SOCIAL WORK AND PSYCHOLOGY

Social Work and Psychology

First question: (Interpersonal Interactions)

Personal Distance

To understand intercultural communication events, one must first study the more general procedures engaged in all communication matters of human. All Interpersonal Interactions such as Language, Singing & Personal Contact employ a Personal Distance. The study of Personal Distance is called Proxemics. It is a set of shared theories and studies of people's use of Personal Distance as a focused embellishment of culture. There is vast influence of the use of space on Interpersonal Interactions such as Language, Singing & Personal Contact. Posture and spacing are unintended responses to rational shifts or variations, for example slight transformations in the pitch and sound of one's tone. (Matsumoto, 2000)

Distance

Distance is an area adjoining anyone that they view as mentally his/her own. Many persons respect their individual freedom and sense anger, discomfort, or nervousness when their individual freedom is intruded. Allowing a human to go into space a person owns and going into anyone's else's area are signs of insight of the bond between the persons. Many social workers and personnel working in social works have to maintain a proper distance between themselves and needy people.

Barriers To communication

Barriers to communication can occur at any stage of the communication process, but they are most prevalent during the decoding step. In social work practice, people have to face many barriers to effectively communicate with other. Some barriers are as follows:

Frames of Reference

People can interpret the same communication differently, depending on their learning, culture, and experience. This type of communication barrier is related to the encoding and decoding components of the communication process discussed earlier. If the sender and receiver have a common frame of reference, that is, when the decoding and encoding of a message are related, communication is expected to be effective. If, alternatively, the communicators have different frames of reference, communication is likely to become distorted. (Ekman, 1982)

Filtering

Another barrier to effective communication is filtering, a process that occurs as information is transmitted from one level to another. It involves the transmittal of partial information by the sender. Filtering can occur in either direction, that is, during downward or upward flows of communication. (Brislin, 1970)

Structure

The structure of the social work organization can affect the quality of communications within it. A tall structure is one in which there are many hierarchical levels of authority. Generally, communication efficiency decreases with the number of levels through which data have to go by before contacting its anticipated receiver.

Information Overload

In today's complex social work organizations, Counselors are frequently overloaded with more information than they can handle effectively. This information overload occurs for several reasons.

Semantics

The same words may have diverse significance to diverse persons. Thus, it is possible for a social workers and subordinates to speak the same language but still not transmit understanding.

Status Differences

Another barrier to communication is status difference, which exists within every social work organization. Some social work organization create status differences through titles, size of office, carpeting, office furnishings, stationery, private secretary, a ...