knowledge about persons and interaction procedures with them to particular
interaction episodes, they must acquire specific information about their inter-
action partners and the current interaction context to achieve their interaction
goals. Even individuals who possess large amounts of general knowledge about
persons and interaction procedures must acquire specific information in order
to be successful; thus, the acquisition of social and personal information is an
important goal in almost every strategic communication episode.

We take it as a given that most interaction situations involve the simultane-
ous pursuit of a number of interaction goals ( Berger, 1988a). For instance,
when an individual tries to persuade a friend to go to a movie, he or she may
actually be trying to accomplish two or more goals at once, for example, per-
suasion and maintaining the friendship. The pursuit of multiple goals can con-
strain the choice and implementation of interaction strategies. The existence
of a friendship-maintenance goal might prevent an individual from employing
certain aversive compliance-gaining strategies and tactics. The goal of acquir-
ing information about others is frequently pursued along with other social goals
and in many cases may be a precondition for the attainment of other goals
as the procurement of information about others is crucial in retrieving or de-
veloping plans to reach social goals. Although our discussion focuses on the
goal of information acquisition, one should not lose sight of the fact that such
a focus ignores the complex goal and planning interactions that accrue from
the simultaneous striving for multiple interaction goals.

It is also important to recognize that as persons engage in strategic interac-
tions their goals may change ( Berger, 1988a). Thus, the goal of becoming a
friend to another may transmute to the goal of becoming a lover as a relation-
ship progresses. Goal metamorphosis is especially important in the social
information-gathering context. We suspect that social information acquisi-
tion is undertaken generally to achieve such social goals as ingratiation,
compliance-gaining, and the like. Once sufficient information is gathered, the
social information acquisition goal transmutes to one of these more primary
goals. Of course, the goal of acquiring social information might reemerge later
in an ongoing interaction if a primary goal is not being reached. Understand-
ing goal hierarchies and their dynamics is crucial to the study of strategic com-
munication ( Berger, 1988a; Lichtenstein & Brewer, 1980; McCann & Higgins,
1988).

Within the context of the assumptions and caveats just outlined, in the re-
mainder of this chapter we explore the following issues related to social infor-
mation acquisition. First, the functions served by social information acquisition
are considered. Second, various strategies used to acquire social information
are examined. Third, research findings concerning the use of information ac-
quisition strategies are presented. Finally, some directions for future research
are suggested.

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