Intimate
Relationships
Rowland S.Miller
习读专用，不作商用，如侵联删。
C H A P T E R 5
Communication
（I）
Nonverbal Communication
◆ Verbal Communication ◆ Dysfunctional Communication and What to Do About It
◆ For Your Consideration ◆ Chapter Summary
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Imagine that you and your romantic partner are seated alone in a comfort- able room, revisiting the topic of your last disagreement. Your conversation is more structured than most because before you say anything to your partner, you record a quick rating of what you intend to say next. You rate the intended impact of your message by pushing one of five buttons with labels ranging from super negative through neutral to super positive. Then, after you speak, your partner quickly rates his or her perception of your message in the same way before replying to you. This process continues as you take turns voicing your views and listening to what your partner says in return. You’re engag- ing in a procedure called the talk table that allows researchers to get a record of both your private thoughts and your public actions. The notable point is that if you’re currently unhappy with your relationship, you may not intend to annoy or belittle your lover, but you’re likely to do so, anyway. Unhappy couples don’t differ on average from happy, contented couples in what they are trying to say to each other, but the impact of their messages—what their partners think they hear—is more critical and disrespectful nonetheless (Gottman et al., 1976). And this is consequential because this single afternoon at the talk table predicts how happy the two of you will be later on; spouses whose communications are frustrating will be less happily married 5 years later (Markman, 1981).
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Communication is incredibly important in intimate relationships. And it’s more complex than we usually realize. Let’s consider the simple model of communication shown in Figure 5.1. Communication begins with the sender’s intentions, the message that the sender wishes to convey. The problem is that the sender’s intentions are private and known only to him or her; for them to be communicated to the listener, they must be encoded into verbal and nonverbal actions that are public and observable. A variety of factors, such as the send- er’s mood or social skill, or noisy distractions in the surrounding environment, can influence or interfere with this process. Then, the receiver must decode the speaker’s actions, and interference can occur here as well (Albright et al., 2004). The final result is an effect on the receiver that is again private and known only to him or her.
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The point here is that getting from one person’s intentions to the impact of that person’s message on a listener involves several steps at which error and misunderstanding may occur (Puccinelli, 2010). We usually assume that our messages have the impact that we intended, but we rarely know that they do. More often than we realize (Keysar & Henly, 2002), we face an interpersonal gap in which the sender’s intentions differ from the effect on the receiver. Indeed, such gaps are actually more likely to occur in close relationships than they are among strangers (Savitsky et al., 2011). We don’t expect our partners to misunderstand us, so we don’t work as hard as we do with strangers to check that we’re on the same page. Interpersonal gaps are frustrating. And not only are they related to dissat- isfaction, they can even prevent rewarding relationships from ever beginning! Consider what happens when a shy man has a chance to make his interest in dating someone known to her. Chatting after class, he may make a timid, inno- cent inquiry—“What are you doing this weekend?”—thinking that his romantic intentions are transparent and hoping for an enthusiastic reply. Unfortunately, he probably thinks that his amorous aims are more obvious to his potential partner than they really are (Cameron & Vorauer, 2008). If she fails to notice that he’s hinting about a date and makes a bland, noncommittal response, he may perceive an explicit rejection of a clear-cut invitation that she never actu- ally received. Wounded, he may then keep his distance, and she may never realize what has transpired.
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This sort of thing actually happens (Vorauer et al., 2003). I don’t want it to happen to you, however, so I’ll do what I can in this chapter to help you close your own interpersonal gaps. But we’ll start our survey of communication in relationships not with what people say in interaction but with what they do. Accompanying spoken words in communication is a remarkable range of nonverbal actions that also carry many messages, whether you intend them or not.
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5.1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
Imagine that as part of a research study, you put on a cap that identifies you as a member of either a group that people like and admire or one that they loathe, and you walk around town with it on, shopping, eating lunch, and applying for some jobs. You’ve put on the cap without looking at it, and you don’t know what you’re wearing. Would you be able to tell what sort of cap you have on by watching others’ reactions to you? You might (Hebl et al., 2002). If you’re wearing an obnoxious cap, your waitress may not be as warm and cheerful as usual. People you pass at the mall may glance at you and dis- play a quick expression of distaste or disgust. Even if no one mentions your cap, others’ behavior may clearly indicate that they don’t like what they see. In fact, because you’d be curious and alert to how others responded, their sentiments might be unmistakably plain.
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In such a situation, you’d probably notice the remarkable amount of infor- mation carried by nonverbal behavior, which includes all of the things people do in their interactions except for their spoken words and syntax. Indeed, non- verbal behavior can serve several functions in our transactions with others. Table 5.1 lists five such functions, and I’ll emphasize three of them.
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First, nonverbal behavior provides information about people’s moods or meaning. If you playfully tease someone, for instance, your facial expression and the sound of your voice may be the only way listeners can tell that you don’t intend to be antagonistic. This function is so important that we have had to invent emoticons, the imitation facial expressions people put in text mes- sages, to sometimes show what we mean.
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Nonverbal behavior also plays a vital part in regulating interaction. Non- verbal displays of interest often determine whether or not interaction ever begins, and, thereafter, subtle nonverbal cues allow people to take turns in a conversation seamlessly and gracefully.
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Finally, by expressing intimacy and carrying signals of power and status, nonverbal behavior helps to define the relationships we share with others. People who are intimate with each other act differently toward one another than acquaintances do, and dominant, high-status people act differently than subordinates do. Without a word being spoken, observers may be able to tell who likes whom and who’s the boss.
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How are these functions carried out? The answer involves all of the diverse components of nonverbal communication, so we’ll survey them next.
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