Social Interaction Theories

Interactional Theory

Interactional theory emphasizes ongoing relationships created by particular words exchanged in a specific interaction; the significant starting point is that people can and do create their relationships with others every time they interact. Gregory Bateson is the key theorist; although interactional theory was not his phrase (he just said he studied communication), it has come to be the term of choice. Carol Wilder and Janet Beavin Bavelas have been responsible for conveying many of Bateson's ideas to communication scholars; Bavelas was an original member, with Paul Watzlawick and others, of what is often called the Palo Alto Group because it was based at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California. Bateson was trained in anthropology, later adding significant interests in biology and cybernetics, but because his most productive period was spent at MRI, his ideas have been widely utilized by family therapists. Due in large part to the uncommonly broad range of disciplines he studied, Bateson is particularly well known for his ability to search out underlying patterns of communication, sometimes using his observations of animals as the vehicle to discovering important interaction patterns in human behavior (as with the concept of metacommunication, developed as a result of watching sea otters at a zoo). A few key concepts are described in this entry.