MOOC "Social psychology". Module 6

This week we ought to watch the videos of the 6^th Module of social psychology course. This module is devoted to the topic of transmission of information.

Let us remember what the lectures were about!

In the 1^st lecture I found out that social communication consisted of the following parts: the communicator, the recipient, message, feedback from the recipient.

There are also different styles of communication:

·                   Direct - indirect

·                   Weak – strong

·                   Persistent – affiliative

·                   Simple – sophisticated, rich

In the 2^nd lecture the professor kept talking about the structure of social communication. I also learnt that feedback can be:

·                   Evaluative (positive/ negative)

·                   Non-evaluative

Positive feedback can make partners of communication closer, it has the ability to improve their relationships. Negative feedback, on the contrary, worsen relationship between two parts.

Communicative barriers are some obstacles that prevent communication. They can be: physical (high temperature), phonetic (a low voice), psychological (anxiety of a person), semantic (slang, words multiple meanings etc.), social (expectations from a person’s status, background).

The topic of the 3d lecture was verbal and non-verbal communication. There are such systems of non-verbal communication:

ü    Kinesics (gestures, movements)

ü    Appearance

ü    Extralinguistics (pauses, fillers)

ü    Paralinguistics (the timbre of voice, its loudness, sonority, intonations)

ü    Oculesics (the shape and size of eyes, direction of a view, its duration)

ü    Olfaction (smells)

ü    Gastics (the interaction with a partner with the help of drinks and food)

ü    Proxemics (distance between participants, place and time of communication)

The 4^th and the 5^th lectures were about persuasive communication. The lecturer told about stages of persuasion and different models of persuasive communication that were made by various psychologists. Besides, I learnt about such communicator’s characteristic features as competence, sincerity and attraction. There was also information about features of the message of communication.

After passing the module we usually have to answer to the questions of a test. Here is my result of the test:

I liked this module very much, it was interesting and it gave me valuable knowledge. What about you? Did you like the 6^th module? Let me know in the comments down below!