Relational Framing Theory: Drawing Inferences About Relationships From Interpersonal Interactions

Relational framing theory explains how people make sense of ambiguous messages about relationships with others. According to the theory, people make sense of the relational component of messages (as opposed to the content of messages) by interpreting them as indicators of either dominance-submissiveness or affiliation-disaffiliation, and they evaluate how much people are engaged in the interaction to infer the intensity of the relational messages. These dimensions act as cognitive frames that support people’s inferences about the relationship between communicators. The authors trace the rich intellectual tradition of the theory, illustrate the process of relational judgments through examples, and discuss future opportunities and directions for the theory.