent cheekbones, and a large forehead. People who have baby faces (both men and women) are seen as more attractive than people who are not baby-faced.

Figure 14.2

People with baby faces are perceived as attractive.

johanferreira15 – zac efron in 2008 – CC BY 2.0; friskytuna – Rachel Bilson – CC BY 2.0.

Another indicator of health is symmetry. People are more attracted to faces that are more symmetrical than they are to those that are less symmetrical, and this may be due in part to the perception that symmetrical faces are perceived as healthier (Rhodes et al., 2001).

Although you might think that we would prefer faces that are unusual or unique, in fact the opposite is true. Langlois and Roggman (1990) showed college students the faces of men and women. The faces were composites made up of the average of 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 faces. The researchers found that the more faces that were averaged into the stimulus, the more attractive it was judged. Again, our liking for average faces may be because they appear healthier.

Although preferences for youthful, symmetrical, and average faces have been observed cross-culturally, and thus appear to be common human preferences, different cultures may also have unique beliefs about what is attractive. In modern Western cultures, “thin is in,” and people prefer those who have little excess fat (Crandall, Merman, & Hebl, 2009). The need to be thin to be attractive is particularly strong for women in contemporary society, and the desire to maintain a low body weight can lead to low self-esteem, eating disorders, and other unhealthy behaviors. However, the norm of thinness has not always been in place; the preference for women with slender, masculine, and athletic looks has become stronger over the past 50 years. In contrast to the relatively universal preferences for youth, symmetry, and averageness, other cultures do not show such a strong propensity for thinness (Sugiyama, 2005).

Forming Judgments on the Basis of Appearance: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

We frequently use people’s appearances to form our judgments about them and to determine our responses to them. The tendency to attribute personality characteristics to people on the basis of their external appearance or their social group memberships is known as stereotyping . Our stereotypes about physically attractive people lead us to see them as more dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled than we perceive physically unattractive people (Langlois et al., 2000). And our stereotypes lead us to treat people differently—the physically attractive are given better grades on essay exams, are more successful on job interviews, and receive lighter sentences in court judgments than their less attractive counterparts (Hosoda, Stone-Romero, & Coats, 2003; Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991).

In addition to stereotypes about physical attractiveness, we also regularly stereotype people on the basis of their sex, race, age, religion, and many other characteristics, and these stereotypes are frequently negative (Schneider, 2004). Stereotyping is unfair to the people we judge because stereotypes are based on our preconceptions and negative emotions about the members of the group. Stereotyping is closely related to prejudice , the tendency to dislike people because of their appearance or group memberships , and discrimination , negative behaviors toward others based on prejudice. Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination work together. We may not vote for a gay person for public office because of our negative stereotypes about gays, and we may avoid people from other religions or those with mental illness because of our prejudices.

Some stereotypes may be accurate in part. Research has found, for instance, that attractive people are actually more sociable, more popular, and less lonely than less attractive individuals (Langlois et al., 2000). And, consistent with the stereotype that women are “emotional,” women are, on average, more empathic and attuned to the emotions of others than are men (Hall & Schmid Mast, 2008). Group differences in personality traits may occur in part because people act toward others on the basis of their stereotypes, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy . A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when our expectations about the personality characteristics of others lead us to behave toward those others in ways that make those beliefs come true . If I have a stereotype that attractive people are friendly, then I may act in a friendly way toward people who are attractive. This friendly behavior may be reciprocated by the attractive person, and if many other people also engage in the same positive behaviors with the person, in the long run he or she may actually become friendlier.

But even if attractive people are on average friendlier than unattractive people, not all attractive people are friendlier than all unattractive people. And even if women are, on average, more emotional than men, not all men are less emotional than all women. Social psychologists believe that it is better to treat people as individuals rather than rely on our stereotypes and prejudices, because stereotyping and prejudice are always unfair and often inaccurate (Fiske, 1989; Stangor, 1995). Furthermore, many of our stereotypes and prejudices occur out of our awareness, such that we do not even know that we are using them.

Implicit Association Test

You might want to test your own stereotypes and prejudices by completing the Implicit Association Test, a measure of unconscious stereotyping.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo

We use our stereotypes and prejudices in part because they are easy; if we can quickly size up people on the basis of their physical appearance, that can save us a lot of time and effort. We may be evolutionarily disposed to stereotyping. Because our primitive ancestors needed to accurately separate members of their own kin group from those of others, categorizing people into “us” (the ingroup ) and “them” (the outgroup ) was useful and even necessary (Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2010). And the positive emotions that we experience as a result of our group memberships —known as social identity —can be an important and positive part of our everyday experiences (Hogg, 2003). We may gain social identity as members of our university, our sports teams, our religious and racial groups, and many other groups.

Figure 14.3

Social identity is the positive emotions that we experience as a member of an important social group.

Caitlin Regan – Who is number 14? – CC BY 2.0

But the fact that we may use our stereotypes does not mean that we should use them. Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, whether they are consciously or unconsciously applied, make it difficult for some people to effectively contribute to society and may create both mental and physical health problems for them (Swim & Stangor, 1998). In some cases getting beyond our prejudices is required by law, as detailed in the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Opportunity Employment Act of 1972, and the Fair Housing Act of 1978.

There are individual differences in prejudice, such that some people are more likely to try to control and confront their stereotypes and prejudices whereas others apply them more freely (Czopp, Monteith, & Mark, 2006; Plant & Devine, 1998). For instance, some people believe in group hierarchies—that some groups are naturally better than others—whereas other people are more egalitarian and hold fewer prejudices (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Stangor & Leary, 2006).

Social psychologists believe that we should work to get past our prejudices. The tendency to hold stereotypes and prejudices and to act on them can be reduced, for instance, through positive interactions and friendships with members of other groups, through practice in avoiding using them, and through education (Hewstone, 1996).

Research Focus: Forming Judgments of People in Seconds

Research has demonstrated that people can draw very accurate conclusions about others on the basis of very limited data. Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) made videotapes of six female and seven male graduate students while they were teaching an undergraduate course. The courses covered diverse areas of the college curriculum, including humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. For each teacher, three 10-second video clips were taken: 10 seconds from the first 10 minutes of the class, 10 seconds from the middle of the class, and 10 seconds from the last 10 minutes of the class.

The researchers then asked nine female undergraduates to rate the clips of the teachers on 15 dimensions including optimistic, confident , active , enthusiastic , dominant , likable , warm , competent , and supportive . Ambady and her colleagues then compared the ratings of the participants who had seen the teacher for only 30 seconds with the ratings of the same instructors that had been made by students who had spent a whole semester with the teacher, and who had rated her at the end of the semester on scales such as “Rate the quality of the section overall” and “Rate section leader’s performance overall.” As you can see in Table 14.1 “Accurate Perceptions in 30 Seconds” , the ratings of the participants and the ratings of the students were highly positively correlated.

Table 14.1 Accurate Perceptions in 30 Seconds

Source: Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1993). Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 64 (3), 431–441.

If the finding that judgments made about people in 30 seconds correlate highly with judgments made about the same people after a whole semester surprises you, then perhaps you may be even more surprised to hear that we do not even need that much time. Indeed, Willis and Todorov (2006) found that even a tenth of a second was enough to make judgments that correlated highly with those same judgments made by other people who were given several minutes to make the judgments. Other research has found that we can make accurate judgments, for instance, about our perceptions of salespersons (Ambady, Krabbenhoft, & Hogan, 2006) and about the sexual orientation of other people (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999), in just a few seconds. Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, and Hall (2005) found that people voted for political candidates in large part on the basis of whether or not their faces, seen only for one second, looked like faces of competent people. Taken together, this research shows that we are well able to form initial impressions of others quickly and often quite accurately.

Close Relationships

One of the most important tasks faced by humans is to develop successful relationships with others. These relationships include acquaintanceships and friendships but also the more important close relationships , which are the long-term intimate and romantic relationships that we develop with another person—for instance, in a marriage (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2000). Because most of us will want to enter into a close relationship at some point, and because close relationships are evolutionarily important as they form the basis for effective child rearing, it is useful to know what psychologists have learned about the principles of liking and loving within them.

A major interest of social psychologists is the study of interpersonal attraction , or what makes people like, and even love, each other. One important factor is a perceived similarity in values and beliefs between the partners (Davis & Rusbult, 2001). Similarity is important for relationships both because it is more convenient (it’s easier if both partners like to ski or go to the movies than if only one does), but also because similarity supports our values—I can feel better about myself and my choice of activities if I see that you also enjoy doing the same things that I do.

Figure 14.4

Close relationships are characterized by responsiveness, disclosure, intimacy, equity, and passion.

Vladimir Pustovit – Couple – CC BY 2.0; Pedro Ribeiro Simões – Couple in love – CC BY 2.0; Ben – Couple – CC BY 2.0.

Liking is also enhanced by self-disclosure , the tendency to communicate frequently, without fear of reprisal, and in an accepting and empathetic manner. Friends are friends because we can talk to them openly about our needs and goals, and because they listen to and respond to our needs (Reis & Aron, 2008). But self-disclosure must be balanced. If I open up to you about the concerns that are important to me, I expect you to do the same in return. If the self-disclosure is not reciprocal, the relationship may not last.

Another important determinant of liking is proximity , or the extent to which people are physically near us. Research has found that we are more likely to develop friendships with people who are nearby, for instance, those who live in the same dorm that we do, and even with people who just happen to sit nearer to us in our classes (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2008).

Proximity has its effect on liking through the principle of mere exposure , which is the tendency to prefer stimuli (including but not limited to people) that we have seen more frequently . Moreland and Beach (1992) studied mere exposure by having female confederates attend a large lecture class of over 100 students 0, 5, 10, or 15 times during a semester. At the end of the term, the other students in the class were shown pictures of the confederates and asked to indicate both if they recognized them and also how much they liked them. The number of times the confederates had attended class didn’t influence the other students’ ability to recognize them, but it did influence their liking for them. As predicted by the mere exposure hypothesis, students who had attended class more often were liked more ( Figure 14.5 “Mere Exposure in the Classroom” ).

Figure 14.5 Mere Exposure in the Classroom

Richard Moreland and Scott Beach (1992) had female confederates visit classrooms 0, 5, 10, or 15 times over the course of a semester. Then the students rated their liking of the confederates. As predicted by the principles of mere exposure, confederates who had attended class more often were also liked more.

Adapted from Moreland, R. L., & Beach, S. R. (1992). Exposure effects in the classroom: The development of affinity among students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28 (3), 255–276.

The effect of mere exposure is powerful and occurs in a wide variety of situations. Infants tend to smile at a photograph of someone they have seen before more than they smile at a photograph of someone they are seeing for the first time (Brooks-Gunn & Lewis, 1981), and people prefer side-to-side reversed images of their own faces over their normal (nonreversed) face, whereas their friends prefer their normal face over the reversed one (Mita, Dermer, & Knight, 1977). This is expected on the basis of mere exposure, since people see their own faces primarily in mirrors and thus are exposed to the reversed face more often.

Mere exposure may well have an evolutionary basis. We have an initial fear of the unknown, but as things become more familiar they seem more similar and safe, and thus produce more positive affect and seem less threatening and dangerous (Freitas, Azizian, Travers, & Berry, 2005). In fact, research has found that stimuli tend to produce more positive affect as they become more familiar (Harmon-Jones & Allen, 2001). When the stimuli are people, there may well be an added effect. Familiar people become more likely to be seen as part of the ingroup rather than the outgroup, and this may lead us to like them more. Leslie Zebrowitz and her colleagues found that we like people of our own race in part because they are perceived as similar to us (Zebrowitz, Bornstad, & Lee, 2007).

In the most successful relationships the two people begin to see themselves as a single unit. Arthur Aron and his colleagues (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992) assessed the role of closeness in relationships using the Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale as shown in Figure 14.6 “The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale” . You might try completing the measure yourself for some different people that you know—for instance, your family members, friends, spouse, or girlfriend or boyfriend. The measure is simple to use and to interpret; if people see the circles representing the self and the other as more overlapping, this means that the relationship is close. But if they choose the circles that are less overlapping, then the relationship is less so.

Figure 14.6 The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale

This scale is used to determine how close two partners feel to each other. The respondent simply circles which of the seven figures he or she feels best characterizes the relationship.

Adapted from Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 63 (4), 596–612.

Although the closeness measure is very simple, it has been found to be predictive of people’s satisfaction with their close relationships, and of the tendency for couples to stay together (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991; Aron, Paris, & Aron, 1995). When the partners in a relationship feel that they are close, and when they indicate that the relationship is based on caring, warmth, acceptance and social support, we can say that the relationship is intimate (Reis & Aron, 2008).

When a couple begins to take care of a household together, has children, and perhaps has to care for elderly parents, the requirements of the relationship become correspondingly bigger. As a result of this complexity, the partners in close relationships increasingly turn to each other for help in coordinating activities, remembering dates and appointments, and accomplishing tasks. Relationships are close in part because the couple becomes highly interdependent , relying on each other to meet important goals (Berscheid & Reis, 1998).

In relationships in which a positive rapport between the partners is developed and maintained over a period of time, the partners are naturally happy with the relationship and they become committed to it. Commitment refers to the feelings and actions that keep partners working together to maintain the relationship (Rusbult, Olsen, Davis, Hannon, 2001) and is characterized by mutual expectations that the self and the partner will be responsive to each other’s needs (Clark & Mills, 2004). Partners who are committed to the relationship see their mates as more attractive, are less able to imagine themselves with another partner, express less interest in other potential mates, and are less likely to break up (Simpson & Harris, 1994).

People also find relationships more satisfactory, and stay in them longer, when they feel that they are being rewarded by them. When the needs of either or both of the partners are not being met, the relationship is in trouble. This is not to say that people only think about the benefits they are getting; they will also consider the needs of the other. But over the long term, both partners must benefit from the relationship.

Although sexual arousal and excitement are more important early on in relationships, intimacy is also determined by sexual and romantic attraction. Indeed, intimacy is also dependent on passion— the partners must display positive affect toward each other. Happy couples are in positive moods when they are around each other; they laugh with each other, express approval rather than criticism of each other’s behaviors, and enjoy physical contact. People are happier in their relationships when they view the other person in a positive or even an “idealized” sense, rather than a more realistic and perhaps more negative one (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996).

Margaret Clark and Edward Lemay (2010) recently reviewed the literature on close relationships and argued that their most important characteristic is a sense of responsiveness. People are happy, healthy, and likely to stay in relationships in which they are sure that they can trust the other person to understand, validate, and care for them. It is this unconditional giving and receiving of love that promotes the welfare of both partners and provides the secure base that allows both partners to thrive.

Causal Attribution: Forming Judgments by Observing Behavior

When we observe people’s behavior we may attempt to determine if the behavior really reflects their underlying personality. If Frank hits Joe, we might wonder if Frank is naturally aggressive or if perhaps Joe had provoked him. If Leslie leaves a big tip for the waitress, we might wonder if she is a generous person or if the service was particularly excellent. The process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior, with the goal of learning about their personalities , is known as causal attribution (Jones et al., 1987).

Making causal attributions is a bit like conducting an experiment. We carefully observe the people we are interested in and note how they behave in different social situations. After we have made our observations, we draw our conclusions. Sometimes we may decide that the behavior was caused primarily by the person; this is called making a person attribution . At other times, we may determine that the behavior was caused primarily by the situation; this is called making a situation attribution. And at other times we may decide that the behavior was caused by both the person and the situation.

It is easier to make personal attributions when behavior is more unusual or unexpected. Imagine that you go to a party and you are introduced to Tess. Tess shakes your hand and says “Nice to meet you!” Can you readily conclude, on the basis of this behavior, that Tess is a friendly person? Probably not. Because the social situation demands that people act in a friendly way (shaking your hand and saying “nice to meet you”), it is difficult to know whether Tess acted friendly because of the situation or because she is really friendly. Imagine, however, that instead of shaking your hand, Tess sticks out her tongue at you and walks away. I think you would agree that it is easier in this case to infer that Tess is unfriendly because her behavior is so contrary to what one would expect (Jones, Davis, & Gergen, 1961).

Although people are reasonably accurate in their attributions (we could say, perhaps, that they are “good enough”; Fiske, 2003), they are far from perfect. One error that we frequently make when making judgments about ourselves is to make self-serving attributions by judging the causes of our own behaviors in overly positive ways. If you did well on a test, you will probably attribute that success to person causes (“I’m smart,” “I studied really hard”), but if you do poorly on the test you are more likely to make situation attributions (“The test was hard,” “I had bad luck”). Although making causal attributions is expected to be logical and scientific, our emotions are not irrelevant.

Another way that our attributions are often inaccurate is that we are, by and large, too quick to attribute the behavior of other people to something personal about them rather than to something about their situation. We are more likely to say, “Leslie left a big tip, so she must be generous” than “Leslie left a big tip, but perhaps that was because the service was really excellent.” The common tendency to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations in judging others is known as the fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias) .

The fundamental attribution error occurs in part because other people are so salient in our social environments. When I look at you, I see you as my focus, and so I am likely to make personal attributions about you. If the situation is reversed such that people see situations from the perspectives of others, the fundamental attribution error is reduced (Storms, 1973). And when we judge people, we often see them in only one situation. It’s easy for you to think that your math professor is “picky and detail-oriented” because that describes her behavior in class, but you don’t know how she acts with her friends and family, which might be completely different. And we also tend to make person attributions because they are easy. We are more likely to commit the fundamental attribution error—quickly jumping to the conclusion that behavior is caused by underlying personality—when we are tired, distracted, or busy doing other things (Trope & Alfieri, 1997).

Figure 14.7

The tendency to make person attributions (such as poor people are lazy) for the behaviors of others, even where situational factors such as poor education and growing up in poverty might be better explanations, is caused by the fundamental attribution error.

Franco Folini – Homeless woman with dogs – CC BY-SA 2.0.

An important moral about perceiving others applies here: We should not be too quick to judge other people. It is easy to think that poor people are lazy, that people who say something harsh are rude or unfriendly, and that all terrorists are insane madmen. But these attributions may frequently overemphasize the role of the person, resulting in an inappropriate and inaccurate tendency to blame the victim (Lerner, 1980; Tennen & Affleck, 1990). Sometimes people are lazy and rude, and some terrorists are probably insane, but these people may also be influenced by the situation in which they find themselves. Poor people may find it more difficult to get work and education because of the environment they grow up in, people may say rude things because they are feeling threatened or are in pain, and terrorists may have learned in their family and school that committing violence in the service of their beliefs is justified. When you find yourself making strong person attributions for the behaviors of others, I hope you will stop and think more carefully. Would you want other people to make person attributions for your behavior in the same situation, or would you prefer that they more fully consider the situation surrounding your behavior? Are you perhaps making the fundamental attribution error?

Attitudes and Behavior

Attitude refer to our relatively enduring evaluations of people and things (Albarracín, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005). We each hold many thousands of attitudes, including those about family and friends, political parties and political figures, abortion rights, preferences for music, and much more. Some of our attitudes, including those about sports, roller coaster rides, and capital punishment, are heritable, which explains in part why we are similar to our parents on many dimensions (Olson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2001). Other attitudes are learned through direct and indirect experiences with the attitude objects (De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001).

Attitudes are important because they frequently (but not always) predict behavior. If we know that a person has a more positive attitude toward Frosted Flakes than toward Cheerios, then we will naturally predict that she will buy more of the former when she gets to the market. If we know that Charlie is madly in love with Charlene, then we will not be surprised when he proposes marriage. Because attitudes often predict behavior, people who wish to change behavior frequently try to change attitudes through the use of persuasive communications . Table 14.2 “Techniques That Can Be Effective in Persuading Others” presents some of the many techniques that can be used to change people’s attitudes (Cialdini, 2001).

Table 14.2 Techniques That Can Be Effective in Persuading Others

Attitudes predict behavior better for some people than for others. People who are high in self-monitoring — the tendency to regulate behavior to meet the demands of social situations —tend to change their behaviors to match the social situation and thus do not always act on their attitudes (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). High self-monitors agree with statements such as, “In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons” and “I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain people.” Attitudes are more likely to predict behavior for low self-monitors, who are more likely to act on their own attitudes even when the social situation suggests that they should behave otherwise. Low self-monitors are more likely to agree with statements such as “At parties and social gatherings, I do not attempt to do or say things that others will like” and “I can only argue for ideas that I already believe.”

The match between the social situations in which the attitudes are expressed and the behaviors are engaged in also matters, such that there is a greater attitude-behavior correlation when the social situations match. Imagine for a minute the case of Magritte, a 16-year-old high school student. Magritte tells her parents that she hates the idea of smoking cigarettes. But how sure are you that Magritte’s attitude will predict her behavior? Would you be willing to bet that she’d never try smoking when she’s out with her friends?

The problem here is that Magritte’s attitude is being expressed in one social situation (when she is with her parents) whereas the behavior (trying a cigarette) is going to occur in a very different social situation (when she is out with her friends). The relevant social norms are, of course, much different in the two situations. Magritte’s friends might be able to convince her to try smoking, despite her initial negative attitude, by enticing her with peer pressure. Behaviors are more likely to be consistent with attitudes when the social situation in which the behavior occurs is similar to the situation in which the attitude is expressed (Ajzen, 1991).

Although it might not have surprised you to hear that our attitudes predict our behaviors, you might be more surprised to learn that our behaviors also have an influence on our attitudes. It makes sense that if I like Frosted Flakes I’ll buy them, because my positive attitude toward the product influences my behavior. But my attitudes toward Frosted Flakes may also become more positive if I decide—for whatever reason—to buy some. It makes sense that Charlie’s love for Charlene will lead him to propose marriage, but it is also the case that he will likely love Charlene even more after he does so.

Behaviors influence attitudes in part through the process of self-perception. Self-perception occurs when we use our own behavior as a guide to help us determine our own thoughts and feelings (Bem, 1972; Olson & Stone, 2005). In one demonstration of the power of self-perception, Wells and Petty (1980) assigned their research participants to shake their heads either up and down or side to side as they read newspaper editorials. The participants who had shaken their heads up and down later agreed with the content of the editorials more than the people who had shaken them side to side. Wells and Petty argued that this occurred because the participants used their own head-shaking behaviors to determine their attitudes about the editorials.

Persuaders may use the principles of self-perception to change attitudes. The foot-in-the-door technique is a method of persuasion in which the person is first persuaded to accept a rather minor request and then asked for a larger one after that. In one demonstration, Guéguen and Jacob (2002) found that students in a computer discussion group were more likely to volunteer to complete a 40-question survey on their food habits (which required 15 to 20 minutes of their time) if they had already, a few minutes earlier, agreed to help the same requestor with a simple computer-related question (about how to convert a file type) than if they had not first been given the smaller opportunity to help. The idea is that when asked the second time, the people looked at their past behavior (having agreed to the small request) and inferred that they are helpful people.

Behavior also influences our attitudes through a more emotional process known as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance refers to the discomfort we experience when we choose to behave in ways that we see as inappropriate (Festinger, 1957; Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). If we feel that we have wasted our time or acted against our own moral principles, we experience negative emotions (dissonance) and may change our attitudes about the behavior to reduce the negative feelings.

Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959) studied whether the cognitive dissonance created by an initiation process could explain how much commitment students felt to a group that they were part of. In their experiment, female college students volunteered to join a group that would be meeting regularly to discuss various aspects of the psychology of sex. According to random assignment, some of the women were told that they would be required to perform an embarrassing procedure (they were asked to read some obscene words and some sexually oriented passages from a novel in public) before they could join the group, whereas other women did not have to go through this initiation. Then all the women got a chance to listen to the group’s conversation, which turned out to be very boring.

Aronson and Mills found that the women who had gone through the embarrassing experience subsequently reported more liking for the group than those who had not. They argued that the more effort an individual expends to become a member of the group (e.g., a severe initiation), the more they will become committed to the group, to justify the effort they have put in during the initiation. The idea is that the effort creates dissonant cognitions (“I did all this work to join the group”), which are then justified by creating more consonant ones (“OK, this group is really pretty fun”). Thus the women who spent little effort to get into the group were able to see the group as the dull and boring conversation that it was. The women who went through the more severe initiation, however, succeeded in convincing themselves that the same discussion was a worthwhile experience.

When we put in effort for something—an initiation, a big purchase price, or even some of our precious time—we will likely end up liking the activity more than we would have if the effort had been less; not doing so would lead us to experience the unpleasant feelings of dissonance. After we buy a product, we convince ourselves that we made the right choice because the product is excellent. If we fail to lose the weight we wanted to, we decide that we look good anyway. If we hurt someone else’s feelings, we may even decide that he or she is a bad person who deserves our negative behavior. To escape from feeling poorly about themselves, people will engage in quite extraordinary rationalizing. No wonder that most of us believe that “If I had it all to do over again, I would not change anything important.”

Key Takeaways

• Social psychology is the scientific study of how we influence, and are influenced by, the people around us.
• Social cognition involves forming impressions of ourselves and other people. Doing so quickly and accurately is functional for social life.
• Our initial judgments of others are based in large part on what we see. The physical features of other people—and particularly their sex, race, age, and physical attractiveness—are very salient, and we often focus our attention on these dimensions.
• We are attracted to people who appear to be healthy. Indicators of health include youth, symmetry, and averageness.
• We frequently use people’s appearances to form our judgments about them, and to determine our responses to them. These responses include stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. Social psychologists believe that people should get past their prejudices and judge people as individuals.
• Close relationships are based on intimacy. Intimacy is determined by similarity, self-disclosure, interdependence, commitment, rewards, and passion.
• Causal attribution is the process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior with the goal of learning about their personalities. Although people are reasonably accurate in their attributions, they also succumb to biases such as the fundamental attribution error.
• Attitudes refer to our relatively enduring evaluations of people and things. Attitudes are determined in part by genetic transmission from our parents and in part through direct and indirect experiences.
• Although attitudes predict behaviors, behaviors also predict attitudes. This occurs through the processes of self-perception and cognitive dissonance.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

• What kinds of people are you attracted to? Do your preferences match the factors that we have just discussed?
• What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold? Are you able to get past them and judge people as individuals? Do you think that your stereotypes influence your behavior without your being aware of them?
• Consider a time when your behavior influenced your attitudes. Did this occur as a result of self-perception or cognitive dissonance?

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