Interpersonal Communication

255 Pages·1976·5.536 MB·English

by  Kurt Danziger, Arnold P. Goldstein and Leonard Krasner (Auth.)

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Interpersonal Communication
Kurt Danziger
York University
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First edition 1976
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Danziger, Kurt.
Interpersonal communication.
(Pergamon general psychology series; 53)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Communication—Psychological aspects.
I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Communication. 2. Inter­
personal relations. BF637.C45 D199i]
BF637.C45D33 301.14 74-26809
ISBN 0-08-018756-0
ISBN 0-08-018757-9
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co., Exeter
Preface
While the volume of research in the area of interpersonal communication
has increased greatly during the last decade, the material remains
scattered in various journals and pubhcations devoted to such diverse
fields as social psychology, child development, psychiatry, speech and
communication, animal behavior, clinical psychology, sociology, and
anthropology. As a result the growing number of students of the area are
faced with an enormous task of coordination and integration. It is the
purpose of this book to make a contribution to this task and to discuss the
general issues that emerge from work in this area.
In the second place the book is intended as a contribution to the
literature of social psychology. It is this discipline that should be
concerned with the study of the basic processes of interpersonal com­
munication and with a consideration of the most general issues in this area
of research. However, the standard social psychological texts tend to pay
little attention to these topics. This is due to a preoccupation with the
outcomes rather than the processes of social interaction and to the
dominance of a social influence model of interpersonal relationships in
which the two-way effects of communication are ignored in favor of
one-way effects. By way of contrast the present volume emphasizes the
importance of reciprocal influence processes in face-to-face interaction.
The selection of material has been governed by its relevance to
conceptual and methodological issues shared by several disciplines
insofar as their work converges on the area of interpersonal communica­
tion. The integration of portions of this material has led to some new
conceptual distinctions and tentative generalizations that are intended to
stimulate further discussion and research in this area.
ix
χ Preface
An earlier draft of the book has been successfully used in advanced
courses in interpersonal communication, and in its present form it should
also prove useful in certain interdisciplinary courses. Apart from its use
by social psychologists it may well be of interest to those working in
neighboring disciplines who require a social psychological treatment of
the subject that is more closely related to their concerns than a standard
social psychology text.
I wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Alan
Campbell, Esther Greenglass, Irwin Silverman, and Peter Ziffo whose
insights and comments were invaluable in connection with the prepara­
tion of various parts of this volume. Dulcis Prendergast and Ursula
Wiggins displayed unusual patience and understanding in typing the
manuscript. A special word of thanks is due to Gerald Deegan of
Pergamon Press whose help and encouragement were always forthcom­
ing when most needed.
KURT DANZIGER
Acknowledgments
Permission to reprint material is gratefully acknowledged from the
following: CoUins Publishers, London, and McGraw-Hih Book Co., New
York for excerpts from The Jail Diary of Alhie Sachs in Chapter 1; Mr. Z.
Stypulkowski and Walker & Co., New York for excerpts from Invitation
to Moscow in Chapter 1; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and
McClelland and Stewart Ltd., Canadian pubhsher for excerpts from The
Big Sell by P. Berton in Chapter 1; Wihiams & Wilkins Co., Baltimore
and F. E. Inbau and J. E. Reid for excerpts from Criminal Interrogation
and Confessions © 1967 in Chapter 1; John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York
for excerpts from J. H. Flaveh, The Development of Role-Taking Skills in
Children © 1968 in Chapter 8; The Society for Research in Child
Development for the ñgure in Chapter 8; Academic Press Inc., New York
and Dr. S. M. Ervin-Tripp for the two ñgures in Chapter 3 from
"Sociolinguistics" by S. M. Ervin-Tripp in Advances in Experimental
Social Psychology, Vol. 4.
xi
The Author
Kurt Danziger (D. Phil. University of Oxford, England) is Professor of
Psychology at York University, Toronto, Canada. He has held university
teaching and research appointments in Australia, Indonesia, and South
Africa. His primary interests are in methodology and theory related to the
study of processes of interpersonal interaction, socialization, and the
history of psychology. He has made numerous contributions to scholarly
publications and has edited a volume of readings on socialization. He is
also the author of a book on socialization which has been translated into
several European languages. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychologi­
cal Association and has been a member of working groups of that body
and of the Social Science Research Council of Canada concerned with
various aspects of research policy.
Introduction
In spite of some notable exceptions the discipline of social psychology
continues to suffer from the consequences of a long outmoded set of basic
assumptions whose basic perspectives not only reduce the significance of
many of its research studies but severely limit the importance of these
studies for the understanding of vital areas of human interaction.
Some of these assumptions are a relic of the historical fact that, at least
in North America, social psychology has been largely an outgrowth of the
study of individual psychology and has been slow to develop its own
fundamental perspectives and shed the metatheoretical burdens of its
ancestor.
Among these traditional preconceptions, going back to at least the
nineteenth century and sometimes beyond, the doctrine of an essentially
atomistic, monadic view of the individual plays a special role. It has led to
a marked tendency to explain the phenomena of social interaction in
essentially intraindividual terms like social motives, attitudes, cognitive
balancing mechanisms, personality characteristics, and so on. Viewing
social processes in terms of the influence that one set of intraindividual
variables has on similar variables in another individual has led to a
relative neglect of the process of communication, which constitutes the
ongoing interrelationship between individuals. The possibility that the
relationships among individuals may be immanent in the messages that
pass between them has too often been neglected in favor of a reification
of purely individual qualities that are supposed to express themselves in
these messages (Bateson, 1972).
A closely related preconception is based on an excessively rationalistic
xiii
xiv Introduction
or a closely related utilitarian view of man which in social psychology
leads to the presupposition that what is exchanged between individuals is
information (in a restricted cognitive sense) or reinforcements of essen
tially intraindividual dispositions. This leads to an elevation of the verbal
code to the level of a prototype for ah communication (cf. Wiener et ai,
1972) and to the conception of changes in the communication process
solely in terms of intraindividual learning mechanisms that are not
essentiahy different from the learning that takes place in a nonsocial
context.
Such a perspective is indissolubly hnked with methodological prescrip
tions that are based on an essentially linear model of cause and eifect
relationships, as in classical physics. Instead of attempts to study
reciprocal interindividual relationships we get investigations of one-way
influences based on a sharp distinction between antecedent and conse
quent variables. The applicability of studies based on a rigid distinction
between sources and recipients of influence to situations where mutual
influence prevails must be seriously questioned. Nor is it likely that the
role of the wider social context can be effectively dealt with by a mere
multiplication of discrete antecedent variables in conventional research
designs. The basic limitations of the linear social influence model are that
it proceeds as though the cybernetic revolution in science had never
happened, as though feedback mechanisms had no place in human
interaction, and as though social psychological events could be treated as
closed systems rather than open systems which maintain a constant
interchange of information and energy across their boundaries.
If we are to escape from the aridities of much of the conventional social
psychological literature and develop an alternative perspective, it would
be healthy to begin by taking a look at what actually happens in a few
real-life situations marked by strenuous attempts at exerting influence in a
face-to-face setting. Chapter 1 represents a step in this direction, taking
its chief examples from the exercise of salesmanship and from the
interrogation of prisoners—criminal, military, and political.
What are some of the more striking features of such situations in the
light of our fundamental concerns? The ñrst thing we might notice is that
the interchanges between salesman and potential customer or between
interrogator and prisoner are essentially concerned with the definition of
their interrelationship. On a purely rational level questions of outcome are
clearly involved: Is the potential customer going to buy? Is the prisoner
going to confess or supply desired information? But the nature of these
outcomes is deeply dependent on the interpersonal relationship that
Introduction xv
develops between the contestants. Every practical guide to salesmen and
to interrogators recognizes this most explicitly. If a certain structure can
be imposed on the interpersonal relationship the desired outcome can be
relied upon, irrespective of purely rational or utilitarian considerations,
and the successful resistance of the "target" person depends equally on
establishing an alternative definition of the interpersonal relationship.
What does the imposition of a particular definition of the interpersonal
relationship mean in practice? It certainly does not mean an explicit
verbal agreement but rather the eliciting of the appropriate social feed­
back from the other person whose communications must imply his
implicit acceptance of the proposed interpersonal relationship. Without
such appropriate feedback the influence attempt fails. Typically, the
contest between the participants in such situations is not decided at once;
in the case of political prisoners it generally develops over a period of
many months. But even where the time scale is relatively brief the picture
is one of a stepwise development of reciprocal feedback, gradually
proceeding in a certain direction. Strictly speaking the communication
process is not by any means circular because it never returns to its
starting point and because both participants actively throw in new
material; a spiral or helix provides a better pictorial model of what takes
place (Dance, 1967), although such an image exaggerates the element of
progressive development and does not allow for the sudden changes of
direction and ups and downs which often characterize these situations.
The process of psychotherapy, which is examined in Chapter 6,
provides an illustration of essentially the same principles of interpersonal
communication in a practical setting. Traditionally, this process has been
analyzed in terms of the intrapersonal dispositions of the participants, the
personality structure of the patient, and the skills of the therapist. Such
formulations automatically lead to a linear model of the psychotherapeu­
tic process in which influence passes unidirectionally from therapist to
client. But a number of studies reviewed in Chapter 6 have shown quite
clearly that the client in his turn influences the style of the therapist quite
profoundly. Unintended affective expressions and manipulation of the
interaction by declining appropriate feedback or providing paradoxical
feedback are not the prerogative of the therapist. At the same time, both
the verbal and the nonverbal communication of the members of this
dyadic system may, over a period of time, show convergencies that are
anything but deliberate.
The fact that the study of social skills requires a very different level of
analysis from the investigation of individual capacities emerges very