Michael Curfew
Comm 3140
Reading Note 7
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We have spent so much time studying the dark side of relationships that we now understand
that it is a conceptual metaphor (advantages and disadvantages in guiding scholarly activities)
The dark side is not exclusively intended to refer to things evil or destructive.
List of synonyms to describe the dark side: aversive interpersonal behaviors, inappropriate
relationships, behaving badly, counterproductive behavior, interpersonal problems, and evil.
o We understand that the dark side associates best with suggestiveness (seldom finding it
overly constraining or dry)
o The dark side is more productive in its more feral or elemental base state
 The dark side is carved out in terms of its contents
Seven themes that loosely intersect, bisect, and border on the dark side:
o It is about the dysfunctional, distorted, distressing, and destructive aspects of human
behavior
o The dark side dallies with deviance, betrayal, transgression, and violation
o The dark side delves into the direct and indirect implications of human exploitation
o The dark side seeks to shed light on the unfulfilled, unpotentiated, underestimated, and
unappreciated domains of human endeavor
o The dark side is attracted to the study of the unattractive, the unwanted, the distasteful,
and the repulsive.
o The dark side seeks to understand the process of objectification
o It is drawn to the paradoxical, dialectical, and mystifying facets of life
The dark side can be thought of in two conceptual dimensions:
o Normatively and morally appropriate versus normatively and morally inappropriate
 The extent to which an activity or phenomenon receives the approval or
disapproval of segments of society or culture
o Functionally productive versus functionally destructive
 Reflects the extent to which an activity or phenomenon impairs or improves the
survival or thriving of a person or social system
Functionally Productive
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Presumptively/Normatively productive
The bright side
What once was bright,
is now dark
What once was dark is
Evil incarnate
now bright
Presumptively/Normatively Destructive
Functionally Destructive
A dark side perspective eventually has implications for both theorizing and investigating
persons, relationship, processes, and systems
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Many models of human behavior tend toward organizing metaphors of actualization, balance,
certainty, consistency, openness, optimization, rationality, security, etc.
o People approach their interactions with multiple and mixed motives
o Interpersonal communication entails multiple outcomes, and collectively these
outcomes can be simultaneously constructive and destructive, functional and
dysfunctional, and pleasurable and painful.
o The assessment of particular consequences as being light or dark is a function of
differences in individuals, context, and culture.
o Temporality contributes to the functional ambivalence of interpersonal communication.
o Interpersonal communication occurs in a hierarchically embedded social system, and a
particular outcome that is judged as good or bad at one level does not necessarily have
the same consequences at another level.
**The dark side is hard to define and compare over the span of different cultures. What may be morally
appropriate in one culture may not be morally appropriate in another. When labeling an element as
dark, or from the dark side, it requires a set of context. Without context, nothing can be dark or bright,
they just are. If one’s direct perspective does not fit perfectly with another’s meta-perspective, is it ever
possible to have a perfect context to give meaning to bright or dark elements? I do not think it is
possible to establish one perfect context understood by all affiliated parties due to the inability to match
perspectives.