Group Decision Making

In almost every college course group work is a requirement. Group work forces you to associate people you might not otherwise talk to. All members of a group have different experiences and knowledge, putting that together can lead to good decision making. Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran are"convinced that group interaction has a positive effect on the final decision."(Griffin p. 223). Hirokawa and Gouran understand that it is not easy to come to a decision when in a group. There are four functions of effective decision making, those are (1) problem analysis (2) goal setting (3) identification of alternatives, and (4) evaluation of positive and negative consequences. This process helps a group acheive the best goal without as much headache.

Rules of the Game

Families are very complicated. Chapter 13 talks about the family as a system, "a self regulating, interdependent network of feedback loops guided by members rules."( Griffin p. 170). Whatever happens in a family, big or small has some affect on all of the others who are part of the family. No relationship is simple, like griffin said, "Relationships are complex functions in the same sense that mathematical functions link multiple variables."(Griffin p. 170). I come from a big family so I am particularly interested in Watzlawick's interactionalist view. My family has become more complicated as we have all become older and have started our own lives. My oldest sister is married and has a baby now. All of the changes and problems they go through has had an impact on all of our lives. Even though I don't live with my parents or younger sisters,yet I hear every piece of news that happens. My family is just like the mobile that griffin describes, when one string is is severed the whole thing shifts and becomes off balance.

Relational Dialectics

Chapter 12 is about Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery's theory called relational dialectics. Relational dialectics is explained to be a tug-of-war that constantly happens in relationships. griffin says that, "relationships are always in flux; the only certainty is change."(Griffin p. 156). In all relationships we seek closeness and openness, but in those same relationships we also want some mystery. This keeps are relationships alive. I think the death of a relationship is when things start to become too boring and predictable. It's easy to fall into the same routine though, I noticed that for two months my weekends seemed to be like a formula that I followed. Friday would be dinner and a movie, Saturday would be spent shopping or dinner again, and Sunday would be spent on the couch. I started to crave something different. I wanted to be surprised by my boyfriend so things didn't feel like they were dying.

Face to Face Communication

While reading Chapter 11 I first agreed with Griffin about how he and his friends laughed at the idea of interpersonal communication through CMC, communication-mediated communication. I have always laughed at people who say they found true love in a chat room. How can you know someone without even seeing them? I don't think that CMC provides enough information about the other persons true feelings or whether they really mean what they are saying. The media richness theory says that communication with someone face to face is better because of verbal and nonverbal cues that are exchanged while face to face. I know from personal experience that more of my familys arguments have happened over a miscommunication over emails than anything else. I prefer to communicate face to face especially when discussing something important.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory: How I use it

In chapter 10 I read about Uncertainty reduction theory. The theory focuses on how humans use communication as a way to understand one another. When we first meet someone we are essentially strangers. We want to reduce the uncertainty about each other. The curiosity about other people is explained by Berger to be three prior conditions. The three conditions are Anticipation of future interaction, incentive value, and deviance. All of these factors make us want to solve the "puzzle" of who the stranger is.
This theory is one that I can agree with. I am always very curious as to why people do the things they do. Even though my boyfriend and I have been dating for almost five years, I still find myself trying to predict and explain some of the things he does or will do. He has a strange attachment to his playstation. I have tried many times to understand what the connection is with that but I doubt I ever will, probably because I am a girl who does not see the point to video games. From the reading I have learned that I have a lot of behavioral and cognitive questions to ask.

Personality Structure and Social Penetration

Chapter 9 discusses the theory of social penetration. Social Psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor explained that the "social penetration process explains how relational closeness develops." (p. 114). Making friends and starting relationships has always just been something that happens. i had never thought of the it as a process. This theory is so interesting to me because it is almost like a manual for choosing and judging possible valuable friendships. I love the example of an onion with layers. I immediately thought of the movie Shrek, I loved the onion and layers visual because I had used it before, not even knowing about this theory In a public speaking class I took our first speech was a self introduction. We were to think of a creative way to tell the class about ourselves. I thought of a bunch of different ideas but I wanted to show everyone that I had layers. I used the onion example and got an A on that speech. I see how it is so tough to really get to know someone because there are so many factors that need to become aligned in order to gain someones trust. I have had a lot of good friends but I only have a few very close friends.

The Looking Glass Self

Reading chapter 5 I learned about Mead's concept of self. Mead claimed, “we paint our self-portrait with brush strokes that come from taking the role of the other- imagining how we look to another person.” (p. 63). Humans have the ability to look at ourselves from other perspectives. Looking at our actions from another point of view helps to define who we really are. Looking glass self is defined in the text as, the mental self-image that results from taking the role of the other; the objective self; me. Without other people we would have no sense of self. We wouldn't be able to see others reactions to be able to judge our own behavior. I am very close to my sisters, we even look a lot alike, I have even been told by others that we act alike. Sometimes I will see or hear my sister do something that bugs me and then realize I do the same thing. Its because of the looking glass self concept that I am able to realize we act alike.

Words and the Meaning We Give to Them

Language is a complex thing. There are many languages in the world. One country for example might speak more than one language and have many different dialects and slang. Griffin says in chapter 5 that “meaning is negotiated through the use of language”, meaning people use language as a tool to put meaning to objects to help us communicate better. Herbert Blumer of the University of California, Berkeley, came up with the term symbolic interactionism, “communication through symbols, like people talking to each other”. We make up names for things and it helps define our culture. On page 61 in our textbook, Griffin asks the reader to read a puzzle. I read the puzzle and did not get it. I read the story over and over convinced that I missed some detail about whether the father survives. I even thought that the surgeon could have been a step father or adopted father. I am ashamed to say that even as a woman, I associated being a surgeon as being a male job. Our society has associated and defined meanings of words that are not always true.

7 Traditions in the Field of Communication Theory

In chapter 4 Griffin maps out the seven traditions that professor Robert Craig of University of Colorado uses as a "sophisticated solution to help the many different communication theories. The traditions that I seemed to identify most with is the socio-psychological tradition. This is one of the traditions that has been discussed in my previous COMM classes, which is why it is most familiar. This theory makes sense to me because of its simplicity. The framework that was laid out by Psychologist Carl Hovland consists of "who says what to whom and with what effect" (p. 42). That is the base of any communication, there is who, what, and whom. I thought the study that Hovland and his colleagues did was very interesting. The experiment was to see if a message from a highly credible source could change opinions. I thought about how Oprah Winfrey, the who and highly credible source, swayed thousands of Americans on who to vote for, the what, just by backing Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. If just any middle aged women said she was voting for Obama, not too many people would shift their vote, but when someone is credible they are likely to be listened to.