The Impact of Preexisting Conditions
- Values, attitudes, and beliefs
- Learned ways of thinking
- Culture and religion
- Cultural mores, norms, ideas, and customs provide the basis for our way of thinking
- Social status
- High-status persons often convey their high-power position with gestures of hands on hips, power dressing, greater height, and more distance when communicating with individuals considered to be of lower social status.
- Gender
- Masculine and feminine gestures influence messages conveyed in communication with others.
- Age or developmental level
- Example: The influence of developmental level on communication is especially evident during adolescence, with words such as dude, cool, awesome, and others.
- The environment in which the transaction takes place
- Territoriality, density, and distance are aspects of environment that communicate messages.
- Territoriality: The innate tendency to own space
- Density: The number of people within a given environmental space
- Distance: The means by which various cultures use space to communicate
- Territoriality, density, and distance are aspects of environment that communicate messages.
- There are four kinds of distance in interpersonal interactions.
- Intimate distance: The closest distance that individuals allow between themselves and others
- Personal distance: The distance for interactions that are personal in nature
- Social distance: The distance for conversation with strangers or acquaintances
- Public distance: The distance for speaking in public or yelling to someone some distance away
