MediaSpace Wiki

Relationships And Communities Session Nine

Communication of Emotion

Planalp, 39-70 Stewart, 74-82

• For some emotions, communicating how we feel is relatively easy.
• But there are many emotions
  • not all are easy to communicate.
• We are often faced with the inexpressible:
  • feelings we don't share
  • based on experience we don't have in common.
• Exchanging messages is not the same as coordinating meaning.
  • transmitted boxcars versus interwoven dialogues (message exchange)
  • only machines simply send messages
    • people remember what they've said (or a version thereof)
    • understanding messages often requires understanding the person who composed it
    • messages are never context free
  • we create messages that approximate what we want to say
  • and receive messages that approximate what was intended
• Communicating emotion is not the same as communicating emotionally
  • the former is the substance or meaning of a message
  • the latter is a property of a message
  • both matter
• Key elements of emotional intelligence and emotional communication competence
  • noticing emotion
  • identifying it correctly (recognition)
  • understanding it
  • Responding appropriately
  • Expressing appropriately
• Varieties of emotional connection
  • Emotional Recognition -- recognizing that the other is feeling
    • the appearance of color
    • can be hard to interpret
    • different people are better at both exhibiting and recognizing than others
    • paying attention matters
  • Emotional Accuracy -- recognizing what the other is feeling
    • Filters matter. If disposed to the negative, we will more often see negative
    • Repertoire matters. People with narrow expressive or recognition repertoire's will convert one to another.
    • Role expectation matters. People will sometimes be unwilling to act in a particular way.
  • Emotional Understanding -- recognizing how the other is feeling
    • Full emotional understanding is difficult and unusual, as it assumes a lot of both participants
      • and we don't need to fully understand everything to have a reasonable understanding
        • precipitating events (objects, causes)
        • appraisal
        • physiological changes
        • expression (action tendencies, action)
        • regulation
    • Partial understanding is more common
      • how they feel
      • why they feel that way
      • what they are dealing with
    • Our assumptions may not be valid
      • one of the problems of assuming that semiotic understanding translates to similar phenomonological understandings
      • our attributions tend to be selective and to observe the fundamental attribution error
        • motivated inaccuracy
      • getting the emotion right isn't getting the intensity right
    • even when we talk about emotions, it may take a while to get them right
      • our emotions often change as we talk about them
  • Emotional coincidence -- feeling along with the other
    • Reacting with the same emotion at the same time
    • We often seek out opportunities for emotional coincidence
  • Emotional cantagion and empathy -- feeling as the other is feeling
    • contagion - "catching" emotions from others
      • a primitive in human behavior. Even babies do it
    • empathy - taking on the emotions of another
      • feeling with others
      • is detached concern a "right" level of empathy?
  • Sympathy -- feeling about the other's feelings
  • Responding to the other's feeling's

Understanding and Listening

Stewart, 167-181, 191-205

• Four things we do whenever we communicate (participate in an episode) with other people
  1. identify the situation
     • situations often offer up appropriate scripts for behavior
       • closed episodes offer canned scripts
         • rituals (greetings, religious services, cashier exchanges, talk in acquaintance level relationships, relationship rituals)
       • open episodes
         • no script, or at least an inobvious one
         • freedom to act outside of script and expectation
       • defined episodes
         • episodes where one or another of the participants has an agenda
         • often become competitive attempts to assert control
         • to impose a particular script or theme
     • scripts set an approximate trajectory in interaction
     • and a set of likely outcomes, not all of the desireable
       • example: a telephone call where a stranger knows your name
  2. define the person or people we are with
     • anything they tell us tells us more than the content of their message
       • our view of their personality and values
       • our evaluation of them
     • personal constructs, often organized in clusters (implicit-personality theory)
       • physical (tall-short, fat-thin, beautiful-not)
       • role (buyer-seller, boss-employee, adult-child)
       • inteaction (friendly-not, polite-rude)
       • psychological constructs (motivated-lazy, intelligent-dumb)
     • a risk: creating self-fulfilling prophecies
     • a risk: are first impressions best impressions?
  3. define ourselves relative to the other person (relationship) and the situation (role)
     • what kind of a relationship do/should/could we had with each person
     • how are we supposed to act given the situation and our role in it
     • how are we supposed to act given our relationship to the other person
     • adaptability is a key to social success
     • and that doesn't mean we can't be true to who we are
     • relationship labels set useful limits
       • friend, acquaintance, close friend, coworker, best friend, brother, sister, work, significant other, partner, spouse
     • situation and relationship prototypes set scriptlike expectations
  4. figure out why things unfold the way they do
     • attribution
       • the fundatmental attribution error
       • personality bias toward others
       • situational bias thoward self
       • group bias (our group is better than not our group)
       • cultural bias (stereotypes, bias toward favoring individual or community)
     • why did they do that
     • why did I do that