ISE eBook Online Access for A First Look at Communication Theory by Griffin Em

Author:Griffin, Em
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education

The introduction to this section on group communication refers to Harvard social psychologist Robert Bales’ work to categorize comments made in small-group discussions. He discovered that dramatizing—like the daydreaming voiced by Maggie and her cabinmates—was a significant type of communication that often fostered group cohesiveness.1 The late University of Minnesota communication professor Ernest Bormann picked up on Bales’ finding and undertook a more extensive study of newly formed groups to examine leadership emergence, decision-making, norms, cohesiveness, and a number of other features of group life.2

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Similar to Bales, Bormann and his team of colleagues observed that group members often dramatized events happening outside the group, things that took place at previous meetings, or what might possibly occur among them in the future. Sometimes these stories fell flat and the discussion moved in a different direction. But at other times, as with the residents of Cabin 8, group members responded enthusiastically by adding on to the story or chiming in with their own matching narratives. When the drama was enhanced in this way, members developed a common group consciousness and drew closer together. On the basis of extensive case studies, Bormann set forth the central explanatory principle of symbolic convergence theory (SCT):

Sharing group fantasies creates symbolic convergence.3

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