The Concept of Conversation in psychology

If you were to live in a den, with no facility, no human interaction, no phone. Would you be able to survive without having somebody to talk to you? Do we talk out of need or do we talk out of desire? What would change if we stopped interacting with people around us? There is no end to such questions while thinking about the concept of conversations.

You may spend an hour or two with yourself, maybe journaling, sleeping, or dancing alone, or doing any other activity that does not involve any electronic device. But at some point, you’d feel very burdened and heavy and would want someone around to talk to you in some or another way, either online or offline.

Conversations act as a medium to connect us to people, build relationships, and have a sense of belongingness. Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs wherein he put human needs in a hierarchical order, the bottom being the basic and primary need, and said that we successively try to achieve higher levels.

Read More: Mastering Effective Communication: Building Trust and Strong Relationships

A great example of the importance of conversation is seen in the movie Her. The film follows Theodore, a lonely man, who forms a deep connection with an AI named Samantha. Their conversations highlight how essential talking and connecting with someone is for emotional well-being. Even though Samantha isn’t human, their interactions show how vital it is to have someone to share thoughts and feelings with, emphasizing the human need for communication and companionship.

One of the levels is the need for belongingness, which is as important as having food and shelter. Having a sense of belongingness keeps you sane, and makes you feel indulged, involved, important and valued. All of us need to seek attention, validation, and affiliation. How’d you get that if you didn’t interact with the people around you?

These conversations need not fetch you some direct benefit i.e. materialistic or monetary. Conversations act as a bridge like we do talk even silly things and yet you can’t call it crap because it’s adding equal value to your life, your persona, and your sense of being. The hype about being driven all the time, being focused and goal-oriented all the time is not as human. It’s an unmatchable expectation. You are not a robot. You do not have a restricted schema to store only the mandatory things.

Every tiny activity, every tiny gesture, gossip, talk, and conversation holds some meaning. No doubt that effective, goal-directed interaction, pushes you a step closer to self-growth, and personality development. Conversations enable you to share your problems with your loved ones. You can ease your tension, enjoy family time, and have a great interpersonal or intrapersonal relationship. You learn to improve the quality of your life.

Read More: How to Speak so that People Will Listen: Psychology Behind Communication

What is the role of conversation in psychology?

As the discipline involves studying human behaviour and knowing why one does what he does, it becomes important to interact with the person and his environment closely to deduce any conclusions. Let’s discuss what other roles a conversation plays in psychology.

• Building Rapport: Before proceeding with the therapy session it’s important to build a rapport with the client. Rapport building helps you to discover the weaknesses, the thoughts, the emotions etc. This can be done only via interaction.
• Assessment: A conversation may help the psychologist dig deeper into a person’s mental state, emotional state, personality traits etc. It helps them in the assessment leading to a goal-directed approach for therapy.
• Therapeutic communication: Therapists need to interact with the client to understand them better. The conversation is always kept subtle yet goal-directed.
• Behavioural observation: The conversation between the client and the psychologist gives an insight to a psychologist about the client. It helps them observe the client’s verbal and non-verbal cues, giving the necessary details about a person’s emotional state, thoughts and beliefs.

There are many more aspects of it like cognitive restructuring, conflict resolution, trauma processing, self-exploration, social influence and research.

Historical context

Early studies on human communication and conversation

• Shannon-Weaver Model: It was proposed by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, to emphasize the transmission of data in the communication systems. It gave some easier-to-understand and well-known concepts like sender, receiver, message, channel, noise and feedback, making a functional framework to have an insight into the communication process.
• Transactional Model: It was put forth by communication scholar Barlund in the 1970s to emphasize the dynamic and interactive nature of communication. It is said that communication is a two-way deed where both parties have an equal share to make the conversation meaningful and fruitful.
• Speech act theory: It was given by J. L. Austin and later developed by John Searle in the 1960s to focus on the conduct of language. It talked about how words not merely act as a medium to convey data but also perform actions like we tend to make promises requests or declarations.
• Developmental Communication studies: Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget contributed to the research on communication development in children in their early to mid-20s. They emphasized language acquisition social interactions and cognitive development and gave insights on how a child evolves and develops the ability to interact.

The Psychological Components of Conversation 

Cognitive Processes Involved in Conversation 

Being a complex framework, some underlying cognitive processes are important in leading conversations. Let’s discuss some cognitive processes that contribute to conversations.

• Perception: As we have earlier studied perception is about how we give meaning to some sensory stimuli. Perception is important in shaping our conversation, how we understand and how we give meaning to nonverbal cues, it all collectively impacts the nature of conversation.
• Memory: Memory has a significant role in carrying forward a conversation because a conversation will be meaningful and effective when we can retain and recall the necessary details as per requirement and context.
• Attention: It brings the whole difference depending on what we are paying attention to. We must stick to, what we intend to talk about and pay attention to that only to avoid distractions, actively listen to the former and get involved in what’s being communicated.

Emotional aspects involved in carrying forward a Conversation 

• Empathy: Refers to the ability to understand and share what the former is feeling.
• Emotional Regulation: Refers to the ability to keep up with one’s emotions during interactions.
• Nonverbal cues: Refers to our facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice that play a huge role in conveying what we intend to say.

Social factors

• Social norms and cultural influences: Our cultural beliefs norms and practices set a bar as to how should we talk and what should we say as per the situation. Involves language use, politeness convention, interaction style etc.
• Power Dynamics in conversation: It’s about the distribution of authority in the context of whom you are talking to what position you hold and how should you be keeping up with that power dynamics.
• Turn-taking and conversational roles: It refers to being aware of taking your turn and giving the other person their turn, keeping a balance between active listening and speaking to maintain smooth and effective communication.

As we are a social being we need to keep up with the social norms and dynamics of society and interaction is key to it. Every human interaction intends to meet a certain need and each of those conversations has a certain set of rules and predefined norms. Each one of us learns to communicate effectively with time and necessity. Conversation/communication skills empower you, strengthen your relationship, and bring clarity, growth and social harmony.