DIVISION TWO
1. How many points for differentiation would the phrase “humorous and totally funny” score on the Role Category Questionnaire?
2. Look at the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon on page 101. How would constructivists explain Calvin’s success in getting a horsey ride from his father?
3. Sometimes during an argument, one kid will chide another with the words
“Aw, grow up!” According to constructivists, the phrase offers good advice in a way that’s ineffective. Why?
4. Osama bin Laden constructed a highly effective terrorist campaign that refl ects sophisticated message plans. Can you explain why the successful achieve- ment of his goals does not necessarily show that he is cognitively complex as Delia uses the term?
QUESTIONS TO SHARPEN YOUR FOCUS
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110 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
Comprehensive research review: Brant R. Burleson and Scott Caplan, “Cognitive Com- plexity,” in Communication and Personality: Trait Perspectives, James McCroskey, John Daly, and Matthew Martin (eds.), Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ, 1998, pp. 233–286.
Role Category Questionnaire: Brant R. Burleson and Michael S. Waltman, “Cognitive Com- plexity: Using the Role Category Questionnaire Measure,” in A Handbook for the Study of Human Communication, Charles Tardy (ed.), Ablex, Norwood, NJ, 1988, pp. 1–35.
Message production in the mind: James Price Dillard, “The Goals-Plans-Action Model of Interpersonal Infl uence,” in Perspectives on Persuasion, Social Infl uence, and Compliance Gaining, John Seiter and Robert Gass (eds.), Pearson, Boston, MA, 2003, pp. 185–206.
In-depth listening: Brant R. Burleson, “A Constructivist Approach to Listening,” Inter- national Journal of Listening, in press.
Social support: Wendy Samter, “How Gender and Cognitive Complexity Infl uence the Provision of Emotional Support: A Study of Indirect Effects,” Communication Reports, Vol.
15, 2002, pp. 5–16.
Relationship maintenance: Brant R. Burleson and Wendy Samter, “A Social Skills Approach to Relationship Maintenance,” in Communication and Relationship Maintenance, Daniel Canary and Laura Stafford (eds.), Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 1994, pp. 61–90.
Developing cognitive complexity: Brant R. Burleson, Jesse Delia, and James Applegate,
“The Socialization of Person-Centered Communication: Parental Contributions to the Social-Cognitive and Communication Skills of Their Children,” in Perspectives in Family Communication, Mary Anne Fitzpatrick and Anita Vangelisti (eds.), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1995, pp. 34–76.
Review and critique: John Gastil, “An Appraisal and Revision of the Constructivist Research Program,” in Communication Yearbook 18, Brant R. Burleson (ed.), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1995, pp. 83–104.
To access a chapter on Greene’s action assembly theory that appeared in a previous edition, click on Theory List at
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111
R e l a t i o n s h i p D e v e l o p m e n t
Think about your closest personal relationship. Is it one of “strong, frequent and diverse interdependence that lasts over a considerable period of time?”1 That’s how UCLA psychologist Harold Kelley and eight co-authors defi ne the concept of close relationship. Though their defi nition could apply to parties who don’t even like each other, most theorists reserve the term close for relationships that include a positive bond—usually romantic, friend, and family. All three types of intimacy can provide enjoyment, trust, sharing of confi dences, respect, mutual assistance, and spontaneity.2 The question is, How do we develop a close relationship?
Two distinct approaches have dominated the theory and practice of rela- tional development. One experiential approach is typifi ed by humanistic psycholo- gist Carl Rogers. Based upon his years of nondirective counseling, Rogers described three necessary and suffi cient conditions for relationship growth.
When partners perceived (1) congruence; (2) unconditional positive regard; and (3) empathic understanding of each other, they could and would draw closer.3
Congruence is the match or fi t between an individual’s inner feelings and outer display. The congruent person is genuine, real, integrated, whole, trans- parent. The noncongruent person tries to impress, plays a role, puts up a front, hides behind a facade. “In my relationship with persons,” Rogers wrote, “I’ve found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I was something I was not.”4
Unconditional positive regard is an attitude of acceptance that isn’t contingent upon performance. Rogers asked, “Can I let myself experience positive attitudes toward this other person—attitudes of warmth, caring, liking, interest, and respect?”5 When the answer was yes, both he and his clients matured as human beings. They also liked each other.
Empathic understanding is the caring skill of temporarily laying aside our views and values and entering into another’s world without prejudice. It is an active process of seeking to hear the other’s thoughts, feelings, tones, and mean- ings as if they were our own. Rogers thought it was a waste of time to be suspi- cious or to wonder, What does she really mean? He believed that we help people most when we accept what they say at face value. We should assume that they describe their world as it really appears to them.
Rogerian ideas have permeated the textbooks and teaching of interper- sonal communication.6 The topics of self-disclosure, nonverbal warmth, empathic listening, and trust are mainstays of an introductory course.
The other approach assumes that relationship behavior is shaped by the rewards and costs of interaction. In 1992, University of Chicago economist Gary Becker won the Nobel Prize in economics on the basis of his application of supply-and-demand market models to predict the behavior of everyday living, including love and marriage.7 News commentators expressed skepticism that matters of the heart could be reduced to cold numbers, but the economic meta- phor has dominated social science discussions of interpersonal attraction and behavior for the last fi ve decades. The basic assumption of most relational theo- rists is that people interact with others in a way that maximizes their personal benefi ts and minimizes their personal costs.
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112 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
Numerous parallels exist between the stock market and relationship market:
Law of supply and demand. A rare, desirable characteristic commands higher value on the exchange.
Courting a buyer. Most parties in the market prepare a prospectus that highlights their assets and downplays their liabilities.
Laissez-faire rules. Let the buyer beware. All’s fair in love and war. It’s a jungle out there.
Expert advice. Daily newspapers around the country carry syndicated advice columns by Michelle Singletary (“The Color of Money”) and Abigail Van Buren (“Dear Abby”). Whether the topic is money or love, both columnists suggest cautious risk taking.
Investors and traders. Investors commit for the long haul; traders try to make an overnight killing.
Even from these brief summaries, you can tell that a humanistic model of rela- tional development is quite different from an economic model of social exchange.
Yet both models affect each of the theories presented in this section.
All three regard communication as the means by which people can draw close to one another. Each considers instant intimacy a myth; relationships take time to develop and they don’t always proceed on a straight-line trajectory toward that goal. In fact, most relationships never even get close. Yet some peo- ple do have deep, satisfying, long-lasting relationships. Why do they develop close ties when others don’t? Each of the theories in this section offers an answer.
“I’ve done the numbers, and I will marry you.”
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Social Penetration Theory
of Irwin Altman & Dalmas Taylor
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
A soft answer turns away wrath.
Don’t get mad, get even.
To know him is to love him.
Familiarity breeds contempt.
Proverbs are the wisdom of the ages boiled down into short, easy-to-remember phrases. There are probably more maxims about interpersonal relationships than about any other topic. But are these truisms dependable? As we can see in the pairings above, the advice they give often seems contradictory.
Consider the plight of Pete, a freshman at a residential college, as he enters the dorm to meet his roommate for the fi rst time. Pete has just waved good-bye to his folks and already feels pangs of loneliness as he thinks of his girlfriend back home. He worries how she’ll feel about him when he goes home at Thanks- giving. Will she illustrate the reliability of the old adage “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” or will “out of sight, out of mind” be a better way to describe the next few months?
Pete fi nds his room and immediately spots the familiar shape of a lacrosse stick. He’s initially encouraged by what appears to be a common interest, but he’s also fascinated by a campaign button that urges him to vote for a candidate for Congress who is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Pete. Will
“birds of a feather fl ock together” hold true in their relationship, or will “oppo- sites attract” better describe their interaction?
Just then Jon, his roommate, comes in. For a few minutes they trade the stock phrases that give them a chance to size up each other. Something in Pete makes him want to tell Jon how much he misses his girlfriend, but a deeper sense of what is an appropriate topic of conversation when fi rst meeting someone pre- vents him from sharing his feelings. On a subconscious level, perhaps even a conscious one, Pete is torn between acting on the old adage “misery loves com- pany” or on the more macho “big boys don’t cry.”
113
9
CHAPTER
Objective Interpretive Socio-psychological tradition● gri34307_ch09_113-124.indd Page 113 1/3/11 9:36 AM user-f469
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114 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
Pete obviously needs something more than pithy proverbs to help him understand relational dynamics. About two decades before Pete was born, social psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor proposed a social penetration pro- cess that explains how relational closeness develops. Altman is distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Utah, and Taylor, now deceased, was provost and professor of psychology at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
They predicted that Pete and Jon would end up best friends only if they pro- ceeded in a “gradual and orderly fashion from superfi cial to intimate levels of exchange as a function of both immediate and forecast outcomes.” 1 In order to capture the process, we fi rst have to understand the complexity of people.
Social penetration The process of develop- ing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self-disclosure and other forms of vulnerability.
Altman and Taylor compared people to onions. This isn’t a commentary on the human capacity to offend. Like the self-description that the ogre in Shrek shares with his donkey sidekick in the original fi lm, it is a depiction of the multilayered structure of personality. Peel the outer skin from an onion, and you’ll fi nd another beneath it. Remove that layer and you’ll expose a third, and so on. Pete’s outer layer is his public self that’s accessible to anyone who cares to look. The outer layer includes a myriad of details that certainly help describe who he is but are held in common with others at the school. On the surface, people see a tall, 18-year-old male business major from Michigan who lifts weights and gets lots of phone calls from home. If Jon can look beneath the surface, he’ll discover the semiprivate attitudes that Pete reveals only to some people. Pete is sympathetic to liberal social causes, deeply religious, and prejudiced against overweight people.
Pete’s inner core is made up of his values, self-concept, unresolved confl icts, and deeply felt emotions. This is his unique private domain, which is invisible to the world but has a signifi cant impact on the areas of his life that are closer to the surface. Perhaps not even his girlfriend or parents know his most closely guarded secrets about himself.
Personality structure Onion-like layers of be- liefs and feelings about self, others, and the world; deeper layers are more vulnerable, protected, and central to self-image.
PERSONALITY STRUCTURE: A MULTILAYERED ONION
CLOSENESS THROUGH SELF-DISCLOSURE
Pete becomes accessible to others as he relaxes the tight boundaries that protect him and makes himself vulnerable. This can be a scary process, but Altman and Taylor believed it’s only by allowing Jon to penetrate well below the surface that Pete can truly draw close to his roommate. Nonverbal paths to openness include mock roughhousing, eye contact, and smiling. But the main route to deep social penetration is through verbal self-disclosure .
Figure 9–1 illustrates a wedge being pulled into an onion. It’s as if a strong magnetic force were drawing it toward the center. The depth of penetration represents the degree of personal disclosure. To get to the center, the wedge must fi rst separate the outer layers. Altman and Taylor claimed that on the surface level this kind of biographical information exchange takes place easily, perhaps at the fi rst meeting. But they pictured the layers of onion skin tougher and more tightly wrapped as the wedge nears the center.
Recall that Pete is hesitant to share his longing for his girlfriend with Jon.
If he admits these feelings, he’s opening himself up for some heavy-handed
Self-disclosure
The voluntary sharing of personal history, prefer- ences, attitudes, feel- ings, values, secrets, etc., with another per- son; transparency.
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CHAPTER 9: SOCIAL PENETRATION THEORY 115
kidding or emotional blackmail. In addition, once the wedge has penetrated deeply, it will have cut a passage through which it can return again and again with little resistance. Future privacy will be diffi cult. Realizing both of these factors, Pete may be extra cautious about exposing his true feelings. Perhaps he’ll fence off this part of his life for the whole school term. According to social penetration theory, a permanent guard will limit the closeness these two young men can achieve.
FIGURE 9–1 Penetration of Pete’s Personality Structure Goals, aspirations
tastes
studies
worldview
Concept of self Deeply held fears and fantasies
Religious convictions
Preferences in clothes, food, and music
dating
Biographical data
THE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF SELF-DISCLOSURE
The depth of penetration is the degree of intimacy. Although Altman and Taylor’s penetration analogy strikes some readers as sexual, this was not their intent. The analogy applies equally to intimacy in friendship and romance. Figure 9–1 dia- grams the closeness Jon gains if he and Pete become friends during the year. In their framework of social penetration theory, Altman and Taylor outlined four observations about the process that will bring Pete and Jon to this point:
1. Peripheral items are exchanged more frequently and sooner than private information.
When the sharp edge of the wedge has barely reached the intimate area, the thicker part has cut a wide path through the outer rings. The relationship is still at a relatively impersonal level (“big boys don’t cry”). University of Connecticut communication professor Arthur VanLear analyzed the content of conversations in developing relationships. His study showed that 14 percent of talk revealed nothing about the speaker, 65 percent dwelled on public items, 19 percent shared semiprivate details, and only 2 percent disclosed intimate confi dences. 2 Further penetration will bring Pete to the point where he can share deeper feelings (“mis- ery loves company”).
Depth of penetration The degree of disclosure in a specific area of an individual’s life.
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116 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
2. Self-disclosure is reciprocal, especially in the early stages of relationship develop- ment. The theory predicts that new acquaintances like Pete and Jon will reach roughly equal levels of openness, but it doesn’t explain why. Pete’s vulnerability could make him seem more trustworthy, or perhaps his initial openness makes transparency seem more attractive. The young men might also feel a need for emotional equity, so a disclosure by Pete leaves Jon feeling uneasy until he’s balanced the account with his own payment—a give-and-take exchange in which each party is sharing deeper levels of feeling with the other. Whatever the reason, social penetration theory asserts a law of reciprocity .
3. Penetration is rapid at the start but slows down quickly as the tightly wrapped inner layers are reached. Instant intimacy is a myth. Not only is there internal resistance to quick forays into the soul, but there are societal norms against telling too much too fast. Most relationships stall before a stable intimate exchange is established.
For this reason, these relationships fade or die easily after a separation or a slight strain. A comfortable sharing of positive and negative reactions is rare. When it is achieved, relationships become more important to both parties, more meaning- ful, and more enduring.
4. Depenetration is a gradual process of layer-by-layer withdrawal. A warm friend- ship between Pete and Jon will deteriorate if they begin to close off areas of their lives that had earlier been opened. Relational retreat is a sort of taking back of what has earlier been exchanged in the building of a relationship. Altman and Taylor compared the process to a movie shown in reverse. Surface talk still goes on long after deep disclosure is avoided. Relationships are likely to termi- nate not in an explosive fl ash of anger but in a gradual cooling off of enjoyment and care.
Law of reciprocity A paced and orderly pro- cess in which openness in one person leads to openness in the other;
“You tell me your dream;
I’ll tell you mine.”
“Since we’re both being honest, I should tell you I have fl eas.”
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CHAPTER 9: SOCIAL PENETRATION THEORY 117 While depth is crucial to the process of social penetration, breadth is equally important. Note that in Figure 9–1 I have segmented the onion much like an orange to represent how Pete’s life is cut into different areas—dating, studies, and so forth. It’s quite possible for Pete to be candid about every intimate detail of his romance yet remain secretive about his father’s alcoholism or his own minor dyslexia. Because only one area is accessed, the relationship depicted in the onion drawing is typical of a summer romance—depth without breadth. Of course, breadth without depth describes the typical “Hi, how are you?” casual relationship. A model of true intimacy would show multiple wedges inserted deeply into every area.
Breadth of penetration The range of areas in an individual’s life over which disclosure takes place.
REGULATING CLOSENESS ON THE BASIS OF REWARDS AND COSTS
Will Pete and Jon become good friends? According to social penetration theory, it all depends on the cost–benefi t analysis that each man performs as he consid- ers the possibility of a closer relationship. Right after their fi rst encounter, Pete will sort out the pluses and minuses of friendship with Jon, computing a bottom- line index of relational satisfaction. Jon will do the same regarding Pete. If the perceived mutual benefi ts outweigh the costs of greater vulnerability, the process of social penetration will proceed.
I previewed this kind of economic analysis in the introduction to the present section on relationship development. Altman and Taylor’s version draws heavily on the social exchange theory of psychologists John Thibaut (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Harold Kelley (University of California, Los Angeles). 3 Throughout their lives, both researchers studied the key concepts of social exchange—relational outcome, relational satisfaction, and relational stability. Since Altman and Taylor believed that principles of social exchange accurately predict when people will risk self-disclosure, I’ll describe these concepts in some detail.
Outcome: Rewards Minus Costs
Thibaut and Kelley suggested that people try to predict the outcome of an interac- tion before it takes place. Thus, when Pete fi rst meets his roommate, he mentally gauges the potential rewards and costs of friendship with Jon. He perceives a number of benefi ts. As a newcomer to campus, Pete strongly desires someone to talk to, eat with, and just hang out with when he’s not in class or studying. His roommate’s interest in lacrosse, easy laugh, and laid-back style make Jon an attractive candidate.
Pete is also aware that there’s a potential downside to getting to know each other better. If he reveals some of his inner life, his roommate may scoff at his faith in God or ridicule his liberal “do-gooder” values. Pete isn’t ashamed of his convictions, but he hates to argue, and he regards the risk of confl ict as real.
Factoring in all the likely pluses and minuses, reaching out in friendship to Jon strikes Pete as net positive, so he makes the fi rst move.
The idea of totaling potential benefi ts and losses to determine behavior isn’t new. Since the nineteenth century, when philosopher John Stuart Mill fi rst stated his principle of utility, 4 there’s been a compelling logic to the minimax principle of human behavior . The minimax principle claims that people seek to maximize their benefi ts and minimize their costs. Thus, the higher we rate a relational outcome, the more attractive we fi nd the behavior that might make it happen.
Social exchange Relationship behavior and status regulated by both parties’ evaluations of perceived rewards and costs of interaction with each other.
Outcome
The perceived rewards minus the costs of inter- personal interaction.
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