Transcript Theories About How People Construct Meaning

Theories About How People
Construct Meaning
Chapter Seven
Symbolic Interactionism
• Rules Theory (Coordinated Management
of Meaning Theory)
– Barnett Pearce
– Vernon Cronen
• Constructivism
– George Kelly
Coordinated Management of
Meaning
• “CMM is an interpretive theory that
assumes human communication is rule
guided and rule following. Rules theorists
do not believe human behavior is strictly
determined by external forces. Instead,
they think that we learn broad social
patterns of interpretation that are woven
into cultural life, and that we use those to
guide our communication” (141).
Hierarchy of Meanings
• We construct and interpret our
experiences based on an incremental
scale of meanings where higher levels of
meaning provide the context for
interpreting lower levels of meaning.
Hierarchy of Meanings
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Content: (utterance)
Speech Act: (context for the utterance)
Episode: (“routine of interaction”)
Relationships: (routine interaction with
particular others)
• Autobiographies: (self concept that is
formed through communication)
• Cultural Patterns: (Interpretations that are
structured by group norms)
Rules
• “Rules allow us to make sense of social
interaction and guide our own
communication so that we coordinate
meanings with others” (145).
Rules
• Constitutive Rules
– Constitutive rules help us decode the
meaning of particular actions (e.g. facial
expressions, affective gestures).
– Common meanings are essential.
• Regulative Rules
– Regulative rules guide our own actions by
helping us determine when and how we
should interact.
Rules
• “When constitutive and regulative rules are
coordinated, interaction tends to run
smoothly and comfortably. That’s because
the individuals agree on what various
communications mean and on how to
sequence their activities. But when
individuals operate according to different
constitutive and regulative rules, friction
and misunderstandings often result” (147).
Logical Force
• Logical Force describes the compulsion
we feel to act under a given social
circumstance.
– “The term force refers to the degree of which
we feel we must act or cannot act in particular
ways. The term logical reminds us that our
sense of obligation is tied to the logic of our
overall hierarchy of meanings” (148).
Logical Force
• Sources of Logical Force:
– Prior actions: (promises, maintenance of the
self concept)
– Desired outcomes
– Situational demands
– Change
Strange Loops
• Strange Loops “are internal conversations
by means of which individuals become
trapped in destructive patterns of thinking”
(149).
– Addiction
– Abuse
Constructivism
• Two influences
– Symbolic Interactionism
– Personal Construct Theory (George Kelly,
1955)
• Constructivism emphasizes the role of
cognition in the create of meaning.
Schemata
• Cognitive schema are related clusters of
ideas that reflect the way the brain sorts
information.
Schemata
• Prototypes: “Prototypes, the broadest
cognitive structures, are ideal or optimal
examples of categories of people,
situations, objects, and so forth” (153).
• Personal Constructs: “Personal
yardsticks.” Personal constructs are
bipolar, or opposite, scales of judgment”
(e.g. attractive/unattractive) (153).
Schemata
• Stereotypes: Predictive generalizations.
– “Stereotypes go beyond the description that
prototypes and personal constructs provide
and make predictions about how a person will
behave” (154).
• Scripts: Prescribed sequence of action.
– “A script is a routine, or action sequence, that
we have in mind about a particular interaction”
(154).
Cognitive Complexity
• “The concept of cognitive complexity
refers to how elaborate or complex a
person’s interpretive processes are along
the three dimensions of differentiation,
abstraction, and organization” (155).
Cognitive Complexity
• Differentiation: “It is measured by the
number of distinct interpretations an
individual uses to perceive and describe
others. Presumably, more cognitively
complex individuals use more constructs
to interpret others than do less cognitively
complex individuals” (155).
Cognitive Complexity
• Abstraction: “The dimension of cognitive
complexity referred to as abstraction is the
extent to which a person interprets others in
terms of internal motives, personality traits, and
character” (156).
• Organization: “The final facet of cognitive
complexity is organization, which is the degree
to which a person notices and is able to make
sense of contradictory behaviors (156).
Person-Centeredness
• “A cognitively complex individual
interprets others in detailed ways,
distinguishes people from one another on
multiple dimensions, and has insight into
the psychological reasons behind specific
behaviors and communication patterns”
(157).