Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Control, in, and of itself, is neither good nor bad.
The second need we fulfill through interpersonal relationships is inclusion. Everyone wants to belong.
As humans, we have an innate desire to belong to groups and social communities. At the most basic level,
we belong to our families when we are born. As we age, the desire to belong to other groups we deem as
positive continues. In school, we may want to belong to sports teams or social groups like a fraternity or
sorority. When we enter the workforce, we want to feel like we belong in the workplace or belong within
our professions by being a member of professional associations. Our need to feel like we belong is a base
need, and we fulfill this need through our daily interpersonal encounters.
The final need we fulfill through our interpersonal relationships is affection. The word “affection”
stems from the Latin term affectio, which refers to emotions or feelings. Kory Floyd and Mark T.
Morman defined “affection” as having an emotional state of fondness and positive regard toward a
specific target. 2 As you can see, our understanding of affection is still rooted in the notions of emotion
and feeling today. We all want to feel someone else’s positive affection towards us, whether it’s from our
parents, coworkers, friends, siblings, children, etc. We also have an innate need to feel affection towards
others.
Hopefully, you can see that these three basic human needs—control, inclusion, and affection—are
essential constructs to everyone’s daily life and interactions. Furthermore, these are central tenets to who
we are as human beings. Much of our success in life is built upon these three needs, so exploring these
needs and how people accomplish them effectively is very important. The interpersonal communication
strategies we discuss in this book are tools. As with many tools, they can either be used to enhance
people’s lives or destruct them. A kind word and smile may make someone’s day, but an evil glare and a
cutting remark can just as quickly destroy someone’s day. For this reason, we want you to consider what
it means to be an ethical communicator just as much as we want you to consider how you communicate
and react to others’ communication with you. Realize that the way you communicate and interact with
others will impact their lives as much as it affects yours.
A Note for Students
Welcome to the world of interpersonal communication. We’re happy that you’re going to be joining us
for this journey through the fascinating world of relationships in today’s modern world. In addition to
this textbook, there’s also a student workbook that we’d encourage you to download and print. You can
find the workbook on the Open SUNY Textbook website. The workbook has a complete outline of
the entire book, a wide range of activities, 20 unique adult color pages, a 16-week course planner, and
so many other features. This workbook is a companion to this textbook. And it’s also available for you
100% free.
A number of the chapters in this text will contain information about research results, so we wanted
to explain a couple of basic social scientific concepts before we jumped right into the text itself. A lot of
the research in the world of interpersonal communication is based on statistics. Don’t worry; we’re not
going to throw numbers at you within this textbook. However, it is crucial to understand a couple of basic
concepts related to statistics: relationships and differences.
Relationships
The first major statistical concept that anyone studying the social sciences must understand is statistical
relationships. We don’t want to get too technical in our discussion of relationships, but we do want to
explain some of the basic ideas. When we examine relationships, we must have scores on two different
xix
Interpersonal Communication