COM 101: Introduction to Interpersonal Communication

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COM 101 Introduction to Interpersonal
Communication

• Instructor Iva Thelen
• Spring 2006
• Lecture 10

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Overview

• Lecture

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Communication Climate The Foundation of Personal
Relationships

• Elements of Satisfying Personal Relationships
• Interpersonal Climate overall feeling or
  emotional mood between people
• Confirming and disconfirming climates
• Guidelines for creating and sustaining healthy
  interpersonal climates

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Elements of Satisfying Personal Relationships

• Investment
• Commitment
• Trust
• Comfort with relational dialectics

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Investment

• What we put into relationships that we could not
  retrieve if the relationship were to end
• Time
• Energy
• Thought
• Feeling
• Material assistance

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Commitment

• A decision to remain with a relationship
• Decision not a feeling
• Assumption of a future

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Trust

• Believing in anothers reliability
• Emotionally relying on another to look out for
  our welfare and our relationship
• Earned
• Honesty and honor
• Being open (self disclosure)

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Comfort with Relational Dialectics

• Understanding and being comfortable with opposing
  forces, or tensions that are normal parts of
  relationships
• Autonomy/Connection
• Novelty/Predictability
• Openness/Closedness

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Responding to Dialectics

• Neutralization
• Selection
• Separation
• Reframing

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Confirming and Disconfirming Climates

• Valuing
• Exists on a continuum

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Levels of Confirmation and Disconfirmation

• Recognizing that another person exists
• Acknowledgment of what another feels, thinks and
  says
• Endorsement giving validity

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Defensive and Supportive Climates

• Evaluation vs. Description
• I wish you hadnt done that
• You shouldnt have done that
• Certainty vs. Provisionalism
• You cant change my mind
• The way I tend to see the issue is
• Strategy vs. Spontaneity
• Remember when I helped you
• I really need your help with this
• Control vs. Problem Orientation
• Well, I like this car and its my money
• It seems that we have different ideas about how
  to spend money
• Neutrality vs. Empathy
• Superiority vs. Equality

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Guidelines for Creating and Sustaining Healthy
Climates

• Actively use communication to shape climates
• Accept and confirm others
• Affirm and assert yourself
• Self-Disclose when appropriate
• Respect diversity in relationships
• Respond to others criticism constructively

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For Thursday

• Test 2