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Introduction

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Good communication skills are vital in both your work life and your social life. Because talking to other people is part of everyday life, you may feel that you naturally possess these skills. In this course you will discover that a little psychological knowledge about interactions will help you to be able to plan and prepare for conversations in a way that will enable you to become an even more skilled communicator. The model you will learn about in this course is based on evidence from extensive psychological research into rapport, much of which has been carried out in a policing context.

As soon as two people are in a room together, they are communicating in some way, albeit perhaps non-verbally. Imagine the following scenario: you and your colleague, Jim, are in a meeting room at work together, the first two people to arrive for a meeting. You are busy trying to answer emails on your laptop, so you don’t want to talk, and from the fact that you don’t look up when Jim enters the room, are interacting with your computer and don’t verbally acknowledge Jim, he is able to deduce that you aren’t interested in chatting. While you’ve said nothing, you have nonetheless communicated. So even without speaking, once two people are in a room together, they are communicating – even if the message they are communicating is that they don’t want to talk.

In this course you will be introduced to a simple model that encourages you to think about interactions between you and a conversational partner or a small group. This model is based on psychological research and is easy to understand and apply in your daily life, whether at work, at home or in a social environment.

In the following video, Dr Zoe Walkington introduces you to the content you will cover in this course.

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Video 1 Talking to people – when rapport works … and when it fails

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Transcript: Video 1 Talking to people – when rapport works … and when it fails

INSTRUCTOR

I've always been really interested in what goes on between people, what makes some people get on really well, and what makes some people immediately seem to get off on the wrong footing with each other. And as a psychologist, at first I thought maybe people had quite fixed personalities. And maybe some people just don't match each other, and they're not going to get on.

But the more I learned as a psychologist, I started to realise that actually a lot of these behaviours emerge between people. So it's not that I have a particular fixed personality and you have a particular fixed personality and if those two come together, we won't get on. It's more that the dynamics of the situation emerge between us.

And I've always found that a really interesting idea. And in this course, what we're going to do is we're going to have a look at an interpersonal model that will introduce you to how some of these behaviours actually work, because one of the things psychologists have noticed is that quite often, things go wrong in conversations. And I'm sure you'll have probably experienced this in your own life.

But they've noticed that these things that go wrong tend to happen in quite predictable ways. And what you'll learn about on this course is those psychological principles that underpin that model of when interactions work to create rapport and when they don't. And hopefully this will be useful to you in lots of different spheres of life, from your own personal relationships, your relationships at work, and also your relationships in community settings.

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By the end of this course, you will be able to:

understand the principles of a psychological model about rapport
identify interpersonal behaviours using the model
avoid maladaptive responses using the model
plan an interpersonal response to a particular situation based on the model
reflect on a situation experienced recently.

1 A difficult conversation

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Before you explore the psychological model, first have a go at the following activity based around a tricky communication.

Activity 1 How might you react?

Allow approximately 10 minutes

Imagine you’re a police officer attending a meeting in a local community centre. You’re the only police officer attending and you’re wearing your uniform, so it’s obvious that you’re a police officer. When you get to the centre, only a few people have arrived so far. You get a cup of tea, walk over to a man in his forties who is just sitting down and introduce yourself by saying, ‘Hi, I’m [your name]. It’s nice to meet you. Have you had an OK journey getting here?’

The man turns to you and says, ‘Sorry but I’ve got nothing to say to a police officer.’ He then turns away from you and doesn’t make further eye contact with you.

What could you do to progress this situation? Make a couple of notes against each of the four questions below. (Alternatively, you might find it useful to write down your responses on a sheet of paper that you can refer to later in this course.)

Putting yourself in the role of the community police officer, what would you want to get out of the situation?

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How would you ‘diagnose’ the behaviour of the community member towards you? What behaviours do you think they are displaying towards you?

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What do you think might be the reasons for them responding that way? Try to generate a few different ideas about what might be going on for them to have reacted this way.

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Spend a couple of minutes thinking about what you might want to say in reply and why. What are the exact words you would want to say in response?

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You will refer to this activity at the end of the course so please ensure you have saved all your responses.

2 Research into difficult conversations

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Sometimes in life people have to have difficult conversations. Examples of difficult conversations might include ending romantic relationships, communicating disapproval to children about bad behaviour, and managing a staff member whose performance is problematic at work.

Figure 1 Police suspect interview

Long description

Another excellent example of a really difficult conversation is a police suspect interview. In the next section, you will learn more about the research relating to these challenging conversations.

2.1 Police suspect interviews

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Most police suspect interviews might be considered difficult because the suspects often don’t want to be there, yet for obvious legal reasons they have to be. Whether they are guilty or innocent, it’s likely that, for the suspect, such interviews are stressful events. It’s also likely that they may be unwilling to talk. Likewise, the police officers conducting the interview may well feel under pressure to get the suspect to talk. As such, these are conversations in which the stakes are high. So what does the research in this area indicate is the best way to approach them?

In 2002, researchers Ulf Holmberg and Sven Åke Christianson carried out some psychological research in Sweden. They gave a questionnaire to men who had been convicted of either sexual offences or murder. The questionnaire asked the men to remember the interviews they’d had with the police in connection with the crime with which they’d been charged, asking them about the interviewing officers and how they felt they were treated by them. It also asked them whether they had admitted or denied their crime during their interview.

On analysing the responses the researchers found there were two main interview styles: one characterised by dominance (i.e. officers appearing aggressive, impatient and brusque), which tended to be associated with denials of the crime from suspects, and the other characterised by humanity (i.e. officers appearing empathic, helpful and accommodating), which was more often associated with suspects making confessions. This research is very interesting to psychologists as it suggests that treating people helpfully and empathically in police suspect interviews is associated with people making confessions.

Activity 2 Reflecting on your own experience

Allow approximately 10 minutes

Reflecting on this information, try to think back to a time when you had to talk to someone about something you didn’t really want to discuss, recording your thoughts in the boxes below. The example you use can be drawn from anywhere – your family relationships, a work situation or maybe a situation in your local community.

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Discussion

It’s interesting to notice that most people’s response to this is to think that of course they would be more forthcoming if someone was empathic and understanding – and yet we still buy into the myth we see in films that, when talking to a police suspect, for some reason the rules of ‘what works’ will be different! (i.e. in films and TV shows we think that being a ‘tough’ or ‘aggressive’ interviewer gets results.)

The psychological research explored here links to the psychological model introduced in the next section, which also considers how dominance and humanity might be important in communicating. This model is called the interpersonal circle.

3 Diagnosing behaviour using the interpersonal circle

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

The interpersonal circle – also known as the interpersonal circumplex or interpersonal wheel – is a psychological tool that helps explain why we experience the reactions explored in the previous activity. For example, why is it that, when you don’t want to talk and don’t feel like saying much, and then someone is very dominant with you, it makes you feel even more reluctant to talk?

In the 1950s, Tim Leary developed the idea of the interpersonal circle as a simple way of visually representing the interactions that take place between people. It’s therefore a well-established idea and has been used to look at the interactions between all sorts of people – doctors and their patients, police officers and suspects in interviews, and partners in romantic relationships. It has even been found to translate well to the interpersonal interactions of primates.

The following video introduces the principles of the model. Once you’ve watched it, you will move on to using the model to diagnose some behaviour.

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Video 2 The interpersonal circumplex (basic model) (adapted from Leary, 1955)

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Transcript: Video 2 The interpersonal circumplex (basic model) (adapted from Leary, 1955)

INSTRUCTOR

The interpersonal circumplex is a really old idea. It was developed in the 1950s by Tim Leary, and it's basically just a way of visibly representing the interactions that take place between people, all sorts of different people, whether it be doctors and their patients, whether it be police and suspects. It's even been used with primates to characterise their interactions as well.

And it's based on a simple circular structure. And that is intersected by two different axes. The first axis runs from dominance to submission, and the important thing about this axis is whatever you give you invite the opposite response. So say I'm being dominant in conversation in a lecture theatre, for example. I'm giving a lecture, and it's to a crowded room. Me talking all the time and dominating the conversation invites submission from the people listening.

Likewise, if I'm having a conversation with someone, and it's like pulling teeth, they don't seem to want to talk to me, or make eye contact with me, they're in a submissive position. And what that makes us want to do is to actually be dominant in response. So we start to fill the silences. So whatever you give on this axis, you get the opposite back.

Now, the second axis runs across the way from hostility through to cooperation. And importantly, it works in a different way. So what you find with this axis is hostility invites hostility, and cooperation invites cooperation. So it works slightly differently. So whatever you give, you get the same in return. And we can probably all relate to this from our own personal relationships. You come downstairs, and you're a bit grumpy in the morning with a family member, and they're grumpy in return, because you get hostility inviting hostility. Likewise, when someone's really kind to you, it's incredibly hard not to be cooperative back to them.

Now, we can use this to plot interactions. So for example, we would plot neutral behaviour towards the centre of the circle, but more intense behaviour towards the edges of the circle. So say someone was being intensely cooperative, we'd mark them around here. But we can also use the principles of a circle to plan behaviours. So say, for example, I want my dinner making this evening, and I would need the person to be cooperative and slightly submissive in order to achieve that. So we'll mark them there.

How would I get them to do it? Well, we know that to get cooperation, you need to give cooperation. So we know I would need to be on this side of the circle. But we also know that to get submission, we need to be dominant. So I would be plotted somewhere around here. I would need to plan to be slightly dominant and cooperative in my approach to put the other person around here.

Now, what's really interesting about the circle is people don't unpredictably move from one area to another. They move around the circle in quite predictable ways. And also, the circle in many ways characterises what naturally happens, our natural reactions. But we can control those reactions. Now, I'm going to be adding some more complexity to this model later on in the course. But this gives you the underlying principles.

End transcript: Video 2 The interpersonal circumplex (basic model) (adapted from Leary, 1955)

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Now that you understand the basics of the model, you can have a go at ‘diagnosing’ behaviour by marking where you feel someone falls on the interpersonal circle.

Activity 3 Plotting where someone is on the model

Allow approximately 20 minutes

First, take a look at the following interaction.

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Video 3 Interaction in a car park

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Transcript: Video 3 Interaction in a car park

MAN

Right, you, is that your car? This is supposed to be parking for everyone, but you didn't give a monkey's, do ya? Hey? You're supposed to park within the lines. You're nowhere near, eh? You selfish, arrogant, prat. Well, I think you need to get on and get it moved. What are you going to do?

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Video 3 Interaction in a car park

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Now consider the following questions.

1. Where is the person on the hostility–cooperation axis? Do you see them as being mainly hostile or mainly cooperative?

2. How intense is that behaviour? Remember that neutral behaviour goes towards the centre of the circle and more extreme or intense behaviour towards the outside of the circle (Wiggins, 1982).

3. Where is the person on the dominance–submission axis? Do you see them as being mainly dominant or mainly submissive?

4. How intense is that behaviour?

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Using the following plotting tool, plot where you would position the person in the video on the interpersonal circle.

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Long description

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Discussion

The person in the video would be plotted on this point of the interpersonal circle:

Long description

Because the interaction shows high intensity dominance and high intensity hostility, the cross on the circle is placed on the outer edge of the circle in between the dominance and hostile points.

3.1 Maladaptive and adaptive variants of the model

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

So far you have been presented with a very simple version of the model. However, to get the maximum advantage from working with it a bit more complexity needs to be added. Birtchnell (2014) developed the basic model of the interpersonal circle to take into account the fact that there are both ‘adaptive’ and ‘maladaptive’ versions of behaviour – an idea that was researched in a policing context by Alison et al. (2013), who developed their model of rapport based on coding many hours of police suspect interviews. The interpersonal circles they developed from this research are shown in Figure 2 below.

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Figure 2 The adaptive and maladaptive interpersonal circles taken from Alison et al.’s (2013) ORBIT model (Observing Rapport Based Interpersonal Techniques) Downloadable version available

Long description

This more complex version of the model takes into account the fact that there are ways of relating that help to facilitate communication (adaptive behaviours) and those that tend to inhibit communication (maladaptive behaviours). The following video explains this idea further.

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Video 4 Adaptive and maladaptive variants of the interpersonal circle (Alison et al., 2013)

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Transcript: Video 4 Adaptive and maladaptive variants of the interpersonal circle (Alison et al., 2013)

INSTRUCTOR:

Remember our original circle? Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that some of the behaviours in some areas are always bad, and some of them are always good. For example, is hostile behaviour always bad, and is cooperative behaviour always good? Well, it's not actually that simple, because there are some times when we need to confront someone, for example. And we can actually do that positively.

Now, research that's been done by Birtchnell and then developed by researchers over at Liverpool University, including Laurence Alison, has found that actually, there are two versions of the wheel, one of which is adaptive and one of which is maladaptive. And so there are positive and negative variants of the same sort of behaviour. And they've added a little bit more complexity to the wheel as well to show that there are different areas that you can move around and different behaviours to be found in these areas.

So take, for example, cooperation. You could find that adaptively, someone being cooperative would seem really social, warm, and friendly. And that's a really positive version of it. But there could be a negative version of it, and that could include being over-friendly, obsequious. And that's when you can see the maladaptive version of the same sort of behaviour going on.

In this diagram, which is from Alison's research, you will see the adaptive and maladaptive variants of the wheel, and you will see how the behaviours map onto that same underpinning structure of hostility to cooperation and dominance to submission, but you'll see that the behaviours are identified as being either adaptive or maladaptive versions.

Remember the guy that we met in the car park earlier who was angry? We can see that his behaviour was on the maladaptive wheel. He was hostile, and he was dominant. And we could see that he was judgemental. He was argumentative and competitive. But is it possible that he could have still been on the same place in the circle, but express that adaptively on the adaptive wheel?

Well, it is, because he could have done that by being certain, by being confident, and by being assertive.

MAN:

Excuse me. Is this your car? I'm not happy about the way you've parked it. It stopped me from being able to park my car. And what I've had to do is I've had to go to the paid car park, so I'd really appreciate you moving it. Look, I know it might not have been your fault. You might have had to park it like that because of someone previous. But what are you going to do?

INSTRUCTOR:

The most important thing for you to take away from learning about the adaptive and maladaptive variants of the wheel is that we know that any behaviour on the maladaptive variant of the wheel is catastrophic for rapport and building relationships with other people. So the most important thing is that you eradicate all maladaptive behaviours. We know that as soon as you demonstrate any sort of maladaptive behaviour, wherever it might be, it reduces how much someone wants to talk to us, and it reduces their levels of cooperation. So getting rid of this is absolutely critical. And to develop rapport, you always need to be on the adaptive version of the wheel.

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3.2 Diagnosing maladaptive and adaptive behaviour

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

In the next activity you will move on to consider a different example, of a different type of behaviour.

Activity 4 Plotting someone’s position on the interpersonal circle

Allow approximately 10 minutes

Watch the following video and pay attention to the behaviour of the male neighbour in this neighbourhood interaction. After you’ve watched the video, you will be asked to diagnose his behaviour on both the adaptive and maladaptive wheels.

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Video 5 A neighbourhood interaction

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Transcript: Video 5 A neighbourhood interaction

WOMAN:

Hiya!

MAN:

Oh, hello.

WOMAN:

Sorry to bother you, but--

MAN:

Not at all.

WOMAN:

Do you know, Mrs. Smith has not been feeling very well and she's in hospital and--

MAN:

Oh, no.

WOMAN:

Yeah, I know. But I'm just wondering, do you know if her cat's been fed? Because I've got access to a key if someone needs me to do that for her.

MAN:

Do you know what? I'm so sorry to hear about that Mrs. Smith. And she's been fantastic to us, Mrs. Smith. You know what?

We were on holiday-- when was it-- Fuerteventura, a couple-- well, no, it must be five years ago now. And we got stuck there! We couldn't get-- all the [INAUDIBLE] on some sort of strike or something like that.

And I would give her a ring and say, could you look after our allotment? Because we had all sorts of things coming up and things that needed doing. And do you know what? She went down there and she looks after the place for-- what?

It must have been three weeks. And I couldn't thank her enough. I mean, she's been absolutely fantastic. I mean, what a neighbour Mrs. Smith is.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

I'll tell you what. She has been one of the best neighbours on the entire street. This is a very good street, mind you. There's some lovely people down here.

I've seen you around. You look like a lovely person. But you'll get to know it, the longer you're here, that everybody around there in this community, they look after each other.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

And I can't speak highly enough of Mrs. Smith. She's been absolutely fantastic. Now, from one day to the next, I know that I can always trust Mrs. Smith.

And you, you know that you can trust anybody on this particular street and you can go in there for a cup of tea. And you won't be bothered. People like to talk--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

--around here. Course they like to talk. But that's a good thing, isn't it? Because it kind of gives you a sense of community.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

So you're very welcome here. And I'll tell you what--

WOMAN:

Thank you.

MAN:

--Mrs. Smith not being well is one of the worst things I've heard for quite a long time. Because I've got a lot of time for that woman. And my wife's one of her best friends as well. I mean, she doesn't see her that often, but she sees her often enough, you know what I mean?

We always say hello on the street. And she'll always say, come in for a coffee. [INAUDIBLE] for a coffee. And I will. And I will go for a coffee because I can do some help for her.

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Video 5 A neighbourhood interaction

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Having watched the video, and concentrating on adaptive patterns of behaviour, do you think the male neighbour displayed any adaptive behaviours? If so, where would you plot him as being on the adaptive wheel?

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Long description

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Discussion

The male neighbour is very very talkative indeed and it is relatively easy to identify that his behaviour is cooperative. He is social, warm and friendly (e.g. ‘you are very welcome here’). On occasion he is also supportive to the female neighbour (e.g. ‘I am so sorry to hear that’). As such it is easy to see that his behaviour is mainly cooperative behaviour but he is also clearly dominating the conversation. For that reason the behaviour could be plotted somewhere between the ‘Supportive, conversational and non-judgemental’ and the ‘social, warm and friendly’ octants. Because his behaviour is quite intense we would make the mark on the plot towards the outside of the circle.

Now, do you think he displayed any maladaptive behaviours? If so, where would you plot him as being on the maladaptive wheel?

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Discussion

While the male neighbour’s behaviour is mainly adaptive, it does veer into maladaptivity in one octant – at times he is a little over-familiar and perhaps a little obsequious (e.g. ‘you look like a lovely person’) and as such we would plot him as being within the ‘overfamiliar, obsequious and desperate’ octant – but the behaviour is not too intense on the maladaptive wheel.

As you have experienced when plotting the behaviour of the male neighbour sometimes even highly cooperative people can be quite hard to deal with! In the next section you will start to consider how you may be able to work with these sorts of behaviours as you move on to consider the potential responses to such positions on the interpersonal circle.

4 Responding using the interpersonal circle

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

In the activities provided so far in this course, you have focused on diagnosing behaviour. However, the reason why the model is so useful is because it allows you to think through and plan for how you can respond within an interaction, using its principles to encourage rapport. In this section you will start to build on your knowledge of diagnosing behaviours to start thinking about appropriate adaptive responses.

From Video 3 in Section 3, you learned about the principles of interactions from the interpersonal circle. You learned that dominance invites submission, and vice versa, whereas on the hostility–cooperation axis both hostility and cooperation invite the same behaviour in response. In this section, you will develop your knowledge of this area slightly further.

Activity 5 Reconsidering the neighbour’s interaction

Allow approximately 20 minutes

Bearing in mind the male neighbour’s behaviour – and taking into account the principles of the interpersonal circle – where would you anticipate someone responding to the man in the video might be plotted on the adaptive and maladaptive wheels of the circle?

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The male neighbour was both adaptively and maladaptively cooperative (i.e. both social, warm and friendly and on occasion over-familiar and obsequious). According to the principles of the circle, this type of communication is likely to lead to the respondent being cooperative in response. Because the male neighbour dominates the conversation so much this is likely to lead to the respondent being submissive. The risk for the person responding to the male neighbour is that they display behaviour that is the maladaptive version of cooperative submissive behaviour, i.e. behaviour that is uncertain, hesitant and apologetic.

In the next section you will find out why avoiding maladaptive behaviour is so important.

4.1 Avoiding maladaptive behaviour

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Research by Alison et al. (2013) has shown that any movement of an interviewer onto the maladaptive wheel reduces the amount of useful information (also known as the yield) obtained from their conversational partner. In fact, the most important aspect of building rapport is the complete avoidance of maladaptive circle behaviours.

If the person you are interacting with is on the maladaptive wheel, it is quite natural to want to respond with maladaptive behaviours yourself, and your conversational partner might therefore ‘pull’ or ‘push’ you into an area where you may feel very tempted to respond with maladaptive behaviour.

So, given that you know that maladaptive behaviour should be avoided at all costs, how can you achieve this? If you can identify what you are at risk of doing – i.e. what section of the maladaptive wheel you might fall into – but then instead deploy a variant of the same position on the adaptive wheel, then you will be responding adaptively. This idea will be further explained in the examples in the next activity.

Activity 6 Responding to the male neighbour

Allow approximately 15 minutes

In the following videos, you will see the same neighbours you saw previously but this time the female neighbour is responding. From your observations, would you say that her handling of him is adaptive or maladaptive in the two clips?

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Video 6 Responding to the neighbour I

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Transcript: Video 6 Responding to the neighbour I

WOMAN:

Hiya.

MAN:

Oh, hello.

WOMAN:

Hello, Mrs. Smith that lives at number seven-

MAN:

Yes.

WOMAN:

- she's not very well and she's been taken into hospital.

MAN:

Oh, dear.

WOMAN:

Do you know if someone's looking after her cat? Because I can get access to a key and look after the cat if anybody needs me to.

MAN:

Oh, well, I'm very upset about Mrs. Smith being not well. She's one of the best people on the street. She's a founder member of all sorts of things in the community.

WOMAN:

Oh, yeah.

MAN:

She's a real pillar of this particular street, Mrs. Smith.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

I'll have to have a word with my wife about her. Because we'll have to go and visit her in the hospital.

WOMAN:

Oh, by all means-

MAN:

Because you know what? She's been fantastic with us.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

Yeah, I was on holiday with my wife about five years ago, I think it was.

WOMAN:

Oh, yeah.

MAN:

And there was one of them strikes, you know? I think it was a handling strike or it could have been a pilot strike.

WOMAN:

Right, yes.

MAN:

And she looks after our allotment for us.

WOMAN:

Oh, she did?

MAN:

Nearly lost all our veg. Yeah, she was fantastic, she were. And everything in the greenhouse.

WOMAN:

Oh, bless her.

MAN:

It was a really hot summer, that one.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

And we nearly lost it entirely. And if it hadn't been for her, we'd have had nothing.

WOMAN:

Oh well, if she looked after that, is there any way you might be able to help me out with maybe looking after her cats?

MAN:

Oh, anything for Mrs. Smith, yeah.

WOMAN:

Yeah. I just wondered if you could maybe ask around to see if anybody else was taking care of the cat. Because I'm happy to do it. But I don't want to double up if someone else is doing it. Don't want to step on any toes.

MAN:

What, you want me to ask around?

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

Well, I'll tell you what.

WOMAN:

Yeah?

MAN:

I do know her neighbour. I think her name is Betty. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what then. I'll get a hold of Betty or I'll get my missus to get a hold of her. And Betty can let you in. How about that?

WOMAN:

That'd be great, yeah.

MAN:

Yeah.

WOMAN:

Thank you.

MAN:

All right, well you're at number what?

WOMAN:

I'm at number 11. So if you have a word with Betty, see what's going on.

MAN:

I'll have a word with my missus. She'll get hold of Betty. I'll come at you, number 11.

WOMAN:

That's it. That'd be lovely.

MAN:

Fantastic, no problem.

WOMAN:

Appreciate it. Thank you.

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Video 7 Responding to the neighbour II

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Transcript: Video 7 Responding to the neighbour II

MAN:

I'll say, I'm very, very upset to hear that Mrs. Smith isn't well. She is very important in this community, Mrs. Smith. She's one of the pillars right here.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

I'll tell you what, she's been very good to us as well. We were on holiday, in fact, about four years ago, I think it was in Fuerteventura. And we got stuck in one of them- I think it might have been a- it was either a pilot or an handling strike, you know, baggage handling, that kind of thing.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

And we couldn't get back. And the fact is, the only number that my wife had in her diary of anybody of our neighbours was Mrs. Smith. Because, as I said, she's been one of the pillars around here. And my wife gave her a ring.

You know what? She looks after our allotment for 10 days- 10 extra days that we would have been here looking after it, watering all my veg, the carrots and, you know me, my tomatoes, which would have died because it was a very hot summer that year, I'll tell you what.

But she, she looks after the lot of them. And we didn't lose a single thing. Because she- every day, she took herself down there- and she's got a bad hip as well.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

I'm very upset to hear that she's not well. I'll tell you what, my wife is going to be upset as well. She's going have to go around to the hospital and see if she's all right.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

In fact, I'd better do that myself now. Because if I don't let my wife know, she'll be upset that I didn't let her know and that she didn't go down to the hospital. You have to- oh, dear. I'm really upset about this.

I'll tell you what, now then, I better go. But it's been nice talking to you anyway. I've got to go because if I don't tell my wife, she'll be right upset.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

Very nice to talk to you.

WOMAN:

Yeah.

MAN:

Welcome to the road. Look after yourself. Nice to talk to you. Bye-bye, love.

WOMAN:

Oh.

End transcript: Video 7 Responding to the neighbour II

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Discussion

The behaviour of the female neighbour in Video 6 is likely to develop rapport with the male neighbour, whereas in Video 7 her behaviour is not likely to develop rapport.

4.2 Confrontation – positive and negative variants

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

You have learned that being sensitive to interactions shown on the adaptive and maladaptive wheels is a useful skill. If you are able to plot (i.e. diagnose correctly) your conversational partner’s position on the wheels, you are more likely to be able to enact a response which is sensitive to where they are, which helps to build rapport and develop conversation.

One particularly important aspect of communication to get right is handling confrontation adaptively. In policing, especially, you will often need to respond to someone who is being hostile – for example, in the challenge phase of a police interview, when managing a team member who is being problematic at work, or when handling interactions on the street in your local community.

Activity 7 Mr Simpson

Allow approximately 20 minutes

In Video 8 you will see police suspect Robert Simpson being interviewed about the death of his father, Ralph. Robert alerted police when he was unable to access his father’s house the week before the interview took place. The police broke the door down and found Ralph dead. However, Robert’s behaviour at the time was found to be a little unusual, and some of the information he provided in his initial witness account of the incident has been subsequently found not to match up with other evidence and witness statements. As a result, Robert is now being interviewed as a suspect to the crime, and in the video the police are at a stage in the interview where they are presenting some of the evidential challenges to Robert.

You already know that we are dealing with confrontation (i.e. hostility) here so you know the behaviours will be on the left side of the wheel. Your task is to identify which of the two videos below is adaptive and which is maladaptive, and to think about what examples you might pick out that illustrate the adaptive or maladaptive responses.

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Video 8 Police suspect interview I

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Transcript: Video 8 Police suspect interview I

INTERVIEWER:

So Rob, we've been talking for some time now, and there are just a couple of issues I'd like to clear up and clarify. So to summarise, you've explained to us that you didn't want to trouble your dad's neighbour, Claire, even though she was happy to allow you to access her property so that you could go and see the garden, is that correct?

ROB:

Yeah, yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

Fine. The only concern that I have here is that you mentioned previously that you were worried about your dad, that he was in this house all alone, and my thought is, if I was so concerned and worried about my dad, the last thing I would do is just then turn away and go home without exploring that further.

ROB:

Yeah, I mean, as I said, I didn't want to kind of bother her and her family. They were having a meal. I didn't want to kind of disrupt that. So I kind of-

INTERVIEWER:

Right, they were having a meal, and you didn't want to disrupt that. So what were your thoughts in regards to your dad at that point?

ROB:

Obviously I was still worried about him.

INTERVIEWER:

So worried that you prioritised his neighbour's family meal over his well-being. I just-

ROB:

So sorry, are you trying to imply that I in some way don't care about my father because I'm polite to my neighbours? Is that what you're saying?

INTERVIEWER:

Those are your words, not mine. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what's happened. And from where I am looking at everything, you were given an opportunity to access her property so that you could explore things further and just double check that your dad was OK, yet you didn't take up that opportunity. You decided to go home.

ROB:

Right.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Is that all you have to say about it?

ROB:

Well, now, I don't quite understand what you're saying about it. What are you trying to say?

INTERVIEWER:

I'm not trying to say anything. You're telling me that you were worried, you're concerned, and I just want to see what that looked like. OK, we'll just move on.

Another point that I have here is that you mentioned trying the French doors, which were located by the side of the lounge, is that correct?

ROB:

Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Yet according to our scenes of crimes officers, they were found to be open. How do you explain that?

ROB:

I'm- I mean, I was pretty kind of flustered at the time. I thought I did try them. But maybe I just kind of assumed that they were still locked from the day before. I don't know.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, thought you tried them- so did you or did you not try them?

ROB:

Well, I don't know. I can't remember. I-

INTERVIEWER:

Can't remember, OK.

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Video 9 Police suspect interview II

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Transcript: Video 9 Police suspect interview II

INTERVIEWER:

Rob, we've been talking for some time now, and there are just a few issues that I'd like to clear up, because I'm a tad bit confused. So you mentioned previously- you explained to us that you didn't want to trouble your dad's neighbour, Claire.

ROB:

Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

Right. However, we've spoken to Claire, and we've taken a statement from her. And she has said to us that she explained to you that she was happy for you to access her property so that you could check around the back and see if your dad was OK.

ROB:

Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

Does that sound right? OK. Now, you mentioned previously that you were concerned about your dad, that he was in the house alone, potentially in trouble.

ROB:

Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

Right? So can you see why I'm curious as to why you were reluctant to take up Claire's offer when you were so concerned about your father's well-being?

ROB:

If I'm honest, I'm- I suppose I didn't want to see what was in there.

INTERVIEWER:

What was in there?

ROB:

Yeah. I just didn't want to go in.

INTERVIEWER:

You didn't want to go in. OK. I'm just going to move forward from that, and we'll revisit that in a moment. Because another thing that was brought to my attention was that you mentioned that you tried some French doors, and they were locked.

ROB:

Yeah, yeah.

INTERVIEWER:

Yet according to our scenes of crimes officers, they were found to be open. So how do you- how do you explain the discrepancy between the two accounts?

ROB:

I mean, I must- I must have made a mistake. I mean, I know that they were open the day before, so maybe I just assumed they were still locked.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. They were open the day before. OK. So talk me through what you actually did, just in regards to the French doors.

ROB:

I'm sorry. I can't- I can't quite remember, exactly. I mean, I was pretty flustered. I didn't want to go in there. I didn't want to see what was in there.

INTERVIEWER:

You didn't want to see what was in there. So are you telling me that you tried the French doors, or you didn't?

ROB:

I don't know. I can't remember. I- I don't know what to say.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. It's OK if you can't remember. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I want this to come from you. There's just a grey area here, and we need to really clarify what's been going on, because we're concerned about what happened to your dad too.

ROB:

If I do know something about what might have happened to him, I don't know how I can tell you.

INTERVIEWER:

I see you're getting upset.

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It’s important to remember that adaptive challenge is a useful tool that can be used in a way that is positive and constructive, as you have seen in the videos in Activity 7. However, you should remember that no type of behaviour on the adaptive wheel is ‘better’ than any other; the most important thing is to avoid maladaptive responses.

5 Thinking about your own experience

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

In the activities presented so far in this course, you have applied the model of the interpersonal circle to the interactions of other people. You will now look at an example taken from your own experience.

Activity 8 Reflection

Allow approximately 30 minutes

Think of the last interaction you had in which, on reflection, you engaged in some behaviour from the maladaptive wheel of the interpersonal circle. (This might be from a work situation, your home life, an interaction in the pub or in a shop, when communicating online, or in some other setting.) Make a note of it here.

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Now think about what happened just before your maladaptive behaviour and answer the following questions. You may find it helpful to refer back to the adaptative and maladaptive wheels in Figure 2 during this activity (you may like to open the figure in a new tab or window or download the pdf).

Who were you interacting with?
What was the context?
Think about the person you were talking to. Where would you say they were on the model? Were they
- Hostile versus cooperative
- Dominant versus submissive
- Adaptive versus maladaptive?

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Now think about your response/reaction or the initiation of the conversation (if you were the first to speak).

Which of the octants from the maladaptive wheel (as shown in the model in Figure 2) would you say you displayed?

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What specifically did you say? (The gist is fine if you cannot remember the exact wording.)

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What happened following your response?

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Now, taking that same situation, think through the model and answer the following questions. Hint: Remember that your ‘risk area’ according to the principles of the model maps directly onto where you will be pushed to go by your conversational partner. You should try and be in that position but on the adaptive version of the circle.

Where would you plot the person you were interacting with on the adaptive and maladaptive wheels?

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According to the principles of the model, what was the ‘risky’ (i.e. maladaptive) behaviour into which you might have been pushed?

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Where would you have needed to be on the wheels in order to elicit adaptive rather than maladaptive behaviour?

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What was your longer-term goal? For example, in an ideal world, where would you have preferred your respondent to have been on the wheels, and how might you have enacted adaptive behaviour that would get them there?

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Discussion

Hopefully, using the principles of the interpersonal circle has enabled you to reflect in a structured way about a recent experience.

6 Enacting appropriate responses

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Being able to diagnose behaviour using the interpersonal circle model is one aspect of the skill-set required for building rapport, while another is the ability to avoid maladaptive behaviour. The final skill is being able to be versatile in your behaviour as it maps onto the adaptive variant of the circle.

You already know the principles of the interpersonal circle model and have learned about the risk of maladaptive responding. You have also learned about how to adaptively ‘meet’ the behaviour of another person. However, sometimes you may want to use the principles of the circle to control your own behaviour and see how that might move someone else around the circle.

Think again about the two axes of the circle and take hostility as an example. If the person you’re communicating with is hostile, it can be a good idea to respond adaptively to that hostility with positive adaptive forms of confrontation, provided that – as you learned – you listen carefully to their responses. But sometimes being cooperative towards someone demonstrating hostility – especially extreme hostility – might start to pull them around the circle to meet you on the cooperative side. If you think about it, it’s very hard to continue with hostility if someone is really nice to you!

As you get more experienced in using the circle as a tool in your communication, you can start to adapt your own behaviour (which is, after all, the only thing you can control) and observe what works to make your conversational partner keep talking.

6.1 A difficult conversation (revisited)

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Remember the example from Activity 1, the difficult scenario of the unfriendly community member in a meeting? Now would be a good time to re-read the example and have a look back at the responses that you noted at the start of the course. In the activity below, you will compare your responses to what you now know, having developed more knowledge about the model.

Activity 9 Reflecting on your responses to Activity 1

Allow approximately 20 minutes

In Activity 1, you were asked the following questions about this scenario. Knowing what you now know about the interpersonal circle model, how would you answer the questions now?

Putting yourself in the role of the community police officer, what would you want to get out of the situation?

Your original response was:

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Original location 1

Your response now:

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Discussion

It is likely that the answer to this question probably hasn’t changed as a result of the course, in that you would probably want to be able to open up conversation with the community member to try to find out what’s behind their reaction. And you’d want to do this quickly, so that you might resolve it quickly too.

How would you ‘diagnose’ the behaviour of the community member towards you? What behaviours do you think they are displaying towards you?

Your original response was:

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Original location 2

Your response now:

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Discussion

Given what you’ve learned in this course, you probably now have a different vocabulary for your diagnosis. It’s likely that you will diagnose their behaviour as being very clearly hostile, maladaptive and slightly submissive. To be even more specific, it is both punitive (punishing you for being a police officer) and unfriendly (‘I’ve got nothing to say to you’).

What do you think might be the reasons for them responding that way? Try to generate a few different ideas about what might be going on for them to have reacted this way.

Your original response was:

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Original location 3

Your response now:

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Discussion

Their response might be rooted in deeply held negative beliefs about the police, or they might have had personal bad experiences regarding the police. It might also be caused by something much more contextual – for example, they’re having a bad day, they’re in a bad mood and don’t want to talk generally – or it might be that they don’t want to be seen by others to be talking to you. To find out which of the above explanations (or others) might be the case, you will need to listen to them to find out more. There may be political or religious reasons underpinning their attitude towards you.

Spend a couple of minutes thinking about what you might want to say in reply and why. What are the exact words you would want to say in response?

Your original response was:

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Original location 4

Your response now:

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Discussion

Given what you’ve since covered in the course, you are now more likely to be much clearer about how to go about planning a response to the community member.

What is my risk area?

You will by now be aware of the risk of enacting hostile maladaptive behaviour back to the community member, firstly because you know that hostile behaviour from someone often invites it back and secondly because maladaptive behaviour can often encourage the other person to act maladaptively too.

How do I translate that to an adaptive response?

You will also be aware that the adaptive response to someone being hostile and submissive is to be confident, assertive and certain. You might choose to say something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry to hear you say that. From what you’ve just said, it sounds like you don’t want to talk to me because I’m a police officer. I’m curious to understand why, though, and even if you might not think I want to hear what you have to say, I would nevertheless be interested to find out why you feel that way.’ By saying this, you will have diffused their hostility, denying it the opportunity to escalate, and you will have asserted a clear desire to engage with and listen to them. You will have shown that you have already heard the important part of their message (i.e. the fact that you’re a police officer) by repeating it back to them. Importantly, you will have avoided showing any hostility for them to react to, thus diffusing the potential for a hostile interaction to get more intense. In short, you will have told them – without any emotion on your part – that you want to listen to what they have to say.

6.2 Planning and preparing appropriate responses

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

When faced with difficult situations requiring communication, it can be useful to use the interpersonal circle model to plan and prepare.

When building rapport, it is important to be mindful of two things: (i) that listening is the most important aspect of building rapport and (ii) that in any interaction a bit of advance preparation often goes a very long way.

It can be useful to ‘road test’ responses with people in advance of difficult conversations though role play. If, for example, you have a difficult meeting coming up, it can be good to get a friend or colleague to role-play being the ‘difficult person’, as this will allow you to try out your questions and conversational openers on them. A really good idea when doing this is to get them to give you a range of different challenging replies to your opening questions and comments so that you’re able to try out a variety of different conversational options in advance, in a safe environment.

Finally, the research (Alison et al., 2013) suggests that behavioural adaptability and versatility is a key skill of those capable of handling conversations really well, so no matter how good you are at adaptive cooperation, if you always stick with that section of the interpersonal circle – regardless of what your conversational partner is doing – you’ll be less effective than someone who is able to enact a range of adaptive behaviours from different segments of the circle. Trying out a range of behaviours on a trusted friend is therefore a good way of improving your adaptive responding to real-life situations.

The final activity in this course is a quiz designed to enable you to assess the knowledge you’ve gained throughout the course. Work through the questions in turn, and don’t worry if you need to refer back to the material in the rest of the course; the aim is to make sure you identify the areas you’re not sure about and work back to plug any gaps in your knowledge.

Activity 10 Quiz

Allow approximately 15 minutes

According to the research, the most important advice from this course is that:

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If I am presented with an individual who is very submissive, who isn’t making much conversation, according to the principles of the interpersonal circle this will encourage me to:

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I am more likely to display behaviours that are maladaptive when I am:

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When trying to establish rapport with someone who I have been warned is likely to be difficult, I should:

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While you are walking down the street and checking your mobile phone, you accidentally bump into someone. They shout at you angrily, ‘You idiot! Look where you’re going in future.’ According to the principles of the interpersonal circle, you should reply:

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The interpersonal circle describes:

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Summary

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

In this course, you have learned about a specific model of interpersonal behaviour which enables you to do the following:

accurately diagnose other people’s behaviour
avoid maladaptive behaviour
plan and enact appropriate adaptive responses.

Additionally, you have learned about how the model can help you with planning and preparing for interactions that might be difficult or hard to handle for a variety of reasons. You have learned how to reflect on your own practice when communicating with others, and you have discovered some of the skills that will help you to practise techniques for handling tricky interpersonal situations. Regular reflection about your own interpersonal interactions using the interpersonal circle model will help you to handle difficult or challenging situations with confidence.

References

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Alison, L., Alison, E., Noone, G., Elntib, S., and Christiansen, P. (2013). Why tough tactics fail and rapport gets results: Observing rapport-based interpersonal techniques (ORBIT) to generate useful information from terrorists. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19, 411–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0034564

Birtchnell, J. (2014). The interpersonal circle and the interpersonal octagon: A confluence of ideas. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 21, 62–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpp.1819

Christianson, S.A. and Holmberg, M.D. (2002). Murderers’ and sexual offenders’ experiences of police interviews and their inclination to admit or deny crimes, Behavioural Sciences and the Law, 20, 31–45.

Horowitz, L. M., Wilson, K. R., Turan, B., Zolotsev, P., Constantino, M. J., and Henderson, L. (2006). How interpersonal motives clarify the meaning of interpersonal behavior: A revised circumplex model. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 67–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/ s15327957pspr1001_4

Leary, T. F. (1955). The theory and measurement methodology of interpersonal communication. Psychiatry: Journal for the study of interpersonal processes, 18, 147–161.

Wiggins, J. S. (1982). Circumplex models of interpersonal behavior in clinical psychology. In Kendall, P. C. and Butcher, J. N. (eds.), Handbook of research methods in clinical psychology (pp. 183–221). New York, NY: Wiley.

Acknowledgements

The Open University — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

This free course was written by Dr Zoë Walkington. It was first published in November 2019.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Course image: courtesy of Police Service Northern Ireland

Figure 1: Kritchanut;iStock / Getty Images Plus

Figure 2: taken from: Why tough tactics fail and rapport gets results: Observing Rapport-Based Interpersonal Techniques (ORBIT) to generate useful information from terrorists; Alison, Laurence J.,Alison, Emily,Noone, Geraldine,Elntib, Stamatis,Christiansen, Paul Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol 19(4), Nov 2013, 411-431

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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