Interpersonal Communication

Relational Patterns

A.    Supportive and Defensive Climates

The orientation of individuals within relationships and their patterns of communication with one another create the climate of communication. Climates and individual behaviors can be characterized along a continuum from highly supportive to highly defensive. There are a number of communication behaviors that tend to create and maintain defensive climates within relationships.

·     Evaluating : Judging other’s behavior

·    Controlling : Striving to control or manage other’s behavior

·  Developing Strategy : Planning techniques, hidden agendas, and moves to use in  relationships, as you might in a chess game

·    Remaining Neutral : Remaining aloof and remote from other’s feeling and concerns

·    Asserting Superiority : Seeing and expressing yourself as more worthy than others

·  Conveying Certainty : Assuming and acting as though you are absolutely certain in your knowledge and perceptions

In contrast, the following behaviors are seen as contributing to a supportive climate:

·    Describing : Describing rather than judging or evaluating the other person’s behavior

·   Maintaining A Problem Orientation : Focusing on specific problem to be solved

·  Being Spontaneous : Dealing with situation as they develop, without a hidden agenda or “master Plan”

·     Asserting Equality : seeing and presenting ourselves as equal to others

·   Conveying Provisionalism : Maintaining a degree of uncertainty and tentativeness in our thoughts and beliefs

B.     Dependencies and Counter Dependencies

A Dependency relationship exists when one individual in a relationship who is highly dependent on another for support, money, work, leadership, or guidance generalizes this dependency  to other facets of the relationship. The dependent pattern may become more generalized. The dependent person comes to take cues from the other, on whom he or she has learned. At other points in time, the dependency is in the opposite direction. In this circumstances, one individual relates to the other not as a dependent but, instead, as a counter dependent, the counter dependent person characteristically disagrees. As dependencies and counter dependencies become a habitual way of reacting, they guide, shape and often overshadow the specific content of conversation.  

C.    Progressive and Regressive Spirals

In progressive spiral, the reciprocal message processing of the interactants lead to a sense of “positiveness” in their experiences. The satisfaction each person derives builds on itself, and the result is a relationship that is a source of growing pleasure and value for the participant. The opposite kind of pattern can also develop, in which each exchange contributes to a progressive decrease in satisfaction and harmony. Like dependencies, spirals often take on a life of their own, fueled by the momentum they themselves create. Overtime, the spirals that characterize any relationship alternate between progressive and regressive. However, in order for a relationship to maintain strength, momentum and continuity, the progressive phases must outweigh and/or outlast the regressive periods.

Factors That Influence Patterns

a)      Stage of Relationship and Context

Communication patterns in a relationship vary greatly from one stage to another. Naturally, people meeting each other for the first time interact in a different manner than people who have lived together for several years. The nature of interpersonal patterns also varies depending of the context in which conversation is taking place. People meeting in a grocery store are quite likely to act and react differently to one another than if they are talking in a bar or at a business meeting. Together, these two factors account for much of the variation in the patterns of communication within relationship.

b)     Interpersonal Needs and Styles

The interpersonal needs and style of the individuals involved represent others influences on communication within relationships. Often noted as especially important in this way are the interpersonal needs for affection, inclusion, and control. William Schutz has suggested that our desires relative to giving and receiving affection, being included in the activities of others and including them in ours, and controlling other people and being controlled by them are very basic to our orientations to social of all kinds. We each develop our own specific need relative to control, affection, and inclusion, as we do in other areas. The particular profile of needs we have, and how these match with those of other people, can be a major determinant of the relational patterns that result. Interpersonal style also plays a key role in shaping the communication patterns that emerge in relationships. Some people are more comfortable operating in an outgoing, highly verbal manner in their dealing with others, while others characteristically adopt a more passive and restrained interpersonal style, due either to preference or apprehension about speaking in social situations. Those who use a more outgoing style deal with their thoughts and feelings in a forthright. In contrast to an externalizing style of interpersonal communication, the internalizing style involves “absorbing” the verbal and non verbal message of others, giving the outward appearance of acceptance, congeniality and even encouragement, regardless of one’s thoughts or feelings.

c)      Power

Interpersonal communication within relationship is also shaped by the distribution of power. There are many similar situation where asymmetries affect interpersonal communication. Circumstance that generally has a substantial impact on the interpersonal communication patterns that develop. In peer-peer, colleague-colleague, or other relationships of this type, there is a potential for symmetry. Where this possibility exists, interpersonal communication creates rather than perpetuates any dependencies that result.

d)      Conflict

The presence of conflict “an incompatibility of interest between two or more people giving rise to struggles between them”. Can have a major impact on communication dynamics. Communication researcher Allan Sillars suggest than when people are involved in conflict situation they develop their own personal theories to explain the situation. These theories, in turn, have a great influence on how interactants deal with one another. Siller finds that there are three general communication strategies used in conflict resolution.

·   Passive-Indirect Methods : Avoiding the conflict-producing situation and people

·   Distributive Methods : Maximizing one’s own gain and the other’s losses

·    Integrative Methods : Achieving mutually positives outcomes for booth individuals and the relationship