Research Reports from the Department of Operations
Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Date
6-9-1976
Abstract
Interpersonal communication, or the sending and receiving of messages between two individuals, can be characterized by various degrees of certainty, consistency, and patterning. One's prior experiences can often affect current perceptions and attitudes. Furthermore, the various aspects of the personalities of the communicants can significantly influence whether the outcome of the communication sequence will be successful and mutually understood, or will be unsuccessful and misunderstood. This dissertation presents several models of the interpersonal communication process. These have been derived from such apparently divergent fields as mathematical communication theory, thermodynamics, behavioral science, and transactional analysis, and have been wedded into a unique, rigorous descriptive model, in operationally meaningful terms, of the outcomes of human interpersonal communication. This represents an attempt to go beyond those studies in the literature which (a) are confined to the one-way stimulus message, or (b) even though including feedback, exclude the consideration of a person's behavior and/or background. Communication theory concepts of entropy, noise, and redundancy are employed in measuring the amount of uncertainty, patterning, and new information occurring in the communicational sequence. It is felt that these measures do capture real world relationships between people as they engage with each other. The computerized results indicate graphically that strong, positive ties between individuals are associated with a high probability that communication will be successful, i.e., that the two will mutually perceive the outcome of the sequence as terminating in the mode the initiator intended it. Further analyses indicate, depending on the personality categorization of the two individuals, the relative proportions of response modes that will result in crossed terminations of communication sequences, and the types and correlation of "noise" which cause these terminations. An additional model explores these crossed outcomes, and encompasses a procedure by which such miscommunication is decreased. The analysis of these results pointed out a nonlinear relationship between the percentage complementary outcomes and the mutual perception of the outcome of the communication sequence. The implications for the conscientious communicator are to attain, where possible, a self-respecting and other-respecting temperament, and to engage in stimulus/response patterns which emphasize complementary outcomes of communicational sequences. These behavioral conclusions, which simply verify that the models are real-life representations, serve to emphasize the significance of the models themselves. The incorporation of human behavior, personality, and attitudes into a quantitative model has traditionally been extremely elusive. The purpose of this dissertation is to substantiate that such an incorporation can be accomplished. The framework presented herein can subsequently be utilized by clinicians, social and behavioral scientists, and individuals themselves for therapeutic purposes.
Keywords
Operations research, Interpersonal communication, Communication models, Communication--Mathematical models, Information theory, Communication--Psychological aspects, Communication--Research, System theory, Human behavior, Social interaction
Publication Title
Dissertation/Technical Memorandums from the Department of Operations, School of Management, Case Western Reserve University
Issue
Technical memorandum no. 407 ; Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Rights
This work is in the public domain and may be freely downloaded for personal or academic use
Recommended Citation
Rasmussen, John J., "Interpersonal Communication : Some Quantitative Models" (1976). Research Reports from the Department of Operations. 257.
https://commons.case.edu/wsom-ops-reports/257