| Studies of relational communication have focused, until now, on either relational knowledge or the relational implications of messages with little concern for understanding how the two interact during the process of communicating. To establish a framework for investigating links between relational knowledge and messages, the literature on social schemata was reviewed to determine how other forms of social knowledge (knowledge of stories, interaction sequences, self, and other persons) are linked to messages and other relevant information. Two questions that emerged from the literature were pursued. Are interpretations of and memory for messages influenced by relational knowledge and, if so, what form does that relational knowledge take?;Five studies were performed focusing on how relational knowledge influenced interpretation and memory for conversations between professors and students. The first study revealed strong expectations for appropriate topics of conversations between professors and students. In the second study, two units for analyzing dominance implications of messages were assessed: alternative paraphrases of remarks in conversations and complete conversations made up of those paraphrases. The two yielded different results, so paraphrases were chosen as the more reliable and valid unit. In the third and fourth studies, degrees of consistency between dominance of paraphrases used earlier and expectations for dominance based on three forms of relational knowledge--dimension-based knowledge, situation-specific knowledge, and behavior-based knowledge--were measured. In the final study, the impact of these three forms of relational knowledge on accuracy of memory and direction of memory errors for remarks in conversations was assessed. Very strong memory biases were found. Of the three forms of relational knowledge tested, only behavior-based knowledge accounted for a significant proportion of accurately remembered remarks and inaccurate intrusions (83% for accuracy and 85% for intrusions).;Post hoc analyses suggested that behavior-based knowledge was founded in professors' and students' recognition of their mutual rights and obligations. These findings challenge the psychological reality of well-established dimension- and situation-based approaches to relational knowledge and suggest alternatives that might more accurately capture the forms of relational knowledge used in producing, comprehending and remembering social interaction. |
