What is interactive model of communication?

Interactional View

Family Communication

- Family is a system (cybernetic tradition)

- Watzlawick: individuals must be understood within a family system (psychiatry)

- Family (system) supersedes the individual regarding communication within the family

- Relationships: complex functions

- Each family: unique game; unique reality

Axioms of Interpersonal Communication

- Homeostasis: Status quo; strong compulsion to maintain

- Resistance to change: Destructive.

Must understand axioms: "grammar" or rules of "game"

- One cannot not communicate

One cannot not influence

- Communication = content + relationship

Latter determines the former

Meta-communication: Communication about communication

- Early definition: Meta-communication is any relational communication

- Meta-communication dominates when family/relationship in trouble

- "Sick" relationships only get better when members are willing to acknowledge meta-communication

- Relationship depend on "punctuation"

Where does one mark the beginning of an interaction?

Problems arise when individual consistently sees himself as reacting

- All communication is either symmetrical or complementary

Control, status, power are bedrock assumptions of the interactional view

Symmetrical interchanges: predicated on equal power

- Complimentary interchanges: predicated on differential power

- Healthy relationships: both kinds of communication

Rogers: "reciprocal complementarity" - shared dominance - correlates with relational satisfaction

- Must assess an exchange of at least two messages to determine nature of exchange

- Coding system

o One-up communication

o One- down

o One- across

- Rogers: Flexibility highly significant predictor of relational satisfaction

- Family systems are highly resistant to change

- Double binds: competing/contradictory demands on members of the system

- Paradox: High status member demands that low-status member behave as if relationship is symmetrical

o Example: "second shift"

- Reframing: changes the games via the rules

Altering punctuation

Must analyze from outside the system

Adopt a new frame

Usually requires outside assistance

Critique

Modifications:

- Not all nonverbal behavior is communication (i.e, you cannot not communicate). Difference between information and communication

- The term "meta-communication" should be reserved for explicit communication about communication, not all relational communication

Equifinality: Outcomes could be cause by any number of factors and/or combinations of them