Communication In Personal Relationships Research Articles

Digital touch for remote personal communication: An emergent sociotechnical imaginary

This article makes legible emergent social imaginaries of digital touch for remote communication in personal relationships, with attention to digital touch interfaces. It draws on data from rapid prototyping research workshops with apprentice professionals embedded within digital communication. Touch is discussed with respect to four analytical themes: materiality, body, emplacement and temporality. We illustrate how participants’ past and present experiences and future visions of remote digital touch thread through these themes and weave together to form a hegemonic, emergent sociotechnical imaginary of digital touch. The article contributes to social debates within digital personal remote communication by foregrounding touch, the material and the sensorial. The article’s novel interdisciplinary framework (combining design-based rapid prototyping with a multimodal and multi-sensorial analysis within the frame of the sociotechnical imaginary) also contributes to methodology around future-facing phenomena, prior to the process of their solidification into material, political formations.

Support seeker expectations, support message quality, and supportive interaction processes and outcomes: The case of the comforting computer program revisited

Developing a complete understanding of supportive communication in personal relationships requires considering the role of support seekers. We examined the influence of seeker expectations and verbal person centeredness (VPC) on the nature and outcomes of supportive interactions. Participants discussed a personal problem during an interaction with a fictional computer program called “ListenerBot.” Participants’ expectations about the helpfulness of ListenerBot and the quality of ListenerBot’s feedback in the form of VPC were manipulated. Participants in the helpful prime condition wrote more words during the interaction and evaluated ListenerBot more favorably than participants in the unhelpful prime condition. Relative to participants who received low VPC feedback, participants who received high VPC feedback evaluated ListenerBot more positively and experienced a greater reduction in emotional distress. Tests for indirect effects showed that VPC and the expectations prime contributed to participants’ reduction in emotional distress through influencing their evaluations of ListenerBot.

The Convergence Communication Scale

A rational-theoretical approach to scale development was employed to develop and evaluate a scale to measure submissive communication in personal relationships. A convergence communication pattern compels submissive relational partners to interpret the world around them in ways consistent with dominant partners. This study was guided by two aims: (1) to develop a valid and reliable measure of convergence communication – the Convergence Communication Scale – and (2) to conduct a preliminary examination of the effects of convergence communication on submissive partners’ mental health. A measurement instrument was developed (α = .95) and tested in two separate administrations ( N = 379; N = 373), revealing associations between convergence communication, depression, and learned helplessness for both males and females, predicting depression specifically for females.

In the wake of transgressions: Examining forgiveness communication in personal relationships

This study evaluated several structural equation models testing the relations between forgiveness communication styles, offense and offender variables, and relational characteristics. Results suggest partners' style of forgiveness (i.e., direct, indirect, and conditional) is shaped by offense and offender variables. Specifically, offender remorse positively predicted both direct and conditional forgiveness, offense severity negatively predicted indirect forgiveness, and blameworthiness positively predicted conditional forgiveness. Results also demonstrated that whereas direct forgiving following transgressions improved relationships (i.e., decreased relational damage and increased satisfaction), conditional forgiving detracted from relationships (i.e., increased relational damage). Indirect forgiveness, in contrast to the other styles, was unrelated to relational damage. These and other findings are discussed in light of research/theorizing on interpersonal forgiveness, relational maintenance, facework, and communication accommodation.

Factors that Influence Recipients’ Appraisals of Hurtful Communication

Interpersonal relationships provide a context in which hurtful messages are likely to be exchanged. This study examined the factors that influence recipients’ appraisals of hurtevoking messages. Specifically, this investigation examined three types of appraisals individuals make about a comment that hurt their feelings: the extent to which it reflects Concern, provides Comfort, or offers Help. Results revealed that both distal (e.g., relationship satisfaction and closeness) and proximal factors (e.g., message intensity and message hurtfulness) influenced recipients’ appraisals of hurtful statements. Interestingly, the only variable that was consistently a significant predictor of each type of appraisal was message intensity. How a message was stated was pivotal in shaping recipients’ appraisals of it. Given the importance of investigating how people navigate relational transgressions, the findings of the present study shed light on the factors that may help to promote less negative interpretations of hurtful communication in personal relationships.

Managing rapport in talk: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the motivational concerns underlying the management of relations

This paper focuses on the motivational concerns that underlie the management of relations. In linguistics, the management of relations has been discussed extensively within politeness theory, and so the paper starts by identifying four key issues of controversy in politeness theory: (a) should ‘polite’ language use be explained in terms of face (e.g. Brown, Penelope, Levinson, Stephen C., 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage, CUP, Cambridge. [Originally published as Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomenon. In: Goody, Esther, (Ed.), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. CUP, New York, 1978), conversational maxims (e.g. Leech, Geoffrey N., 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Longman, London), and/or conversational rights (e.g. Fraser, Bruce, 1990. Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 14 (2), 219–236); (b) why are speech acts such as orders interpersonally sensitive — is it because they are a threat to our autonomy (Brown and Levinson, 1987 [1978]), or because of cost–benefit concerns (Leech, 1983); (c) is Brown and Levinson's concept of negative face too individually focused, and should a social identity component be included (Matsumoto, Yoshiko, 1988. Reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 12, 403–426); and (d) is face just a personal/individual concern or can it be a group concern (Gao, Ge, 1996. Self and other: a Chinese perspective on interpersonal relationships. In: Gudykunst, W.B., Ting-Toomey, S., Nishida, T. (Eds.), Communication in Personal Relationships Across Cultures, Sage, London. pp. 81–101.)? The paper then uses reports of authentic rapport sensitive incidents to throw light on these controversial issues and to find out the relational management concerns that people perceive in their everyday lives. It maintains that such data is important to politeness theory, because linguistic politeness needs to be studied within the situated social psychological context in which it occurs. The paper ends by presenting and arguing for a conceptual framework that draws a fundamental distinction between face and sociality rights, and that incorporates an independent/interdependent perspective, thus providing a more comprehensive framework for analysing the management of relations than is currently available.

The Dance of Connection: How to Communicate Better in all Your Relationships The Dance of Connection: How to Communicate Better in all Your Relationships

The author of this self-help book – herself a psychologist and psychotherapist – focuses on communication in personal relationships, including couples, parents, children and friends.

Men's and Women's Evaluations of Communication Skills in Personal Relationships: When Sex Differences Make a Difference and when they don't

Much recent research on gender and communication has emphasized differences in men's and women's communicative conduct, with some theorists going so far as to claim that men and women constitute different cultures. However, comparatively little research has assessed both similarities and differences in men and women's communication to determine whether the sexes are more alike or different. The present paper provides such assessments with respect to men's and women's evaluations of the importance of diverse communication skills in two relationships, friendship and romance. Two studies are reported. In Study 1, participants (N = 382) evaluated the importance of eight communication skills in same-sex friendships. Results indicated that although females rated affectively oriented communication skills as somewhat more important than males and males rated instrumentally oriented skills as somewhat more important than females, both males and females overwhelmingly viewed affectively oriented skills as more important than instrumental skills. Study 2 sought to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1 by having participants ( N = 685) evaluate the importance of eight communication skills for either same-sex friendship or opposite-sex romances. Results virtually identical to those of Study 1 were obtained in Study 2 for both friendship and romance. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for our understanding of communication in personal relation ships and the different cultures perspective.

Relational cognition complexity and relational communication in personal relationships

This investigation examined the influence of individual differences in relational cognition complexity on patterns of relational communication in personal relationships. Relational cognition complexity of members of married couples was assessed via the Relational Cognition Complexity Instrument (RCCI). Couples discussed topics which were salient and non‐salient for their relationship and the recorded conversations were transcribed and reliably coded utilizing the Relational Communication Coding Scheme. RCCI scores were not related to the relative distribution of an individual partner's dominant, submissive and neutral relational communication moves. The male partner's RCCI score was moderately positively related to the couple's transactional redundancy, especially during discussions of salient topics. Couples with a male partner scoring relatively high on the RCCI were characterized by greater mutual expression of support and lower mutual expression of non‐support, when compared to couples with a male sco...

Invited Article Fudging with Friends and Lying to Lovers: Deceptive Communication in Personal Relationships

Although a considerable body of recent research has addressed the problem of deceptive communication, few studies have examined deceptive communication in personal relationships. We argue that the occurrence, substance, and outcomes of deceptive communication are markedly influenced by the nature of the communicators' relationship. To redeem this claim, we examine how several differences between impersonal and personal relationships may influence deceptive exchanges, and consider some of the implications of the distinctions for future research dealing with deceptive communication in personal relationships.