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Active Empathic Listening [WLOs: 1, 5] [CLOs: 1, 4, 5]ResourcesClick each source below:Week 4 Discussion Advice (attach below)Week 4 Discussion Video Resources (attach Below)Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read Chapters 7 and 8 of Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal Communication, specifically Sections 7.2 and 8.3.(attach below) Also, watch the video below. (transcript attach below) (Transcript)To be an effective communicator, you must master the core competency of listening. A willingness to listen during an interaction allows you to understand others, respond appropriately to what they say, and provide helpful feedback. Bevan (2020) describes ideal listening as active and empathic. In this discussion, you will take a listening quiz, and then explain how using active empathic listening can help you improve as a communicator in your personal and professional relationships.In your initial post,Using and citing Bevan, define active empathic listening. Report on both meaning and significance of the definition, in your own words.Complete this listening quiz (Links to an external site.) and report your results and feedback to the group. It is possible you will have to click an icon that says, “Run Adobe.” If you cannot access this resource, take a similar, text-based version in Bevan (Section 8.3) titled “Self-Test: Bodies’ Active-Empathic Listening Scale.”Explain how you can use active empathic listening to help you improve your communication in your personal interactions or in the workplace.Provide at least one example of exactly how you can change your listening habits and how you will benefit from this change.For this discussion forum, your initial post should be 300 to 350 words in length. chpt_7_8.pdf week_4_discussion_advice_edited_1_30_2020.docx week_4_discussion_video_resources.docx week_4_webinar___active_empathic_listening_video_trasnscipt.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview 5/21/2020 Print Jennifer L. Bevan Contributor: Tessa Urbanovich Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal Communication, Third Edition Zovio Inc Vice President, Learning Resources: Steve Wainwright Associate Director, Sponsoring Editor: Greer Lleuad Development Editors: Jessica Sarra, Shannon LeMay-Finn Assistant Editor: Taylor Holmes Production Editor: Julie Mashburn Media Editor: Jaime LeClair Cover Design: Tara Mayberry Printer: Lightning Source Production Service: Hespenheide Design ePub Development: M & R Consultants Corporation (MRCC) Video Production: Illuminating Pictures Cover Image: Kubkoo / iStock / Getty Images Plus ISBN-13: 978-1-62178-624-5 Copyright © 2020, 2014, 2011 Zovio Inc All rights reserved. GRANT OF PERMISSION TO PRINT: The copyright owner of this material hereby grants the holder of this publication the right to print these materials for personal use. The holder of this material may print the materials herein for personal use only. Any print, reprint, reproduction or distribution of these materials for commercial use without the express written consent of the copyright owner constitutes a violation of the U.S. Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101-810, as amended. https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bevan.6245.19.1?sections=fm,ch07,ch07intro,sec7.1,sec7.2,sec7.3,sec7.4,sec7.5,sec7.6,ch07summary,ch08,ch08i… 1/39 5/21/2020 Print 7 Beginning Interpersonal Relationships Fuse/Thinkstock Learning Outcomes After reading this chapter, you should be able to █ Explain how perceptions and impressions frame and shape the relationship initiation process. █ Identify how individuals start and manage conversations with others. █ Compare and contrast three of the primary theories of relationship development. █ Explain why self-disclosure is signi icant when beginning relationships. █ Describe Knapp’s ive stages of relationship formation. █ Apply strategies for competent communication during relationship initiation and formation. https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bevan.6245.19.1?sections=fm,ch07,ch07intro,sec7.1,sec7.2,sec7.3,sec7.4,sec7.5,sec7.6,ch07summary,ch08,ch08i… 2/39 5/21/2020 Print Introduction To the blonde journalist that was at my register a few days ago. Even though I had to check your ID I do not remember your name and wish I would of asked before you left :( I highly enjoyed our interaction and conversation together. Even though it was in a hectic environment, I could of stood there all day and night talking with you! You had such beautiful, kind eyes, great smile, awesome personality and just great energy! We both share some similar experience and traumas due to my past profession and you as a journalist. If for some reason you do read this, please don’t take this as me trying to hit on you. I genuinely enjoyed our interaction and you as a person. All I am looking for is a chance to reconnect and make a friendship with an awesome person! :) Either way... if you read this or not...I wish you all the best and safe travels with your career. (Anonymous, n.d.) Even the irst few minutes of the initial interaction with another person can be powerful: The fact that people place ads to reconnect with relative strangers is an example of just how much of a lasting impression those irst moments can leave. The above excerpt is a “missed connections” advertisement posted on Craigslist. Such missed connections occur when individuals meet each other, exchange glances, exchange smiles, or initiate a conversation. At least one person inds the other attractive or memorable, even in that brief interaction, but the interaction abruptly ends, for one reason or another, before contact information is shared or future plans are made. “Missed connections” ads also indicate that interpersonal communication does not just happen: For people to communicate, one person must take the initiative and make contact with another person. The other person must then respond in some way for a connection to occur. Sometimes that initial connection is broken, often to one communicator’s regret. Earlier in this text, we de ined communication as a process—a series of steps in which an idea is formed, a message is encoded, and this message is sent via a channel to a receiver who decodes or interprets the message and responds to it. Now we turn our attention to how we irst make these connections with other people, engage in conversations to get to know them better, listen and share information, and begin to form close relationships. In sum, in Chapter 7, we discuss how relationships are initiated. Relationships are the important and close connections or associations that we forge and maintain with other people via communication. We explore the importance of irst impressions and perceptions, how we carry on conversations with others, the concepts of self-disclosure, and the stages of interpersonal relationships. https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bevan.6245.19.1?sections=fm,ch07,ch07intro,sec7.1,sec7.2,sec7.3,sec7.4,sec7.5,sec7.6,ch07summary,ch08,ch08i… 3/39 5/21/2020 Print 7.1 First Impressions Matter: Perceptions and Impressions When you initially meet someone, you immediately form an impression of the person—and the person forms an impression of you. These impressions are formed based on how individuals look, including their physical attractiveness and what they are wearing; what they say; and how they sound. As you learned in Chapter 2, when you interact with others, each person presents an image of himself or herself. We each have a self that we display in social situations—a public personality that we show to other people. To create a positive impression when you irst meet someone, you need to understand the process of creating irst impressions and the ways you can manage the impressions you create with others. In this section, we discuss perceptions and impressions. Perceptions When we communicate, we must irst perceive others and the world before us. Perception is a dynamic process that involves selecting, organizing, and interpreting the world around us. We do not objectively see things that are external to us; rather, we become aware of objects, events, people, and messages by perceiving them via one or more of our ive senses. We cannot process and attend to everything we are exposed to in our daily lives, but perception allows us to make sense of and organize what we do encounter. The process of perception involves three general stages: 1. selection, which occurs when something stimulates our senses in some way, and we respond by focusing on or attending to it 2. organization, which occurs when we arrange the information that we have perceived in a manner that makes sense to us 3. interpretation, which is a subjective process that occurs when we explain and assign meaning to the thing that we have selected and organized Within these stages, there are four speci ic concepts that we employ when we perceive something; each is described below. Selective Perception Consider the last face-to-face interaction you had with someone. Close your eyes and try to remember everything you can about what you both said, where it took place, how it started and concluded, and what communication barriers were present. Though you may attempt to perceive everything that is part of a speci ic interaction, doing so is impossible. There are too many stimuli. Thus, in the selection part of the perception process, we engage in selective perception, directing our attention to the task of perceiving some stimuli and ignoring or disregarding others. The stimuli that we choose to perceive catch our attention in a number of ways. A stimulus may be appealing in some way, such as a photo you ind beautiful. A stimulus may be the most dominant, such as extremely loud yelling. Or a stimulus may be something important to you, such as a thought you want to communicate. You are likely to notice these types of stimuli irst in the selection process and then continue to organize them in the next step of the perception process. Schemas Assume you have been invited to a concert. You have been to the venue before, and you remember that the acoustics are wonderful and all the seats offer great views of the stage. You know that parking is convenient, and several restaurants are nearby where you can eat before the concert. You also like the group performing. You are excited about attending the concert, and you expect to have a terri ic evening. Paul Chesley/The Image Bank/Getty Images Your expectation that the concert will be fun is based on the operation of a schema. Schemas are organized collections of information about a subject that are stored in your memory from past experiences. Schemas can be based on personal experiences you have had and also formed as part of your dominant cultural and cocultural memberships. These mental structures or templates help you process and categorize new information quickly, rather than starting from a blank slate every time you encounter a new situation. As such, schemas are a signi icant part of the organization process of perception. You tend to believe in the validity of your schemas, and they create expectations about a situation (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). █ You have schemas about social situations, objects, and people and their social roles. We all assume roles in our lives—functions or positions that we have in our society. We may occupy several social roles at the same time. For example, someone may be a wife, mother, daughter, doctor, and community volunteer, but each of these roles has a different set of expected behaviors. A person schema is an expectation about what a speci ic person will be like based on certain characteristics he or she has. For example, you are referring to a person schema when you say something like, “Every person I’ve known named Jose has been a nice guy.” We have schemas for social situations, objects, and people and their social roles. One person can occupy several of these social roles at the same time, such as grandmother, teacher, and community leader. A role schema is a set of expectations you have about how someone in a certain role should look or behave. For example, you might state, “Parents should not swear in front of their children.” These person schemas and role schemas are mental images based on your personal experiences or on the behavior of other people in your life who have played these roles. Person and role schemas can also be formed through your personal experiences and your cultural norms and beliefs. You make judgments about people based, in part, on whether they conform to these schemas, and your impressions contribute to your decision about whether to get to know them better. Stereotypes When we use stereotypes, we are answering the question “What can I expect to happen?” by relying on predictive, broad generalizations. As discussed earlier in this text, stereotypes are a speci ic type of schema; they are preconceived opinions you hold about someone or something. A stereotype assumes that all members of a particular group possess the same or similar characteristics. Whereas schemas are based on your own experiences, stereotypes are usually not based on reason, fact, or past experiences. You may form stereotypes based on what others have said, images portrayed by the media, or mistaken beliefs you have about people. Stereotypes are also often guided, reinforced, or determined by cultural beliefs about race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and class. Schemas are more likely to be related to individual characteristics of a person, but stereotypes ignore the individual characteristics and assume that a person possesses personality traits or holds attitudes that are typical of an entire group. Stereotypes are often negative and re lect prejudices, preconceived opinions of dislike, hostility, or unjust behavior. Schemas, on the other hand, do not necessarily have negative connotations (Pennington, 2000). https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bevan.6245.19.1?sections=fm,ch07,ch07intro,sec7.1,sec7.2,sec7.3,sec7.4,sec7.5,sec7.6,ch07summary,ch08,ch08i… 4/39 5/21/2020 Print Prototypes Another way to organize the perceptions that you select is by using prototypes. Prototypes represent a mental image you have about the attitudes and behaviors of the ideal person in a speci ic role. As with schemas and stereotypes, they can be formed and reinforced based on both personal experiences and on cultural beliefs. Your prototype of a best friend, for example, would probably include what you think their personality should be like, what interests and beliefs they should have, and what you can talk to them about. This prototype is the epitome of what you envision a best friend to be. The person who actually becomes your best friend will probably have a great deal in common with your prototype of a best friend. However, if your friend suddenly becomes unavailable to talk to when you need them, the gap between the prototype and the actual person will grow. If that happens, the relationship might change, and, although you might still be friends, you may no longer be best friends (Pennington, 2000). Prototypes, like stereotypes and schemas, are oversimpli ications and generalizations. To some extent, we need to generalize across the many perceptions we select each day to categorize them in a useful and ef icient way. You will not, for example, need to relearn or seriously consider each time how to interact with the checkout person at the grocery store because you have a prototype in your mind for how that general type of interaction should unfold. You thus carry these mental images into your interactions with other people, but these ways to organize your perceptions become problematic when you start to rely on them as your only source of information about a person or situation. When you meet people and initially interact with them, it is important that you keep an open mind and guard against letting your preconceived ideas in luence your early judgments of others. In that way, you can get to know another person as the unique individual he or she is based on how that person acts and the interactions you share. If you build a relationship with that person, over time, some of your initial impressions will be con irmed and others will be discarded (Zunin, 1986). Implicit Personality Theory How do these perceptions work together to form a general impression or perception of someone? Implicit personality theory provides an explanation of how perceptions are predicted to it together. According to this theory, once we know a small amount about someone’s characteristics or traits, we use that information to ill in our general expectation about that person with other similar qualities. Which personality characteristics go together is typically determined by our previous experiences and interactions with others. For example, research has found that people who perceive that someone is physically attractive (a nonverbal aspect of interpersonal communication we discussed in Chapter 4) will also think that he or she is kind, friendly, generous, and smart as well, even if they have no direct evidence for the existence of those personality traits (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972; Langlois et al., 2000). Grouping positive personality characteristics in this way is called the halo effect. In contrast, the reverse halo effect, also called the horn effect, describes the grouping of negative characteristics on the assumption that the individual only has other negative traits as well. As with stereotypes and prototypes, we use implicit personality theory to organize and interpret our interactions with others. The danger associated with this theory occurs when we do not check our perceptions via communication or are unwilling to learn more about the person to more accurately understand who the individual is. In other words, rather than allowing our implicit (usually initial) assumptions about someone to “ ill in” the rest of their personality characteristics, we must be open to communicating with them and allowing the perceptions that stem from our direct interactions to determine how we perceive who they are as a person. Impressions At the broadest level, an impression is the overall effect of someone or something, which is based to some extent on your experience with that individual or that thing. There are three important aspects of impression that researchers study: how we form impressions of other people, how long these impressions last, and how we attempt to manage the impressions others form of us. Interpersonal communication is instrumental in assisting us in forming impressions of others and managing others’ impressions of us. Impression Formation The saying “You never get a second chance to make a good irst impression” is true. Not only do we form impressions and make judgments about people quickly, but these split-second impressions are often long lasting and dif icult to change. With impression formation, you are decoding, or interpreting, dimensions of another person’s “image,” be it how they appear, their nonverbal messages, or what they say. For example, studies have shown that when you irst meet someone, you form general impressions of the person based on facial appearance alone—and you form these impressions in less than a tenth of a second. Based on that split-second impression, you immediately judge the attractiveness, trustworthiness, and likeability of the other person, and you also form impressions of speci ic traits, such as competence or aggressiveness, that you believe the person possesses (Willis & Todorov, 2005). Researchers have found that you usually approach new people with preconceived ideas about their personalities, attitudes, and beliefs as well as certain expectations of how they should behave (Uleman, 1999). Any number of things can aid in forming these impressions. For example, wearing the color red in a job application context led participants in one German study to form impressions that the job candidate was less intelligent and would be less likely to be hired in comparison to applicants wearing blue or green clothing (Maier et al., 2013). In this way, implicit personality theory and stereotypes can come into play when you form impressions of others. But in many ways, the ability to make quick assessments of other people is a valuable trait; the judgments you make can help you detect potential threats and keep you safe. You continually encounter strangers as you walk down the street, sit next to them in a crowded movie theater, or swipe left or right on a dating app. Your safety may depend on your ability to judge their personalities and accurately predict the behavior of people you encounter. This ability to form accurate impressions of others can help you sense if it is a good idea to give your number to someone that you have just met or if you can trust the person you are talking to via an app enough to meet in person. Impression Management At the same time that we are forming impressions of others, we also trying to in luence the impressions others form of us. The act of encoding, or creating, dimensions of your own image is called impression management. When you are preparing to go on a irst date with someone, for example, you probably pay particular attention to your grooming, your clothing, and other aspects of your appearance. When you see the other person, you most likely put your best “self” forward, and you do your best to smile and convey a positive image. These are all attempts to create a good irst impression. https://content.ashford.edu/print/Bevan.6245.19.1?sections=fm,ch07,ch07intro,sec7.1,sec7.2,sec7.3,sec7.4,sec7.5,sec7.6,ch07summary,ch08,ch08i… 5/39 5/21/2020 Print Social psychologists have identi ied two common techniques that people use for imp ... Purchase answer to see full attachment