Motivation (ch. 36)

Motivation is a very important aspect when it comes to communication. It helps us to fulfill basic needs of affiliation, achievement, control, and reducing our uncertainty and anxiety. The need for affiliation is a good example of our motivation in communication. We always have a need to form close relationships with others and we force ourselves to do this. This theory can kind of tie in with group communication, and how we sometimes adapt to the beliefs and attitudes of the groups we associate ourselves with. It almost makes me think that because we have a need for affiliation, we may adapt to the beliefs and attitudes of others simply so that we may feel that we belong to a group. I like this idea because not only are we fulfilling a need that we have, we also learn new things from the people around us. If we surround ourselves with people who are different from us, we learn things about different beliefs and how other people think. Knowing things like this helps the communication between others. This idea ties in with the need to reduce uncertainty, and how we motivate ourselves to communicate so that we may gain knowledge and create understanding. We communicate with others so that we may be able to learn new things, understand them, thus creating a nice flow of communication.