Weakness- disregards the quality of the relationship among participants, provides little guidance for research

impersonal- participants relate to one another as social roles rather than as distinct persons and base their predictions about how message options will affect the other on general cultural and social knowledge rather than mental information.

interpersonal-participants relate to one another as unique persons and base their predictions about message options on their perceptions about the other

Relationships become more valuable as more people share personal information during social interactions.

Weakness- exaggerated close relationships

Weakness-too broad

Message reception-interpreting the message

Interaction coordination-turn-taking, shifting subjects

Social perception-comprehending the meaning, making sense of one's self and relationships

Relational-friend, wife, parent

Institutional-school, work, home, gym

Functional-persuade, support, inform

Cultural-social norms, class, status

The second major focus is called discourse or interaction-centered theories. The central idea is on understanding interpersonal communication as a message or a joint action behaviorally enacted between persons. Scholars taking a discourse view are interested in how we work out our understandings and expectations throughout our interactions.

The third major focus is called identity-centered theories. This perspective includes the role of interpersonal communication in co-creating, negotiating, resisting, and altering identity.

The fourth major focus is called relationship-centered theories. This focuses on understanding the role of communication in developing, sustaining, and terminating social and personal relationships.

Paradigms- knowledge scholars use to think about and talk about a phenomenon of interest.

They believe in a knowable reality apart from the researcher.

The goal is to advance predictions and to offer generalized or functional explanations about how variables and structures are interdependent with one another.

Scholars view the social world as webs of variables in causing outcomes or effects on other values known as dependent variables.

Theories should consist of law-like statements which apply across situations about how variables or structures relates functionally.

Value-neutral theorizing. Subjectivity should be controlled.

A "good" theory in this system consists of one that is accurate, testable, logically consistent, simple, appropriate in scope, and useful in generating predictions and explanations about interpersonal communication.

These researchers are committed to deeply understanding of how particular social realities are produced and maintained through everyday practices of individuals, relational parties, families, etc.

"Native's point of view" - the perspectives and language choices (local meanings) of the individuals being studied. Values context or situation specific-research.

Theories valued by interpretive researchers are those focused on meanings and meaning-making, looking for common patterns of meanings among members that are being studied.

The goal is not to test a theory in a specific situation but rather to engage the theory in conversation with the emergent observations and interpretations that flow from the native's experiences.

Mainly focuses on the interest of predetermined identifiable groups such as women, people of color, social groups, people with disabilities etc. Supports the idea of social change

We communicate to persuade others, comfort them, make ourselves look good, build relationships, etc. We communicate to accomplish various ends.

The notion that interpersonal communication is strategic. In the sense that people communicate to pursue interaction goals.

Goals:

Instrumental goals- define the task involved in an interaction, typically the most overt

Interpersonal goals- creating or maintaining a relationship with others

Identity goals- the self-images one wants to establish in a situation, including for one's self and other people's identities

Interaction goals:

-Personal goals- goals are apart of an individuals mental state.

-Conventional goals- relevant in the sense that there are norms about the kinds one ought to attend to in certain circumstances.

associated with quantitative , post-positivist research

all testable theories, possess strong utility because they can make practical recommendations in a wide variety of circumstances, also strong in terms of parsimony

This theory has been criticized for being overly individualistic, the scope has not included issues of difference and power

But it also utilizes more social constructs, like how the nature and history of a relationship can shape individuals goals, can provide practical solutions to communicative problems based on conventional understandings of goals that are relevant, contradicts much of the advice about communication we see in popular media

Plans - refer to our knowledge about how we accomplish our goals

Actions - refer to observable (non)verbal behaviors used to pursue multiple goals

explains the mental processes by which people produce messages where the speaker wants to influence another

primary goals - defines "what is going on" in a situation, the objective that motivates a person to speak, exerts a "push" force

secondary goals - shape and constrain how speakers pursue the primary goal, they exert a "pull" force by holding the speaker back from saying things as bluntly as they might if they were concerned only with the primary goal

5 common secondary goals

-conversation management - concerns about both parties "public images"

-identity - wanting to act consistently with one's ethical/moral standards

-relational resource - concerns about maintaining relationships

-personal resource - not wanting to waste time, energy, or resources

-affect management - wanting the situation to remain within comfortable bounds in terms of anxiety/emotions

Evaluation:

GPA model is narrow in the sense that its purpose is to predict and explain whether and how people will engage in communicative ways

communication cannot be reduced to an analysis of behaviors alone because the meaning of communication is shaped by the inferences people make about the goals behind communicative acts

MGPR proposes that over time people form a sense of the kinds of interactions goals that their partner typically pursues during typical relational interactions

This perspective views communication as involving both the purposeful production and construal of messages

Given that much goal pursuit is implicit, interpretation of communication is more than just understanding the content of messages, it also requires making inferences about a speakers pragmatic intent, even if our inferences are not always accurate

When looking at a friends situation, something to observe:

1. the individual's actions reflect the person's personality (Internal attribution)

2. something in the situation caused them to behave as they did (External attribution)

^Internal attribution because it attributes their behavior to personal , internal, qualities.

External Attribution - it locates the cause of behavior in the environment

This theory was developed as a common-sense approach to human interpersonal relations.

This theory is based on a set of ideas:

1. humans are competent at understanding interactions with others

2. we have sophisticated cognitive explanations for human behavior

3. we are good at explaining why others do what they do

Language is a conceptual tool for perceiving and understanding one's own and other people's behaviors. Thus communication as a symbolic and meaning-making activity is central to attributions about human behavior

Perception and the environment both influence human behavior

Phenomenal Perception - represents both the nature of contact between people (who they are to each other, how long they interact, what they say, etc.) and the environment in which they communicate

Casual Perception - includes the various stimuli to which people choose to focus their attention

2 types of stimuli

1. Distal stimulus - an object in the social environment that is "outside", a person, a car, violin, or another person. Properties of the environment that everyone can generally agree exist

2. Proximal stimulus - anything that directly affects the sensory experiences of the person, such as the taste of an apple, sound of stereo, or one's feelings or concerns for someone else

Attribution Theory reflects a psychology of interaction that focuses on common-sense perceptions and interpretations of the causes of human behavior

5 Assumptions of Attribution Theory

1. Common-sense psychology is a guide for understanding how people interact with one another. Meaning the degree of knowledge about human behavior each individual possesses, Heider believes that we engage the attribution process as a part of normal, everyday interactions.

2. Common-sense psychology is valuable because it contains truths about human behaviors. The truths are identified as commentaries on the knowledge we possess about ourselves and others.

3. Common-sense psychology is based in the naive analysis of action. This form of analysis leads to a critical distinction between internal and external causes of action.

4. Language serves humans well for symbolizing social and physical environments. Heider believed in the use of language (language of attribution), the language system reflected the meaning of words and the meaning of situations from the individual sense maker's perspective.

5. Common-sense psychology is best expressed in everyday language. The words we use affect attributions we make about human interaction.

Attribution - as a causal inference we make about why people behave as they do. Environmental effects, or externa

Internal Attribution (Person-Situation Distinction) - "locates" the causes of someone's behavior in that person's traits, abilities, or personality. Explains people's behaviors as a product of their personality, disposition, or other personal characteristics.

External Attribution - locates the causes of a behavior in aspects of the environment rather than in aspects of a person.

- EVT is an empirical model that seeks to explain and predict violations and confirmations of expectancies in interpersonal relationships

- how individuals anticipate the interpersonal behaviors of others and what happens when those behaviors are unexpected

3 Assumptions of EVT

1. people develop expectations and preferences about other people's behaviors, source of expectations may be cognitive, affective, and behavioral

2. when people behave as we expect we pay little attention to their behavior

3. violating social norms is sometimes preferred, violations of expectations for social behavior are often viewed negatively but they can produce positive effects

Expectancy - an enduring or regularized pattern of behavior

Expectancies are influenced by 3 sets of factors:

1. communicator characteristics - gender, age, race unique personality traits, communication styles, etc.

2. relationship factors - attraction, similarity, familiarity, relative status, mutual support, etc.

3. context characteristics - degree of privacy, formality, task orientation in a situation, etc.

discounting principle - when there are multiple ways to explain a specific behavior we are less confident that the behavior is due to any single cause internal or external ex. if my roommate doesn't go out one weekend because she had homework, i can discount any single cause as the reason for the change in my roommates behavior

augmentation principle - when something happens despite there being pressure against it we tend to think it reveals something about the person ex. on the news you see a man heroically run into a burning building to save his child, you are likely to believe that such actions reflect their character, i can make internal attributions about their behavior like they are selfless and good because of their actions

essentially frames our expectancies for other people.

causes us to question whether given behavior is in line with how we expect most people to behave or is distinctive to the person

distinctiveness - how normal is the behavior in this situation?

consistency - how typical is this behavior for this person? If the action is common then it has high consistency, if the person behaves rarely this way, then it has low consistency

self-reference bias - our tendency to see ourselves as the focus of other people's behaviors

hedonic relevance

- we tend to interpret experiences that make us feel better or worse as intentional acts

- assume that people behave in ways that either help us or hurt us

self-serving bias - the idea that we form attributions for our own behavior that paints us in the most positive light possible. showcases the successes we have achieved and distance ourselves from our failures.

fundamental attribution error - we tend to emphasize the internal causes of behavior at the expense of possible external or situational causes

correspondence bias - the tendency to make inferences about someone's personality from behaviors that may have situational causes

- Fiji- “real” emotions are believed to be located in events themselves, while individuals’ experiences of emotions are considered trivial and transient. We feel together, and what you experience is beside the point.

-emotions have a “real” physiological substrate that is shaped by variable social interpretations, but a complementary interpretation is that emotions have a variable physiological component that is interpreted through “real” social interaction.

-Perhaps “real” emotions are displayed differently in social situations, but equally
plausible is that “real” emotions arise from those social situations.

- Empathy - applies broadly to feeling the
feelings of others, be they joy, fear, or sadness

- Sympathy - feeling others’ distress

- Uncertainty reduction theory (URT) - uncertainty is an uncomfortable state that motivates people to reduce it through communication.

- Predicted Outcome Value theory (POV) - people may be motivated to decrease
uncertainty or not, depending on the outcomes they expect from the interaction.

- The URT/POV debate teaches us that information and emotion work together,
as more recent theories of uncertainty and information recognize.

- undifferentiated anxiety based on uncertainty cannot predict both
information seeking and information avoiding.

- events in the social world that violate expectations have more impact than expected behaviors because they trigger emotion, and they are evaluated emotionally.

-The second component of EVT is that communication behavior is adjusted
according to the outcomes of the meaning/valence assessment, especially in terms of approach or avoidance.

the appraisal component of EVT:

1. goal relevance detection - violations can be better or worse than doing what is expected (depending on its evaluation) because emotion is triggered.

2. instantaneous valence appraisal - The reaction to the personal space violation may not be limited to valence but go on to reactions such as joy, anger or disgust.

• additional implications - including causal attributions, likely outcomes, degree of deviation from expectations, consistent with goals, and urgency

• coping potential including control,
  power, and adjustment potential

• normative significance (internal and
  external standards checks)

Emotion & EVT come together when an observed emotion itself violates social expectations either because it violates a cultural display rule or a personal pattern. Ex. No laughing at funerals, happy person sad, why the sad face?, an unexpected i love you, etc.

symbolic interactionism - the routine interactions we engage in every day are not spontaneous creations of our own making

"symbolic enactments" that reflect our knowledge of cultural rituals that allow people to coordinate their behavior and generate meaning

- words and many nonverbal behaviors are symbols that do not resemble their referent, and generate meaning only in context

the private "self" is to a large degree a symbolic construction --- "Universal human nature is not a very human thing."

a) why and how people construct their public images

b) the strategies people use to maintain or to restore their own or others' images if those images are lost or threatened

- Goffman used the metaphor of interaction as "drama" in order to to illustrate how and why face is constructed, maintained, and lost

- interaction is like a performance in a play in the sense that people are like actors who deliver their lines, wear costumes, and use props that are appropriate to each scene

- "expressive ritual" - interactants generally

support each other's face presentation

- people, like ourselves, are emotionally attached to their face, when face is accepted and validated, people feel good when it is called into question, they feel bad.

- the general rules of "self-respect" and "considerateness" lead us to act in ways that maintain our own face and to cooperate in the maintenance of others' face

- When these sequences are threatened or disrupted, individuals engage in a "preventive" or "corrective" process that is essentially a "pause" in the interaction to allow participants to realign their message sequence

- ritual disequilibrium - when a disruption cannot be avoided and one or more participants lose face, an incident has occurred and the interaction order is in a state

-Ex. Excuse me I'm sorry, certainty no problem!

interactants will use four ritualistic moves to restore order -

1. a challenge to "call attention to the misconduct" (spoken or implied)

2. an offering to show others that the offending person recognizes that his or her behavior violated expectations for maintaining face of self and others (ex apologizing, downplaying the severity of the offense)

3. an acceptance of the offering as sufficient to reestablish order and restore face

4. a thanks from the offending person that others have accepted or "forgiven" the individual's poor performance

- goffman viewed communication as strategic in the sense that messages are used to construct, maintain, and restore the organizational system of interaction that allows participants to enact their identities or conduct their performances.

- that communication is the essential element in what Goffman called the "orderly traffic" of social behavior.

- Goffman recognized that embarrassment was not the only consequence of an "incident", participants can also feel annoyed, angered, and offended

- Goffman's face theory meets the criteria of a good theory. Includes a broad scope and explains phenomena that occur frequently or in a wide range of circumstances

- however, sometimes the strengths of a theory are the source of its limitations. In the case of Goffman's work, his scope is so broad that it causes the theory to be weak on the criterion of parsimony. Goffman's description of the elements and processes of social interaction is not concise.

• wide-ranging framework aimed at predicting and explaining many of the adjustments individuals make to create, maintain, or decrease social distance in interactions.

• It explores the different ways in which we accommodate our communication, our motivations for doing so, and the consequences of our actions

• how people adjust their communication/communication styles to manage social distance, relationships, identities, and situations.

Basic Principles of CAT

- Communication is influenced not only by features of the immediate situation and participants’ initial orientations to it, but also by the socio-historical context in which the interaction is embedded.

- Communication is not only a matter of merely and only exchanging information about facts, ideas, and emotions (often called referential communications), but salient social category memberships are often negotiated during an interaction through the process of accommodation.

- Interactants have expectations regarding optimal levels of accommodation. These expectations are based on stereotypes about outgroup members as well as on the prevailing social and situational norms.

-Interactants use specific communication strategies (in particular, convergence and divergence) to signal their attitudes towards each other and their respective social groups.

Motives for Convergence and Divergence

Convergence

- the desire to gain approval from one another

- the more similar we are to a person, the more likely they are to like/get along, or respect that individual.

- weakness: the possible loss of personal or social identity

Divergence

- the desire to emphasize distinctiveness from one’s interlocutor, usually on the basis of group membership

- divergence can be regarded as a very important tactic of displaying a valued distinctiveness from other

- divergence can also be adopted in order to shape receivers’ attributions and feelings

- individuals diverge to showcase group belonging

convergence - a strategy whereby individuals adapt their communicative behaviors in terms of a wide range of linguistic ex., speech rate, accents, paralinguistic ex., pauses, utterance length, and nonverbal features ex., smiling, gazing, in such a way as to become more similar to their interlocutor’s behavior

Divergence - a strategy that leads to an accentuation of speech and nonverbal

differences between self and the others

*CAT has a main focus on why individuals converge (become similar) or diverge (emphasize differences) in communication

maintenance - whereby a person persists in his or her original style, regardless of the communication behavior of the interlocutor, can signal disinterest or independence of an individual

- individuals perceptions and societal social norms/stereotypes shape how accommodations are received by others.

CAT represents a main goal of how communication reflects, influences, and shapes social relationships and individual identities.

Effective communication requires a balance of convergence and divergence

3 major assumptions that frames privacy management:

1. dialectical tension - sharing private information with others is important, but knowing how to balance being social and autonomous simultaneously.

2. centrality of others - we need others as much as we need a sense of privacy

3. meaning of private information -people have different ways of defining what information is private to them, we can only be sure a particular kind
   of information is considered private to a person when that individual begins to manage such issues as who knows, who is restricted, how much someone knows, when the information is told, when the information is concealed, and basically when behavioral indicators of private information management become visible.

Organizing principles of CPM Theory

Privacy Rules - the engine that drives management choices for revealing and concealing information people believe is private as they work to regulate the privacy relationship

Privacy Boundaries - illustrate how people regulate rules for private information protection or access within the privacy boundaries

Two Levels -

1. Level of individual - "original owner"

2. Level of ownership and boundaries - “authorized co-owner.”

   
   

Operating Principles of CPM Theory

1. private information ownership boundaries

2. private information control rules

3. private information turbulence

• relies heavily on social exchange theory ---> is a relationship rewarding enough to continue getting closer with someone or is it potentially too costly to develop?

• social penetration theory assumes that when relationships are perceived as potentially more rewarding than costly, individuals will increase the depth and breadth of their self-disclosure with the other

  person, hopefully leading to increased closeness

Stages of relationships

1. Orientation - occurs during initial interactions between strangers, low depth & breadth of disclosure, sharing basic information about an individual

   --> first names, hometowns, majors, yr

2. Exploratory Affective Exchange - mutual disclosure, but not very personal information

   --> student asks to borrow notes and shares they missed class because of work

3. Affective Exchange - open communication of most non-intimate subjects, increased experimentation of disclosure of more sensitive topics, individuals feel more comfortable

   --> students get closer with others through a group project and disclose information about their likes, dislikes, preferences, etc.

4. Stable Exchange - open communication on all topics (& riskiness)

   --> over the entire year, students that sit at the same table will become closer and develop levels of friendship through this class

- Not all relationships will progress through all of these possible stages

- turnings points are seen as the "substance of change"

Uncertainty Reduction Theory - when individuals have their first interactions have the main goal of reducing uncertainty about that individual by gathering and disclosing information throughout their interactions

• post-positivist theory

• increasing the amount of verbal and nonverbal communication were both predicted to cause uncertainty reduction

• as an individual gets to know another, it's easier to predict and explain their behavior

- partners perceived turning points can generate great descriptive insight as to why some relationships escalate, de-escalate, or stay the same

- As relationships change over time, individuals get closer/more distant or life circumstances, we can observe two main factors within relationship transitions:

1. Relational uncertainty - an individual's doubts & questions about their relationship

   a. self-uncertainty - addresses the questions people may have about their own commitment to or feelings about the relationship

   b. partner uncertainty - the doubts that can emerge about a partner’s investment in and goals for the relationship

   c. relationship uncertainty - people are unsure about the nature or future of the relationship itself

2. Partner influence - explains when a partner interferes with an individual's personal goals or daily routines, which leads to the couple become more interdependent

   
   

- relational uncertainty and interference cause an increase in negative emotions like, jealousy, hurt, anger, and sadness seen in relationships

- uncertainty is high at the start of relationships and decreases with closeness over time

- interference increases within mid-level types of intimate relationships, then decreases as couples align better

RTM Mechanisms:

• Relational Information Processing - individuals will interpret messages more negatively and defensively when dealing with relational turbulence

• Relational Turbulence - individuals feeling a sense of chaos and instability when relationships are misaligned, turbulence on a flight

• Relational intimacy develops over time

• nonverbal communication cues are generally perceived as a whole, and the absence of one or more cues need not spell doom for communicators

Cues filtered out approach

• Assumed that text-based communication leads to impersonal communication (as opposed to INTERpersonal communication)

• CMC reduces nonverbals and social cues, which reduces people's ability to form bonds

Assumptions:

1. Humans affiliate

2. The development of interpersonal impressions of another person is based on the information one gets via non verbal or verbal-textual channels over the course of server interactions 

3. Developmental change in relational communication will depend on forming an interpersonal impression of another interactant

4. Relational messages are transmitted by nonverbal, linguistic, and textual manipulations

5. In CMC, messages take longer to process that do those sent face to face

Hyperpersonal Model

1. channel

2. sender

3. receiver

4. feedback loop

This theory showcases individuals wanting to create an ideal version of themselves to present to others.

- using a multitude of media platforms within a relationship, strengthens it

Propositions:

#1: Tie strength is positively associated with multiplexity

• close friends are usually connected on multiple platforms --> friends on social media, texting, facetiming, etc.

#2: Tie strength, not medium, shapes communication

• the strength of the relationship relies on how individuals communicate rather than the channel they use

#3: Tie strength and media use mutually cause each other

• close relationships being connected on multiple platforms allow for the strength of the relationship to increase

#4: Media changes potently shape weak ties

• weak ties suffer when technology changes

#5: Groups create hierarchies of media use expectations

• groups tend to adopt one or two media as a 'base' media used for communication across the membership, and then tailored other media for use only with strong ties

Applications of MMT to different types of relationships:

• workplace

• families

• classrooms

• long-distance friendships

• online environments --> gaming communities

Critical interpersonal and family communication (CIFC) - a branch of IFC that focuses on power, politics, and situations where an individual or group is ignored

• critical turn - shift from the old ways to a more modern/critical perspective of close relationships

• heavy themes of inclusion, inequality, social justice

People are confused about what is considered CIFC and what is involved

Types of politics:

• identity politics - gender, race, sexuality...

• deconstructive politics - breaking stereotypes/dissecting norms

• economic politics - how employment and capitalism affect family relationships

• technological politics - how the digital world shapes relationships

• affect politics - emotions within relationships

• material politics - how objects reshape communication

*identities - race, sexuality, gender, class, ability, etc.

Origin:

Black feminist scholar - Kimberle Crenshaw created the term "intersectionality" to explain the experiences of black women

Intersectionality in IPC

- explains how identity and power influence how individuals act, speak, listen, understand, etc.

- communication is shaped by social issues like racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and other power structures

Boylorn's main idea: intersectionality is not just about identity, but about how power affects everyday interpersonal interactions

relationships - intersectionality reveals why individuals experience relationships differently based on their:

--> social status

--> overlapping identities