Review for Psychology of Communication Online Exam

The exam consists of 100 multiple choice and true/false questions.

The following topics will be on the exam.

Social systems
Define homeostasis
Entropy (systems disintegrate) and negentropy (fixing systems)
Nonsummativity
Positive feedback (deviation amplifying = away from homeostasis)
Negative feedback (deviation counteracting = corrects back toward homeostasis)
Stochastic Process = the branching decision trees of life
Social evolution
Variation = something new
Selection = choosing and using variations
Retention = habits a system or mind gets into
Kenneth Burke
Definition of humans (Symbol using…Inventor of negative…etc.)
Language is the MOTOR, not the music, on the merry-go-round of life
Key Motives = Order, the Secret, The Kill
Purgative Guilt Cycle = Order – Breach – Guilt – Victimage – Mortification
Catharsis – Redemption
Bormann = fantasy themes
Goffman = Front stage and backstage of social situations
Mind
Distinguish mind from brain (time-bound vs. transcends time, etc.)
Brain is like computer, mind is like software
Freud’s model of psyche = id, ego, superego (define each)
Mead’s “I” and “Me”
Memory = short term (working) and explicit
Attitude = definition
Perception
Neisser’s model of the perceptual cycle
Cognitive schemata (patterns of memory, expectations, etc.)
Gestalt
Perception is selective
Korzybski
Structural differential (ranges from “event” – the reality – to inference)
The “is of identity”
Consciousness of our abstracting is key to critical thinking
Hyakawa’s “abstraction ladder” ranges from Bessie/Cow to Wealth (very abstract)
Meaning
Pragmatic
Define Meaning (comes from social systems, associations in mind/brain, etc.)
John Searle’s “speech acts” (e.g., declarative, directive…)
 W. Barnett Pearce’s “Coordinated Management of Meaning” theory
Layers (speech act, episodes, etc.)
“Language is fateful”
Watzlawick’s axioms, especially “You cannot not…” and digital vs. analog
Symbol – referent relationship
Symbol stands for, referent is the thing referred to
No questions on Personality
Motivation
Pleasure principle
Maslow’s hierarchy (physiological… self-actualization)
Glasser’s “choice theory” – motivations and central tenet (central idea)
Henry Murray’s motivations, especially regression and abasement
(which are very close to Burke’s victimage and mortification)
Murray believed motivation was complex and contained contradictory elements
Shakti Gawain’s “being, doing, having”
Persuasion
Spoken language developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago
Rhetoric begins with Corax and Tisias
Sophist
Plato’s “allegory of the cave”
Protagoras = “Man is the measure of all things…” (truth is relative)
Liberal Arts developed during Medieval times
Kenneth Burke’s focus on identification
Monroe Motivated Sequence
FAB formula
VIPS formula (visibility breaks through “clutter”)
Media
Marshall McLuhan’s epochs, especially tribal and literate
Quotes by McLuhan
Neil Postman claimed we’re more “pleasured” by the media like Brave New
World rather than Orwell’s 1984
Direct and Powerful Effects
Gerbner = Cultivation theory
Agenda-setting Theory
Postmodernists
Lyotard wrote “The Postmodern Condition”
Discusses power elite and language games

**If any part of a true/false question is false, then the answer is false

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