I-Challenges

Influencing Others’ Perspectives by Mentioning Personal Experiences in Therapeutic Community Group Meetings

Bibliographic Data

ID11325313
AuthorsM Pino (0000-0003-1571-5028, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume80
Issue3
Pages217-242
Publication date2017-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Psychology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0190-2725 • E-ISSN: 1939-8999
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0190272517706048
OpenAlexW2617040022
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited35

In this article, I examine the communicative practice of mentioning a personal experience as a vehicle for challenging a peer’s perspective. I study this in the context of therapeutic community (TC) group meetings for clients recovering from drug misuse. Using conversation analysis, I demonstrate that TC clients use this practice, which I call an I-challenge, to influence how their peers make sense of their own experiences and to do so without commenting on those peers’ experiences and perspectives. This study highlights the power of talking in the first person as a means of influencing others—a notion previously made popular by Thomas Gordon’s work on “I-messages.” Additionally, this study illustrates a novel way of studying social influence. Whereas previous research in social psychology has focused on the cognitive constraints behind phenomena of social influence and persuasion, here I contribute to understandings of the interactional norms underlying the organization of influence as a structured and coordinated domain of social action

Action (physics · Context (archaeology · Conversation · Conversation analysis · Perspective (graphical · Persuasion · Power (physics · Social relation · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access