Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

exist because of forces outside the individual’s control. An individual with an external dating locus of
control would believe that their dating life is a matter of luck or divine intervention. This individual would
also be more likely to blame outside forces if their dating life isn’t going as desired. We’ll periodically
revisit locus of control in this text because of its importance in a wide variety of interpersonal interactions.
According to John Daly, cognitive “complexity has been defined in terms of the number of different constructs
an individual has to describe others (differentiation), the degree to which those constructs cohere
(integration), and the level of abstraction of the constructs (abstractiveness).” 47 By differentiation, we are
talking about the number of distinctions or separate elements an individual can utilize to recognize and
interpret an event. For example, in the world of communication, someone who can attend to another
individual’s body language to a great degree can differentiate large amounts of nonverbal data in a way to
understand how another person is thinking or feeling. Someone low in differentiation may only be able
to understand a small number of pronounced nonverbal behaviors.
Integration, on the other hand, refers to an individual’s ability to see connections or relationships
among the various elements he or she has differentiated. It’s one thing to recognize several unique
nonverbal behaviors, but it’s the ability to interpret nonverbal behaviors that enables someone to
be genuinely aware of someone else’s body language. It would be one thing if I could recognize that
someone is smiling, an eyebrow is going up, the head is tilted, and someone’s arms are crossed in front.
Still, if I cannot see all of these unique behaviors as a total package, then I’m not going to be able to
interpret this person’s actual nonverbal behavior.
The last part of Daly’s definition involves the ability to see levels of abstraction. Abstraction refers to
something which exists apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances. For example, if
someone to come right out and verbally tell you that he or she disagrees with something you said, then
this person is concretely communicating disagreement, so as the receiver of the disagreement, it should
be pretty easy to interpret the disagreement. On the other hand, if someone doesn’t tell you he or she
disagrees with what you’ve said but instead provides only small nonverbal cues of disagreement, being
able to interpret those theoretical cues is attending to communicative behavior that is considerably more
abstract.
Overall, cognitive complexity is a critical cognitive disposition because it directly impacts interpersonal
relationships. According to Brant Burleson and Scott Caplan, 48 cognitive complexity impacts several
interpersonal constructs:
1. Form more detailed and organized impressions of others;
2. Better able to remember impressions of others;
3. Better able to resolve inconsistencies in information about others;
4. Learn complex social information quickly; and
5. Use multiple dimensions of judgment in making social evaluations.
In essence, these findings clearly illustrate that cognitive complexity is essential when determining
the extent to which an individual can understand and make judgments about others in interpersonal
interactions.
Authoritarianism/Dogmatism
According to Jason Wrench, James C. McCroskey, and Virginia Richmond, two personality characteristics
that commonly impact interpersonal communication are authoritarianism and dogmatism. 49
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