1.2.2 Motives For Interpersonal Communication
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Motives for Interpersonal Communication
At 19 months of age, Helen Keller fell ill with a severe fever that destroyed her sight and hearing (Dash, 2001). Helen had learned to speak quite early and had a substantial vocabulary (for a toddler), but when she stopped hearing she stopped trying to talk. In the years that followed, she created primitive messages through pulling, shoving, pinching, and shivering, but she had lost the knowledge of how to interpersonally communicate.
With no ability to connect with others through communication, she became filled with hatred and an all-encompassing sense of isolation. She called the resulting sense of self “The Phantom.” The Phantom routinely flew into screaming tantrums that ceased only when utter exhaustion set in. In one of her early lessons with Annie Sullivan—the woman who eventually taught Helen how to communicate through hand signals—The Phantom became so enraged that she punched Annie in the mouth, knocking out one of her front teeth.
But when Annie finally taught Helen how to communicate through sign language, The Phantom was slain. As Helen explained years later, “It seemed that something of the mystery of communication was revealed to me . . . and suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something remembered—a thrill of returning thought.” Helen Keller went on to master sign language, Braille, and spoken language and graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College.
As the Helen Keller story powerfully illustrates, when we communicate interpersonally, we connect with others—fulfilling a profound human need. We also achieve important personal and professional goals. When these outcomes are denied us, we lapse into isolation and loneliness or, worse yet, have a violent “Phantom” emerge from within, as did Helen Keller.
Interpersonal Communication and Human Needs Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1970) suggested that we seek to fulfill a hierarchy of needs in our daily lives. Only when the most basic needs (at the bottom of the hierarchy) are fulfilled do we turn our attention to pursuing higher-level ones. Interpersonal communication allows us to develop and foster the interactions and relationships that help us fulfill these needs. At the foundational level are physical needs such as air, food, water, sleep, and shelter. If we can’t satisfy these needs, we prioritize them over all others. Once physical needs are met, we concern ourselves with safety needs—such as job stability and protection from violence.
Then we seek to address social needs: forming satisfying and healthy emotional bonds with friends, family members, and romantic partners. Next are self-esteem needs, the desire to have others’ respect and admiration. We fulfill these needs by contributing something of value to the world. Finally, we strive to satisfy self-actualization needs by articulating our unique abilities and giving our best in our work, family, and personal life.
Interpersonal Communication and Specific Goals In addition to enabling us to meet fundamental needs, interpersonal communication helps us meet three types of goals (Clark & Delia, 1979). During interpersonal interactions, you may pursue one or a combination of these goals. The first—self-presentation goals—are desires you have to present yourself in certain ways so that others perceive you as being a particular type of person. For example, you’re conversing with a roommate who’s just been fired. You want him to know that you’re a supportive friend, so you ask what happened, commiserate, and offer to help him find a new job.
You also have instrumental goals—practical aims you want to achieve or tasks you want to accomplish through a particular interpersonal encounter. If you want to borrow your best friend’s prized Porsche for the weekend, you might remind her of your solid driving record and your sense of responsibility to persuade her to lend you the car.
Finally, you use interpersonal communication to achieve relationship goals—building, maintaining, or terminating bonds with others. For example, if you succeed in borrowing your friend’s car for the weekend and accidentally drive it into a nearby lake, you will likely apologize profusely and offer to pay for repairs to save your friendship.