Johari Window

Though many communication concepts apply to these killers, the Johari Window allows us to connect the killers’ backgrounds and lives into their communication patterns or lack thereof. In order to analyze what the Johari Window model of communication means in Hickock and Smith’s lives, we first must have a complete grasp on the model. According to the University of Southern California, the Johari Window model is “…the disclosure/feedback model of self-awareness that can be used an information processing tool. It represents information, such as feelings, experience, views, attitudes, skills, intentions, motivations, etc., within or about a person in relation to themselves from four perspectives” (University of Southern California). In other words, the Johari Window is a communication model that allows one to look at four different communicable aspects of a person’s life and analyze the contents of each area to discern information about the person. The four different quadrants that make up the Johari Window model are the open, blind, hidden, and unknown areas. The open quadrant includes in it things that are known by yourself and by others about yourself. The blind quadrant includes aspects of yourself …show more content…
The night of the killings, when Hickock and Smith first make contact with Herbert Clutter, there is loads of communication context available to help analyze the situation. Mr. Clutter’s first words after hearing Hickock and Smith show us that he is analyzing multiple elements of the communication context. After being woken in the middle of the night by the two strangers and is visibly shaken, he says, “Who is it? What do you want?” (Capote, 237). Mr. Clutter clearly gathered as much context as he could from the short interaction and determined that the situation was dangerous and he needed to be