COMM 3525 Study Guide - Final Guide: Fundamental Attribution Error, Groupthink, Closed System
22 May 2018
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Catelyn Martinez
Final Study Guide
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Meta communication: “the talk about the talk” stepping out of the conversation and ask
questions. It is the solution to schismogenesis.
Fundamental attribution error: false judgement. It is our tendency to explain someone’s behavior
based on personality or disposition, underestimate the influence that external factors have on
another person’s behavior. For example, if someone is quiet throughout the semester, you
assume that the student is very quiet and shy based off what we see. The student can be quiet
because they work nights and they’re exhausted by class time.
Schismogenesis: crazy from the beginning and escalating. This is the relationship where each
person is reacting from their response until it spirals out of control. A rift that is being dealt with.
Position vs interest: interest is your basic need. Position is the basic need that gets out of hand.
Your position escalates, and the initial need is forgotten.
Face (threat, save, gain): your “face” is how you want to be seen. When your face is threatened,
it occurs when someone has power, they alter how you are seen. For example, disrespecting an
elder by calling him an old man over sir is threatening his face. Instead of being seen as a
respectable elder, he is seen as just a guy. Saving face is done when someone speaks highly of
the person. For example, when you speak to the dean over your grade, saying the professor is
horrible. The dean can save the professor’s face, saying how other students spoke so highly of
him. Gaining face is altering what a person originally thinks of you. For example, a teenage
mother putting her child into excellent schools in order for them to get into an ivy league school.
Even though she had a child young, she gains face when her child succeeds.
Jack Gibb: defensive vs supportive communication
● judgment vs description: using ‘you’ language compared to using ‘I’ language and
providing examples about why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling
● neutrality vs empathy: not caring about the situation compared to showing someone you
understand where they are coming from
● superiority vs equality: using rank compared to seeing each other as equals
● certainty vs provisionalism: going in with a closed mind and having all the answers
compared to listening with an open mind
● control vs problem solving: telling people what the solution is going to be based on them
winning compared to trying to hear everyone’s side and finding a solution everyone
agrees with
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● strategy vs spontaneity: implying hidden motives and manipulating the other person to
win compared to being straightforward and direct
system: looking at the full picture, the parts in relation to the whole. To never try to exclude an
individual from the system. Open system is being able to express how you feel, open
mindedness. Closed system is being closed off, not being able to express how you are feeling,
avoids conversation.
● Role: the function that a person plays in a part of a system
● Rules: what people in the system must follow
● Triangulation: happens within a closed system. When one or two parts of the system talk
to each other, pushing the third party out
● Frame/reframe: framing is the thought process people use to define a situation and how
they are going to deal with it. Reframing is taking the situation and redoing it in a
different way
● Mixed messages: communication that is contradictory, inconsistent, or unclear
● Homeostasis: quality or characteristics of roles. Preserving the status quo, an individual
should never try to change it. Trying to preserve your view from the outside world. For
example, homeostasis was attempting to be broken in the movie High School Musical.
The jocks wanted to stay jocks but a couple of the people in that group had other interests
such as singing or cooking. They’re told to stick to the status quo, meaning they need to
stick with playing sports and that is it.
Bormann: Symbolic convergence theory:
● Symbols form chain links, forming a fantasy that helps form your rhetoric vision.
Rhetoric vision is the general outlook on the world. It is shaped by those who are
important to use. With the use of symbols forming chains, it creates a picture on how you
would want to see the world. For example, certain cultures see police as good guys while
others see them as pigs. Based on their rhetoric vision influenced by those around them,
their chain links together and creates an opinion.
Reification: we take something immaterial and treat it as a material object. Forgetting that it is
abstract, we believe it is true to the point that anyone who disagrees with what we think, we
laugh in their face. For example, many people believe a wedding ring is the reification of a
couple’s love for each other. When someone doesn’t want to wear a ring, people think it is crazy.
Groupthink: the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group, discouraging creativity or
individual responsibility. The group is like minded and there is a strong desire to fit in. breaking
groupthink can be done by being slow to judge from all members, especially the leader, playing
devil’s advocate (showing diversity in thinking process), diversity of membership, and the leader
encouraging dissent.
Freire: “pedagogy of the oppressed” pedagogy: the method and practice of teaching
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● Banking model: professor perpetuates information, no one is thinking independently.
Information is being poured in and things are being memorized, not thinking for
themselves.
● Cultures of silence: nobody wants to speak out, no one mentions, discusses, or
acknowledges the given subject.
● Narration sickness: the loss of ego power. An individual is feeling like it is the end, there
is nothing left. telling stories that end with phrases like “it’s hopeless” or “there’s nothing
I can do” or “why continue to try”
o This can be reified by not allowing the loss of ego power. The person who is
bringing you down can be stopped by not allowing their words to get you down.
o Use phrases such as “we can do this!”
● The oppressed become the oppressors: instead of trying to break free from oppression,
they want to become the oppressors. A constant cycle that someone is always going to be
better than the other. For example, the Hutus oppressing the Tutsis because they’re tired
of them being seen as better.
Third Story: there are three sides to a story, your side, my side and then the actual story. The
actual story or the third story is the side that is told from a person who isn’t directly involved and
can tell the story from an unbiased point of view.
Conscientization: the process of compassion, caring for other people. DO NOT CONFUSE
WITH PITY
● Compassion: treating the other as an equal
● Possibility
● Humility: modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness
Empowered humility: the capacity to be bold and dream big while being are of the
limitations we have. It’s not about being powerful despite your limitations; rather, its
about being powerful by leveraging your limitations. Ex: don’t tell me what you fund, tell
me what problems you are trying to solve.
Cognitive dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes relating to a
behavioral decision.
Identification: if you can get people to identify with you, it allows a person to chip away at the
cultures of silence. Making connections with people and relating allows people to feel like
they’re not alone. This regains their ego power, allowing them to speak up.
Alienation: us vs them mentality. The state or experience of being isolated from a group to which
one should be involved in. Lack of sympathy. Ex: Excluding someone in a class because they
share different beliefs than your own.
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Document Summary
Meta communication: the talk about the talk stepping out of the conversation and ask questions. It is our tendency to explain someone"s behavior based on personality or disposition, underestimate the influence that external factors have on another person"s behavior. For example, if someone is quiet throughout the semester, you assume that the student is very quiet and shy based off what we see. The student can be quiet because they work nights and they"re exhausted by class time. This is the relationship where each person is reacting from their response until it spirals out of control. Position vs interest: interest is your basic need. Position is the basic need that gets out of hand. Your position escalates, and the initial need is forgotten. Face (threat, save, gain): your face is how you want to be seen. When your face is threatened, it occurs when someone has power, they alter how you are seen.
