Tamara D. Afifi and Samantha Coveleski

13Relational competence

Abstract: Communication competence has generally been held as the ability to appropriately and effectively use communication to obtain a desired outcome or goal. Traditionally, the focus of communication competence has been on how behaviors and cognitions, such as cognitive complexity, empathy, role-taking, and interaction management, are enlisted for goal achievement. This chapter takes a “macro approach” to competence in relationships by first reviewing the operation of these fundamental behaviors and related cognitions in close relationships. Shifting, then, to a wider frame, we expand the traditional perspective to include a broader set of communication processes and remark on communication skills that could be considered relational competence. Focusing on those communication processes that influence the ability of individuals to acquire, develop, and maintain satisfying relationships, we situate relational competence as a complex and dynamic phenomenon. Some of these processes, such as social support, affection, and information regulation vary from incompetent to competent depending on their use. Other communication processes, such as hurtful messages, verbal aggression, and violence, are more likely to be destructive and incompetent. What remains for future research is to disentangle the subtle differences in the characteristics of verbal and nonverbal messages that make them more or less skilled and functional as well as helpful or harmful.

Keywords: competence, relational competence, relationships, attachment, information management, hurtful messages, conflict, aggression

One might think it would be easy to describe what constitutes competence in relationships. Such a task, however, can be daunting because communication competence is ultimately what many communication scholars spend a lifetime trying to decipher. This task is particularly arduous because interpersonal interaction is the epitome of relationships and social integration (Spitzberg 2003). Being a competent communicator, therefore, is essential to developing and maintaining relationships, particularly healthy relationships. Being a competent communicator could ultimately determine whether a relationship survives, let alone flourishes. Competence also reveals itself in many different communicative behaviors in relationships. Some of these behaviors, however, could arguably be more central to the notion of competence than others.

In this chapter, we take a “macro approach” to competence in relationships by outlining some of the fundamental behaviors and related cognitions that comprise competence in close relationships. We then expand the traditional focus of communication competence to other communication skills in close relationships that could be considered a part of the realm of relational competence. Relational competence involves the ability to “facilitate the acquisition, development, and maintenance of mutually satisfying relationships” (Hansson, Jones, and Carpenter 1984: 273). Although the communication patterns that create and maintain mutually satisfying relationships are varied, we provide examples of central communication skills that have been shown to affect people’s ability to maintain healthy close relationships. Determining what constitutes a mutually satisfying relationship is also difficult because it can involve characteristics like relationship duration, trust, happiness, closeness, satisfaction, and commitment. Most of these characteristics, however, revolve around the idea of relational quality. Relational competence involves communication skills or communication competencies that allow people to maintain quality relationships. As such, we begin by discussing the broader notion of communication competence in relationships and how these skills are developed. After providing this foundation, we explore other essential communication skills, such as social support, affection, and conflict management, and their functionality in relationships.

1Traditional conceptualizations of communication competence

1.1Communication competence and related skills

Communication competence is a complex concept to define. While its complexity can prove problematic for research, understanding its sophistication is an essential tool for untangling relational communication phenomena. In general, communication competence is people’s ability to appropriately and effectively use communication to obtain a desired outcome or goal (Spitzberg, Canary, and Cupach 1994). Communication competence is typically situationally determined (Spitzberg, Canary, and Cupach 1994). But, it can also constitute a larger set of communication “traits” that are relatively stable across situations (see Merrill and Afifi 2012). Literature associated with competence can be categorized around seven conceptual clusters (fundamental competence, social competence, interpersonal competence, linguistic competence, communicative competence, and social skills (Spitzberg and Cupach 1984) with each emphasizing a different aspect of competence. The clusters vary in their conceptualization of competence and their number and overlap demonstrate the potential for competence to become unclear and nebulous.

Competence, itself, can be understood as an ability and a quality (Spitzberg 1993). As an ability, competence is the capacity of a person to enable the repeated performance of goal-directed behavioral routines. As a quality, competence is the evaluation of several criteria of a behavioral performance (i.e., dialogical criteria, clarity, understanding, efficiency, satisfaction, effectiveness, and appropriateness; Spitzberg 2003) or a person’s capacity for this behavioral performance. Competence also serves three essential roles in relationships (Spitzberg 1993). First, as an ability, competence fundamentally facilitates the development and management of relationships. As such, those who are skilled in relational competence have an advantage in relationships. Second, as an evaluation, competence plays a mediating role between the behavior itself and a person’s reaction to that behavior. How a person reacts to an actor’s behavior is dependent on a person’s evaluation of the actor’s communication competence. This means that the perception of competence is a vital component in relationship initiation and maintenance. The third role of competence in relationships is its manifestation in the self’s evaluations of one’s own competence, or “self-competence” (Spitzberg 1993: 138). The degree to which a person perceives him- or herself to be competent in a given interaction will determine the person’s decisions regarding pursuit and management of goals. Interestingly, people often rate their own competence higher than the ratings provided by their interaction partners (Alicke and Govorun 2005; Canary and Spitzberg 1990).

While conceptualizing competence serves an orienting purpose, doing so begs the question: What are the sources of competence? According to Spitzberg and Canary (1984), four constructs represent the underlying processes of competence: cognitive complexity, empathy, role-taking, and interaction management. Cognitive complexity is rooted in the constructivist approach to communication (Delia, O’Keefe, and O’Keefe 1982). The assumption is that people organize what they know and experience into cognitive schemata. In communication, the schemata of importance are referred to as interpersonal constructs (Delia, O’Keefe, and O’Keefe 1982). They use these constructs as a filter, base, and referent for evaluating and interacting with the world around them. Cognitive complexity is the number, abstractness, and interrelatedness of these interpersonal constructs. As people’s cognitive complexity increases, their ability to make differentiated and complex interpretations of relational situations increases. These cognitive skills are essential for becoming interpersonally competent (Spitzberg and Cupach 1984). Even when individuals are rated high in cognitive complexity, however, other factors, such as being emotionally upset or cognitively taxed, can impair their ability to evaluate messages (Bodie et al. 2011). In light of this, competent relational communication cannot be studied in the isolated individual nor in ignorance of their potential for being able to adequately process messages (Burleson 2010).

Empathy and role-taking are often used interchangeably, but Spitzberg (1980) distinguishes empathy as an emotional reaction to, or affective experience of, another person’s emotional state. Role-taking is conceptualized separately as the cognitive construction of another person’s role in order to manage interactions. However, as the terms are related, they together represent the “adaptiveness” quality of competence (Spitzberg and Cupach 1984: 45). By taking the role of others, even at a young age, one develops interpersonal constructs that permits more comprehensive adjustment to one’s interaction partner (Hale 1980). Indeed, the ability to empathize is often a crucial part of relational competence (see Davis and Oathout 1987).

Interaction management is the ability to handle the procedural aspects of structuring and maintaining a conversation (Wiemann 1977). Very similar to aspects of control, interaction management includes actions such as topic negotiation, turn taking, entering and exiting interactions, and handling topical development smoothly (Spitzberg and Cupach 1984). Even though this explication of constructs underlying competence assumes that behaviors can be reproduced, it is important to understand that competence is a context-specific phenomenon (e.g., Spitzberg 1991).

1.2Multiple goals and social influence

Although communication in relationships is a complex and messy process, some order can be brought to the chaos if interaction is assumed to be goal-directed. Whenever people communicate, they rely on goals and plans (Kellermann 1992). More often than not, people juggle their own desires and intentions with those of spouses, dating partners, family members, and friends. This negotiation often takes place in communicative encounters. Given that competence typically is considered the capacity to perform an appropriate behavior effectively for a particular purpose within a particular situation, evaluations of competence hinge on the identification of the interactants’ goals, plans, and eventual actions. Relational competence is judged according to how individuals balance their goals and plans with those of others. This assumption is especially salient in goals-plans-actions (GPA) theories.

GPA theories conceptualize message production as a three-step process in which goals form plans, which manifest in externally executed actions. Goals are future states of affairs that an individual is committed to achieving or maintaining (Dillard 1997). Plans are cognitive representations of behaviors that are intended to enable goal attainment (Berger 1997). Actions are the behaviors enacted in an effort to realize a goal (Dillard 2008). Communication competence in GPA theories is exhibited in the message production process as one manages situational ambiguity, increasing complexity of plans, plan modification, and goal multiplicity (Wilson and Sabee 2003). As the number of goals increases, the complexity of plans and planning increases (Dillard 2008). Competent communicators are able to quickly format a plan and take action in ambiguous situations. They also are able to handle complex plans that are subject to change either before interaction, after an interaction, or while an interaction is taking place (Berger 1997). Focusing on message production, GPA theories assume competent communicators have an “anticipatory mindset” (Wilson and Sabee 2003: 23) That is, they are able to recognize the effectiveness of their actions and revise their plans before and during interaction in order to maximize the potential for goal achievement.

Before interaction begins, goals drive the initial cognitive processes. Commonly occurring in relational communication, desired future states of affairs become interactional goals when the desired state requires compliance and approval of others (Wilson and Morgan 2006). In order to realize their goals, individuals must engage in communication and coordination with others. Of the seven common primary goals identified in interpersonal influence research (Dillard 2008), Wilson and Morgan (2006) note that four goals, specifically, frame the interactions in close relationship: giving advice, obtaining assistance, convincing others to share an activity, and eliciting support for a third party. Secondary goals are related to the primary goal in that they exist only because of the primary goal, but they may, and often are, contradictory to the primary goal (Dillard 2008).

People attempt to accomplish multiple goals through interaction (Dillard and Knobloch 2011). Although the pursuit of multiple conflicting goals is distressing and drains cognitive resources (Kahneman 2003), being perceived as communicatively competent often depends on one’s ability to manage multiple goals (Wilson and Sabee 2003). Managing multiple goals is essential to avoiding relational conflicts that might arise from departing from any one of five categories of secondary goals: a) identity goals, or desires to act consistently with one’s beliefs, morals, and values; b) interaction goals, or desires to maintain a positive self image, to avoid other people losing “face”, and to say things that are relevant and coherent in light of the larger conversation; c) relational resource goals, or desires to maintain valued relationships; d) personal resource goals, or desires to avoid unnecessary risking or wasting one’s time, money, or safety; and e) arousal-management, or desires to avoid or reduce anxiety or nervousness (Dillard, Segrin, and Harden 1989). For example, one spouse is skilled at cleaning and would like to give her less-skilled partner advice on how to wash dishes more effectively. The more skilled spouse’s primary goal is to give advice, but her secondary goal could be to avoid threatening her partner’s “face”. Another secondary goal could be that the more skilled spouse desires to act consistently with his belief that married couples should always be supportive. Should his partner feel threatened by the advice, the more skilled spouse would unintentionally violate her own identity goal. The ability to anticipate these outcomes, however, permits the spouse to adjust her plans (Berger 1997), build in contingencies (Wilson and Sabee 2003), and design new messages in order to maximize the attainment of all goals.

While GPA theories provide a framework for understanding the source of tension between multiple goals, how that tension is resolved is more specifically addressed by the message design logic approach to message production. Originated by O’Keefe (1988), a message producer can employ one of three different fundamental, communication-constituting premises in reasoning from goals to messages. A premise, or logic, drives the message production resulting in expressive, conventional, or rhetorical message design logics. This approach is still goal-based, but details the consistent types of message tailoring to a particular situation rather than stable structures of motivation and action (O’Keefe and McCornack 1987). Goals are considered implicit in social structures, and messages are designed in ways that support the logic of how to accomplish various goals (O’Keefe 1988). Using an expressive message design logic, individuals will simply express the thoughts and feelings that the situation provokes in them. When communicating in conventional message design logic, language is treated as a means of expressing propositions, but the propositions are specified and constrained by the social effect one wants to achieve. In rhetorical message design logic, individuals attempt to cultivate an interpersonal consensus about the social situation that is desirable (O’Keefe 1988).

In accordance with multiple goals perspectives, message design logics assume that communication is purposeful (Caughlin 2010). In a study on reactions to HIV disclosures, Caughlin et al. (2008) found all three types of message design logics present in reactions to a hypothetical scenario in which participants were asked to imagine their sibling had just disclosed a positive HIV diagnosis to them. They found that the more sophisticated the message design logic, the higher participants rated the message in appropriateness, supportiveness, sensitivity, and helpfulness. These results suggest that message design logic is an indicator of relational communication competence.

Competence in difficult interpersonal situations is essential to maintaining harmonious relationships. Whether communication decisions are competent depends on the goals of the communicator and the meaning of those actions, which might not be clear or agree upon to everyone involved in the interaction (Wilson and Morgan 2006). From a multiple goals perspective, the meaning of communication behaviors is not inherent to those behaviors, but is instead dependent on the interpretation of those behaviors (Caughlin 2010). Thus, not only does competent relational communication involve managing multiple goals, but it must also involve managing the interpretation of one’s goals. For example, families of lung cancer patients report frequent avoidance of discussions pertaining to informational and emotional issues despite also reporting that they are very open about the patient’s illness and death (Caughlin et al. 2011). Although avoidance of some topics may seem to contradict the family’s identity goal (being communicatively open), Caughlin et al. (2011) found that this served as a coping mechanism. This alludes to the existence of a second goal (e.g., to maintain hope and optimism) and demonstrates how avoidance is not inherently problematic (Afifi, Caughlin, and Afifi 2007). Explicit topic avoidance is often used with the goal of protecting one’s privacy or autonomy (Afifi 2003; Petronio 2002), but the communicator simultaneously risks his/her communicative behavior being interpreted as rude or face threatening (Brown and Levinson 1987).

Messages that convey the primary goal of topic avoidance are evaluated as more competent when they also contain a message component that addresses a secondary goal of expressing gratitude (Donovan-Kicken et al. 2011). Similarly, end- of-life talk is most effective in families when family members are able to attend to two goals: discussing end-of-life decisions and addressing identity and relational goals (Scott and Caughlin 2012). End-of-life decision discussions bring up uncertainties about expectations of family member roles and responsibilities. When children, for example, are able to reassure a father that they will take care of him as he wishes in his later years, the children are able to satisfy identity goals (e.g., it is morally right to take care of my father; my father needs to perceive me as a person who will do this) and address the primary goal of discussing end-of-life care (Scott and Caughlin 2012). Even though competence in managing multiple goals in relationships is related to the ability to craft sophisticated messages, competent relational communication is highly dependent on situational factors and others’ interpretations.

2Broadening the notion of communication competence in relationships

In the aforementioned sections, we examined more traditional notions of communication competence in relationships. There are other communication skills, however, that are perhaps more subtle that equally contribute to competence in close relationships. At the foundation of many of these communication skills are individuals’ attachment orientations.

2.1Attachment, social support, and affection

At a basic level, all human beings long to feel secure, loved, and supported. Close relationships are a primary source of the fulfillment of these needs. Competence in close relationships often means that partners, friends, and family members have secure attachments and can provide a “secure base” for one another (Bowlby 1982). Attachments are the bonds that people develop with others as a result of their primary caregivers’ availability and responsiveness to their needs as children (Bowlby 1982; Jang, Smith, and Levine 2002). Parents who have children with secure attachments provide a safe space from which their children can explore the world and seek support when they are uncertain or stressed (Bowlby 1982). Attachments are rooted in the degree to which people can trust others (i.e., anxiety) and want to approach or avoid relationships (Collins and Feeney 2004; Guerrero, Faranelli, and McEwan 2009).

Attachments shape the way individuals communicate in close relationships across the lifespan (Jang, Smith, and Levine 2002). Individuals with secure attachments could be considered more competent communicators, given that they tend to be moderately disclosive, expressive and socially supportive, emotionally stable, and able to give and receive affection freely (LePoire, Shepard, and Duggan 1999). These communication competencies have important implications for relational and personal well-being. For example, research shows that people who are more anxious in relationships tend to emphasize the negativity in their conflict and use more negative emotions with their romantic partners (e.g., Feeney 1999). Moreover, people who are avoidant in relationships tend to be reserved emotionally in order to prevent conflict and emotional intimacy with their romantic partner (Feeney 1999). Although attachments often change, research shows that they are relatively stable across the lifespan (e.g., Simpson et al. 2007). That is, people’s attachments often change, particularly with major life events that can influence the attachments (e.g., traumas, divorce, death, significant life events, being with a supportive partner), but they have still been shown to remain relatively consistent across the lifespan.

Along with attachment, more broadly, being able to communicate effective social support, specifically, is an important characteristic of relational competence. Sometimes social support can hurt personal and relational health if it is not used appropriately. Essentially, the effectiveness of social support is mediated by its appropriateness. For instance, sometimes people can be “overly helpful” in their support, making the other person’s stress worse. Coyne and Smith (1991) found that wives who were over- protective of their husbands following the husbands’ myocardial infarction not only increased the husbands’ distress, but also their own distress. Research on natural disasters also suggests that sometimes people are able to provide good support initially, but are unable to sustain quality support because they are experiencing the same stressors and their resources are also drained (Afifi, Afifi, and Merrill 2014; Kaniasty and Norris 1993). Or, sometimes individuals provide poor support if they feel like the person deserved his/her stress (Kaniasty and Norris 1993). Research points to clear instances where social support can be considered incompetent, resulting in deteriorating personal and relational health.

Although there are times when social support can be harmful, social support tends to buffer the negative impact of stress on people’s mental and physical health (Albrecht and Goldsmith 2003; Burleson 2009). For example, research indicates that parents’ social support, particularly the support by the mother, can help children succeed even when they grow up in poverty stricken, violent neighborhoods (Evans et al. 2007). Better quality support tends to include messages that are “high person-centered” where a support provider recognizes the depth of the support receiver’s situation, elaborates on the person’s feelings, and provides comfort (Burleson 1982, 2008). More incompetent social support tends to be characterized as low person-centered messages where the support receiver’s feelings and opinions are dismissed as invalid and there is little comfort or elaboration on that person’s thoughts (Burleson 1982, 2008). Social support is also effective when it matches the other person’s expectations and desires for support (Joseph and Afifi 2013).

Researchers need to take into account the fact that social support is often a process that transpires through multiple conversations and that the relationship with the person offering the support matters. For instance, if someone is ruminating or mulling over an issue, a best friend telling that person to stop thinking about it, which would typically be considered a low person-centered message, might be effective and exactly what the person needs to hear to stop ruminating (Afifi et al. 2013). In general, however, social support that is more high person-centered, on average, tends to be more effective than low person-centered messages.

Social support also gets communicated nonverbally, often through affection. Similar to social support, affection serves an important stress reduction function and is a crucial component of communication competence in close relationships. According to Affection Exchange Theory (Floyd 2002, 2006), expressing and receiving affection helps prepare the body to fight against stress, as well as protect individuals from the negative effects of stress on their health. The theory suggests that the more people give and receive affection, the better their body is able to adapt to acute and chronic stress, which ultimately promotes better health. Giving and receiving affection has been shown to reduce cholesterol and produce healthier cortisol and other biological stress responses (Floyd and Riforgiate 2009). For example, Floyd (2006) found that the amount of affection individuals communicated to others throughout a typical workday was predictive of higher waking cortisol levels and aggregate cortisol values. Higher waking cortisol values are indicative of better health because the body needs a certain amount of cortisol to fight the stress it experiences during the day. Floyd (2006) also found that expressed affection was positively associated with the amount of morning-to-evening decrease in cortisol, which is a diurnal rhythm that is indicative of healthy adaptation to stress. Overall, affection and social support may provide a sense of security, which ultimately reduces stress and promote better physical and mental health, as well as relational quality.

2.2Information regulation

As with many of the other communication skills described in this chapter, people’s ability to regulate or appropriately manage the flow and content of their private information is essential to relational competence (see Petronio 2002). This management often involves regulating one’s own and others’ private information through disclosures, avoidance, and secrets. When it comes to competence, people often believe that secrecy and avoidance are destructive patterns of communication in relationships. Granted, an overwhelming amount of research shows that secrecy, both from the perception of the person keeping the secret and the perception of the person from whom the secret is being kept, is negatively associated with relationship satisfaction (e.g., Vangelisti and Caughlin 1997). People are more dissatisfied and tend to have more conflicted relationships when they are keeping secrets and/or they think others are keeping secrets from them (Aldeis and Afifi 2014). A similar finding exists for avoidance (see Caughlin and Golish 2002). Still, most people report keeping secrets from those close to them (Afifi, Olson, and Armstrong 2005; Afifi and Steuber 2009). Some secrets are also positive in nature. What often tends to create an emotional wedge in relationships is when people feel like they cannot talk to their relational partners or family members about certain topics and withhold information as a result (Afifi, Olson, and Armstrong 2005). When people feel like others will react negatively to their disclosures, they often avoid disclosing sensitive information (Afifi, Olson, and Armstrong 2005). Fortunately, research shows that when people reveal information and the reaction is positive, people are more likely to disclose to that person in the future (Afifi and Steuber 2009). Part of relational competence involves building trust with close others, so that people feel like they have the communication efficacy necessary to disclose sensitive information if they want to do so.

As most theories of privacy in relationships (e.g., Communication Privacy Management, Petronio 2002; Relational Dialectic Theory, Baxter and Montgomery 1996) also suggest, people typically need a balance of disclosure and privacy to build and maintain healthy relationships. Communication competence often involves finding the appropriate balance between openness and closedness in one’s personal relationships. As a whole, the United States is a culture that tends to privilege openness and equates it with healthy relationships (Petronio 2002). Yet, avoidance serves important functions in relationships. As Roloff and colleagues (e.g., Roloff and Wright 2009; Roloff and Ifert 2000) contend, whether avoidance helps or hinders relationships depends on how it is used and the function it serves. For instance, research shows that people who have been happily married for years tend to learn what topics to discuss and what topics to avoid with their spouse (Roloff and Ifert 2000). It would be dissatisfying to the relationship to introduce every complaint to one’s partner (Roloff and Ifert 2000). In addition, avoidance is typically viewed as a negative coping strategy in the coping literature (Raush et al. 1974). There are instances, however, where avoidance may serve an important stress reduction function. When a stressor is out of one’s control, avoidance might be a better strategy than active problem solving. For example, avoidance may be functional for adolescents who perceive that their parents’ conflict is out of their control (Afifi et al. 2008). Avoiding talking about their parents’ conflict may help de-escalate conflict and shelter children from some of its harmful effects. At the same time, extensive use of avoidance or using avoidance instead of discussing an important issue, could be detrimental to one’s personal and relational health (Roloff and Ifert 2000). Similar to the general definition of communication competence discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the functionality of avoidance depends upon the particular context at hand and the positive and negative impact it can have on the relationship.

A similar argument about the functionality of witholding information in relationships holds true for self-disclosure, particularly self-disclosure about one’s stress. Research in psychology has shown for years that disclosure is cathartic and health-promoting (see Derlega et al. 2004). According to the Fever Model (Stiles, Shuster, and Harrigan 1992), when a stressor builds inside the body, it can breed rumination and anxiety and disclosing it can rid the body of the stress and restore its health. Indeed, Pennebaker’s research (Pennebaker and Beall 1986; Petrie, Booth, and Pennebaker 1988) has shown that writing about a stressor is associated with better health. Most of this research, however, does not take into account the response from the recipient of the information or the dyadic nature of the relationship (Kelly and MacReady 2009). Sometimes the response from the recipient of the disclosure can make the stress worse instead of better. Other times, people can disclose their stress and unknowingly spread it onto the recipients. Other research shows that disclosing too much about one’s stress or verbally ruminating is associated with increased anxiety and depressive symptoms (Rose 2002). Likewise, people who share their stressor with others when it should be coped with alone can inadvertently spread their stress onto them (Afifi, Hutchinson, and Krouse 2006). For example, parents who talk inappropriately about the other parent to their child can contribute to the child’s poor mental health (Afifi and McManus 2010). Talking about one’s stress serves an important coping mechanism and relational partners need to be able to share their stress with each other, but talking about it too much and in negatively valenced and/or inappropriate ways, can result in stress contagion and potentially make the discloser and the target feel worse (Afifi et al. 2014). Consequently, relational competence involves knowing when and how to regulate one’s private information to build and maintain healthy relationships.

2.3Hurtful messages

Hurtful messages are sometimes an example of communication incompetence that can have potent effects on close relationships. Hurtful messages are not always incompetent. Sometimes people hurt others simply because they relay information that is difficult for a loved one to hear, but it needs to be communicated. But, it is the way that people communicate hurtful messages that makes the messages more or less hurtful to the receivers. Hurtful messages can create feelings of hurt. Hurt feelings are powerful emotions at the crossroads of relational turbulence, abuse, persuasion, and support (see Vangelisti 1994, 2009a). They involve emotional injury or harm that is elicited and defined by the interpersonal relationship with the person who committed the hurtful act (Vangelisti 2009b). Feeling hurt is characterized by feeling deserving of the hurt, a devaluation of the self and/or relationship with the offender, and feelings of vulnerability (Vangelisti 2009b). Informed by appraisal theory, hurt feelings emerge from appraisals of a negative evaluation that arise from a perceived discrepancy between one’s desired and perceived relational value (Leary and Leder 2009). Although the state of hurt as a distinct emotion continues to be contested among scholars (Vangelisti 2009b), the cause and revelation of hurt feelings is inherently communicative because of the nonverbal and verbal communication of the hurtful messages and necessitates a pre-existing human relationship in which parties are invested. While physical abuse can certainly result in hurt feelings, the sophisticated and devious potential of language exacts much more calculated and potent affronts (Vangelisti 2009b). At the same time, since hurt feelings are the result of the recipient’s appraisal process, messages can be unintentionally hurtful. Hurtful messages, therefore, are subject to interpretation.

Hurtful messages can have emotional, relational, and physiological consequences. Hurtful messages inflict a level of perceived hurt intensity. Types of hurtful speech acts include accusations, evaluations, directives, advice, expressions of desire, disclosures of information, questions, threats, jokes, and lies (Vangelisti 1994). The harmful effects of hurtful messages manifest themselves physiologically. Biological indicators demonstrate the extent of hurtful messages, with self-reported hurt feelings being positively associated with salivary cortisol (Priem, McLaren, and Solomon 2010). Elevated cortisol levels after being exposed to hurtful messages evidence their power to create stress (Priem, McLaren, and Solomon 2010).

Perceptions of hurt, particularly when the hurt was perceived to be inflicted intentionally, tend to foster emotional distancing. This occurs because hurt, by definition, involves feelings of vulnerability, and those who are hurt experience a desire to distance themselves from the source of their pain (Vangelisti and Young 2000). The relationship between the intensity of hurt and the amount of relational distancing is moderated, however, by the recipient’s perception that the hurt was intentionally inflicted (McLaren and Solomon 2008; Vangelisti and Young 2000). Messages are perceived as more hurtful when they are believed to be inflicted intentionally (McLaren and Solomon 2008). The experience of feeling hurt also varies as a function of relational uncertainty, partner involvement, and gender, but evidence suggests that certain messages hurt more than others because of the relational meaning inferred from the interaction itself (McLaren, Solomon, and Priem 2012). Because of the capacity of messages to do significant relational damage, preventing hurt requires careful attention to potential appraisals of the communicative contribution to the interaction. Intentionally hurtful messages afford fewer options for redress and so more hurtful messages prompt more relational withdrawal (McLaren and Solomon 2008). Mixed evidence confuses the conclusion about whether active (explicit partner rejection) or passive (being ignored, excluded) disassociations are more hurtful (Leary et al. 1998; Feeney 2004), but politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987) would suggest the active rejection is more hurtful. This is because active disassociation is an explicit face threat and passive dis-association is more ambiguous (Goldsmith and Donovon-Kicken 2009).

Communicators, however, do not always intend to inflict hurt on their partners. When hurt is not intended, potentially hurtful messages can be mitigated by using different wording or a different use of humor or directness (Goldsmith and Donovon-Kicken 2009). The communicative decisions leading up to the delivery of the content is also important. When an interaction is characterized by affection and minimal offense, the eventual transgression caused by the hurtful message is perceived to be less serious (Goldsmith and Donovon-Kicken 2009). Likewise, individuals in satisfying relationships are more likely to perceive partner transgressions as unintentional (Vangelisti 2007). As such, perceptions of the severity of hurt come not just from the message itself, but from the larger context of the conversation and the larger context of the relationship.

2.4Conflict management skills

The ability to effectively and appropriately manage conflict is also essential to the livelihood of quality interpersonal relationships (see Cupach, Chapter 14 this volume). Conflict is normal and healthy in relationships. In fact, conflict is an important way in which people resolve issues in their relationships. What is essential is how the conflict is managed. Unfortunately, most research has focused on destructive or incompetent conflict patterns in interpersonal relationships at the expense of more productive or competent conflict tendencies. The goal is typically to identify unhealthy conflict patterns in an effort to ameliorate them and prevent their recurrence. Unhealthy conflict is often (but not always) prolonged and repeated, unresolved, and includes extreme reactions and emotions (e.g., avoidance, perpetual sadness, coercion, anger, aggression) that undermine the purpose of the conflict and prevent people from reaching a mutually satisfying solution (Afifi, Joseph, and Aldeis 2012). Examples of destructive conflict behaviors include excessive and ineffective uses of avoidance (Roloff and Ifert 2000), demand-withdraw patterns (e.g., Caughlin 2002), Gottman’s (1994) four horsemen (i.,e., criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling), and negativity (e.g., Huston et al. 2001). Demand-withdraw patterns exist when one person demands or nags to talk about an issue and the other person withdraws or refuses to talk about it (Caughlin 2002). When these patterns become recurring, they can result in dissatisfaction, poor mental health, and relationship dissolution (see Christensen and Heavey 1990).

Many of these conflict tendencies are learned in childhood (Canary, Cupach, and Messman 1995). Children often socially model their parents’ conflict tendencies and carry them over into their own adult relationships (Amato and Booth 2001). For example, research on divorce shows that children with divorced parents are more likely to get divorced themselves later in life, perhaps because their lifelong notion of commitment is weakened, but also because they are repeating their parents’ ineffective conflict management skills (see Amato 2000; Amato and Booth 2001). In particular, when children are exposed to on-going conflict that is hostile, coercive, and/or they become enmeshed in it, it has an adverse impact on their well-being and future relationships (Noller et al. 2000).

It is important for parents to model effective conflict management for their children. Parents should avoid engaging in negative conflict patterns in front of their children. At the same time, they should not completely avoid conflict. Marital couples have the greatest amount of conflict within the first ten years of marriage. Over time, conflict tends to subside in healthy couples. The way of disagreeing may be healthy or unhealthy, but disagreements themselves are neither healthy nor unhealthy. Children need to see their parents model healthy disagreements about important issues, talk about the issues calmly, and collaborate to find creative solutions. Conflict management is constructive when people listen to each other’s perspectives and empathize, provide emotional support, moderate their emotions, and create solutions that are mutually satisfying (Perlman, Garfinkel, and Turrell 2007).

In addition, people’s conflict management tendencies can become more or less competent when paired with the tendencies of their romantic partner. The matching of couples’ conflict behaviors is equally as important as people’s personal conflict skills (see Gottman 1994). The pairing of two people together who are highly competitive can result in vastly incompatible conflict tendencies than a competitor paired with an avoidant person. Moreover, the synergy, communicatively and physiologically, that is created within relationships and larger relational systems (e.g., families) can magnify negative conflict patterns in relationships and corresponding ill effects. For example, research shows that family members’ cortisol levels are more highly correlated when they are physically together and during more stressful moments of the day, when there is negative affect, and/or high levels of conflict in the home (e.g., Saxbe and Repetti 2010). Negative conflict can be stressful and this stress can spill over onto others who are in close proximity to each other. Competent communicators learn how to regulate their emotions so that their conflict does not get out of control and inadvertently spill over onto others on a regular basis.

2.5Aggression and violence

Two of the more explicit examples of communicative incompetence are aggression and violence. Eventually, both partners will perceive an incompatibility that will need to be negotiated within their relationship. In some situations, these negotiations escalate to aggression and violence. Escalation from negotiation to violence occurs for a constellation of reasons. Factors derive from inherent traits, situational elements and, arguably, a lack of relational competence (see Nicotera, Chapter 28, this volume). Due to the layering of various individual, family, community, and societal factors, abuse and aggression in relational and familial contexts may be best approached from an ecological model with communication emphasized as the primary phenomenon of interest (Dailey, Lee, and Spitzberg 2004). The ecological model permits a unified analysis of interactions within a system (DePanfilis 1986). This is necessary to understand two opposite reactions to verbal aggressiveness in relational communication: reciprocity and the chilling effect. Reciprocity refers to occasions when the recipient of verbal aggression responds to his or her partner with verbal aggression. Abusive couples have significantly more reciprocity in their verbal aggression than nonviolent distressed and non-distressed couples (Sabourin, Infante, and Rudd 1993). An opposite consequence to verbal aggressiveness is the chilling effect (Cloven and Roloff 1993; Roloff and Cloven 1990). The chilling effect occurs when people withhold complaints or threatening information because they fear that the other person may respond negatively (Cloven and Roloff 1993). Some initial evidence for the chilling effect suggested that greater anticipation of aggressive reactions from a dating partner is associated with more withholding of complaints about controlling behaviors (Cloven and Roloff 1993). Research on families shows that parents who are more conformity-oriented or who have strict expectations for appropriate behavior might foster patterns of concealment in children due to fears of their parents’ negative evaluations if their secrets were to be revealed (Afifi, Olson, and Armstrong 2005). Like reciprocity of verbal aggression, the chilling effect begins with negative communication from one party, but is realized only in the interaction between people.

When verbal aggressiveness escalates, violence can follow. Violence is an explicit indicator of communicative incompetence, but the way the incompetence reveals itself differs depending upon the type of violence and the context in which it is situated. Finite distinctions among different types of communication patterns that foster incompetence have emerged over time. Until the 1990s, domestic violence research generated ill-informed and contradictory findings because it was based on simplistic conceptualizations of violence and abuse (Johnson and Ferraro 2000). In contrast to the assumption that domestic violence only involves a heterosexual male battering his heterosexual wife into submission, Johnson (2008) forwarded a more universal typology of domestic violence in order to make important theoretical and practical distinctions. According to Johnson (2008), there are four types of intimate partner violence: violent resistance, situational couple violence, intimate terrorism, and mutual violent resistance. Intimate terrorism (IT) refers to the use of violence and other behaviors as a means to gain general control over one’s partner. Violent resistance refers to the set of actions a partner enacts in order to “fight back” against an abusive spouse. Situational couple violence (SCV; also known as common couple violence) involves violence that is situationally provoked. Because SCV is rooted in the events of a particular situation, there is no attempt to gain control or pattern of influence. SCV, has a lower per-couple frequency of violence compared to IT, and does not involve one partner controlling the other and the violence does not escalate over time. SCV and IT also differ in that IT victims experience more severe violent episodes and report more incidents of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders (Johnson and Leone 2005). All of these forms of violence represent different relational communication skill deficits. Such distinctions help people differentiate various forms of violence, the communication patterns that underlie them, and what people can do to prevent their occur-rence (see also Spitzberg 2009; 2013).

When people think of abusers, they might only think of them as lacking communication competence. It is true that individuals who are abusive tend to lack communication competence in many ways. But, in some situations, it is because the person is so skilled communicatively, at least initially, that the violence and control only become apparent over time or in momentary episodes. Individuals who are abusive might be charismatic and gregarious, which is why it is easy to fall in love with them (Rosen 1996). Abusers are often socially skilled – at least at the onset of the relationship and in the public sphere (Rosen 1996). There are may also be distinct differences in communication competence when considering the various types of violence. For example, while SCV could be the result of moments of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral lapses in competence, intimate terrorism requires a sophisticated understanding of social influence and the ability to implement those influence messages to garner control (Olson 2002). Yet, both forms of violence have the possibility of being equally destructive. There are other cases of abuse that are also the result of incompetence. For example, Anderson (2010) notes that abusive mothers have unrealistic expectations for child behavior and they attribute negative intentions to children’s behavior. Romantic partners of abusers may attempt to control child behavior by using abuse themselves in order to avoid having their child misbehavior and anger the abusive partner (Slep and O’Leary 2005). Due to the cognitively demanding emotional upset of being a victim of abuse themselves, adult victims may use abuse with their children instead of other forms of disciplinary action. Future research is necessary to better delineate how competence and incompetence reveal themselves in different forms of violence and how these communication patterns are intertwined with others involved.

3Final thoughts

Communication competence is a complex and dynamic phenomenon in relationships. Even though communication competence has traditionally been conceptualized as behaviors and cognitions, such cognitive complexity, empathy, role-taking, and interaction management, that help people achieve their goals (Spitzberg and Canary 1984), we expanded on this perspective to include a broader set of communication processes. Some of these communication processes, such as social support, affection, and information regulation, can be competent or incompetent depending upon how they are used. Other communication processes, such as hurtful messages, verbal aggression, and violence, tend to be more incompetent and destructive. Even hurtful messages, however, can vary in their skill level and their ability to help or hurt a relationship. Sometimes people may need to communicate a message that might be deemed as hurtful by a receiver in order to actually help the receiver and the relationship (e.g., the need to lose weight to prevent type II diabetes; the need to stop an addiction; the need to stop ruminating because it’s harming the relationship).

In this chapter we have challenged researchers to broaden their traditional notion of communication competence in relationships to include other communication skills. But, the question then becomes, how are these communication skills a part of relational competence? If we go back to the definition of relational competence used in this chapter, we are reminded that relational competence involves the ability to “facilitate the acquisition, development, and maintenance of mutually satisfying relationships” (Hannson, Jones, and Carpenter 1984: 273). All of the behaviors we describe in this chapter focus on individuals’ communicative capabilities to acquire, develop, and maintain quality relationships. The central component that crosses all of these behaviors is their functionality. Behaviors like social support, affection, the ability to successfully regulate private information, and the ability to communicate hurtful information, are essential to the building of close relationships, their survival, and their ability to thrive, particularly under stressful circumstances.

The future challenge for scholars is to decipher the characteristics of verbal and nonverbal messages that make them more or less skilled and functional. Seemingly “incompetent” behaviors involving hurtful messages and violence can actually seem quite skilled, especially when they include subtle communication patterns and cognitions like evasion, social influence, and cognitive complexity that make the victim seem like he/she is the one who is incompetent. But, these behaviors can do irreparable damage to the relationship and everyone involved. Additional research is necessary that explores the “grey areas” where social support, affection, disclosure, and avoidance go from competent behaviors that enhance personal and relational health to incompetent behaviors that are harmful.

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