Week 1

What is interpersonal communication?

• A unique interaction between people
• The methods by which people express opinions, experiences, feelings, etc.
• Forms of communication which are constantly shifting due to changes in societal
norms, language, and technology
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• people must have certain basic needs met before they will be able to have other, more
advanced or abstract needs met.
• there are deficiency needs and growth needs, and that growth needs are very difficult
to achieve if deficiency needs have not been met first.
• Maslow’s theory is important to understand in studying interpersonal communication
because communicating is the central way in which people find ways to satisfy their
needs at each level.
• Understanding this concept will assist practitioners as they listen to their clients
describe their needs and when they are discussing with clients how the clients hope to
meet those needs.

Three Models of Interpersonal Communication

• Transactional models -- these are the current, accepted models
 •
• Channel: e.g. face-to-face, through email/ phone
• But the people can communicate not just verbal, but also non-verbal too.
• Noise are all variable that may affect the communication process e.g. sleepiness,
hungry etc
• Fields of experience: based on the personal experience of the sender & receiver, the
way they talk, the underlying message they convey may be different
Different Type of Communication
1. I – It (then to see others as object during the communication e.g. waiter)
2. I – You (acknowledge another person, but still not fully engaged)
3. I – Thou (to important others)

Principles of interpersonal communication

1. It is impossible NOT to communicate (even in silence, body language is a form of
communication)
2. Interpersonal communication is irreversible (impossible to unsay sth)
3. Interpersonal communication involves ethical choices (think and responsible for what
you say)
4. People construct meanings in interpersonal communication (we have subjective
interpretations. Culture, environment are the factors that affect the interpretation)
5. Metacommunication affects meanings (can use words or nonverbal behaviour to
convey message, can metacommunicate to check understanding e.g. “was I clear?”
6. Interpersonal communication develops and sustains relationship
7. Interpersonal communication is not a panacea (there are many ways of
communication but many issues cannot be solved just by talking, e.g. ease of betrayal)
8. Interpersonal communication effectiveness can be learned (can learn to be effective
communicator)
Guidelines for Effective Interpersonal Communication
Develop a Range of Skills – no one style of communication is best in all circumstances so it’s
important to develop a range of communication abilities.
Adapt Communication Appropriately – learn to recognize which kinds of communication to
use in specific interactions.
Engage in Dual Perspective – Strive to see things from the other person’s perspective and not
just your own.
Monitor Your Communication – be aware of your communication and regulate it.
Commit to Effective and Ethical Communication – invest energy in ensuring your
communication processes are respectful and appropriate.
All communication between people contains both content (what) and relationship (who)
Week 2
Why is communication important?
• It is the means by which we develop our identities
• Communicating helps us learn about ourselves and others
• It establishes and maintains relationships
• It is the primary means of establishing self-esteem
• Effective communication advance our careers
• It enables us to meet our own needs and the needs of others
• It enhances our ability to participate effectively in a very diverse social world
Influences on development of the self
1. Particular others
- Specific people who are important in our lives
- Caregivers and significant others

Ways that particular other influence on self-concept:

a. Direct definitions
- Explicit labels: “you are smart”
- Learn what others value in them and this shapes what they come to value
in themselves
- Continue the stereotypes e.g. “Girls aren’t good at math” we learn our
family’s and society’s gender expectations, informing us of who we are,
how we should behave

b. Reflected appraisals
- how we think others appraise us
- Uppers: communicate positively about us and reflect positive appraisals of
our self worth
- Downers: negatively about us; call attention to our flaws, emphasize on
our problem, put down our dreams and goals
- Vultures: extreme downers; negative images of us & attack our self-
concept; harsh criticism and make you have self-doubt
- Reflected appraisal can affect our self-concept through Self-fulfilling
prophesy: internalize what someone else has said about us and then make
it come true with our own actions

c. Identity scripts
- A script of who we are and how we should live
 - Rules for living
- Identity scripts come from families or societal expectations, defining what
role a person is expected to play e.g. all children in the family will go on
to university

d. Attachment styles
- Secure attachment: attentive to the child’s need, leading to develop a
positive sense of self-worth
- Anxious/ ambivalent: inconsistent and unpredictable (sometimes loving
and attentive, sometimes indifferent or rejecting), children feel themselves
to be unlovable, they are the problem.
- Dismissive: caregivers reject or are abusive towards their children,
however, the child will feel others are unworthy, they have a positive view
of themselves and low regard for others which makes them decide
relationships are unnecessary
- Fearful: negative or abusive ways, make the children feel unworthy of
love and that other people are not loving They want to build a close
relationship but are anxious about it.
- other factors influence attachment styles e.g. socioeconomic class

2. Generalized other
- Socioeconomic status: affect job, salaries, school we attend, life styles influences
an individual’s perception of themselves with respect to their values and self-
concept
- Race and ethnicity: how the racial/ ethnic group is treated within a society will
affect attitudes and behaviours of people who identify with that group
- Sexual orientation: affect individuals’ sense of themselves if they are not
heterosexual
- Gender: male/ female stereotypes
Johari’s window – for gaining understanding about oneself
Purpose of the model:
1. To illustrate the importance of open communication in self-knowledge
2. To offer tools for expanding self-knowledge
The four quadrants represent the information, feelings, and motivations of an
individual, as known or unknown by the person themselves, and known or unknown by
others.
The amount of information in each quadrant can increase or decrease over time.
 1. You can build trust with others by disclosing information about yourself.
2. With the help of feedback from others, you can learn about yourself and come to
terms with personal issues.
Guidelines for improving self-concept (Week 3 slide)
1. Recognize that you are multidimensional & constantly evolving
2. Develop self-awareness! Recognize your strengths and limitations
3. Keep in mind that how you are as a person will impact who you are as a practitioner
4. Commit to change/growth and constant self-improvement
5. Set realistic & fair goals
6. Create supportive context
7. Use positive self-talk
8. Avoid self-sabotaging (don’t say I can’t do this. Seek help from others and tell others
you have this difficulty)
9. Self-disclose appropriately
10. Listen to constructive criticism

Week 3
- We are constantly interpreting the world around us and organizing the information
we receive
- We start to compile the information by familiarity and base our perception on the
findings.
Perception & communication
- Perception is a active process of creating meaning by selecting, organizing and
interpreting people, objects, events
- Perceptions are always incomplete & subjective
- Perceptions shape what things mean to us & how we interpret the world/others
- Perceptions lead to labeling
- Perceptions affect our feelings & behavior
- Perceptions differ from one person to another based on values, needs,
expectations, etc.
- Perceptions affect our communication.

Three-step processes:
1) Selection
- Factors that affect our selection:
a. Qualities of the phenomena: notice things which stand out (changes,
louder, brighter)
b. Self-indication: who we are, what we are doing, and what is going on
inside us shapes what you focus on
c. Culture: notice those culturally considered negative or spectacularly
positive

2) Organization
o Cognitive schemata (people organize and interpret their experience by
applying cognitive structures)
 1. Prototypes: ideal/ most well-known example of some category
 2. Personal constructs: make more detailed evaluation; form of
measurement or judgement as to falls on a continuum e.g.
constructs of a good teacher: caring intelligent…
 3. Stereotypes: generalization about a person or situation based on
previous personal experiences or learned social perceptions
 4. Scripts: action expected of us and others in specific situations
based on personal experience or observation of others under similar
circumstances. Useful guidelines for how to behave

3) Interpretation
- Subjective process on how we explain our perceptions
- There are two ways to interpret things
- 1. Attribution: explanation of why sth happened/ act a certain way
- 2. Attribution errors:
 Self-serving bias: benefit our own interests and needs
 Attribute good results to our positive qualities
 Attribute negative outcomes to external factors
  Fundamental attribution error: overestimate someone’s behaviours
 Overestimate internal causes of others’ negative behaviour
 Underestimate the external causes
- These three steps cannot work independently and affect each other. It is
continuous.
- These process take place in nanoseconds

Influences on Perception
1. Physiology: different in sensory abilities affect our senses respond
2. Age: more experience when we get older
3. Culture:
4. Role: training and demands result in people learning new roles e.g. parents,
silbling
5. Cognitive abilities: we all processes things differently
6. Self: look at ourselves on how we understand perception
7. Unconscious or implicit bias
Guidelines to improve perception and communication
1. Keep in mind that perceptions are always partial and subjective
2. Avoid mind-reading: we assume we understand others but may misinterpret their
action
3. Check perceptions with others
a. There are 3 steps to perception checking:
1. State observable data
2. Think about two possible interpretations of behaviour
3. Request clarification or confirmation

4. Fact vs inferences: do not confuse facts with inferences

5. Guard against the self-serving bias: as it will distort perception of others
6. Guard against fundamental attribution error
7. Monitor labels: labelling perceptions make us response to the label instead of
actual events that may cause insensitivity and misunderstanding
Week 4
Emotions and Interpersonal Communication
- Emotions are part of our lives
- Expression of emotion is a human need & survival skill
- Emotions are not fixed. We can and do feel many emotions at once.
- There are no good or bad emotions. All emotions are equal and they all have a
necessary place in our lives.
- We express emotions through interpersonal communication
- Expressing emotions is hard! It takes skill to communicate emotions in effective
& healthy ways. This is a skill which can be learned. (self awareness, looking at
the model)
- We might not know what we feel exactly, what our goal is for expressing
emotions, or how to express emotions clearly and constructively
- In order to communicate well, we need to develop skills in identifying and
expressing feelings!

Interactive View of Emotions (social influence)

- Social rules and communities teach us how to understand and express emotions

Influences on Expression of Emotion

- Your view of emotional behaviour
- Personality
- Culture
- Gender
- Power
- Social conventions/ expectation
- Fear of vulnerability
- Personal experience
There are also 4 reasons that people may not effectively express their emotion:
- Social expectations (e.g. gender socialization, women should held back their
expression of anger; men not express their feeling of sadness)
 - Fear of vulnerability (fear of lose respect, look vulnerable)
- Protecting others (fear of hurting/ upset others)
- Social and professional roles (social and professional role e.g. psychologist,
doctor)
- However, sometimes it is harmful if the feelings affect a relationship is such a way
that they actually need to be expressed/ harmful to health
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Definition: Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize feelings, to analyze
which feelings are appropriate to which situations, and to communicate those feelings
effectively.

Why is emotional intelligence (EI) so important?

- Knowing your feelings
- Managing your emotions
- Handling setbacks
- Channelling feelings to achieve goals
- Having empathy
- Having realistic optimism
Higher EQ is linked to
- Improved communication
- Confidence
- Greater adaptability and flexibility
- Ability to recover quickly from stress
- Resiliency (ability to keep strong, and come back quickly from failure)
- Ability to meet one’s needs
- Better relationships
- Ability to help others through their own emotional issues.
- Ability to inspire and lead
- Greater possibility for happiness & success
- Youth - higher grades, stay in school, make healthier choices
- Adults - career success (skills or education are less important)

Three common forms of ineffective expression of emotion

1. Speaking in generalities
- E.g. I feel bad
- Does not effectively express true emotional states
 - It is vague and abstract. This limits our ability to communicate clearly with
others. (We don’t know what they mean by “bad” or “happy”)
- A limited emotional vocabulary can restrict a person’s ability to express
their emotions and to communicate effectively with others
- Can’t express the complexities or extent of their actual feelings

2. Not owning feelings

- E.g. “you make me so angry!”
- Disowning personal responsibility for that emotion
- E.g. “You make me so angry” lays the blame at the other person’s feet. But
if you say “I feel angry when you do that” takes ownership of the feeling.
- Better statement: “I feel angry when you don’t call to tell me you’re going
to be late” (accepts ownership of the feeling, communicate clearly and
explain the reason for the feeling)

3. Counterfeit emotional language

- E.g. “why can’t you just leave me alone” / “I feel we need to look at this
again”
- The use of language which seems to communicate emotion but in fact does
not actually describe what the person is feeling
- Better version: “I’m behind in my work, and I’m feeling frustrated. When
you keep interrupting me, I can’t concentrate”
Guidelines for communicating Emotions effectively
1. Identify your emotions
- Learn to notice our feelings and use language to label them, label the most
prominent one

2. Choose how to express emotions

- Decide whether you want to communicate your emotions  decide how
you may want to reflect or calm down  think about who you want to talk
to  think about the timing of expressing your emotions and setting (e.g.
online or phone or face-to-face)

3. Own your feelings

- Turn “you” statement to “I” statements
- We are responsible for our own emotions and how we express them
- Focus on what behaviours to change
4. Monitor your self-talk
- Use self-talk to do emotional work and talk ourselves in and out of
feelings

5. Adopt a rational-emotive approach

 - Use rational thinking and self-talk to challenge debilitating (使人衰弱的)
thoughts
- 4 steps approach:
A) Monitor emotional reactions
B) Identify commonalities in events and experiences to which you
respond emotionally
C) Tune into your self-talk; notice irrational beliefs and fallacies
D) Use self-talk to dispute fallacies

6. Respond sensitively/ effectively to others’ expressions of emotion.

- Listen before problem-solving
- Accept all feelings (don’t respond with generalities e.g. everything will be
alright” <- this shuts the other person down)
- Be willing to discuss emotional topics (don’t offer solutions! People just
need someone to listen to them, empathize and validate how they’re
feeling)
- Paraphrase to show you understand (e.g. “I see”, “Go on” make it clear
you’re clearly listening, then paraphrase back “It sounds like you’re
saying… “ when appropriate)
Week 5
Language is a powerful tool that people use to communicate. Culture and background will
influence how human use language.

1. Language is made up of symbols

- It is arbitrary (based on random choice rather than any reason or system)
- Words are not intrinsically linked to what they represent
- Words are just chosen, and we all agreed at some point on its meaning
- Even within different cultures or societies speaking a common language,
the same word can be used to represent different things
- Since it is arbitrary, the meanings of words often change over time, e.g.
new words can invented, words alter overtime.

- It is ambiguous. Meanings of words aren’t clear-cut or fixed

- Ambiguity in language can create confusion

- It is abstract. It is not concrete or tangible. The more our symbols

represent abstract ideas, the more room there is for confusion.
- Use specific language is important to try and avoid misunderstanding

Verbal communication
Anti-oppressive language
 - Anti-oppressive language is an interdisciplinary approach to working with people
which focuses on ending socioeconomic oppression
- Requires practitioners to critically examine and be aware of power imbalances,
how our choice of words reflects those imbalances, to strive to modify their verbal
and written language to avoid reinforcing those imbalances
Trauma-informed language
- Language which acknowledges the impact of trauma on people and works to resist
re-traumatization
- Mindful of words and terminologies which are negative and leave the people
experience that trauma feeling misunderstood or unsupported.

Word choices:

He/she – they

Youth-at-Risk – street-involved youth

Native – Indigenous

The alcoholic – someone who is a substance user

The schizophrenic – someone who has schizophrenia

Fireman, Policeman – firefighter, police officer

Assisted feeding – assisted oral intake, assisted nutritional intake

He’s crazy – He has a mental illness

Retarded – developmentally challenged or delayed

The perpetrator – person in custody/person who committed the crime

Child prostitute – child being sexually exploited or trafficked

Victim – survivor; person who experienced the trauma or event

Homeless person – someone who is vulnerably housed

Poverty resulting in insufficient access to food – food insecurity

Upper class, lower class – higher or lower income socioeconomic level

Old people – older adults

Domestic violence – intimate partner violence (IPV)

Childhood abuse or trauma – adverse childhood experiences (ACE)

Lesson from 2SLGBTQ+ and indigenous communities

- Avoid making assumptions
- Be willing to learn essential terms
- Use preferred names and pronouns (ask if you are unsure)
Four Principles of Verbal Communication
 1. Language and culture reflect each other
- Language creates or reproduces culture or society by naming and
normalizing practices which are valued by the culture or society
- Values are expressed through traditional sayings which illustrate and
uphold predominant culture attitudes and beliefs

2. Meanings of language are subjective

- Symbols are arbitrary, ambiguous and abstract. What the words mean to
you depends on your own past experiences

3. Language use is rule-guided

- Verbal communication is patterned by unspoken but broadly understood
rules
- These rules are shared understandings of communication means and what
kinds of communication are appropriate
- E.g. speak softly in libraries
- There are two kinds of communication rules:
a) Regulative rules
- Tell us how, when, where and with whom to talk about certain
things e.g. don’t speak loudly in libraries
a) Constitutive rules
- Tell us what communication means and how to interpret it
- E.g. yelling = anger; whispering = telling sth secret
There two rules are learnt from particular others, and generalized other, and
formed by culture and societies.

4. Communication devices shape meaning

- Elements of communication e.g. pacing, speed, pausing and interruption
- This decides what a communication means

Speech Communities
- A shared understanding of how to communicate within a group. This shared
understanding is not known or familiar to people outside of the group
Misunderstandings in verbal communication
- The symbolic nature of language means that misunderstandings can easily
occur
- We often ignore unnecessary information that we don’t really need, our
brain tends to ignore repetition
Ineffective use of language
a) Insensitive openers
- “oh dear, you’re looking less put-together than usual today”
- Negative and insensitive comment
b) Judgmental “you” statements
- “you’re never going to solve the problem that way”
- Sound accusatory, not helpful in describing other behaviour, make the
listener feel badly
c) Labelling
- “You always react badly to situations like this.”
- Labelling someone, making sweeping judgements and generalizations
d) Sarcasm (諷刺, 挖苦)
- “ no, you didn’t miss anything at the meeting. We all just sat and stared at
each other”
- Represent passive aggressive behaviour through which a person
communicates negative feelings
- Risky form of communication
e) Negative comparisons
- “Jacob had no problem finishing his report on time. I guess you’re just not
very good at this kind of writing”
- Holding a person up to the supposed standards or characteristics of another
person lead to feelings of inferiority and resentment.
f) Threats
- “If you don’t stop behaving like that, you’re going to regret it”
- Indicate the end of any productive communication process

Guidelines for improving verbal communication

1) The importance of engaging in dual perspective
- Dual perspective means being able to understand both our own and
another person’s perspective, thoughts, feelings, beliefs.
- Need to be aware of other person’s feelings
- Cannot just caught up only in our own perspective
2) Own your feelings and thoughts
- Take responsibility for what we are feeling and thinking
- Be aware of our feelings and thoughts in relation to our client's thoughts
3) Respect what others say about their feelings and thoughts
- Cannot lessen their experience by talking about our own experiences.
4) Strive for accuracy and clarity
- We need to regularly check and confirm with our clients that we are fully
understanding what they’re saying to ensure that we are correctly
following their thoughts and feelings
- Don’t make assumptions about what the service users might be indicating
to us