Elaboration Likelihood Management Theory

When I took Human communication class I had to do a persuasive speech. So two days before I had to present I put together a persuasive speech, so I thought. I went over my speech with some friends in they thought it was more informative then persuasive. That was and example of central route. So the night before MY speech i redid my presentation all over because they said it wasn’t persuasive enough, that’s and example of peripheral route. So the day of my speech I was very nervous, I came up there delivered like I was a drive for pizza hut, I give them the four Y’s. I felt I had a very strong arguments and lots of creditable resources that I stated, so that would be positive cognitive attitude if you liked what I was saying. If you did not care too much about what was said or if I didn’t sound very creditable that would be negative cognitive attitude. Or if you be leaved what was say but you didn’t agree on some of the things I was talking about that would be neutral cognitive attitude.

Adaptive Structuration Theory

In college, or any school setting for that matter, every class we attend has different sets of rules. Each class has it own unique type of communication. Each student knows the basic rules for each class he or she attends. Each student comes to class with the knowledge they were told to retain by reading the required material the night before. The teacher also brings his or her knowledge with them to teach the class —knowledge they learned while students themselves. A couple of days ago, I found out about a class that had little structure to it. The teacher relied on the students to make the class productive by bringing a new topic to class with them each day. Each student adapted to this method until one day a student asked the teacher “What if no body came to class with new topics. What would you do?” By him asking that question, it gave the class additional insight about the class. This was all about decision-making, and it would be the student’s choice not to interact with the teacher. Without the students communicating and bringing in new things to talk about, the class wouldn’t have had any stability and teacher would have had to change the class structure. It obvious that this type of setting is not good for all students and the teacher would have had to have had a back up way of learning. Hopefully the teacher realized that while it may have been nice to not have to come up with any lesson plans, it can come back to bite you in the butt, and maybe even cause the students to leave the class with nothing learned.

Constructivists Theory

I have a friend who recently broke up with his girlfriend. He called me, telling me the entire story. In an effort to cheer him up, I explained to him that in the world, the ratio of women to men is much greater, so why cry over one girl who obviously didn’t care about you enough to stop her from breaking your heart? I know what I said was very uplifting. After speaking to me, he called a female friend for a little woman advice. She was able to give him more comforting advice. I knew by calling someone of a different gender would play a major role in making him feel better. This situation is a perfect example of cognitive complexity. She told him let things die down before he tried talking to her, telling him “Don’t worry she will come back to you.” Her more sophisticated message offered him comfort in addition to him doing the right thing… my advice on the other hand was more of a person-centered message and would only help him for all of five minutes.

Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making Theory

I recently finished a class and as part of the requirements, we had to do a group researcher project. We met in the library every Tuesday night for the duration of the class. In our first meeting, we had conversation about who knew what to see what the focus of our project would be, engaging in what communication experts call promotive communication. Promotive communication enables people to set goals they want to accomplish. We later chose to take the traditional successful path of researching through problem analysis, goal setting and evaluation. It seems like with every research problem I’ve done, there has been that one person in the group who always shows up late, if at all, or doesn’t do their fair share of the work. This time did not prove to be different. This guy would always come late and be disruptive by talking n his cell phone. The other group members, including myself would tell him to get off the phone so that we could finish our work and be productive, an action known as counteractive communication. Once he finally realized that we would not let him continue to disrupt our progress, we were able to get back on task and finish the project.

Relational Dialectics Theory

I have a wonderful girlfriend but there is always seems to be some sort of tension between us. At times it seems like a game of tug of war, than a loving relationship. We are always having contradictory pulls that affect the way we talk and treat each other. The main thing that affects our relationships is connectedness, certainty and openness. These are all of the things she says I need to work on. She says that I am not open enough with her regarding my feelings, and believes that I am going to break up with her. I try to reassure her that I want to be with her and have no plans to leave her. (I actually want to be with her and get married, something I never saw myself doing before.) We talk about getting married some day but some of the things she says make me optimistic about it. She is very uncertain about the length of our relationship and says hurtful things from my past to make her points seem more “valid”. Every time we talk about spending the rest of our lives together, and make sure the things we need to work on, including areas of connectedness - separateness, certainty - uncertainty and openness - closeness are more toward the first term before the hyphens so that our relationship will continue. Even though it gets very difficult at times, with the all the arguments and doubts, I hope things will work out for the better.

Social Information Penetration Theory

When I first met my girlfriend I only told her the basic things about me like my name, age, and where I was from. As we got closer, we began to share our likes and dislikes, which made us a little more closer. We soon started talking about what we want to do after we graduate and what we want to do with are majors. As time went past, she started to become more open with me then I was with her. I have always had a problem with opening up to people. I don’t know why but I could never allow myself to let people know everything about me because I didn’t want to get hurt or let the other person think they had enough information about me that they could use it against me. But my girlfriend made me open up to her because she said she felt I was hiding something from her. But, even though we have been together for two years, she still has not totally figured me out yet. In the movie Swim Fan, a guy named Jonnie got to know a particular girl too fast and they exposed too much personal information too soon. Within two days of knowing each other, they had sex, and this action led the girl to believe they had something more than what Jonnie thought it was. She would stalk him, threaten him and do whatever it took to learn everything about him. She even tried to kill his girlfriend so that her and Jonnie could be together. I’m not saying that I have experienced this type of crazed relationship, but nowadays, you really don’t know what people’s motives are. To prevent anything like what happened to Jonnie from happening to me, I am very cautious about how open I am.

Expectancy Violation Theory

In the hit TV show Family Matters, Steve always violated Laura’s personal space by coming near her even when she didn’t want him to. Steve broke all of the person space expectations rules. I have experienced this type of uncomfortable feeling that you get when people violate your person space. One day, I was in the laundry mat sitting at a table waiting for my clothes to get finished drying. I was sitting at a small table with my girlfriend, and an older woman sat down with us. There were many other tables available, but for some reason she sat next to us. I didn’t understand why she sat so close to me, let alone at the same table as me. It felt weird because I had no idea who she was. For all I knew, she could have been close to me so she could pick pocket my wallet or something. It made me feel a little uncomfortable but I didn’t want to be rude. I tried to give her nonverbal clues to let her know I wanted her to move, but she still stayed there. I guess my fake smile wasn’t enough for her to get the hint.

Uncertainty Reduction Theory

When I first met my best friend I didn’t know what to disclose because I knew if I told to much it could hurt me in the long run if this relationship did not work out. So, we just started off with simple verbal communication to see what we had in common. Then we started to hang out more and eventually were inseparable. We would go out everywhere together. We started using are own language that nobody could understand but us. Out of comprehensive theory the positives out weighed the negatives because he was the perfect friend. In the movie Mean Girls, the majority of the girls at the high school were not really friends because they all backstabbed each other. They would tell each other’s business to get the upper hand on their other friends who didn’t tell secrets, in order to become more popular, even if it did mean hurting the girls they called friends. However, it was just breaking down all of their relationships with reach other because they could not trust each other. Luckily, my relationship with my best friend and all of my friends are not and never were like the girls in the movie, so I didn’t have to worry about the backstabbing and lying.

Social Information Processing Theory

I have met people on-line, and it is very different from meeting people face to face. Ever since I became familiar with the Internet, I became fascinated with chat rooms, and recently Web sites like www.facebook.com. These Web sites sort of entranced me and hurt the face-to-face communication I had with certain people. CMC is growing at fast rates and it gave me the opportunity to meet people that I would never meet in my life. Face-to-face communication limited the people I could meet, but getting to know someone took less time. But with CMC I could put my best attributes forward but at the same time, limit the things I wanted people to know about me. CMC took 10 times longer for me to get to know people and to be more hyper personal. In the movie Perfect Stranger a woman met a man on-line who was married, but was cheating by talking to other women online. He met one of the ladies he had an on-line relationship with, and soon after, she was killed. One of the women he had a relationship with thought he was a killer. There are many movies that play on the theme like that of the Perfect Stranger, but this type of thing has happened to many women and men in real life. I have watched many episodes of America’s Most Wanted and have seen women open themselves up to men on-line and eventually in person; only to have that man be a killer… the rest is a sad, but deadly history. Having relationships on-line can be a safe route to prevent a previous hurt heart, but if taking too far, can end in tragedy. It’s sad but some people are actually sought out to be killed, and engaging in tragic on-line relationships are to blame for many deaths. Now, I don’t communicate on-line like I used to, and seeing how things are going in the world of Internet, I am glad I slowed down.