,Week 1 What do we talk about?
Article 1 Primary and secondary goals in the production of interpersonal influence messages
Primary goal of communication of interpersonal influence messages is the desire to bring
about a behavioral change in a target person (efficacy)
Compliance-gaining theory: isolates two types of single goals (1) social actors must confront
the issue of how to behave so as to produce the desired outcome and (2) considering the
costs associated with different approaches
Persuasive strategy selection: is based on two criteria (1) desire to be effective and (2)
desire to conform the constraints inherent in the particular situation in which the influence
attempt takes place
- Primary goals (bring about behavioural change in a target person)
- Secondary goals (objective of several sorts that derive directly from more general
motivations recurring in a person’s life)
Secondary goals of communication of interpersonal influence messages (appropriateness)
1. Identity goals (related to the self-concept, internal standard of behaviour that may or
may not overlap with expectations about how other should behave → derive from
morals, principles and preferences)
2. Interaction goals (social appropriateness, representing source’s desire to manage
impression successfully)
3. Resource goals (increasing or maintaining valued assets)
- Relational assets refer to personal rewards and gratifications which arise from
participation in a relationship with the target
- Material assets refer to physical objects
- Physical assets refer to aspects of the source’s health which might be
compromised in an interpersonal influence attempt
4. Arousal management goals (communicative events have arousal properties, are
experienced as pleasurable or pleasurable)
Distinguishing primary and secondary goals
- Two classes differ
- Primary goals are more central
- Awareness of a primary goal stimulates a consideration of secondary goals
- Notion of influence goal alone has no substance
,Article 2 A Cognitive Approach to Human Communication: An Action Assembly Theory
Humans are actors and the ‘stuff’ of social interaction is behavior → the cognitive system has
developed to facilitate action and that the functions of the cognitive system are best
understood in terms of their implications for actions
! Developing a model of the communicative output system is hard: the stream of social
behavior is multi-channeled, multi-functional and reflects a complex array of levels of
organization
The basic observation concerns that communicative behavior is at once novel and creative
yet patterned and repetitive (social behavior of any individual is composed of a repertoire of
repetitive words, topics, themes and instrumental phrases, but any particular discourse is
almost a unique combination of these elements)
A general theoretical framework
The human mind is a contains conceptual and procedural knowledge
- Procedural: things we have learned to do in order to act efficaciously
A procedural record is formed when a given action results in a particular outcome
Theoretical propositions
The theoretical statements of the general framework assume the status of axioms in the
present theory:
1. A procedural record is a modular entity containing a specification for action and an
outcome associated with that action
2. Each procedural record is characterized by a level of strength reflecting the status of
the action-outcome contingency of the record. The strength of any record is a
function of its recency and frequency of activation given that the action-outcome
relationship continues to hold
3. The output representation of action-to-be-taken is a hierarchy of levels of increasing
specificity where each level is relatively autonomous in its exclusion of output
demands
4. At any moment a procedural record possesses some level of activation. In order for a
procedural record to impact upon output processing, this level of activation must
exceed some threshold value
5. The activating conditions for any element of the procedural store are defined as
occurrence of a goal to which that record is relevant plus the occurrence of any
conditions which have proven to mediate the action-outcome contingency contained
in the record
It is possible to specify seven types of functions relevant to human interaction:
1. Interaction functions: include those ends which people attempt to accomplish by
communicating with others
2. Content formulation functions: concern the formulation of locutionary, illocutionary
and thematic dimensions of behaviour
, 3. Management functions: derive from demands for topic continuity and chaining.
4. Utterance formulation functions: derive from lexical, syntactic, and articulatory
requirements for the formation of intelligible utterances
5. Regulatory functions: concern speaker-turn regulation in ongoing interaction.
6. Homeostatic functions: concern the need to regulate physiological controlled
quantities during interaction
7. Coordinative functions: concern the functional integration of effector units involved in
articulation and nonverbal behaviour
Levels of output representation (from abstract to specific)
- Interactional level: an assessment of current state plus projected states and
transitions leading to accomplishment of interaction goals
- Ideational level: a single move or transition in the discourse and contains a
specification of propositional content, illocutionary content and elements of thematic
structure
- Utterance level: a single clause contains a specification of lexical items and their
order and is phonological in nature
Article 1 Primary and secondary goals in the production of interpersonal influence messages
Primary goal of communication of interpersonal influence messages is the desire to bring
about a behavioral change in a target person (efficacy)
Compliance-gaining theory: isolates two types of single goals (1) social actors must confront
the issue of how to behave so as to produce the desired outcome and (2) considering the
costs associated with different approaches
Persuasive strategy selection: is based on two criteria (1) desire to be effective and (2)
desire to conform the constraints inherent in the particular situation in which the influence
attempt takes place
- Primary goals (bring about behavioural change in a target person)
- Secondary goals (objective of several sorts that derive directly from more general
motivations recurring in a person’s life)
Secondary goals of communication of interpersonal influence messages (appropriateness)
1. Identity goals (related to the self-concept, internal standard of behaviour that may or
may not overlap with expectations about how other should behave → derive from
morals, principles and preferences)
2. Interaction goals (social appropriateness, representing source’s desire to manage
impression successfully)
3. Resource goals (increasing or maintaining valued assets)
- Relational assets refer to personal rewards and gratifications which arise from
participation in a relationship with the target
- Material assets refer to physical objects
- Physical assets refer to aspects of the source’s health which might be
compromised in an interpersonal influence attempt
4. Arousal management goals (communicative events have arousal properties, are
experienced as pleasurable or pleasurable)
Distinguishing primary and secondary goals
- Two classes differ
- Primary goals are more central
- Awareness of a primary goal stimulates a consideration of secondary goals
- Notion of influence goal alone has no substance
,Article 2 A Cognitive Approach to Human Communication: An Action Assembly Theory
Humans are actors and the ‘stuff’ of social interaction is behavior → the cognitive system has
developed to facilitate action and that the functions of the cognitive system are best
understood in terms of their implications for actions
! Developing a model of the communicative output system is hard: the stream of social
behavior is multi-channeled, multi-functional and reflects a complex array of levels of
organization
The basic observation concerns that communicative behavior is at once novel and creative
yet patterned and repetitive (social behavior of any individual is composed of a repertoire of
repetitive words, topics, themes and instrumental phrases, but any particular discourse is
almost a unique combination of these elements)
A general theoretical framework
The human mind is a contains conceptual and procedural knowledge
- Procedural: things we have learned to do in order to act efficaciously
A procedural record is formed when a given action results in a particular outcome
Theoretical propositions
The theoretical statements of the general framework assume the status of axioms in the
present theory:
1. A procedural record is a modular entity containing a specification for action and an
outcome associated with that action
2. Each procedural record is characterized by a level of strength reflecting the status of
the action-outcome contingency of the record. The strength of any record is a
function of its recency and frequency of activation given that the action-outcome
relationship continues to hold
3. The output representation of action-to-be-taken is a hierarchy of levels of increasing
specificity where each level is relatively autonomous in its exclusion of output
demands
4. At any moment a procedural record possesses some level of activation. In order for a
procedural record to impact upon output processing, this level of activation must
exceed some threshold value
5. The activating conditions for any element of the procedural store are defined as
occurrence of a goal to which that record is relevant plus the occurrence of any
conditions which have proven to mediate the action-outcome contingency contained
in the record
It is possible to specify seven types of functions relevant to human interaction:
1. Interaction functions: include those ends which people attempt to accomplish by
communicating with others
2. Content formulation functions: concern the formulation of locutionary, illocutionary
and thematic dimensions of behaviour
, 3. Management functions: derive from demands for topic continuity and chaining.
4. Utterance formulation functions: derive from lexical, syntactic, and articulatory
requirements for the formation of intelligible utterances
5. Regulatory functions: concern speaker-turn regulation in ongoing interaction.
6. Homeostatic functions: concern the need to regulate physiological controlled
quantities during interaction
7. Coordinative functions: concern the functional integration of effector units involved in
articulation and nonverbal behaviour
Levels of output representation (from abstract to specific)
- Interactional level: an assessment of current state plus projected states and
transitions leading to accomplishment of interaction goals
- Ideational level: a single move or transition in the discourse and contains a
specification of propositional content, illocutionary content and elements of thematic
structure
- Utterance level: a single clause contains a specification of lexical items and their
order and is phonological in nature
