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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The Psychology of Interaction

By Dean Miller


Connection is about using symbols and in case of people, using language, to express meanings and concepts between individuals and it involves the act of evoking side effects from other individuals. People communication is marked by intention and concern of the reactions and communication in humans can be mental when mediated by vocabulary or non-verbal when no words is involved. Conversation can also be direct when a specific pattern of actions evokes a specific type of response or delicate and indirect when behaviors are not foreseeable or ambiguous and not even completely comprehensible. The purpose of conversation is almost always motivated or intentional as we normally expect a reaction from people.

We communicate with. In fact all communication is based on anticipation of response from others thus communication tend to have a path or purpose. However the communication distance can create issues in the process and the purpose of communication may stay unfulfilled when disseminated ideas are too vague or indirect. The vagueness increases when programs of communication between two or more people are remote or distal rather than proximal.

Long distance communication techniques such as emails and internet, mobile phone calls etc. bring in new problems to the study of communication as we are not able to see the person we connect with, we find it difficult to 'interpret' the stimuli that we expertise. As I have noted in an earlier part of this discussion, the ability to 'interpret' the communicative stimuli is a very important part of the communicative process and the model or derivation of the meaning of what we hear or observe depends on our built in need for analysis of all indirect body words cues, facial words and phrases and hints or subtle or unconscious processes.

All online conversation and information on the internet are thus prone to misinterpretation as we are not able to translate the information using the non verbal cues or expressions that are an essential part of the communication process.

The communication gap is thus the gap of design as despite a lot of info there is certain dearth of vital information and our mind recognizes the communication process as incomplete. You may chat with a person online for several hours in a day but unless you are in a position to see or notice his or her facial and bodily expressions, you can never be assured that the conversation process is completely authentic. Of course, modern gadgets such as the webcam have greatly enhanced the communication method.




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