Transcript WoodChapter03

Chapter 3 Lecture
Building and Testing Theory
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Talk About It (Chicken or Egg?)
Do theories of human
communication describe how
humans actually communicate?
Or do they reflect individual
theorists' perceptions and
perspectives?
What do you think?!?!
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VIEWS OF HUMAN NATURE
and therefore interpersonal
communication
Ontology are assumptions about
human nature.
The assumptions theorists make
about humans can't be proved or
disproved scientifically; they are
matters of faith or belief.
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DETERMINISM<------>FREE WILL
Determinism assumes that human
behavior is governed by forces beyond
individual control, usually the twin forces of
biology and environment.
On the other end of the ontological
spectrum is the belief that humans have
free will and that they make choices about
how to act.
For Heidegger, thrownness refers to the
fact that we are thrown into a multitude of
arbitrary conditions that influence our
lives and opportunities.
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What do you think?
Do you think we are primarily
influenced by biology and
environment?
OR
Do you think we are primarily
influenced by our choices?
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WAYS OF KNOWING
Epistemology: the branch of
philosophy that deals with knowledge,
and is concerned with how we know.
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DISCOVERING TRUTH
There is a singular truth. Objectivism is the
belief that reality is material and external to
the human mind.
Objectivity the quality of being uninfluenced
by values, biases, personal feelings, and
other subjective factors when perceiving
material reality.
Believers in objective truth presume that
the true nature, or meaning of any act of
communication can be determined.
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CREATING MEANING
Those who believe that there are multiple
realities would regard it as entirely
reasonable that different people interpret
communication in varying ways.
Standpoint Theory--the material, social,
and symbolic circumstances of a social
group shape what its members experience,
as well as how they think, act, and feel.
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What do you think?
Is knowledge based on the existence of
phenomena (the falling tree) or on human
perceptions (hearing it fall).
There are different opinions about what
counts as knowledge and how we come to
know what we think we know.
POSITION ONE: OBJECTIVITY
POSITION TWO: MULTIPLE REALITIES
(STANDPOINT THEORY)
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PURPOSES OF THEORY
Universal Laws
A law is an inviolate, unalterable fact that holds
true across time and space.
Universal laws may be more applicable to natural
science than to human behavior, including
communication.
Situated Rules
There are no laws that explain human
communication across all time and
circumstances.
We seek theories as the articulation of rules that
describe patterns in human behavior.
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What do you think?!?!
What should the focus be for
theorists?
Behavior?
Meanings behind behavior?
A combination of behavior and
meaning?
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Behaviorism
Behaviorism: A form of science that focuses on
observable behaviors and that assumes
meanings, motives, and other subjective
phenomena either don't exist or are irrelevant.
Behaviorists believe that scientists can study only
concrete behaviors, such as what people do or
say.
Human motives, meanings, and intentions are
beyond the realm of behavioristic investigation.
Skinner believed that human behavior is a
response to external stimuli. He was well known
for referring to the mind as a "black box," the
contents of which cannot be known and which are
irrelevant to science.
All that can be measured is concrete, objective
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behavior.
Agree or Disagree?
Theories and theorists vary widely not only
in what they study but also in the
fundamental assumptions they make about
human nature, knowledge, communication,
and the goals of the theory.
Meaning, motive, and intentions, even if
they exist, aren't measurable, so they
aren't within the province of science (p. 62).
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MEANINGS
Many scholars aren't convinced that behaviorism
is desirable. Theorists who reject behavioral
views of science believe that the crux of human
activity is meaning, not behaviors
themselves. What is distinctively human is free
will or the ability to make choices and the capacity
to create meanings (crucial to humanists).
John Searle wrote about brute facts, which are the
objective, concrete phenomena or observable
behaviors that behaviorists study. Institutional
facts are what brute facts MEAN, what humanists
wish to study.
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brute fact--An objective, concrete
phenomenon unadorned by interpretations of
meaning.
Provide one description based on only
brute facts and a second description
based on institutional facts.
A marriage ceremony.
A person interacting in a chat room.
Two friends engaging in a game of
friendly insults and put-downs.
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TESTING THEORIES
HYPOTHESES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Hypotheses are testable predictions about relationships
between communication phenomena.
If you don't have a clear basis for making a prediction,
generate a research question. Use research questions in
your action research.
DEFINE TERMS: Operational definitions are precise
descriptions that specify the phenomena of interest.
QUANTITATIVE METHODS gather information that can be
quantified and then interpret eh data to make arguments
about what the numbers reveal about communication
behaviors and relationships among communication
phenomena.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS use numbers to describe
human behavior.
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Apply Research Findings
Can you think of an example or story from
your personal experience that supports
scholarly research findings?
Husbands interrupt wives far more
often than wives interrupt husbands.
Women are more active than men in
doing what is called "conversational
maintenance," which is involving others
in conversations.
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An experiment is a controlled study that
systematically manipulates one thing
(called an independent variable) to
determine how that affects another thing
(called a dependent variable, for what it
does depends on the independent
variable).
Dependent variable affects independent
variable.
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Apply Research Findings
Can you think of an example or story from
your personal experience that supports
scholarly research findings?
Acitelli found that both partners found it
satisfying to talk about the relationship
when there was a problem. When no
conflict or difficulty existed, however,
the wives in the scenarios were
perceived as being more satisfied with
conversation about the relationship.
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QUALITATIVE METHODS
Valuable when we wish not to count or
measure phenomena but to understand the
character of experience, particularly how
people perceive and make sense of their
communication experience.
Textual analysis--also called interpretative
analysis--involves describing
communication texts and interpreting their
meaning.
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Apply Research Findings
Can you think of an example or story
from your personal experience that
supports scholarly research findings?
Men often interrupt to challenge
others or to assert themselves.
Women's interruptions are more
likely to support others or to
indicate interest in what others are
saying.
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Ethnography attempts to discover what things
mean to others by sensitive observation of human
activity. They rely on unobtrusive methods, which
are means of gathering data that intrude minimally
on naturally occurring interaction.
Critical analysis suggests that research should
make a real difference in the lives of human
beings. Critical scholarship is one important way
to change oppressive or wrong practices in the
world.
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ASSESSING RESEARCH
Validity refers to the truth or accuracy of a
theory in measuring what it claims to
measure.
External validity refers to the
generalizability of a theory. Internal validity
is that the theory's design and methods do
what they claim to do.
Reliability is the consistency.
Significance is the conceptual or pragmatic
importance of a theory.
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End of chapter 3
Read case studies for Wed.
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