Interpersonal Communication and Persuasion.

I arrived late today; however, it didn't prevent me from taking advantage of most of the class. Today the professor talked about two interesting topics: interpersonal communication and persuasion. Being aware of how interpersonal communication works is very important since our lives revolves around meeting people every single day, and some of them become very important in our lives. That's why understanding the dynamics of relationships will help us be proactive when it comes to relationships. Relationships are a two-way street that includes our family, friends and romantic partners. When relationships fail, it's because people prefer blaming each other instead of looking at their behavior patterns. Depending on the circumstances, in relationships, everyone takes a role such as being passive, dominant, submissive, etc.; it has to be complementary--power must be distibuted.

As the professor explained, relationships go to a process, which starts when they forms until they break down. That being said, the Knapps' Relational Development Model says that relationships start with the very initial impression. It seems that many people approach their prospect partners and even their friends due to physical attraction. Then, according to this model, small talk takes place until this transcends the surface toward more intimacy, and that's when relationships become stronger. Nevertheless, there are many people who get stuck in the "experimenting phase" in the first stage as well as they do in the "avoinding phase" during the termination stage. The termination stage starts when people start focusing in their differences; then, commitment decreases, and silence, inactivity and physical/emotional separation take place in the relationship. We've also seen that the Steve's Duck Filtering Theory says we filter, through elimination, those people we want to get close to and one nice HUC101 students' video about that. I find both of these teories to be accurate since I feel related to both of them in many respects.

We also learned that persuasion is an art; the art of using words powerfully. People who possess information and communicate it effectively, gain respect. With persuasion we effectively communicate our knowledge to accomplish a goal: to convince people to understand our perspective. If we do it well, we can change other people's minds. Although there are things that are difficult to change in our listener (values, beliefs), there are some others such as attitudes, behaviors that can be easier to change...with proof, evidence of what we are talking about, of course. Next week, during the last class, we will put to test our persuasion skills.