04. Social Interaction II Flashcards
(19 cards)
What is the Interpersonal Gap
(Gottman et al., 1979)?
The gap between what the sender intends to communicate and what the listener perceives
The sender…
Has private knowledge that they wish to convey which they encode into verbal & non-verbal actions
There is potential interference (sender’s mood, social skills, distractions in environment)
Non-Verbal Communication
Includes:
- Eyes & gazing (eye contact)
- Body movements (e.g., hand gestures, posture)
- ‘Paralanguage’ (e.g., pitch, volume)
- Interpersonal distance
(Hall, 2019)
Non-Verbal Example: facial expressions
- Convey mood & emotion
- Can be controlled (intensify, minimize, neutralize, mask)
- But hard to control: we show micro expressions (authentic flashes of our real emotions) (Yan et al., 2013)
Verbal communication
Use of speech
Verbal communication experiment:
Self-Disclosure (Aron et al., 1997)
“36 Questions that will make you fall in love with anyone”
- Giving strangers personal information generates closeness
- The 36 questions have been used in other studies (Sprecher, 2021) showing that face-to-face vs online both work
- We like personal info (both giving and receiving) (Slatcher, 2010)
Bad disclosure
Like trauma dumping
- Disclosure can be “too much too soon”– patience & turn taking is required (Buck & Plant, 2011; Sprecher & Treger, 2015)
- Closeness develops based on: meaningful disclosure, where the other responds with interest and empathy (Reis & Shaver, 1988)
Responsiveness is…
- Paying attention to the other person - being attentive & supportive
(Gable & Reis, 2006; Reis et al. 2011)
How accurate are at “reading” other people (experiences, intentions, behaviours)?
- “Moderately” accurate (r = .32; Nater & Zell, 2015)
- There is a lot of room for interpretation (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974)
Perceptions of others:
What are attributions?
Explanations we use to understand each other’s behaviour
What types of attributions are there?
- Internal (cause is due to the person) e.g. they are such an impatient and irritable person
- External (cause is due to something else) e.g. they must have had a really hard day at work
What are attributions used to explain?
Behaviour (good and bad)
What influences attributions?
Satisfaction (Weiss, 1980; Walsh & Neff, 2020):
- satisfied people make internal attributions for partners’ good behaviour & external for partners’ bad behaviour (relationship enhancing)
- the opposite is true of unsatisfied people (distress maintaining)
- attributions also affect satisfaction (Bradbury & Fincham, 1990; Osterhout et al., 2011)
Positive illusions (Seeing through rose-coloured glasses):
- emphasize partners’ good traits and ignoring bad traits (Murray & Holmes, 1999)
- judging partners better than themselves (Gignac & Zajenkowski, 2019)
Advantages of positive illusions:
(e.g., Murray et al., 1999):
- increased relationship satisfaction and stability
- minimizes conflict
- partner feels good & secure
- self fulfilling prophecy -> our partners “live up” to idealisation (Murray & Holmes, 1999)
Disadvantages of positive illusions
- unrealistic illusions are unhelpful (Neff & Karney, 2005)
- partner may feel more pressure
- minor vs major illusions
When are positive illusions more beneficial than self-verification?
- when relationships are “new” (dating & newly married) (Fletcher, 2015)
What are the types of relationship beliefs?
- Destiny beliefs: people are either compatible or they are not
- Growth beliefs: relationship challenges can be overcome
How to narrow the Interpersonal Gap
- we expect others to read our minds (Wright & Roloff, 2015) but are very bad at reading minds
- studies on romantic partners and college roommates showed that as relationships progressed, accuracy did not increase, but (over)confidence did (Swann & Gill, 1997)
- mostly due to projection (ego-centrism)
