Galvin
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
West and Turner – Chapter 10
Social Penetration Theory
Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor (1973) conceptualized Social Penetration Theory (SPT).
Social Penetration refers to a process of relationship bonding whereby individuals move from superficial communication to more intimate communication. Relationships follow a trajectory, or pathway to closeness. Altman and Taylor contend that relationships are somewhat organized and predictable in their development.
Assumptions of Social Penetration Theory
- Relationships progress from nonintimate to intimate
- Relational development is generally systematic and predictable
- Relational development included depenetration (slow deterioration of a relationship) and dissolution
- Self-disclosure is at the core of relationship development – Altman and Taylor (1973) “Making the self accessible to another person is intrinsically satisfying.” Stranger-on-the-train, revealing personal information to strangers in public places, is an example of self-disclosure.
Relationships and Onions
Altman and Taylor incorporate an onion-like structure in their discussion. The onion represents various aspects of a personality. The outer layer is the Public Image, or what is available to others. Altman and Taylor believe that intimacy can’t be achieved without Reciprocity, or the return of openness from one person to another.
Breadth and Depth of Self-Disclosure
Breadth refers to the number of topics discussed; depth refers to the degree of intimacy guiding topic discussion. Breadth time refers to the amount of time spent by relational partners discussing various topics.
Conclusions with regard to breadth and depth of self-disclosure:
1) Shifts in central layers of “the onion” have more impact than those in outer layers
2) The greater the depth, the more opportunity for a person to feel vulnerable
Trust is an inherent part of the disclosure and reciprocity process. If people disclose too much before too early in a relationship, they may actually end the relationship.
A Social Exchange: Relational Costs and Rewards
Taylor and Altman (1987) argue that relationships can be conceptualized in terms of rewards and costs. Reward/Cost ratio is the balance between positive and negative relationship experiences.
Two conclusions:
1) Reward and costs have a greater impact early on in the relationship than later
2) Relationships with a reservoir of positive reward/cost experiences are better equipped to handle conflict effectively
Stages of the Social Penetration Process
1) Orientation Stage – The stage that includes revealing small parts about ourselves
2) Exploratory Affective Exchange Stage – The stage that results in the emergence of our personality to others
3) Affective Exchange Stage – The stage that is spontaneous and quite comfortable for relational partners. Personal idioms, or private intimate expressions stated in a relationship, are used.
4) Stable Exchange Stage – The stage that results in complete openness and spontaneity for relational partners. Dyadic Uniqueness, or distinctive relatonship qualities like humor and sarcasm, emerge.
West and Turner – Chapter 9
Uncertainty Reduction Theory
Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), (a.k.a. Initial Interaction Theory) was originated by Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese in 1975. When strangers first meet, they are primarily concerned with increasing predictability in an effort to predict (the ability to forecast one’s own or others’ behavioral choices) and explain (the ability to interpret the meaning of behavioral choices) initial encounters.
Assumptions of URT
- People experience uncertainty in interpersonal settings
- Uncertainty is an aversive state, generating cognitive stress
- When strangers meet, their primary concern is to reduce their uncertainty or to increase predictability
- Interpersonal communication is a developmental process that occurs through stages (3):
- Entry Phase – the beginning stage of interaction between strangers
- Personal Phase – The stage when people begin to communicate more spontaneously and personally
- Exit Phase – The stage when people decide whether to continue or leave
- Interpersonal communication is the primary means of uncertainty reduction
- The quantity and nature of information that people share change through time
- It is possible to predict people’s behavior in a lawlike fashion
Axioms of Uncertainty Reduction Theory
Axiom 1: Given the high level of uncertainty present at the onset of the entry phase, as the amount of verbal communication between strangers increases, the level of uncertainty for each interactant in the relationship decreases. As uncertainty is further reduced, the amount of verbal communication increases. Communication and uncertainty are inversely related.
Axiom 2: As nonverbal affiliative expressiveness increases, uncertainty levels decrease in an initial interaction situation. In addition, decreases in uncertainty level will cause increases in nonverbal affiliative expressiveness. Nonverbal bonding and uncertainty are inversely related.
Axiom 3: High levels of uncertainty cause increases in information-seeking behavior. As uncertainly levels decline, information-seeking behavior decreases. Information-seeking behavior and uncertainty are directly (positively) related.
Axiom 4: High levels of uncertainty in a relationship cause decreases in the intimacy level of communication content. Low levels of uncertainty produce high levels of intimacy. Intimacy and uncertainty are inversely related.
Axiom 5: High levels of uncertainty produce high rates of reciprocity (communication that mirrors the previous communication behavior). Low levels of uncertainty produce low levels of reciprocity. Reciprocity and uncertainty are directly related.
Axiom 6: Similarities between people reduce uncertainty, whereas dissimilarities increase uncertainty. Similarities and uncertainty are inversely related.
Axiom 7: Increases in uncertainty level produce decreases in liking; decreases in uncertainty produce increases in liking. Liking and uncertainty are inversely related.
Axiom 8(added in late 80s): Shared communication networks reduce uncertainty, a lack of shared materials increases uncertainty. Shared communication networks and Uncertainty are inversely related
Berger and Calabrese combined all seven axioms in every possible pair combination to derive twenty-one theorems (theoretical statements derived from axioms, postiting a relationship between the two concepts).
Expansions of URT
Antecedent Conditions
Berger (1979) suggests that three antecedent, or prior, conditions exist when seeking uncertainty reduction:
1) When the other person has the potential to reward or punish
2) When the other person behaves contrary to expectations
3) When a person expects future interactions with another
Strategies
Berger (1995) suggests that people attempting to reduce uncertainty use tactics from three classes of strategies:
1) Passive Strategy – reducing uncertainties by unobtrusive observation
2) Active Strategy – reducing uncertainties by means other than direct contact
3) Interactive Strategy – reducing uncertainty by engaging in conversation
Developed Relationships – Beyond the Initial Encounter
Berger (1982, 1997) comments that uncertainty is ongoing in relationships.
Berger and Calabrese (1975) “While uncertainty reduction may be rewarding up to a point, the ability to completely predict another’s behavior might lead to boredom. Boredom in a relationship might well be a cost rather than a reward”
Parks and Adelman (1983) suggest that social networks of an individual are important sources of information about a romantic partner. The more partners communicate with their social networks, the less uncertainty they will experience, and the less likely they will be to break up. Based on this explanation, Berger and Guykunst (1991) posited an eighth axiom and seven resulting new theorems to the original theory.
Berger (1997) noted that Relational Uncertainty, a lack of certainty about the future and status of a relationship, could mar relational stability.
The Intercultural Context
Beyond the interpersonal context, URT can be applied to the intercultural context. Berger (1987) notes that uncertainty varies across cultures.
Gudykunst and Nishida (1986a) discovered differences in low-context cultures (cultures like the U.S. where most of the meaning is in the code or message) and high-context cultures (cultures like Japan where the meaning of a message is in the context or internalized in listeners). They found that frequency of communication predicts uncertainty reduction in low-context cultures, but not high-context cultures. They also found that people use direct contact in low-context cultures to reduce uncertainty, but more indirect communication to reduce uncertainty in high-context cultures.
Uncertainty Avoidance, an attempt to avoid ambiguous situations, refers to a person’s tolerance for uncertainty. People in high uncertainty avoidance cultures (Japan, France, Mexico, Spain, Argentina) think, “What is different is dangerous,” whereas people in low uncertainty avoidance cultures (Canada, U.S., India, England, China (Hong Kong), Sweden) think, “What is different is curious.”
West and Turner – Chapter 6
Coordinated Management of Meaning
Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen developed CMM
Use the metaphor, “Undirected Theater.”
Rules figure prominently in this theory.
Cronen, Pearch, and Linda Harris (1982) summarize CMM:
“CMM theory describes human actors as attempting to achieve coordination by managing the ways messages take on meaning”.
Assumptions of CMM:
1) Human beings live in communication;
2) Human beings co-create social reality, or a person’s beliefs about how meaning and action fit within an interpersonal interaction;
3) Information transactions depend on personal meaning (the meaning achieved when a person brings his or her unique experiences to the interaction) and interpersonal meaning (the result when 2 people agree on each others’ interpretation of an interaction)
The Hierarchy of Organized Meaning
CMM proposes 6 levels of meaning:
1) Content – the conversion of raw data into meaning
2) Speech Acts – actions we perform by speaking, e.g. complimenting or threatening
3) Contract – relationship agreement and understanding between 2 people – emeshment is the extent to which partners identify themselves as part of the relational system
4) Episodes – communication episodes that have recognized beginnings, middles, endings – punctuate – how individuals interpret or emphasize an episode
5) Life Scripts – clusters of past or present episodes that create a system of manageable meanings with others
6) Cultural Patterns – images of the world and a person’s relationship to it. (e.g. Individualism vs. collectivism)
The Coordination of Meaning
Pearce (1989), “Coordination is more easily shown than described.”
Coordination exists when two people attempt to make sense of the sequence of messages in their conversation.
3 Outcomes are possible:
1) Coordination
2) No coordination
3) Partial coordination
Influences on the Coordination Process
2 Areas:
1) Sense of Morality – that individuals be concerned with a higher moral order. Differences in sense of morality will play themselves out throughout a relationship.
2) Availability of Resources – stories, images, symbols, and institutions that persons use to make their world meaningful. Incompatible or incommensurate resources in a conversation challenge coordination.
Rules and Unwanted Repetitive Patterns
For Pearce and Cronen, rules provide people opportunities to choose between alternatives. Once rules are established in a dialogue, interactants will have a sufficiently common symbolic framework for communication. Rule usage requires, “flexible expanding abilities that cannot be reduced to technique.”
2 types of rules:
1) Constitutive Rules – how behavior should be interpreted within a given context
2) Regulative Rules – guidelines for people’s behavior
Unwanted Repetitive Patterns (URPs) (Cronen, Pearce, Linda Snavely) – recurring, undesirable conflicts in a relationship. Two people with particular rules systems follow a structure that obligates them to perform specific behaviors regardless the consequences.
Charmed and Strange Loops
The hierarchy of meaning suggests that some lower levels can reflect back and affect the meaning of higher levels. Pearce and Cronen (1980) have termed this process a Loop.
Charmed Loop – Rules of meanings are consistent throughout the loop, i.e encounters are consistent with who the interactants are, and communication is consistent with the cultural expectations of the relationship.
Strange Loop – Rules of meaning change within the loop, e.g. the alcoholic who gives up drinking, but takes it up again when he feels in control of his drinking. The episodes are part of the alcoholic’s life script, which leads to a vicious cycle.
West and Turner - Chapter 5
Symbolic Interaction Theory
History of SI
Early 20th Century Pragmatists Dewey and James are the intellectual ancestors of SI; they believed reality is dynamic.
SI had its genesis at 2 universities: Iowa School and Chicago School
Iowa: Manford Kuhn. New ways of looking at self were viewed as eccentric, so most principles and developments of SI came from Chicago School.
Chicago: Herbert Mead and John Dewey.
The two schools diverged on methodology.
Chicago’s Mead and his student Herbert Blumer contended that the study of human beings could not be conducted using the same methods as the study of other things. They advocated the use of case studies, histories, and nondirective interviews.
Iowa adopted a more quantitative approach, and used the twenty-statements and self-attitudes questionnaire.
Themes and Assumptions
Three Central Themes of the seven central assumptions of SI, developed by LaRossa and Reitzes. (1993)
- The importance of meanings for human behavior
- Humans act toward others on the basis of the meanings those others have for them
- Meaning is created in interaction between people
- Meaning is modified through an interpretive process
- The importance of the self-concept
- Individuals develop self-concepts through interaction with others
- Self-concepts provide an important motive for behavior
- The relationship between the individual and society
- People and groups are influenced by cultural and social processes
- Social structure is worked ot through social interaction
Key Concepts
Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society
Mind – Mead defines it as the ability to use symbols that have common social meanings. Mead believes that humans develop minds through interaction with others.
Infants learn language – a shared system of verbal and nonverbal symbols, which depends on significant symbols – symbols whose meaning is generally agreed upon by many.
Closely related to mind is thought – an inner conversation. Through thinking comes role taking, the ability fo put oneself in another’s place. (a.k.a. perspective taking)
Self - Mead defines Self as the ability to reflect on ourselves from the perspective of others. Borrowing from Charles Cooley in 1912, Mead refers to the looking-glass self, or the ability to see ourselves in the reflection of another’s gaze.
Cooley believes that three principles of development are associated with the looking-glass self:
1) we imagine how we appear to others
2) we imagine their judgement of our appearance
3) we feel hurt or pride based on these self-feelings
Pygmalion Effect – living up or down to another’s expectations
I – The spontaneous, impulsive, creative self
Me – The reflective, socially aware self
Society – Mead defines it as the web of social relationships humans create and respond to.
2 parts of society that affect the mind and self:
1) Particular others – individuals who are significant to us, usually family, friends, work colleagues and supervisors
2) Generalized others – the attitude of the whole community
