Resolving conflicts with roommates often can be challenging whether you live with close friends or random people. Over the summer, I took a class back in California. I ended up subletting with local students. Although they were nice people, we never became closer than strangers living together. In my 3 bedroom apartment, one resident failed to clean up after herself. She had odd hours working at a lab and I rarely ran into her. Avoiding conflict, I ended up doing dishes and cleaning up after her mess. One day, I decided I've had it enough. I left a note on the refrigerator asking would whoever left the dishes in the sink clean it up as it was starting to get gross? This built up tension. My apartmentmate called and left an angry voicemail asking if there's a problem, would I talk to her in person without leaving notes?
According to O'Sullivan model, communication method is determined by two factors: locus and valence. In this case, since my locus was on the other roommate and valence was negative, I chose a lean medium, leaving a note. My roommate also a negative locus and valence, but chose to call. The difference in my roommate and my actions reflect Lean Media Theory. I thought the situation was clear: asking to do dishes. However, my roommate chose a richer medium. She viewed the situation with more ambiguity, changing the focus from simple house chore responsibility to communication within the house.
In addition to valence and locus, I believe the degree of intimacy between two people also plays a role. At my current house, we have a white board on the refrigerator. However, we mainly use it for paying bills and updating each other on maintenance requests. I would choose to talk in person if I wanted to bring up doing dishes.
Su Cho
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5 comments:
I probably would have done the same thing had I been in your situation this summer. Because you never saw your apartmentmate and you were not that close, leaving an innocent note seemed like the appropriate thing to do in the situation. However, she saw that lean media note as an attack and decided to attack you right back with a phone call, a richer type of media. By doing this, she probably felt as though she had more power in the situation and was trying to make you feel small by, in her mind, not being able to step up and talk to her in person. Just as the model says however, it all depends on the relationship you have with the other person and whether or not the situation will end up in a positive or negative light. All in all, I think you handled the situation well.
I can see how this all plays out. I really like your point about how since she changed the medium that the discussion was being held, she also change completely what it was about. It's a very interesting idea.
I wonder if you think that if you had called her the first time, do you think she would have reacted as negatively? Maybe she preferred the richer medium because she was good at "damage control" and preferred having more cues to react to and so to take the blame off of herself.
Su,
I think that your situation was a difficult one to decide how to approach, and being in your dilemma I would probably have done the same thing. Certainly choosing a leaner media created a buffer for your delivery of negative sentiments to a relatively unknown roommate. Because you were unsure of how she would react it was certainly appropriate to use a media such as a note to ask her to clean up. I find it interesting that she got upset and said that you should talk to her face-to-face when she apparently didn't create much of an opportunity to do so. She also was able to be on the defense in a sense- she got to react to your media choice rather than be the first one to make the media choice. After you displayed your preference to avoid confrontation with her, she was able to be aggressive in her reaction, knowing you wouldn't be a "tough opponent." Although she chose a richer media for the interaction, I think she also had a bit of a buffer in that she got to be the reactionary member of the social interaction rather than the individual to make the first move.
Su :
I think you bring out a very interesting discussion about media selection. I agree with you that your choice of indirect communication can be explained by O'Sullivan model. But for your roomie's case, I think it involves a problem that even though be defined more as a rich media, telephone is a more efficient way when you try to reach somebody in some case. The reason why your roomie chose telephone to communicate with you ,is more likely to be that she felt confused about the situation and she was in need of efficiency.
The publicness of the medium is also an important factor, right on the top of the list with richness. She perhaps felt very angry (not to mention at least slightly embarrassed) that you made her mess a publicly known fact. I understand the apartment didn't have that many occupants, but by bringing any third person into the knowledge of her mess, you made it not just a conversation between two people. It is now more like a judging panel, with a potentially impartial third party judging who's in the right and who's in the wrong.
A message may always seem like a lean medium, but it does make a large difference if you left the message under her door or across a highway billboard. In this case, you probably didn't think that much about the location of the message. But she apparently did and took offense in your medium (medium is the message sometimes, right?).
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