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Communications. Dr Joan Harvey. Barriers to effective communication. Communicator issues Problems encoding the message Credibility of communicator Attractiveness of the communicator. Communications barriers: message issues. Cognitive or affective appeals?
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Communications Dr Joan Harvey
Barriers to effective communication • Communicator issues • Problems encoding the message • Credibility of communicator • Attractiveness of the communicator
Communications barriers: message issues • Cognitive or affective appeals? • Message interrupted by noise -neural or psychological • Information overload • One sided or two sided • Primacy or recency
Communications barriers: message issues cont • Size of attitude discrepancy • N of points and repetition • Summarise the message
Communications barriers: audience effects • Threatening the ego • Resistance to persuasion: • Self esteem • Inner directed • Need for social approval • Depressed • Strong ideological beliefs • Internal locus of control • Public commitment • Mood and emotion effects • Feedback
Communications cycle • Information • Encode • Transmit • Audience • Decode • Feedback
Impression management • Ingratiation • Opinion conformity • Mixing agreement with disagreement • Initial disagreement followed by agreement • Favour doing • Flattery • Other enhancement • Must be credible • Timing, frequency and discernment important • Self enhancement • Find out what target thinks is attractive and adopt it
IM continued • Self promotion • to be perceived as competent rather than to be liked • Intimidation • to be feared • Exemplification • managing impression of integrity, self sacrifice & moral worthiness • Supplication • exploiting own weaknesses
IM continued • Indirect IM techniques • Use associations with positive others • E.g. celebrity endorsements • Acclaiming • Explain a desirable event to give maximum desirable implications for yourself • Non-verbal IM tactics • Facial expressions, posture, • TA techniques
Protective IM • Accounts are: • “statements made to explain untoward behaviour and bridge the gap between actions and expectation” • Motive talk • Neutralisation • Excuses and justifications • Quasi-theories • Aligning actions
IM: the headline- this situation needs to be impression managed!
Communications and IM cont • Excuses • Appeal to accidents • Appeal to defeasibility • Appeal to biological drives • Scapegoating • Justifications • Denial of injury • Denial of the victim • Condemn the condemners • Appeal to loyalties
IM: excuses: an example of scapegoating when accidents and defeasibility didn’t work Several examples of this in UK
Other protective IM behaviours • Disclaimers and hedging • Credentialing • Sin licences • Cognitive disclaimers • Appeal to suspension of judgement • Self handicapping • Apologies
Examples of different types of IM behaviour Social desirability- to make ones self appear in best light Social approval- to give answers that you think the other person is wanting Self-deceptive enhancement- to deliberately over-report good behaviour and under-report poor behaviour
Other examples of IM behaviours • Politicians caught in problem situations • Mismanagement by UK Govt of health scares such as BSE • Responses of industry eg • Monsanto and GM foods, • Toyota and accelerator recall, • BP and Deep Water Horizon • Mox fuel crisis at BNF
Different types of IM behaviour • Attributive or repudiative tactics- ascribe positive traits to self and deny existence of negative ones • Ingratiatory behaviours • Concern with maintenance of face • Machiavellian behaviour • Willingness vs unwillingness to communicate positive and negative information
Language • Redundancy and generative power • Structure of language e.g. processing times for form filling • Meaning of language differences • Social class [Bernstein] • Cultural differences [Argyle etc]
Non-verbal communication • Personal space and social distance • Reflective listening skills • Very popular for management training now • Non verbal cues [“tells”] • Posture • Gesture • Gait • Facial expressions
And finally • Visual, audio or written? • It depends • Simple messages, V-A-W • Complex messages- Written best • Also gender differences
Thank you for listening • Joan Harvey and George Erdos • Newcastle University • PEF, CZU