Post 3

One topic that i found really interesting to read about this week was the guidelines for creating and sustaining confirming climates. There are five guidelines for building and sustaining healthy climates. The first guideline is actively use communication to build confirming climates. This means to enhance your communication with others by accepting and growing from the tension generated by relational dialects. The second guideline for sustaining confirming climates is to accept and confirm others. This means for a relationship to work others must acknowledge others and accept the validity of their needs and preferences.  The third guideline for sustaining confirming climates is to affirm and assert yourself. Wood puts it perfectly as he explains that, "you are no less valuable  your needs are no less important and your preferences are no  less valid than those of  others" (210). Affirm and assert yourself to others styles of communication. The fourth guideline is respect diversity in relationships.  People must respect this because everyone is diverse, and we must respect the differences in others. The final guideline is respond constructively to criticism. This is a very crucial point in communication because sometimes others just want to give their opinion and that is something that we should respect and not look down upon. Instead feel open minded about their criticism and move forward.

Confirmed

After reading Gibbs Defensiveness-producing communication behaviors, I learned that they are many ways to make a decsion and many factors that affect our decsion making skills. When I am faced with a really hard decision i tend to way the weight of the positives and negatives. In an argument I tend to do the same things.  One argument i had was one with a really good friend of mine actually. I was upset that I had not seen her the whole summer and it was very frustrating. ONe of the six behaviors that I believe that i can realate to would be  control/problem oriented because I was trying to control the friendship but was not viewing the busy work schedule of my friend.
After reading chapter eight I also learned that they are three steps that go into either confirming or disconfirming an argument. Those three steps include first recognition, which is basically respecting the other persons point of view. The second is acknowledgement which is confirm with them my personal opinons and disagreement. The final one is endorsement which includes why I believe the things I do.

Post 1

When I disagree with someone, I actually have a really hard time confirming my points. While reading the chapter I was able to distinguish well between recognition, acknowledgement, and endorsement. Recognition is recognizing that another person exists. Acknowledgement is acknowledgement of what another feels thinks, or says. When I disagree with someone I always make sure that I acknowledge their point of view before I go about arguing with someone. We disconfirm others when we do not do this. Endorsement involves accepting another's feelings or thoughts. When someone is disagreeing with you it is not necessarily a disconfirment. Someone is disconfirming if they are told that they are "crazy, wrong, stupid, or unimportant"(wood, 204). Confirming is recognizing, acknowledgement  and endorsing them to either do or not to do something. The example in the book gives the example of dropping acid, which was very helpful to understand the whole process of having a confirming climate. The climate that your relationships have with your friends can help them make choices in their lives.

Post 3

       The most interesting thing that I learned this week in chapter 7 was the obstacles to communicating emotions effectively. The reason we may not express emotions include many social expectations, self protection reasons, protecting others, and many social and professional roles. The social expectations of women are that more of them are willing to bear their emotions over men. Many men suppress their feelings because they have been generalized to be tough and unemotional. This leads to many men to become disconnected from their emotions and realize that society has taught them that they are not to experience many feelings. The social expectations of women and men's feelings have allowed women to express their feelings more than men. The self protection obstacle of communication discusses the need to not share information in order to protect yourself from any harm. The book discusses a chilling effect which is the act of restraining expression of our feelings in order to avoid someone more "powerful" than us. Furthermore we restrain from expressing feelings in order to protect others or ourselves. Finally, the way we express our feelings around the people we work with in our professional life is continually monitored. The way we carry ourselves in a professional environment can either credit us, or hurt us in the long run. Controlling your emotions in the work place is very important because we want to make sure they are always necessary, appropriate, and constructive.

Post 2

The fallacies that were discussed in the last portion of this chapter include perfectionism, obsession with shoulds, over generalization, taking responsibility  for others, helplessness, and fear of catastrophic failure. Perfectionism usually effects  people by causing stress, and chronic dissatisfaction with your self. Obsession with shoulds usually saps energy for construction work and sets up unrealistic standards set the self up for failure. Overgeneralization perceives one failure as typical of self. Taking responsibility for others usually effects ones self by depriving others of taking responsibility for selves. Helplessness effects the self by believing there is nothing you can do to change how you feel. The final fallacy is fear of catastrophic failure; this effects the self by the inability to do things because of what might happen. The fallacy that shows up in my interpersonal communication would have to be overgeneralization. Sometimes i tend to think when someone acts a certain way its because that's how they always are. For example, if someone were to push by me rudely I would assume that person was rude and everything that he or she did was just an example of there rudeness. When in actuality, I need to think about the circumstances of that person and why he or she is being rude.

Post 1

     Before we can understand the different perceptions of emotions we need to define emotions. Emotions are our experience and interpretation of internal sensations as they are shaped by physiological, language, and social experience. Physiological influences on emotions include how we think about emotions. For example, Organismic view of emotions is the theory that external phenomena cause physiological changes that lead us to experience emotions. Perceptual view of emotions asserts that subjective perceptions shape what external phenomena's mean to us. The way we respond to things such as shaking hands, butterflies in our stomach or a fist in the air all depend on what meaning we give that phenomena. The last perception of emotions is the social influences on emotions. When we discuss social influences we must discuss the interactive view of emotions. Interactive view of emotions proposes that social rules and understandings shape what people feel and how they do or do not express their feelings. The perspective that makes the most sense to me is physiological influences. Physiological influences allows a stimulus to be sent to your mind which allow a physiological response to trigger emotion.