Reading §
- Nonverbal Communication
- Nonverbal communication serves vital functions, providing information, regulating interaction, and defining the nature of the relationship two people share.
- Components of Nonverbal Communication.
- Facial expression:
- Facial expressions are good guides to others’ moods, but cultural norms influence expressive behavior.
- Gazing behavior:
- The direction and amount of a person’s looking is important in defining relationships and in regulating interaction. In addition, our pupils dilate when we’re seeing something that interests us.
- Body movement:
- Gestures vary widely across cultures, but the posture and motion of the entire body are informative as well.
- Touch:
- Different types of touch have distinctly different meanings.
- Interpersonal distance:
- We use different zones of personal space—the intimate, personal, social, and public zones—for different kinds of interactions.
- Smell:
- Information about one’s emotions is transmitted to others by one’s smell.
- Combining the components:
- Mimicry occurs when people use similar nonverbal behavior without realizing it. Nonverbal actions allow us to fine-tune the intimacy of our interactions in subtle but real ways.
- Nonverbal Sensitivity:
- Unhappy spouses, especially husbands, do a poor job at nonverbal communication.
- Verbal Communication
- Self-Disclosure:
- Intimacy involves sharing personal information about oneself to one’s partner.
- How self-disclosure develops:
- As a relationship develops, both the breadth and depth of self-disclosure increase. Intimacy develops when we perceive responsiveness in others that indicates that they understand us and care about us.
- Secrets and other things we don’t want to talk about:
- Couples avoid taboo topics, and some secrecy is routine even in intimate partnerships.
- Self-disclosure and relationship satisfaction:
- Appropriate self-disclosure breeds liking and contentment, and expressions of affection are good for us.
- Gender Differences in Verbal Communication: ^be93d0
- Women are more likely than men to discuss feelings and people, but men and women are equally talkative. However, macho men self-disclose relatively little to other men even when they are friends, and thus are likely to share their most meaningful intimacy only with women.
- Dysfunctional Communication and What to Do About It
- Miscommunication:
- Distressed couples have trouble saying what they mean, and they engage in destructive verbal behavior characterized by kitchen-sinking, drifting off-beam, mindreading, interruptions, yes-butting, and cross-complaining. Criticism, contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness, and belligerence are especially corrosive.
- Saying What We Mean:
- Skillful senders use behavior description, I-statements, and XYZ statements to focus on specific actions and make their feelings clear.
- Active Listening:
- Good listeners use paraphrasing and perception checking to u stand their partners.
- Being Polite and Staying Cool:
- Happy couples also avoid extended periods of negative affect reciprocity.
- The Power of Respect and Validation:
- Partners should communicate respect and recognition of the other’s point of view even when they disagree.
- Suggestions
- Affectionate touching is good for both you and your partner. Consider doing more of it.
- Tune in. Pay attention. Watch your partner’s eyes and listen to their paralanguage and strive to discern what they really mean by what they say.
- Open up. Share your hopes, dreams, and fears with trusted, responsive partners.
- Ask your partner what they think about the things that are important to you.
- Tell those you love that you love them.
- When it matters, don’t text. Talk.
- Construct complaints carefully. Discard terms such as “always” or “never” and practice the use of XYZ statements.
- Don’t assume that you understand. Paraphrase and check your perceptions of your partner’s meaning.
- If you get angry, take a time out. Ask to take a break, go off by yourself, and calm down.
- Communicate respect for your partner’s opinions whether or not you agree with them.
- Contempt is caustic. Avoid it at all costs.
Lecture §
PDF:
- Why is communication important for Intimate Relationship?
- What are the 3 mutual understanding suggested in Intimacy Process Model? ^e2989d
- Understanding, validation, caring
- What are the 3 step process suggested in the model?
Transclude of block 3266fb
- Disclosure
- Partner’s response: (understand, respect, care)
- Reaction to response: (if positive, suggest continue self-disclose)
- Is communication learnt or inborn?
- Much of this process is automatic as we were never taught how to communicate
- ★ Nonverbal Communication
- Why is NVC hard, why is it important?
- In-born or learnt by observation process for transmitting message
- We can use multiple channels & for different functions simultaneously making nonverbal communication sophisticated and nuanced (细致入微)
- What are the 7 important functions for NCV, explain each.
- ★ Provides info ^eb5910
- Intention, feeling/emotion, traits, meaning, values, attitudes
- Regulates interaction
- Efficient to smooth conversations
- Social control ^6192cf
- Designed to influence someone else, goal oriented
- Presentation (impression management)
- Creation or enhancement of a particular self image
- Service-task
- Service or task-oriented in an interaction
- Facilitate or augment Verbal Communication
- Change, alter the meaning of verbal communication
- ★ Defines nature of relationships ^f02f87
- Indicate intimacy of relationships
- What are the 7 components of NCV?
- Facial expression (kinesics)
- Most trusted channel of NVC
- First set of NVC baby can observe and learn
- Relationship definition
- Hertenstein et al 2009
- High school year-book-photo
- Smiling
--> marriage --> divorce
- Important for Emotion expression (universal across Culture)
- Basic emotions are universal across cultures, even cross species with champilzees
- Easier to control than body movement (prevent emotional expression)
- Harder to control microexpression
- Body Movement & posture (Kinesics)
- Gazing/Looking
- Haptics/Touch
- Proxemics
- Distance indicate status of intimacy
- Height difference
- Body orientation
- Chronemics
- Vocalics (paralanguage)
- Variation in a person’s voice (peach, rhythm, loudness, intonation)
- Baby talk (vary across culture)
- Relationship definition
- Vary with mate value (voice preference)
- Verbal Communication
- What is Self-disclosure?
- Revealing personal information to someone else
- Social Penetration Theory
- Development of depth and breadth
- Early stage:
- Both depth and breadth is low
- Guided by reciprocity (matching within interaction)
- Vary with individual differences
- Development
- Breadth and depth increase
- Intimate Relationship
- In Intimate Relationship, which two communicative component needs careful balance for relationship satisfaction? ^8b45b1
- BOTH self-disclosure AND selective secrecy are important for relationship satisfaction
- Reason for secrecy matter (benefits vs. cost)
- Taboo topics
- Number 1: the current state that partners avoid talking about
- People tend to avoid directly discussion taboo topic (prefer
implicit > explicit)
- Triangle test (response to others)
- Endurance test (response to challenges)
- Separation test (response to return)
- What are the two common social depenetration patterns?
- Both depth and breadth decrease
- Breadth decrease, depth increases (about negative in the relationship)
- Too many taboo topics also increases dissatisfaction
- Deception & Gender differences in communication (textbook)
- Miscommunication
- Interpersonal communication model
- Interpersonal Gap: sender’s intention will not match the effect on the listener
-
Sender Intention --> Encoding --> Action ---> Decoding --> Listner Effect
- Why do error in communication occur
- Skills vs. Motivation vs. Performance (nonverbal sensitivity)
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Good with skills, performance
- Good at decoding NVC
- Deficit in sensing the feeling Emotion
- Gender
- Female are generally better at both encoding and decoding
- Too much attention to nonverbal cues can be problematic
- What are some common case for miscommunication? ^2ccf90
- Not saying what one mean
- Use vague language (false consensus bias)
- Addressing several topics (kitchen-sinking & drifting off-beam)
- Not hearing each other
- Mind-reading might lead to assume the worst about each other
- Interruptions, yes-butting (dismissive), cross-complaining
- Excessive negative affect
- Delivering a hostile criticism toward the partner’s character, instead of use criticizing the specific behaviour
- Gottman’s Four Horsemen
- Delivered with contempt suggest inferiority of the other person
- Elicits defensiveness: increase tension, personal attack toward each other
- Stonewalling (door-slam) 冷暴力
- One feels ignored
- One wanted to use time to calm down (not did not communication this intention)
- Belligerence
- How to process to better communication?
- Say what you mean
- Be direct, specific, identify the behaviour instead of targeting the person
- Use “I-feel” statement instead of “you-…” statements
- XYZ statements
- Instead of “You are so inconsiderate! You never let me finish what I’m saying” try “When you interrupted me just now, I felt annoyed”
- Be an active listener
- Paraphrase to help perception checking
- Perception checking
- Be polite and remain calm
- Require emotion regulation
- Agree to be polite ahead of time
- Schedule regular times to discuss issues
- Keep in mind the 3 important aspects of intimate communication
- Empathy, calidate, concern!
In Class Quiz §
- How important is communication for intimate relationships?
- Does increase in breadth and decrease in depth problematic in relationship?
- Fixed result from research
Active Studying §
Summarize today’s lecture §
What part I didn’t understand, next step actions? §