INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Interpersonal communication

Interpersonal communication

Introduction

The reflexive nature of interpersonal communication and interpersonal communications is accepted by interpersonal communication scholars as both inherent and axiomatic. People draw upon their understanding of an association to enact relationally appropriate behaviors, to interpret a partner's actions, and to select interpersonal communication strategies. Reciprocally, people define and come to understand their interpersonal communications based on the meanings they derive from interaction. Interpersonal communication functions to establish interpersonal communications when messages are produced or processed in ways that suggest the formation or escalation of a personal bond between interaction partners. Interpersonal communication functions to maintain interpersonal communications when message production or processing reinforces and sustains preexisting levels of involvement. Scholarly efforts to understand these interpersonal communication functions focus on how thoughts and words create, define, modify, and maintain interpersonal communications. This paper will focus on interpersonal relationships and the basic principles of the communication process.

Discussion & Analysis

Theoretical perspectives on interpersonal communication prominent in the 1970s also emphasized intrapersonal and cognitive processes. In particular, social exchange theories addressed how rewards and costs contribute to the stability and satisfaction of ongoing associations. These approaches emphasized how people make decisions about social interpersonal communications to maximize personally profitable experiences (Delli Carpini, Cook & Jacobs, 2004). People tend to continue interpersonal communications that have provided rewards in the past, and interpersonal communications are stable when partners can maintain self-interested exchange patterns that are mutually fulfilling. Furthermore, people experience dissatisfaction with an interpersonal communication when they judge social exchange to be unfair, rewards do not meet their expectations, or the resources they possess fall outside an optimal range. In these ways, individual expectations, needs, and evaluations were considered the foundation for interpersonal communication.

As communication perspectives on interpersonal communication development gained momentum, research on establishing and maintaining interpersonal communications became increasingly focused on messages produced and interpreted in the context of interpersonal communications. Scholars began to theorize about the relational messages exchanged between partners (Mutz, 2006). This work laid a foundation for thinking about how messages vary according to the nature of the interpersonal communication between communication partners. Corresponding theoretical advancements addressed the cognitive structures required to process relational messages, track changes in interpersonal communication states, and transcend lapses in interaction.

Questions about the link between interpersonal communication characteristics and communication continue to inspire research; however, the 1990s witnessed an important change in research on communication in interpersonal communications. Exemplifying this shift, twin volumes on the dark side of interpersonal communication and inter personal interpersonal communications brought together research on a host of specific interpersonal communication phenomena. Consistent with the framework put forth by these volumes, much of the contemporary research on establishing and maintaining interpersonal communications is focused on specific communication quandaries, rather than more general trends in everyday interaction that correspond with interpersonal communication development, escalation, or stability.

Over the past 40 years, research on establishing and maintaining interpersonal communications has grown to encompass a variety of intra-personal and interpersonal processes that unfold within interpersonal associations (Schmitt-Beck, ...