Group Communication Roles and Tasks

As we started to brainstorm what people were interested in our class and what they'd like to research, our class came up with five or six topics.  Our group is doing lit reviews for nonverbal communication, and I couldn't be happier with my topic and group.  We started off by doing our survey, coming together as one to put all of our ideas together to make interesting questions.  We started to experience interaction as we came up with questions and thoughts for our survey.  Since our group is considered a "small group" our communication was direct and participation was equal all around.  We essentially have become a team because we all put in our input, we all fully did our annotated bibliographies and we did them successfully.  Our collective identity is becoming stronger by class period. 

The one thing I like about our group the most is that we are all creative in our own way.  As I said before, we all bring something different to the table which makes our group synergy great.   The idea that many brains is better than just one brain is definitely seen in our group.  In no way are any of our group members not doing much for the project and just sitting back and relaxing also known as social loafing, which I have seen in PLENTY of at my experiences at Kutztown University.  I find our whole group as being information seekers and initiator contributors.  I say this because we are always throwing ideas out in the open, asking each other for clarification and asking for facts from respective articles.  I personally put the "Joker or Clown" into positive roles.  Although it is usually a negative connotation by diverting thhe group off task, I believe that cracking a joke here or there lightens up the mood and makes everyone enjoy their time doing the project.

We all take on maintenance roles by talking for a little bit before we get started at the task at hand. Doing so, increases our group cohesiveness and we feel good about our topic and we get a lot of work done.  Becoming too cohesive could decreases productivity because we would get off tangent more than we usually do.  I cannot see this happening to our group because we'd like to achieve good grades and more importantly feel good in the end about the work that we had accomplished.

The Penn State Scandal

This Penn State scandal really made Penn State University look really bad.  In all that was going on there, much stress were put on the people that were accused of lying, actually assaulting children and people covering up what Sandusky had done.  Those people were Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, and Mike McQueary.  All three of those men either lied to police authorities, covered up some aspect of Sandusky's wrong doing or denied some altercations to conform to group think.  These three men obviously were a very close knit group of friends who didn't want to break the bonds of cohesiveness so they all conformed and decided to lie to authorities about a very serious subject.

Those three men most likely did that due to group think.  This relates to group think because they were a close group of guys who did not want the University to look bad at all, yet it ended up looking bad.  They denied, lied, or covered up aspects to keep their prestige of Penn State University on the roll.  They did this because they had been working for such a beloved institution together for some years now, and they did not want to see it go down the drains.  In group think members of the group try to avoid conflict, exactly what the situation was here.  Also, members try to reach critical decisions without alternative ideas or thoughts, its one idea and its done.  This cohesive group of Penn State representatives ultimately can be explained as a a group of people who stick to group think.

"Put the phone down!"

Last week I went upstairs to the South Dining Hall to eat dinner and I encountered a very nice lady who I had a great conversation with.  Carol, who worked the sandwich station in the buffet style cafeteria, was a very nice and kind lady.  Carol and I talked about our families and many other things.  Carol had a big family and a very loving family it sounded like.  I told her about my family and how my sister lives in California.  She was surprised to hear that my family lives in New Jersey and my sister is all the way on the west coast.

I showed Carol a picture of my sisters dog, Sadie, and we got into another conversation about pets and how I had none when I was growing up and she had a loving dog whom she will never forget.  Carol and I gave each other much feedback which helped us both go along with the conversation.  Carol and I also were bonding in our conversation, although it was not in a romantic way.  Carol and I now know each others name and I will always go up to her station to simply say hello to her and to see how her day is going.

Debating a Devilish Question

The question " Is there any part of a dyadic relationship that is NOT communication?" is an extremely difficult question to answer.  As I'm sitting here at my computer trying to think of all the possibilities, I cannot think of why any part would not be communication.  The five characteristics of dyadic communication ( it's directness, it's personal, it's immediate, it's spontaneous, and it's usually informal) are all relevant to my personal experiences and I can probably vouch for our whole class and say the same thing. 

I think that every part of a dyadic relationship is all communication.  I support my belief by saying that the multiple approaches stated in the book are extremely relevant and make perfect sense.  The developmental approach looks at communicating in a way that relationships between two people will evolve if the person finds something special in the other person engaging in the conversation.  The cultural-level rules looks at how we interact with people that we do not know.  When engaging in a conversation with an unfamiliar person, humans ask general questions such as "Hello, how are you?" or " I'm Matt. It's nice to meet you.What is your name?" Questions like these "break the ice" for new prospective interpersonal relationships. Sociological-level rules is a shared way of greeting people due to group membership.  For example, on a college campus it is likely that you will hear many "What's up?" questions being thrown around because that question is short and sweet and everyone says it.  Finally the Psychological-level rules are the rules that pre-existing interpersonal relationships use everyday with each other, such as hugging a friend or shaking somebody's hand. 

All of these rules and approaches build dyadic relationships and I feel that after doing this blog I strongly support that everything in the world is considered communication.  I know we talked about this in class but I strongly believe that everything we see, hear, say, and do is communication.