Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

twins to see if they differed in terms of their communicator style, or “the way one verbally, nonverbally,
and paraverbally interacts to signal how literal meaning should be taken, filtered, or understood.” 35
Ultimately, Horvath found that identical twins’ communicator styles were more similar than those of
fraternal twins. Hence, a good proportion of someone’s communicator style appears to be a result of
someone’s genetic makeup. However, this is not to say that genetics was the only factor at play about
someone’s communicator style.
Other research in the field of communication has examined how a range of different communication
36,37, 38
variables are associated with genetics when analyzed through twin studies:
• Interpersonal Affiliation
• Aggressiveness
• Social Anxiety
• Audience Anxiety
• Self-Perceived Communication Competence
• Willingness to Communicate
• Communicator Adaptability
It’s important to realize that the authors of this book do not assume nor promote that all of our
communication is biological. Still, we also cannot dismiss the importance that genetics plays in our
communicative behavior and development. Here is our view of the interrelationship among environment
and genetics. Imagine we have two twins that were separated at birth. One twin is put into a middleclass
family where she will be exposed to a lot of opportunities. The other twin, on the other hand, was
placed with a lower-income family where the opportunities she will have in life are more limited. The
first twin goes to a school that has lots of money and award-winning teachers. The second twin goes to
an inner-city school where there aren’t enough textbooks for the students, and the school has problems
recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. The first student has the opportunity to engage in a wide
range of extracurricular activities both in school (mock UN, debate, student council, etc.) and out of
school (traveling softball club, skiing, yoga, etc.). The second twin’s school doesn’t have the budget for
extracurricular activities, and her family cannot afford out of school activities, so she ends up taking
a job when she’s a teenager. Now imagine that these twins are naturally aggressive. The first twin’s
aggressiveness may be exhibited by her need to win in both mock UN and debate; she may also strive to
not only sit on the student council but be its president. In this respect, she demonstrates more prosocial
forms of aggression. The second twin, on the other hand, doesn’t have these more prosocial outlets for
her aggression. As such, her aggression may be demonstrated through more interpersonal problems
with her family, teachers, friends, etc.… Instead of having those more positive outlets for her aggression,
she may become more physically aggressive in her day-to-day life. In other words, we do believe that
the context and the world where a child is reared is very important to how they display communicative
behaviors, even if those communicative behaviors have biological underpinnings.
Temperament Types
is the genetic predisposition that causes an individual to behave, react, and think in a
specific manner. The notion that people have fundamentally different temperaments dates back to the
Greek physician Hippocrates, known today as the father of medicine, who first wrote of four temperaments
in 370 BCE: Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic, and Melancholic. Although closely related, temperament
and personality refer to two different constructs. Jan Strelau explains that temperament and personality
differ in five specific ways:
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