Withdrawing in silence from the fellowship of other Americans. Other prisoners have also described the punishing effects of social isolation. Medical researchers have identified a wide range of health threats that can result from a lack of close relationships.
Happily married people also have lower incidences of pneumonia, surgery, and cancer than do single people. By contrast, a life that includes positive relationships created through communication leads to better health. As little as ten minutes per day of socializing improves memory and boosts intellectual function. Not everyone needs the same amount of contact, and the quality of communication is almost certainly as significant as the quantity. The key point is that personal communication is essential for our well-being.
Identity Needs Communication does more than enable us to survive. It is the way—indeed, the only way—we learn who we are. As Chapter 2 explains, our sense of identity comes from the way we interact with other people. Are we smart or stupid, attractive or ugly, skillful or inept? We decide who we are based on how others react to us. McCain, J. Faith of my fathers p. Physical Needs Communication is so important that its presence or absence affects physical health.
In extreme cases, communication can even become a matter of life or death. When he was a Navy pilot, U. Senator John McCain was shot down over North Vietnam and held as a prisoner of war for six years, often in solitary confinement. He and his fellow POWs set up clandestine codes in which they sent messages by tapping on walls to laboriously spell out words.
McCain describes the importance of keeping contact and the risks that inmates would take to maintain contact with one another:. Deprived of communication with others, we would have no sense of ourselves.
The boy was discovered in January digging for vegetables in a French village garden. He showed no behaviors that one would expect in a social human.
The boy could not speak but rather uttered only weird cries. More significant than this lack of social skills was his lack of any identity as a human being. He had no sense of himself meaning. See the film summary at the end of this chapter. Like the boy of Aveyron, each of us enters the world with little or no sense of identity.
We gain an idea of who we are from the way others define us. As Chapter 2 explains, the messages we receive in early childhood are the strongest, but the influence of others continues throughout life.
Social Needs Besides helping to define who we are, communication provides a vital link with others. Researchers and theorists have identified a whole range of social needs that we satisfy by communicating.
These include pleasure, affection, companionship, escape, relaxation, and control. In one study of more than college students, the happiest 10 percent described themselves as having a rich social life. The very happy people were no different from their classmates in any other measurable way such as amount of sleep, exercise, TV watching, religious activity, or alcohol consumption.
One widely recognized survey reported that, in , Americans had an average of 2. Twenty years later, that number had dropped to 2. In other words, a higher education can enhance your relational life as well as your intellect. Because connections with others are so vital, some theorists maintain that positive relationships may be the single most important source of life satisfaction and emotional. Practical Goals Besides satisfying social needs and shaping our identity, communication is the most widely used approach to satisfying what communication scholars call instrumental goals: getting others to behave in ways we want.
Some instrumental goals are quite basic: Communication is the tool that lets you tell the hair stylist to take just a little off the sides, lets you negotiate household duties, and lets you convince the plumber that the broken pipe needs attention now!
Other instrumental goals are more important. Career success is the prime example. As the On the Job box on page 8 shows, communication skills are essential in virtually every career. They can even make the difference between life and death. Beyond physical and safety needs are the social needs we have mentioned already. Beyond these, Maslow suggests, each of us has self-esteem needs: the desire to believe that we are worthwhile, valuable people.
The final category of needs described by Maslow is self-actualization: the desire to develop our potential to the maximum, to become the best person we can be. As you read on, think about the ways in which communication is often necessary to satisfy each level of need. The Process of Communication We have been talking about communication as though the meaning of this word were perfectly clear. Communication scholars have argued for years about communication definitions.
Despite their many disagreements, most would agree that at its essence, communication is about using messages to generate meanings. Before going further, we need to explain systematically what happens when people exchange messages and create meanings in interpersonal communication. Doing so will introduce you to a common working vocabulary and, at the same time, preview some of the topics that are covered in later chapters. The information that follows will help you improve the way you communicate with the people who matter most to you.
I dentify the conflicts in your important relationships and how satisfied you are with the way they have been handled. Describe your personal conflict styles, evaluate their effectiveness, and suggest alternatives as appropriate. Identify the relational conflict styles, patterns of behavior, and conflict rituals that define a given relationship. Demonstrate how you could use the win— win approach in a given conflict.
A quick look at a thesaurus offers a clue about the distasteful nature of conflict. Synonyms for the term include battle, brawl, clash, competition, discord, disharmony, duel, fight, strife, struggle, trouble, and violence. Even the metaphors we use to describe our conflicts show that we view conflict as something to be avoided. With the right set of communication skills, conflict can be less like a struggle and more like a kind of dance in which partners work together to create something that would be impossible without their cooperation.
You may have to persuade the other person to become your partner rather than your adversary, and you may be clumsy at first, but with enough practice and goodwill, you can work together instead of at cross-purposes. The attitude you bring to your conflicts can make a tremendous difference between success and failure.
One study revealed that college students in close romantic relationships who believed that conflicts are destructive were most likely to neglect or quit the relationship and less likely to seek a solution than couples who had less-negative attitudes. The Nature of Conflict Before focusing on how to solve interpersonal problems constructively, we need to look briefly at the nature of conflict.
What is it? Why is it an inevitable part of life? How can it be beneficial? They probably involve many different people, revolve around very different subjects, and take many different forms. Some become loud, angry arguments.
Others may be expressed in calm, rational discussions. Still others might simmer along most of the time with brief but bitter flare-ups. Whatever form they may take, all interpersonal conflicts share certain characteristics. For instance, consider the neighbor whose stereo keeps you awake at night.
For instance, you could achieve peace and quiet by closing your windows or getting the neighbor to close hers. You might use a pair of earplugs, or perhaps the neighbor could get a set of earphones, allowing the music to be played at full volume without bothering anyone. If any of these solutions prove workable, then the conflict disappears.
Unfortunately, people often fail to see mutually satisfying solutions to their problems. Read more Please choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see on your profile that this library is a favorite of yours. Communication and Identity: Creating and Presenting the Self. What in the world made them think that lingerie is easy to design and construct?
They want to be designers and they know nothing about women. Langenegger, Sonia R. Garcia, Ted Lewis and Robert E. You will be guided to the product download page immediately once you complete the payment. If you have any questions, or would like a receive a sample chapter before your purchase, please contact us via email: support digitalcontentmarket. Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising.
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