The four-sides model (also known as communication square or four-ears model) is a communication model postulated in 1981 by German psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun. According to this model every message has four facets though not the same emphasis might be put on each. The four sides of the message are fact, self-disclosure, Social relationship between sender and receiver, and wish or want. [1]
The four-sides model also known as communication square or four-ears model is a communication model described in 1981 by German psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun. [2] [3] It describes the multi-layered structure of human utterances. In it von Thun combined the idea of a postulate (the second axiom) from psychologist Paul Watzlawick, that every message contains content and relational facets, [4] with the three sides of the Organon model by Karl Bühler, that every message might reveal something about the sender, the receiver, and the request at hand. [5] These models are part of the linguistic speech act theory.
Per Schulz von Thun
Every layer of a message can be misunderstood by itself. The classic example of Schulz von Thun is the front-seat passenger who tells the driver: "Hey, the traffic lights are green". The driver will understand something different, depending on the ear with which he will hear, and will react differently. (On the matter layer he will understand the "fact" "the traffic lights are green", he could also understand it as "Come on, drive! ."-"command", or on the "relationship" could hear a help like "I want to help you, or if he hears behind it: I am in a hurry the passenger reveals part of himself "self-revelatory".") The emphasis on the four layers can be meant differently and also be understood differently. So the sender can stress the appeal of the statement and the receiver can mainly receive the relationship part of the message. This is one of the main reasons for misunderstandings. [2]
The factual level contains what the sender wants to inform about: On the factual level the sender of the news gives data, facts and information statements. [3] It is the sender's task to send this information clearly and understandably. The receiver proves with the "Factual ear", whether the matter message fulfills the criteria of truth (true/untrue) or relevance (relevant/irrelevant) and the completeness (satisfying/something has to be added). In a well-coordinated team, this usually runs smoothly. [2]
The self revealing level contains what the sender would like to reveal about themselves; It contains information about the sender. [3] It may consist of consciously intended self-expression as well as unintended self-disclosure, which is not conscious to the sender (see also Johari window). Thus, every message becomes information about the personality of the sender. The self-revealing ear of the receiver perceives which information about the sender is hidden in the message. [2]
The relationship layer expresses how the sender gets along with the receiver and what the sender thinks and feels about the receiver. [3] Depending on how the sender talks to the receiver (way of expression, body language, intonation ...) the sender expresses esteem, respect, friendliness, disinterest, contempt or something else. the sender may express what he thinks about the receiver (you-statement) and how they get along (we-statement). Depending on which message the receiver hears with relationship ear, he feels either depressed, accepted or patronized. Good communication is distinguished by mutual appreciation. [2]
The appeal or want contains what the sender wants the receiver to do or think. [3] According to von Thun whoever states something, will also affect something. This appeal-message should make the receiver do something or leave something undone. The attempt to influence someone can be less or more open (advice) or hidden (manipulation). With the "appeal ear" the receiver asks himself: "What should I do, think or feel now?" For Example: "Mothers are very appeal-influenced by children. Mum! The shoes .... Yes! I'll be right there to put them on for you." [2]
Two people are eating a home-cooked meal together.
The one who didn't cook says: "There is something green in the soup."
| Factual level: | There is something green. |
| Self-revealing layer: | I don't know what it is. |
| Relationship layer: | You should know what it is. |
| Appeal layer: | Tell me what it is! |
| Factual level: | There is something green. |
| Self-revealing layer: | You do not know what the green item is, and that makes you feel uncomfortable. |
| Relationship layer: | You think my cooking is questionable. |
| Appeal layer: | I should only cook what you know in the future! |
The other answers: "If you don't like the taste, you can cook it yourself."
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian-American linguist and literary theorist.
Deception is the act of convincing one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the message has a tendency to believe it. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda and sleight of hand as well as distraction, camouflage or concealment. There is also self-deception. It can also be called, with varying subjective implications, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, ruse, or subterfuge.
Intrapersonal communication is communication with oneself or self-to-self communication. Examples are thinking to oneself "I will do better next time" after having made a mistake or imagining a conversation with one's boss in preparation for leaving work early. It is often understood as an exchange of messages in which the sender and the receiver is the same person. Some theorists use a wider definition that goes beyond message-based accounts and focuses on the role of meaning and making sense of things. Intrapersonal communication can happen alone or in social situations. It may be prompted internally or occur as a response to changes in the environment.
Marketing communications refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination. Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate a message to its desired market, or the market in general. It is also in charge of the internal communications of the organization. Marketing communication tools include advertising, personal selling, direct marketing, sponsorship, communication, public relations, social media, customer journey and promotion.
Paul Watzlawick was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California.
In computer science, message passing is a technique for invoking behavior on a computer. The invoking program sends a message to a process and relies on that process and its supporting infrastructure to then select and run some appropriate code. Message passing differs from conventional programming where a process, subroutine, or function is directly invoked by name. Message passing is key to some models of concurrency and object-oriented programming.
Schulz is a common German and Jewish-Ashkenazi family name from Germany, particularly Northern Germany. The word Schulz originates from the local official title of Schultheiß or Schulze, meaning head of town/village or judge. The final "e" of Schulze was often dropped as early as the 15th century.
Decoding, in semiotics, is the process of interpreting a message sent by an addresser (sender) to an addressee (receiver). The complementary process – creating a message for transmission to an addressee – is called encoding.
Friedemann Schulz von Thun is a German psychologist and expert in interpersonal communication and intrapersonal communication. Schulz von Thun worked as a professor of psychology at the University of Hamburg until his retirement on 30 Sep. 2009. Among his various publications is a three-part book series titled "Miteinander Reden" which has become a standard textbook series in Germany and is widely taught in schools, universities, and vocational skills training. Schulz von Thun developed a number of comprehensive theoretical models to help people understand the determinants and processes of inter-personal exchange and their embeddedness in the individual inner states and the outward situation. He invented the four sides model and developed the inner team model and a visualization of the value square.
Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) is one of a number of theories that attempts to explain how individuals handle actual deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication. The theory was put forth by David Buller and Judee Burgoon in 1996 to explore this idea that deception is an engaging process between receiver and deceiver. IDT assumes that communication is not static; it is influenced by personal goals and the meaning of the interaction as it unfolds. IDT is no different from other forms of communication since all forms of communication are adaptive in nature. The sender's overt communications are affected by the overt and covert communications of the receiver, and vice versa. IDT explores the interrelation between the sender's communicative meaning and the receiver's thoughts and behavior in deceptive exchanges.
The encoding/decoding model of communication emerged in rough and general form in 1948 in Claude E. Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," where it was part of a technical schema for designating the technological encoding of signals. Gradually, it adapted by communications scholars, most notably Wilbur Schramm, in the 1950s, primarily to explain how mass communications could be effectively transmitted to a public, its meanings intact by the audience. As the jargon of Shannon's information theory moved into semiotics, notably through the work of thinkers Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, and Umberto Eco, who in the course of the 1960s began to put more emphasis on the social and political aspects of encoding. It became much more widely known, and popularised, when adapted by cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall in 1973, for a conference addressing mass communications scholars. In a Marxist twist on this model, Stuart Hall's study, titled the study 'Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse.' offered a theoretical approach of how media messages are produced, disseminated, and interpreted. Hall proposed that audience members can play an active role in decoding messages as they rely on their own social contexts and capability of changing messages through collective action.
Social information processing theory, also known as SIP, is a psychological and sociological theory originally developed by Salancik and Pfeffer in 1978. This theory explores how individuals make decisions and form attitudes in a social context, often focusing on the workplace. It suggests that people rely heavily on the social information available to them in their environments, including input from colleagues and peers, to shape their attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions.
The hyperpersonal model is a model of interpersonal communication that suggests computer-mediated communication (CMC) can become hyperpersonal because it "exceeds [face-to-face] interaction", thus affording message senders a host of communicative advantages over traditional face-to-face (FtF) interaction. The hyperpersonal model demonstrates how individuals communicate uniquely, while representing themselves to others, how others interpret them, and how the interactions create a reciprocal spiral of FtF communication. Compared to ordinary FtF situations, a hyperpersonal message sender has a greater ability to strategically develop and edit self-presentation, enabling a selective and optimized presentation of one's self to others.
In interpersonal communication, an I-message or I-statement is an assertion about the feelings, beliefs, values, etc. of the person speaking, generally expressed as a sentence beginning with the word "I", and is contrasted with a "you-message" or "you-statement", which often begins with the word "you" and focuses on the person spoken to. Thomas Gordon coined the term "I message" in the 1960s while doing play therapy with children. He added the concept to his book for parents, P.E.T.: Parent Effectiveness Training (1970). Not every message that begins with the word "I" is an I-message.
Roman Jakobson defined six functions of language, according to which an effective act of verbal communication can be described. Each of the functions has an associated factor. For this work, Jakobson was influenced by Karl Bühler's organon model, to which he added the poetic, phatic and metalingual functions.
The organon model is a model of communication by German psychologist and linguist Karl Ludwig Bühler. It was published in German in 1934. and not translated into English until 1990. In it he defined the functions of communication according to which linguistic communication can be described. Bühler's work influenced the communication model of Roman Jakobson.
A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics, and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of both.
Models of communication are simplified representations of the process of communication. Most models try to describe both verbal and non-verbal communication and often understand it as an exchange of messages. Their function is to give a compact overview of the complex process of communication. This helps researchers formulate hypotheses, apply communication-related concepts to real-world cases, and test predictions. Despite their usefulness, many models are criticized based on the claim that they are too simple because they leave out essential aspects. The components and their interactions are usually presented in the form of a diagram. Some basic components and interactions reappear in many of the models. They include the idea that a sender encodes information in the form of a message and sends it to a receiver through a channel. The receiver needs to decode the message to understand the initial idea and provides some form of feedback. In both cases, noise may interfere and distort the message.
Truth-default theory (TDT) is a communication theory which predicts and explains the use of veracity and deception detection in humans. It was developed upon the discovery of the veracity effect - whereby the proportion of truths versus lies presented in a judgement study on deception will drive accuracy rates. This theory gets its name from its central idea which is the truth-default state. This idea suggests that people presume others to be honest because they either don't think of deception as a possibility during communicating or because there is insufficient evidence that they are being deceived. Emotions, arousal, strategic self-presentation, and cognitive effort are nonverbal behaviors that one might find in deception detection. Ultimately this theory predicts that speakers and listeners will default to use the truth to achieve their communicative goals. However, if the truth presents a problem, then deception will surface as a viable option for goal attainment.
The inner team is a personality model created by German psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun. The plurality of the human inner life or facets of the personality (Self) is presented using a metaphor of a team and a team leader. This is supposed to support the self-clarification process and by doing so set the foundation for a clear and authentic external communication.