Discussion of the Situational and Developmental Views in a Scene from Titanic

Interpersonal communication plays a major role in everyone’s daily life. Because it is so important, theorists have developed two views about how to determine whether a transaction is interpersonal or not. We will be looking at the situational and the developmental view by applying it to a scene from a movie in order to determine which one is a better indicator. The particular scene that will be discussed is a scene from James Cameron’s Titanic. The scene takes place the day after Jack sees Rose hanging off the edge of the ship while she debates whether she should jump or not. Jack convinces her not to jump, and she agrees. But, her foot slips and Jack saves …show more content…

The final step in the levels of knowing is the process of understanding someone on a psychological level, or knowing the reasons behind why a person behaves the way he/she does. However, because Rose does not know Jack that well towards the beginning of their conversation, she says to him, “I know what you must be thinking: poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?” Jack replies, “No – no, that’s not what I was thinking. What I was thinking is what could have happened to this girl to make her think that she had no way out.” Rose then delves into her life story and enlightens Jack on why she tried to jump off the ship. Jack then knows Rose on an explanatory level and is able to vouch for why she behaved the way she did. Consequently, the more Jack knows about Rose the more he thinks she is different from the rest of her society. Differentiating a person from others of the same kind is referred to as stimulus discrimination.
As both (or in this case one) of the members continue to show interest, exchange of psychological information occurs. It is not necessary that psychological information will present itself, only that it can if there is at least some type of motivation between the two people. At the beginning, only Jack is motivated to find out more about Rose. Rose tries to keep her distance and holds a very formal conversation, while Jack consistently