Interpersonal communication is the primary building block of people\u2019s individual social selves and of their relationships to others and the larger world. To study interpersonal communication is to focus on interactional processes, some of which allow people to hate and to love, to move apart and to join together, to disagree and to agree, and to harm and to support one another. As interpersonal scholars, we center on the precursors, processes, and power dynamics, as well as the lived experiences and outcomes, of interpersonal communication that occurs face to face and through mediated channels. We engage multiple methods aligned with the normative social science, interpretive, and critical paradigms. Of particular interest is communication in families and in everyday social contexts, paying attention to the cultural conditions in which such communication arises. We look at how people use language and nonverbal communication to navigate their social worlds and we concern ourselves with the consequentiality of such communication for individuals and for society more broadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Interaction Lab at the University of Washington studies everyday social interactions and communication technologies, focusing on their roles in personal relationships, families, and groups. Our mission is to deepen the understanding of everyday communicative practices as the micro-foundations of social structures and dynamics, ultimately contributing to more cohesive and equitable communities. The lab\u2019s recent projects explore how conversational dynamics build social solidarity, facilitate social support, and induce social influence in ephemeral online and offline encounters; how people perceive and interact with machines and artificial agents as relational and task partners; and how nonverbal communication integrates dominance, competence, and warmth in interpersonal power and status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interaction and Relational Communication Collective Interpersonal communication is the primary building block of people\u2019s individual social selves and of their relationships to others and the larger world. To study interpersonal communication is to focus on interactional processes, some of which allow people to hate and to love, to move apart and to join together, to … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11315","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11315"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11380,"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11315\/revisions\/11380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irc.com.uw.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}