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LECTURE FOUR
TWO-PERSON COMMUNICATION

1. The dyad as a two-person social system
2. Variables of dyadic relationships: norms, roles, and disruptive power.
3. Four ways to assess the quality of a dyadic relationship.
4. Reasons for self-disclosure as well as for reluctance to explain when self-disclosure is
appropriate.
5. Qualities that describe intimacy in a two-person relationship.
6. Affiliation and commitment in the dyad.
7. Recent findings concerning the relationship between cohabitation and marital stability.
8. The relationship between need for affiliation and need for dominance.
9. Complementary, symmetrical, and parallel relationship.
10. Status and power in dyadic communication.
11. Principles of assertive behavior and DESC Script as two other techniques of assertiveness
training.

The dyad, or two-person context, represents the smallest unit of human interaction. In
many ways it serves as a microcosm of all larger social groups. It encompasses the full range
of human relationships – from the most brief and casual to the most intense and long lasting.
Meeting a friend for lunch, working on a project with a colleague, buying a pair of shoes – each
of these actions involves a dyadic relationship.
. The dyad communication studies:
 rules that govern dyads, limit and direct behavior;
 multiple roles enacted by both members of a dyad;
 role conflicts and how they create obstacles to communication;
 techniques evaluating the quality of two-person relationships; characteristics of qualitatively
high, or interpersonal, relationships,
 the variables of self-disclosure: intimacy, and affiliation and commitment; dominance,
status, and power;
 relationship structures.

Many studies of dyads have emphasized similarity-dissimilarity, rational decision making,
and conscious analyses of dyadic relationships. Delia (1980) proposes four principles
providing us with a framework within which all relationships operate:
1. First, a relationship is often formed not as something pursued for its own sake – not
because you desire it – but as an outgrowth of some joint task or activity. For example, you
may have to collaborate with someone on a project at work.
2. Second, the demands of the situation (here we include social activities, contexts, and
institutions) often organize your inferences and perceptions, establish your expectations of
the relationship, and shape the way it evolves. For example, in buying a pair of shoes you
don't usually evaluate the salesclerk’s personal traits.
3. Third, many stable and enduring relationships are limited to a specific context or range of
contexts and do not imply increasing intimacy. Two partners in a firm may go out to lunch
every week during working hours, yet never socialize after business hours.
4. Finally, although the degree of satisfaction from a relationship will be based on your implicit
judgments about the other person, these judgments vary with the context and the trajectory