Charting Relational Stages Rubric

Outcomes

• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the perceptual process of communication.
• Apply active listening and its principles in your communication.
• Distinguish between the risks and advantages involved in increasing self-disclosure.
• Identify relationship stages and relate them to your own experiences.
• Maintain relationships and identify symptoms of trouble within.
• Identify personal barriers to thinking and communication.
• Execute original base-line research in the interpersonal discipline.

Point Value: 200

Activity Description
Chart a current or past relationship that you have been involved in. If you’re currently involved, invite your significant other to participate to see if your perception of the relationship progress is the same as his or hers.

• As you write about each stage of the relationship be sure to address each element of that stage.
• What was involved in your perceptual contact? How did your companion perceive you?
• Did self-disclosure intensify the relationship in the involvement stage or did it open up the back door?
• Was your listening more direct and active during the contact or the involvement stage than it was during the intimacy stage?
• What happened during the intimacy stage that may have moved the relationship into deterioration?
• Which perceptual or personal barriers became more intense during the deterioration stage?

Activity Rubric

1. The learner justifies their efforts in charting a past or current relationship in which they’ve been involved.

Below Expectation (0-10) Satisfactory (11-20) Exemplary (21-30)

2. Each stage of the relationship is described in detail relating to the relational theory discussed in class.

Below Expectation (0-10) Satisfactory (11-20) Exemplary (21-30)

3. Interpersonal perceptions are discussed on both the part of the learner and the companion.

Below Expectation (0-4) Satisfactory (5-7) Exemplary (8-10)

4. The learner describes how self-disclosure worked as an intensifier in the involvement stage and discusses the effects of self-disclosure.

Effects can include encourage self-disclosure on the companion’s part, empathy, rejection, loss, increased knowledge, and the fact that you can’t take it back.

Below Expectation (0-10) Satisfactory (11-20) Exemplary (21-30)

5. The learner evaluates the quality of listening in the relationship as it progressed through the stages.

Below Expectation (0-10) Satisfactory (11-20) Exemplary (21-30)

6. The learner assesses dysfunctional conflict communication and/or causes of relational deterioration that have applied to their own personal relationship.

Possible conflict communication might include decreased openness, deception, increased criticism, decreased compliments and reinforcement, the silent treatment, and humiliation.

Possible relational deterioration factors may include unrealistic beliefs, excessive intimacy claims, third-party relationships, relationship changes, undefined expectations, sex-related problems, and work-related problems.

(Theoretically, every relationship goes through the deterioration stage. The above symptoms are the most often occurring in most relationships. The learner may indicate other symptoms, or reasons, perhaps, why they opted for the back door.)

Below Expectation (0-10) Satisfactory (11-20) Exemplary (21-30)

7. The learner identifies and defines perceptual or personal barriers that may have entered the relationship during the deterioration stage.

Perceptual barriers may include attribution, the implicit personality theory, primacy- recency, the self-fulfilling prophecy, and stereotyping.

Personal barriers may include polarization, intensional orientation, fact-inference confusion, allness, static evaluation, indiscrimination, and disconfirmation.

Below Expectation (0-16) Satisfactory (17-29) Exemplary (30-40)

Conflict

“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.” 

― Anne Lamott

Myths - Conflict means the relationship has gone bad, it hurts the relationship, and it reveals us as we do not want to be seen.

Content v. Relation dimensions of conflict

On what level is the conflict talking place? In most mature relationships conflict exists primarily on the content level symptomatic of deeper relationship dysfunctions.

Conflict Management

            Avoidance v. Fighting Actively

            Force v. Talk

            Gunnysacking v. Present Focus

            Attack v. Acceptance

                        personal rejection

                        beltlining

Verbal Aggressiveness v. Argumentativeness

·       be objective

·       avoid attacking

·       reaffirm opponent’s competence

·       avoid interrupting

·       stress equality and similarities

·       express interest in opposing view

·       avoid emotion

·       never humiliate

Meaning

Term Assessment One

Read and follow the instructions for each of the seven assessment items below.

Use Google docs to write and edit your responses and share your document's link with me via email to comm2110.09@gmail.com with 2110 A1 YourName in the subject field. Submit your responses no later than midnight, June 30th.

1. Engage in a conversation and identify and apply the existing contexts and elements of noise during a your exchange. Remember, there are five contexts and three types of noise.

2. In a different communication context (meaning a different person in a different conversation) from number one, document your own perception process as you speak with someone else. What perceptual influences did you deal with? Write about the perception theories you might automatically default to, such as the Attribution theory, Self-fulfilling Prophesy, the Implicit Personality theory. Then comment about how the makeup of your self–concept influences your perception.

3. Practice active listening in your communication. This is easier said than done (pardon the pun), as you may need to encourage someone close to you to self-disclose. At the very least write about your attempts, but what I’m most interested in is the effect your active or passive listening has on the person to whom you’re listening. Indicate whether you were active or passive, perhaps both, and what listening style you used during the exchange.

4. Understand the risks and advantages involved in increasing self-disclosure. You might be able to respond to this item with your research from item three. Write about the risks or advantages that evolved from allowing yourself to be seen, the vulnerability of your self-disclosing to another.

5. Get out of your box and strike up a conversation with a stranger who shares very little of your own cultural frame of reference, someone you normally wouldn’t speak with for whatever reason. Write about your experience discussing how you handled the situation, what changes, if any, did you make in the way you spoke to this person, what cultural insecurities you may have experienced. The rules for this include:

• The person you speak with must be on your social level, meaning waiters in restaurants and retail salespeople are off limits for this since they’re paid to talk with complete strangers. Likewise, if you’re employed in a service position, you can’t use that context for this item.
• Be careful with whom you decide to approach.
• Don’t patronize. If you have to force it, it won’t work.

6. Practice your assertiveness and develop your confidence with the person you’ve identified in your notes as one with whom you experience communication apprehension. Write about your success or the areas in which you found you might need a little help.

7. Are you humanistic or pragmatic in your interpersonal approaches? Or are you both? Detail your communicative make-up, and what changes in your communication you see yourself making as a result of what you’ve been learning.

Not So Happy

Oh. My. Heck.