The Importance of Communication

 

Can we incur not to communicate at all? Choosing not to communicate is not something we can afford to do. All human being having to communicate. So, the question is: why do we communicate?

Communication achieves a variety of important needs that we may have. Communication scholars have identified four major needs that are convinced by communication: physical needs, instrumental needs, relational needs and identity needs.

So, let us elaborate on each of these four needs in moreover details.

 

Physical needs:

Physical needs are the absolute necessities that a person needs in order to survive. Physical needs include vital necessities that help our bodies and minds function properly. These needs include air, water, sleep, food, shelter, and clothing. Even though the need to communicate is not as essential and indispensable as the aforementioned ones, it is so important to the extent that its presence or absence affects physical and psychological health. 

There are strong ties between the social function of communication and our physical and psychological health. In other words, there is a strong connection between communication and our overall well-being. 

Complete absence of communication with others may have a negative impact on our health just like smoking, obesity or lack of physical activity. Scientists have shown that people who live in complete isolation from others and do not engage in any form of communication at all are likely to die earlier than those who do.

 In fact, prolonged isolation has been shown to severely damage a human. Human beings are social creatures, which makes communication important for our survival. Communication can also be therapeutic and beneficial to our health, which can lessen or prevent physical and psychological problems.

Satisfying physical needs is essential for our physical functioning and survival. however, in order to socially function and prosper, we must meet instrumental, relational, and identity needs.

Instrumental needs:

Instrumental needs include needs to get things done in our day-to-day lives and achieve short-term and long-term goals. We all have short-term and long-term goals that we work on every day.

 achieving these goals is an ongoing communicative task, that means we spend much of our time communicating about instrumental needs. Some of common instrumental needs including getting support, influencing others, or getting information we need. 

Shortly, communication that meets our instrumental needs help us get things done. Communication for instrumental needs serves as a means of influence in bringing something about. We often use communication strategies. Friends, Parents, bosses, and Politicians using communication to impact on others in order to fulfill goals and meet needs.

There is a discuss part in communication studies that examines compliance-gaining communication, or act in a certain way or communication aimed at getting people to do something. Efforts and endeavors to gain the compliance of others (i.e. to make them act in accordance with a wish or desire) are widespread in our daily interpersonal (person to person) interactions.  Researchers have specific many tactics which people typically using in compliance-gaining communication.

Some common tactics used for compliance-gaining:

• Offering rewards in exchange for compliance seeks behavioral conformity in a positive way, by promising rewards or positive outcomes (things or privileges given in recognition of effort to comply).
• Threatening punishment seeks compliance in a negative way, by threatening bad consequences such as loss of privileges or legal action.
• Liking seeks compliance by acting in a pleasant, friendly and helpful way to get the other into a good mood before asking them to do something.
• Debt seeks compliance by calling past favors and indicating that one person “owes” the other.
• Another instance of communication practice where the instrumental need is most dominant is advertising. The advertising process can be defined as a strategic communication procedure whose function is to create a psychological and ultimately behavioral change in a potential consumer of a product or service, i.e. to make the potential client buy a certain commodity.

Relational needs:

Communicating about relational needs helping us fulfill the social relating that is a major part of being human. Scholars and academics have identified a whole range of social or relational needs that we satisfy by communicating. These include belonging, cooperation, companionship, attachment and love, affection, pleasure and control. 

Needs like these arise in every relationship – with spouses, family members, neighbors, friends, and colleagues. Communication is the essential way we satisfy our public needs. Communication meets our relational needs by awarding us a tool through which to maintain, develop and end relationships. Though our relationships change in terms of closeness, distance and intimacy, all individuals have relational needs. 

Besides, communication or the lack of it helps us end relationships. We may do communicate our retrograde commitment to a relationship. From spending time together, to checking in with relational partners by text, social media, or face-to-face, to celebrating accomplishments, to providing support during difficult times, communication forms the building blocks of our relationships.

One specific relational need is the deep need to belong. We all have a profound need to belong that drives us towards forming and joining groups. For example, I belong to my family group first, then my immediate work group, then the larger institution or company, then my country.

Another important relational need is the need for attachment and love. A baby starts out with an innate attachment to its mother. When taken away, there is a strong sense of loss, and this makes the child cry out in searching recuperation of that close connection.

Love is a form of attachment, and we seek to get others to love us as we love them. This creates a powerful two-way bond that sustains attachment and satisfies belonging needs.

 

Identity needs:

Each one of us is likely to have asked himself or herself questions like: “Who am I?” “Am I a law-abiding citizen?” “Am I (dis)honest? “Am I generous or mean?” “Am I thoughtful and kind?” “Am I clever or stupid?” etc. Questions like these and a range of others allow us to engage with our sense of identity. 

So, what is identity? Are we born with a sense of identity? Is identity something innate or something we acquire through experience and interaction with others? It can clearly be seen that identity is mostly acquired. 

If that is the case, how do we end up having a sense of identity? Does communication play any role in our identity formation? Identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world and the characteristics and qualities that define you and which are regarded as essential to your self-awareness. Identity relates to your basic values that dictate the choices you make.

The question is how do we obtain this knowledge of who one is? Identity needs are meet through communication, which is the main way we are learning, who we are as humans, and gaining one by no sense of identity and the way others define us or as we enter the world with little.

 We gain an idea of who we are from the way others draw and describe us. Identity may be obtained indirectly from parents, peers, and other role models (such as caregivers and teachers).

 Children come to acquaint themselves in terms of how they think their parents see them. If their parents consider them as incapable or worthless, they will come to define themselves as useless or worthless; and vice versa. People who realize themselves as likable may remember more positive statements than negative ones. Few people choose their identities.

 Instead of, they frugally internalize the dominant cultures or the values of their parents. Imagine how different you would have been growing up in a different culture or different times. Society shapes the self and guide behavior.

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