The Interactional View
of Paul Watzlawick
Paul Watzlawick
- Researcher at Palo Alto Mental Research Institute & professor of psychiatry at Stanford
- Inspired by Gregory Bateson
- Palo Alto Group is committed to studying interpersonal interactions as part of a SYSTEM
- "Care little about why a person acts in a certain way, but rather in how that behavior affects everyone in the group."
It Takes Two to Tango
Critiques
Janet Bavelas co-authored Pragmatics of Human Communication with Watzlawick in 1967. 25 years later, she reviewed the status of their axioms.
The Family as a System
- The nature of a relationship depends on how both parties punctuate the communication sequence
- Punctuate: Interpreting an ongoing series of events by labeling one event the cause and the following as the response
- Watzlawick suggests that typically an individual perceives themselves as reacting to, but not provoking certain attitudes. (Kind of like... "Well, you started it!")
- We cannot not communicate
- not all nonverbal behavior is communication
- suggest whole message model that treats verbal and nonverbal as integrated and interchangeable.
- Content/Relationship
- Metacommunication should be a term reserved for explicit communication about the process of communication
- Systems theory
- Equifinality: assumption that a given behavioral outcome could have occurred due to any or many interconnected factors rather than being a result in a cause-effect relationship
- Does this question the interactional view's validity?
- Each individual is connected and interdependent.
- Pragmatic approach to interaction within a system examining each individuals communication patterns.
- Described relationships as complex functions.
- References Coordinated Management of Meaning which states that persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social worlds. The same is said by Palo Alto Research Group regarding family systems
Axioms of Interpersonal Communications
All Communication is Either Symmetrical or Complementary
Interactional views focuses on issues of control, status, and power
One Cannot Not Communicate
- Thinking about Hofestede's cross-cultural dimensions of communication, how do you think "family communication" or "family interactions" could potentially contribute to inter-office communication? What would be the difficulties?
- With the innovations in technology, which have inevitably changed family communcation, do you think that this makes the Interactional View still relevant?
- When conducting international business, we know it's important to be culturally sensitive. What happens if you subconsciously exhibited a nonverbal behavior that was offensive to that culture? Nonverbal cues are different in every culture. Which culture's nonverbal cues should take precedence during an exchange? Should we adapt to them or should they adapt to us?
- Symptom Strategy: attributing our silence to something else beyond our control
- Leads for unnecessary analyzing of communication
- Communication is inevitable!
- Nonverbal messages will have an impact.
- Symmetrical interchange: based on equal power
- Complementary interchange: accepted differences in power
- Healthy relationships have both.
- One- up: conversational move to gain control of the exchange; attempted domination
- One-down: move to yield control of the exchange; attempted submission
- One-across: move to neutralize or leve control within the exchange
adapted from Edna Rogers & Richard France
Communication = Content + Relationship
Stepping Outside the Box
- Reframing: process of changing by stepping outside of a situation and reinterpreting what it means.
- "Aha" moment
- The facts haven't changed but you're given a new way to interpret them.
- Accepting a new frame implies rejecting the old one.
Content & Relationship Levels of Communication
- Content (report): what is said verbally
- Relationship (command): how it's said nonverbally
- In spoken communication, tone of voice, emphasis on certain words, facial cues, etc direct a message and how it's interpreted.
- Metacommunication: "This is how I see myself, this is how I see you, this is how I see you seeing me..."
- According to Watzlawick, relationship messages are always the most important element in communication.
www.thinktd.co.uk/blog/2009/12/effective-communication/