The Social Psychology of Communication Summary Articles PDF

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The - Social - Psychology - Of - Communication - Summary Samenvatting - college 1 - 7

The social psychology of communication (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
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The Social Psychology of Communication

Article summary
Lecture 1 What do we talk about?

Gossip as cultural learning
Baumeister, Zhang, Vhos (2004)
Gossip conveys potentially useful information about how or culture and society operate. As
cultures become more and more complex neither problems nor solutions can be easily
foreseen.
So far the prominent view of gossip has been that gossip is malicious and aimed at harming
people and their reputation. It is plausible however that this is not the primary goal of gossip
and sometimes even irrelevant. Gossip can be regarded in several different ways: First, it
helps bonding people together because they share information about themselves and others
of their social community. The time spent together while doing this is beneficial to the
relationship as well. The hearer learns something about the target person.
Secondly, gossip conveys codes of conduct and moral rules embedded in concrete stories,
which can be regarded as observational learning of a cultural kind. Learning from gossip
enabled people to avoid making the same mistakes as the target.
It might be that the tendency to gossip has evolved with evolution as it an efficient way to
learn how to behave in order not to be excluded. Still, people dont seem to gossip out of the
desire to teach or learn, but just for the pleasure of it.
Gossip tends to be negative, as negativity is more efficient in conveying rules and norms
than stories about how somebody followed the rules (bad is stronger than good).
Men tend to gossip more about politicians, celebrities and people from broader social sphere,
while women tend to gossip about friends or family members.
Gossip is more efficient to learn about rules than just explaining the rules in the abstract
because it is more vivid, e.g. when parent tells child about another child that was hurt in an
accident after it ran onto the street. In this example the gossip is not told as a form of
aggression against the hurt child, but to illustrate a point.
Children start to gossip as soon as they can talk, they tend to believe gossip more often
when they get older, probably because they start to see the importance of information about
others.
In organizations gossip is an important way to find out which off record behavior is
expected. In nonliterate cultures it is the most important way of information management.
Studies show that participants judged gossips harshly when the sole purpose was to
derogate a person, but not when there was a lesson to learn from the story.
One third of gossip is positive, one third negative and one third mixed.
Gossip is much more effective to inform people because it is focus on their (sub-) culture and
much faster and efficient than any centralized form of information about social norms.
Gossip is mostly accepted as true without further questioning and invites people to comment
on it even though they might not have any background information.
By distancing oneself from the misbehavior of others, ones social status can be elevated.
Gossip brings about mostly negative emotions, but also positive ones as well as surprise.
The more negative the emotions, the more the people said they learned something from the
gossip.
What has been learned is mostly stated in terms of general rather than specific guidelines.
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Primary and secondary goals in the production of interpersonal influence messages

Dillard, Segrin, Harden (1989)
There are primary or influence goals which initiate the influence process and secondary
goals which shape and constrain it. The study suggests 5 secondary goals: identity,
interaction, personal resource, relational and arousal management goals.
Identity goals: internal standards of ones own behavior
Interaction goals: concerns of social appropriateness, to manage a smooth flow of the
communication event
Resource goals: increasing or maintaining the relationship with the target, the material
resources (e.g. money) or the physical integrity and health
Arousal management: maintaining normal arousal state
Primary goals can be seen as secondary goals that are temporarily dominant (e.g. request to
pay back a loan: material resource goal becomes primary goal)
There was a study that asked participants to justify why they would not use certain means to
influence their conversation partner to show a certain behavior. Mostly participants were
justifying strategies as useless in terms of their influence goal (e.g. This wont work.) and
about their identity goal (e.g. This is not how I do things.) Arousal goals were only
mentioned in 1% of the answers. This might have been due to study set up, though.
Another study proposed a model with 6 goal factors, which fits better, namely Influence,
Identity, Interaction, Relational, Personal and Arousal. It also showed that relational, material
and physical goals should not be treated as sub goals of resource goals. Relational goals
and personal goals should be treated as separate entities while physical and material goals
were dropped altogether.
A third study found 3 perceptual dimensions of influence messages:
Directness: extent to which it is clear which change the target is expected to show.
Positivity: degree to which positive outcomes of compliance are specified.
Logic: degree to which the source makes use of evidence and reason
Overall it was shown that identity and interaction goals were hard to separate. However
Identity was positively correlated with planning and logic but negatively correlated with
directness. Thus both goals seem to include planning but their impact on communication
behavior is quite different.
Relational resource goal were related to positive messages, suggesting that we are more
likely to be positive about the influence outcomes when we are talking to a person closer to
us. In this study arousal goals were shown to be more prominent than suggested by study 1.
Arousal was negatively correlated to all three message dimensions.
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Constituting relationships in talk: A taxonomy of speech events in social and

personal relationships
Goldsmith, Baxter (1996)
A speech event is to social communication what a sentence is in linguistic grammar. It can
be defined as a jointly enacted communication episode, a basic building block, that is
characterized by a clear ending and beginning as well as internal coherence. So far research
has concentrated on communication as a tool to enact some strategy in order to reach a
goal. They center on goals such as forming, maintaining or altering a relationship. However it
has largely been ignored that such acts as self-disclosure, information seeking, compliance
gaining etc. are also part social communication. Communication should rather be regarded
as an embodiment of a particular kind of relationship constructed jointly by the two parties. It
is also important communication sometimes might only have the goal deepen the relationship
by the mere exchange of words (e.g. gossip, small talk, greetings).
Therefore it was tried to find an alternative communication based vocabulary for describing
different types of relationships. The first study asked participants to report speech events that
occurred between them acquaintances, friends, close friends, nonmartial romantic partners,
spouses, siblings, parent-child relationships.
In this context is has to be noted that situation and speech event cannot be used as
interchangeable terms, as the the former describes more the who and where part of the
communication while the latter focuses on the how. The data was then interpreted in terms of
types of talk that respondents recognized, common labeled for referring to types of talk and
semantic dimensions used to differentiate among types of talk. The resulting taxonomy of 24
speech events was then given to a new sample of students who judged the events on
familiarity, the extent to which they would use the lable and which alternative lable they could
think of (diverse sample, high generalizability etc.).
12 dimensions along which speech events can be classified were derived from the data
(important-trivial,serious-fun,informal-formal,awkward-smooth,excited-low key, deepsuperficial, hostile- supportive, straightforward-indirect, goal oriented- lacking a goal, upbeatnegative, involved-quick, difficult- easy). The third study asked participants to rate speech
events on these dimensions. A taxonomy of 29 categories of speech events was derived
(appendix of article, but probably not thaaat important). Participants were then asked to sort
speech events into piles that produced categories which they thought were adequate.
For further analysis 3 dimensions were used:
Dimension 1: extent to which a speech event is perceived as formal and goaldirected.
Dimension 2: extent to which a speech event is perceived as important, deep and
involved.
Dimension 3: positive valence of speech event
Speech events were rated in terms of these dimensions. There were clusters visible which
suggested 3 supragenres: 1.superficial talk, 2. informal talk, 3.involving&positive talk.
The frequency of certain kinds of speech events that were assigned one of the supragenres
was measured. It was found that events from Supragenre 1 and 2 was most frequent
(gossip, joking, catching up, small talk..). Another result was that different relationhsips forms
appear to enact qualitatively different types of informal superficial speech events. A big part
of speech was concerned with making plans (10%). Of course frequency of occurrence must
not be confused with psychological significance of the events.
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Motivational interviewing within the different stages of change: An analysis of

practice nurse-patient consultations aimed at promoting a healthier lifestyle
Noordman, de Vet, van der Weijden, van Dulmen (2013)
The aim of the study was to combine the Stages of change (SOC) model with motivational
interviewing (MI). The SOC proposes 5 stages of motivational readiness between which
people can switch back and forth:
1. Precontemplation stage
2. Contemplation stage
3. Preparation stage
4. Action
5. Maintenance
Motivational interviewing is a patient centered directive approach to enhance intrinsic
motivation. Combining the SOC with MI is seen as potentially helpful to help patients change
their behavior, as interventions are more useful when they are tailored to the patients current
stage of change.
The study examined whether and to what extent practical nurses adapted their MI to the
patients SOC. The nurses and patients did not know that SOC and MI was being the focus of
the study. It was hypothesized that: Nurses are more likely to invite and encourage the
patient to talk about behavior change during the precontemplation and contemplation stage.
The same was expected to be more present in the preparation than in the action or
maintenance stage. This is described as consciousness raising. Also it was expected that
there are more questions asked to elicit how the patient thinks and feels about behavior
change during stage 1 and 2. In addition it was hypothesized that challenges about the
behavior change would be more frequently acknowledged in stage 3, 4 and 5. Ideas about
how the patient could change their current behavior was expected to be most frequent in
stage 3. Lastly it was expected that independent of the SOC the nurse would generally
adhere to all practice guidelines.
Participants either smoked or had a medium level of activity. In the analyses The stages
were combined into 3 stages: 1. Precontempation and contemplation, 2. Preparation, 3.
Action and maintenance.
Results: nurses summarize when patients are in action/maintenance stage. They pay more
attention to request for help and management with patients in preparation stage.
The nurses do adjust their MI skills to SOC but only to some extent. The adherence to
clinical guidelines was not affected by the SOC.
Nurses do encourage patients to talk about behavior change more in the (pre-)
contemplation stage and also more during the preparation than during the action and the
maintenance stage. In the preparation stage they talk more about behavior change than they
do in (pre-) contemplation. They do the same more in the preparation than in the action and
maintenance stage. The other hypotheses could not be confirmed.
This shows that to some extent nurses asses the SOC of the patients on an intuitive level
and adjust their MI skills. It would thus be advisable to teach nurses how to identify a
patients SOC so that they can enhance their MI.
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Lecture 2 How do we speak?

The communicative functions of paralanguage and prosody
Street (1990)
Paralanguage is normally viewed as facilitating the listeners efforts to interpret the semantic
content. Early research has mainly focused on the physiology of sound production (muscles,
vocal tract, teeth etc.). Later so called attributional correlates were made between differences
in accents, speech rate and vocal pitch. Then personal characteristics were tried to be
associated with vocal behavior.
Prosody and Paralanguage are seen to be the acoustical properties of communication.
Prosody is defined as discretely coded non-verbal speech behaviors. This includes stress
(the loudness or pitch put on a certain word), center (where the stress has its peak), juncture
(pauses or lengthening of syllables), pitch direction (voice goes up or down in the end) and
pitch height or range. It is also described as an interpretative guide to the semantic content
(e.g. by stressing a word). Junctures within sentences can convey meaning as well subdivide
sentences into fragments, which are better accessible to the listener. The intonation can
clarify whether what is being said is a question or a statement. Vocal exaggeration can point
out irony or sarcasm.
Paralanguage however describes the continuously coded behaviors, such as vocal intensity
(loudness), fundamental frequency (pitch), silences (pauses, speaker switches), speech
duration, and speech rate. (All pretty similar to Prosody, but they refer to more global
features of the speech, not to single words.) Paralanguage is said to create optimal
conditions for communication.
Accent is said to be a bit of both Prosody and Paralanguage.
Extralinguistics describe factors we can hardly influence, such as our vocal chords etc. are
shaped. Still, they have big impact on how we come across in communication. Feelings also
affect voice characteristics.
In a conversation people engage in a process called adaptation. It means that nonverbal
behavior might be adapted during a conversation, so that an optimal level of communication
is ensured. Convergence in this context describes the adaptation towards similarities while
divergence describes the adaptation towards differences. Adaptation is believed to be a
largely unconscious process that is only realized when taking place in a divergent way. It is
believed to be an innate response which develops as children grow older. Even though the
adaptation of nonverbal behavior is a powerful process, some degree of consistency within
the individual can always be observed.
Another phenomenon that is described is that of sociolinguistic distance. It describes that
differences in vocal expression are somewhat characteristic of the relationship of the two
parties. So far research has taken a channel approach and examined all components of
communication on their own. This is somewhat arbitrary, which is why more recent studies
focused on the interplay of several factors, such as relationships. In this context it has been
observed that there always seems to be some kind of communicative control. The
communicative style largely depends on whether this control is being acquired or maintained.
When both parties want to acquire the control at the same time this results in competitive
reciprocity, since the powerful position in a conversation has been associated with longer
duration of talk, loudness and fast speech. The power dynamics in a conversation are not
enforced by the powerful party but were mutually constructed during the course of a
conversation. It is hard to assign certain characteristics of speech to the dominant or the
submissive party, as situational factors play an important role.
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Effects of speech accents on interpersonal evaluations: Implications for counseling

practice and research
Fuertes, Potere, Ramirez (2002)
The article reviews studies that examine the effect of accents on interpersonal evaluations,
especially those between counselors and clients. Speech accents are used by listeners as
immediate and powerful markers for assessing background and character of speakers. They also
shape listeners perceptions and behaviors toward the accented speaker. Accents also affect the
evaluations of the speakers competence, social status, social attractiveness and similarity with
the listener. Accented speech can also have an impact on listeners comprehension of the
content and stimulate stereotypes as well as discriminatory behavior against speakers.
The Accent prestige theory (APT) states that received pronunciation (first class accents) are
generally accorded higher prestige, e.g. status and solidarity in interpersonal evaluations. More
precisely, it has been found that nonstandard speaker give higher ratings of solidarity to
nonstandard speaker than to standard speakers. It is emphasized that the accent is merely an
indicator of a speakers attributions; those attributions are what is being judged, not the accent
itself.
Accents are also said to be intimately associated with social class. It was found that white
listeners rate middle class blacks and whites the same, but blacks with a ghetto-accent
significantly lower, while African Americans made no such distinction.
When middle class standard speakers were asked whether they agreed about certain opinions,
they were more likely to agree with middle class speakers than with working class nonstandard
accented individuals.
The formality of the setting is also influential. Nonstandard accented speakers tend to be rated
most positively when placed in informal settings (e.g. at home, bus stop), while standard speaker
were still rated more positively. In teaching contexts, Asian speakers teaching abilities were
rated lower when their levels of accentedness were judged higher. In the USA about 40% of the
students who encountered a nonnative American teacher decided to drop the class when they
discovered the instructor was not a native speaker.
With regard to gender differences it has been found that Australian women made only small
distinctions between Australian and Greek accented speakers whereas men rated Australian
speakers higher. Also Greek accented female speaker rated Greeks accents less favorably in
formal settings than did Anglo Australian speakers of either sex. Women also tended to
accommodate their accents much more in formal settings than men did. Men get judged more
harshly when they have an accent.
It has been shown that people can remember less when they hear information from an accented
speaker. This has been explained by the cognitive resources that are stressed when the accent is
unfamiliar to the listener. Nonaccented speakers get higher rating of intelligence.
Another experiment examined the chances to be invited to look at houses when the caller was
either speaking in an accent or in standard speech; the chances were found to be better for the
latter. Also people can identify accents also by very little speech for example only after hearing
the word hello.
In counseling it has been found that European Americans are more likely to wok with Hispanic
therapists when they do not have an accent. There was a correlation found between participants
levels of universal-diverse orientation (multicultural awareness and appreciation). Expertness was
rated lower when the therapist had a foreign accent. This might be due to the fact that clients feel
they cannot identify with the accented therapists, the accent can however be counterbalanced by
using specific expressions that are commonly used by the client/ clients cultural group.
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Think versus Feel framing effects in persuasion

Mayer, Tormala (2010)
The articles describes three subsequent studies that examine the use of the word think or
feel in otherwise identical messages. Even though these are used interchangeably in daily
life, there is good evidence that the two words might make a difference in the persuasiveness
of messages, depending on whether the target is cognitively or affectively oriented. It is
hypothesized that targets with a cognitive (affective) orientation are better persuaded by
think (feel) messages.
Thus, matching the orientation and the message is likely to show biggest effects. This might
also be due to the fact that matching can boost peoples psychological involvement and
makes them more likely to process a message more carefully. Some studies linked
processing fluency to favorable judgments and feelings which might explain why matching is
effective (message-yields-fluency- hypothesis). This is unlikely to be a conscious process,
and probably the message with the matched framing just feels more convincing to the
participant.
The first study assessed participants affective or cognitive orientation by self-report items.
The manipulation was then introduced in a text about blood donation in which someone
described their experiences, either using I feel or I think kinds of messages.
Participants were then asked about their willingness to donate blood. Results were as
expected, affectively (cognitively) oriented people were more willing to donate when feel
(think) messages were used.
Study 2 manipulated the affective/cognitive orientation by priming. It also tried to find out
whether psychological involvement or processing fluency was the mechanism behind the
effect. Therefore self-report measures of involvement and processing fluency were included.
Results were as expected, depending on whether participants were in the affective or
cognitive prime condition; they were more convinced by feel or think messages,
respectively. Processing fluency was also reported to be higher when prime and condition
matched, rather than mismatched. Thus, subjective processing fluency did significantly
mediate the effect. None of the involvement measures was significant; participants reported
rather high levels of involvement across all conditions.
Study 3 examines gender differences. There is much research suggesting that women are
generally more affectively oriented than men, for whichever reasons. I it is thus hypothesized
that men will be better persuaded by think messages and women by feel messages.
Results were as expected. At the end of the questionnaire participants had to indicate how
emotional they were generally. There was a mediating effect of emotionality on the gender
effect. The arguments presented in this study (to buy a product) were perceived as equally
on different dimensions (persuasiveness, masculinity etc.) across conditions. This suggests
that not the argument itself is evaluated differently on a conscious level, but that the framing
has a more subtle effect on the targets evaluation.
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The effect of linguistic abstraction on interpersonal distance

Reitsma-Van Rooijen, Semin, Van Leeuwen (2007)
It has been shown that people systematically vary the level of abstraction with which they
describe the behavior of in- or out-group members. There is a strong tendency to describe
positive actions of in-group members in an abstract fashion (e.g. X is a helpful person)
while negative actions are described in a situation specific way (e.g. X hurt Y). The contrary
goes for out-group members. This is called Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB). It is a largely
unconscious process; the LIB correlates with implicit but not with explicit measures of
discrimination. So far it has been shown that participants who judge the interpersonal
distance of a speaker and a target based on messages that vary in level of abstraction
perceive a greater proximity when the message is positive and abstract than if it is positive
and concrete. In negative messages the proximity is the smallest when the message is
abstract and larger when the message is concrete. The study examines whether this effect
holds when the target of the message is the participant him- or herself. Participants were put
in one of four groups, a combination of abstract or concrete and positive or negative. They
were asked to write down an incident when they acted positively or negatively and received
feedback from another participant which was adjusted to their condition. Results were as
expected (the effect held). There also was a main effect for the valence (e.g. positive or
negative), where the proximity was always rated higher in the positive condition.
It was also assessed how the messages were generally evaluated; this evaluation was used
as a mediator for the abstraction level. It was found that even when the evaluation was
accounted for the effect still held. Since the only variation in the messages was the use of
either an adjective (e.g. you are a responsible person) or an verb (e.g. you acted
responsibly) it is still assumed that an unconscious process it taking place, as this subtle
difference is unlikely to be processed consciously. Also, a between subject design was used,
therefore participants were not able to compare different messages.
The abstraction level with which people are referred to could account for a large part of
perceived discrimination in situation where people just intuitively feel that they are being
discriminated against.
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Do interviewers voice characteristics influence cooperation rates in telephone

surveys?
Van Der Vaart, Ongena, Hoogendoorn, Dijkstra (2006)
The study aimed at evaluating the impact of an interviewers voice characteristics on the rate
of cooperation in telephone surveys (which is why the title is well chosen). They focused their
analysis on the introduction part of the interview, because most decisions not to participate
are made directly after that part and the results wont be confounded with the interviewers
general persuasiveness.
The voice characteristics were measured in two ways: with objective acoustic measures and
through the ratings of judges. The judges also rated the perceived personality of the
interviewers and stated whether or not they would agree to an interview after the specific
introduction.
Past studies found conflicting results in terms of which characteristics had a significant
impact on response rates. It was assumed that voice characteristics influence the decision
because it is made right after the introduction and thus it is likely that peripheral routes of
decision making are applied. More precisely it was assumed that the first impression of the
message affected liking and perceived authority of the interviewer.
The act of asking a question is assumed to convey that the questioner is dependent or
subordinate to the recipient. This is mostly characterized by a final raise in the pitch of the
question, as well as an overall higher pitch. This is assumed to be a prelinguistic
phenomenon that also relates to authority. When the pitch is higher perceived authority is
assumed to be smaller.
It was hypothesized that:
1. The acoustic characteristics relate to the willingness to grant and interview by both
judges and participants (the people that were called).
2. The judges ratings of the voice characteristics relate to willingness to grant and
interview by both judges and participants (the people that were called).
3. The voice characteristics as measured acoustically relate to likeability and authority.
4. The voice characteristics as measured by the judges relate to likeability and authority.
5. Likeability and authority relate to the willingness to grant and interview by both judges
and participants (the people that were called).
The voice characteristics measured were pitch, intonation, speech rate and fluency.
Hypothesis 1 and 2 did not receive any support at all. Fluency and loudness were positively
related to the cooperation rate. Hypothesis 3 and 4 were supported, more precisely the
characteristics of pitch intonation and fluency relate to the characteristics of likeability and
authority. The results of hypothesis 5 showed that the perceived approach (e.g. likeable or
authoritative) had an impact on the participation rate. Likeability was related to the
willingness of the judges, whereas authority was related to the response rate among the
participants. It is thus concluded that it might be wise to use an authoritative approach
throughout the interview and switch, once the interview is granted, to a more likeable style.
Of course this will be hard to teach to interviewers in practice. The results are also in line with
past research suggesting that overall the voice characteristics are a poor indicator of
willingness to participate in an interview. The voice is said to be more than the sum of its part
and therefore the overall style might be far more predictive than single features of the voice.
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Lecture 3 What do we show?

Non-verbal behaviour as communication: Approaches, issues and research
Gordon, Druckman, Rozelle, Baxter (2006)
Much research of diverse areas has formulated mental models, metaphors that concern the
mind. They can be understood as non-literate comparisons in which either the mind or some
component of it is linked to or explained by a non-literal domain (e.g. stream of
consciousness). Gestures and nonverbal behavior (NVB) have been studied for a long time,
first called chirologia. Darwins work on emotional expression has been most influential
here. However the attempt to infer something from NVB is often difficult as people tend to
deny all the meaning that is interpreted. The ability to detect incoherence of NVB and speech
is present in children as young as 4 or 5 years. There have been many metaphors to
describe NVB. It has been described as a riddle, a code, affective expression or dramatic
presentation. More recently it there has been the label personal idiom, pointing out that
people convey their personality by NVB and as a skill, that can be trained.
Knapp distinguished 7 categories of NVB:
1. Kinetics (body language)
2. Paralanguage (content free vocalization)
3. Physical contact (touching)
4. Proxemics
5. Physical characteristics of people
6. Artifacts (cloths, perfume, jewelry)
7. Environmental factor (setting)
He further distinguishes two acts within behavioral messages; the informative act, which
results in certain interpretations of the sender by the receiver. This act is unconscious and
cannot be influenced by the sender. The other act is the communicative act, which bears the
message and can be inhibited as one is consciously aware of it.
McKay says that the sender can display NVB goal directed or non-goal directed. The
receiver can decode the message as either being goal directed or not. There can be
congruence between intentions an perception, but this is not necessarily the case.
Ekaman and Friesen propose a different model of characteristics of non-verbal behavior. It
consist of usage (cirdumctances while NVB), origin (cultural, biological, social norms), and
coding. Coding can be either extrinsic and signify something else of intrinsic, without a
meaning. Extrinsic coding however can be arbitrary, which means that is has no physical
resemblance to the meaning (e.g. thumbs up) or intrinsic, thus resembling the meaning (e.g.
finger across throat).
Because we really need more models, 5 categories of behavioral acts have been defined:
1. Emblems (which can directly be translated into words)
2. Illustrators (which are tied to speech and illustrate it)
3. Regulators (which regulate the conversational flow; nods, eye contact)
4. Adaptors (which are either self(e.g. scratching), object (e.g. tapping pencil) or alter
(e.g. protective hand movements) adaptors)
5. Affect display (which are facial expressions that are somewhat universal)
Dittmann introduced a model based on communicative channel capacity. The channels are
language, facial expressions, vocalizations and body movements of which the capacity can
be increased along two dimensions: 1. Communication specificity (communicative
expressive) and 2. Information value (discrete continuous). Communicative and discrete
messages are said to be able to convey specified units od content along with a broad range
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of underlying emotions. Expressive and continuous messages on the other hand can carry
less information, with facial expression being an exception.
Another model of Mehrabian propses 3 dimensions on which we perceive others.
1. Positivity (liking)
2. Potency (status or social control)
3. Responsiveness (activity cues)
Along with those the NVB is divided in 1. Dimensions, 2. Associated cues, and 3. Specific
nonverbal indicators of the cues.
Patterson has defined 7 basic functions of NVB:
1. Providing information
2. Regulating interactions
3. Expressing intimacy
4. Expressing social control
5. Presentation function
6. Affect management
7. Facilitating service tasks/goals.
Further 4 classes of processes have been defined which are interacting:
1. Determinants (biology, culture, perosnailty)
2. Social environment (partner, setting)
3. Cognitive- affective mediators (affect, goals)
4. Person perception and behavioral processe (impression fomarmation)
An example of an interaction was given. Police officers who are in stressful situation tend to
focus on situational factors a lot more than on personal ones. In a calm setting however the
officers were paying a lot of attention to participants NVB, indicating that most encounters in
real life, which are in rather relaxed situations facilitate a focus on NVB of the person rather
that environmental factors.
With regard to personal distances there are the intimate, the personal, the social and the
public distance, which are relatively stable across cultures. With regard to display rules,
some differences were found, such as Japanese people being less likely to be close to a
conversation partner of to touch them. African Americans display the largest distance to
others while Anglo Americans still have a larger distance than Mexican Americans. African
American were also found to have a different gaze pattern while listening, as they watched
their partner while speaking but looked away while listening.
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From flawed self-assessment to blatant whoppers: The utility of voluntary behavior in

detecting deception
Ekman, Sullivan (2006)
People can deceive other with differing degrees of deliberateness. Their emotional
expressions play a crucial role in that process.
The work of Ekman et. al described in this article is mainly based on high stake lies, with total
awareness of the person telling them. This does not include mild forms of malingering,
dissociation, repression or social/white lies.
It was found that there are language differences between those who deliberately lie and
those who just misremember or are confused.
Therefore a past work is reviewed with regard to how deliberately displayed emotions differ
from spontaneous ones. According to Darwin, there are muscles in the face that are hard to
control deliberately. He concludes, that those are the muscles that we cannot inhibit very
well, and thus the ones that provide clues to the sincere emotions (e.g. the ones that produce
leakage).
Differences were found in 4 domains.
1. Morphology of the expression: expression (they always use smiles) looks different
when expressed deliberately of spontaneously. This was assessed by certain
muscles that are active or passive during the two types of smile. The sincere smiles
are called Duchenne smiles. The differences were also reflected in EEG scans, which
showed different activation patterns. Observers were right in differentiating between
he two smiles only 56% of the time, when presented with one face at a time, but in
74% of the trials when presented with two faces of the same person.
The authors assume that the effects can also be found in other expressions than in
smiling.
2. Timing and duration: The sincere expressions are between .5 and 4 seconds long,
the course is more smooth (no abrupt beginning or ending). These so called micro
expressions are only observable in slow motion assessment, or to highly trained
observers.
3. Symmetry: Deliberate expressions are less symmetrical than sincere ones. The left
side of the face seems more involved in displaying emotions, except for happiness.
4. Cohesion: Next to the facial expressions, there are other cues that give hints about
whether somebody in telling the truth or not. It was found, that women display a
higher voice pitch while lying about their feelings. Also the word themselves might be
a hint. More generally hesitations, changes in emphasis, speech errors or indirect or
distancing language can be informative to assess. It is also proposed that slips of the
tongue, implausible statements or contradictions between what is said at different
times are indicators of truthfulness.
Attention should be paid to illustrators, which accompany speech, manipulators, in
which people tough themselves and emblems, which are substitutes for words. Again,
most people wont see them in real life setting, unless they are trained.
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Effects of different type of hand gestures in persuasive speech on receivers

evaluations
Maricchiolo, Gnisci, Bonaiuto, Ficca (2009)
A study was conducted to test whether varying only the hand gestures in a persuasive
speech would have an impact on the message persuasiveness, the evaluation of the
speakers communication style effectiveness and the speakers composure and competence.
There are different types of gestures:
1. Illustrators or ideational gestures, related to the semantic content of the speech
2. Conversational gestures, accompanying speech without relation to semantic content
3. Adaptors, which include self- addressed, object- addressed or person addressed
movements
Some studies found relations between certain gesture types and participants understanding,
others did not. Also, the gestures were mostly manipulated along with other non-verbal
characteristics of the speech, thus the effects are hard to interpret. Therefore the current
study varies only the gestures between different conditions, while keeping everything else
constant. Participants were shown a video of a professional actress arguing for a certain
topic about which there was going to be an election. Only her upper body was visible, her
clothes were kept rather neutral. After seeing the video each receiver evaluated speaker and
message through a self-administered questionnaire with a list of adjectives. The attitude to
vote was also recorded.
The dependent variables that were considered are: communicative effectiveness,
competence, composure and warmth of the speaker, and persuasiveness of the message.
It was expected that particularly ideational gestures and conversational gestures would
increase effectiveness, competence, persuasiveness perception and intention to vote. No
effect was expected for perceived warmth as previous research has shown that this depends
largely on other nonverbal cues.
It was found that effectiveness was higher for ideational than for self or object addressed
adaptors. Speaker composure and competence, speaker communication style, effectiveness
and message persuasiveness were also shown to be affected by the type of gestures used.
Generally, linked-to-speech gestures seem to have a better efficacy than unrelated gestures.
Adaptors had a negative effect on composure, which is in line with previous research that
suggests that adaptors are a sign of nervousness. However competence was rated equally
with object-addressed-, ideational- and no gestures. In the past it was shown that object
addressed adaptors in an ongoing interaction are a sign of leadership which might account
for this result. Self-addressed adaptors had a non-expected positive influence on message
persuasiveness. There seems to be a hierarchy, with linked to speech gestures being better
than non-linked to be gestures, which are still better than no gestures.
Ideational gestures had the most positive influence on all kinds of measures. No gestures
were rated especially negatively when the content was contrary to the participants opinion
(more procession capacity for content?).
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Turn-taking in conversations
Wiemann, Knapp (1975)
The article considers the nature of conversational turn taking, a phenomenon by which one
interactant stops talking and another starts in a smooth synchronized manner. People tend to
make judgments about others not just because of what they say but also how they say it.
There are rules to govern interactions which are rarely explicitly stated and only perceived as
present when they are broken (e.g. one person speaks at a time, speaker changes should
reoocur). A result may be embarrassment of all present parties, which is socially undesirable
itself. The way of interaction provides information about the relationship between the
interactants. There are so called symbols, which are understood by a group of people, when
violated, the person distances himself from the group. During acculturation the symbols/rules
are learned.
Duncan describes 3 rules that are operating during a successful conversation:
1. Turn yielding cues, speaker signals that others can take turn
2. Suppression of speaking turn claims, speaker s turn is maintained
3. Back channel cues, showing that one does not want to take turn
A fourth one is turn requesting: letting speaker know you want turn without being impolite.
More precisely, there were several (non-)verbal behaviors that played a role in turn yielding:
completions, interrogative requests, buffers (e.g. or something like that) and other directed
gaze (looking at speaker more towards end of his/her turn).
During verbal turn requesting, behaviors such as simultaneous talking, buffers, reinforcers,
interrogative requests and stutter occurred. In nonverbal turn requesting however other
directed gazes and head nods played a role.
Silences are also presumed to play a role, when somebody pauses too long, a speaker
change is likely to occur.
Gazes play a role in that sense that auditors watch speakers less and less during the turn
while speakers increase gazes towards the auditor towards the end of their turn.
Gestures were found not to play a vital role, which might be due to the experimental setting.
It is also unclear how posture shifts influence turn taking. (Maybe: leaning forward if you want
to talk, leaning back when you are finished).
Reinforcers were used to request the floor nearly as often as they were used to signal that
the speaker should go on.
Some utterances might serve as buffers and reinforcers at the same time (such as yeah,
but). Those might lead the speaker to claim the floor more vigorously than before.
Utterances like this are very clear but not necessarily subtle soft or effective. They seem to
bind the speaker and auditor together and, as they are not a direct interruptions, are
acceptable behavior.
Nodding might be important as it softens the exchange by its supportive nature.
All these findings are rather suggestive of a certain grammar that plays a role in turn taking.
The exact rules are not yet clearly defined. It might also be interesting to examine the
interaction of several cues in order to define their meaning more conclusively.
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Lecture 4: How do cultures differ?

Cross cultural variability of communication in personal relationships
Gudykunst, Matsumoto (1996)
How cultures differ has been assessed across different dimensions, mainly the individualistic
(I), collectivistic (C) dimension. While predictions of others behavior are person based in I
cultures, the focus is more on the group context in C cultures. There are however cultural
values that differ within different C or I cultures. In Japan for example a lot of emphasis is
based on wa (harmony), amae (dependency) and enryo (restraint). Thus where does a
culture fall along one dimension and how does this relate to their communication habits?
There is a bit of all of the dimensions present in every culture, but one is normally
predominant. Hofstedes dimensions (IC, uncertainty avoidance- UA, power distance PD,
masculinity femininity) are best to describe cultural differences.
In I cultures there are many different in-groups for each individual, each one only exerts little
influence over the individual. The communication standards are therefore somewhat
universal across different in- and out- groups. In C cultures there are fewer in- groups and
the distinction between communication standards is much more defined. The influence a
group had in an I culture is very specific (i.e. colleagues influence you in work-related
matters) whereas this influence is much more broad in C cultures. The groups an individual
belongs to are ranked in C cultures, with family being ranked most highly in Latin America
and the company in Japan. If the dimension of horizontal vs. vertical cultures in included we
can draw conclusions about the value of equality and freedom in cultures. In many European
countries it is expected that individuals stick out and do their thing, which signifies a vertical
and I culture (low equality, high freedom). In Scandinavia it is more common to see everyone
as an individual (I) but not expect them to stick out (horizontal) (high equality, high freedom).
Japan has a horizontal C culture, which emphasizes equality but no freedom. In India
however we find a strictly vertical culture that are equal within each group (low equality, low
freedom).
Of course there are differences at the individual level. Consistent with the I- C dimension we
can define the personal characteristic of idiocentrism and allocentrism. Those relate to the IC dimension but exist independently in each individual and can be activated differently
across contexts. Idiocentric people in an I culture are believed to be mostly egocentric,
whereas in a C culture they would be ambivalent about the social and group norms.
Allocentric people in a I culture are believed to be concerned about their in-group and are
believed to be totally accepting of group norms in a C culture.
Several values are related to whether an individual endorses I, C or mixed values the most.
The I values are: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement and power. The mixed
values are: security, universalism (equality) and spirituality. The C values are conformity,
tradition and benevolence (helpfulness).
Related to that are the two self construals of independence and interdependence.
Independent selves strive for uniqueness and directness while Interdependent persons
behavior is dependent on the social situation and the relationships.
Also related to the I-C dimension is the concept of high vs. low context communication. In
high context communication the target is expected to infer a lot of meaning from the
statements, while low context communication is very direct and clear. There are several
conversational maxims that are endorsed to varying degrees in low and high context
communication. The quantity maxim asks the speaker to give as much info as needed. The
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quality maxim asks to tell true things with appropriate evidence. The relevancy maxim asks
to only tell important things and the manner maxim asks to be polite while doing so.
In high context communication a lot of qualifier words such as maybe, perhaps and
probably are used to avoid sounding assertive. In low context communication more words
like certainly, absolutely and positively are used. In high contexts, it is perceived to be more
trustworthy to only use few words which say a lot, while in low contexts the messages are
more direct and clear. Silence is perceived to be rude in low contexts while it is meaningful in
high contexts. Low context communication is more often used in C cultures while I cultures
use more low context communication. In close relationships however, high context
communication can occur in I cultures, as the interactants know each other on a deep level.
In I cultures, talking is more affect oriented which might make people more inclined to talk to
regulate emotions. Also there is a smaller difference between in- and out- groups in I cultures
and a lot of self-disclosure takes place in any setting. In C cultures self- disclosure takes
place mostly in in-groups.
Interestingly, the independent selfconstrual in negatively related to embarrassment and
social anxiety. Effective communication has been defined as a function of the amount of
anxiety and uncertainty of the speaker. In I cultures there is less uncertainty reported with
out-groups, whereas in C cultures less Uncertainty has been reported with in-groups. The
politeness rules in C cultures differ between contexts, while they are quite constant in I
cultures. In I cultures a lot of emphasis is based on maintaining ones own face. I tis more
important to save others face in C cultures. When it comes to romantic relationships, the
dependency is seen as negative in I and as positive in C cultures.
When it comes to uncertainty avoidance, high levels are related to low levels of tolerance of
ambiguity and more acceptance of aggression, when it serves the purpose to get rid of an
opponent. Differences in people are taken to signify danger. Low levels of UA are related to
the perception that differences are something curious and enriching. In relation to
communication high UA lead to strict rules when speaking to strangers, while low UA leads
to control of aggression and anger towards out-group. On the personal level people can be
either uncertainty (low UA) or certainty (high UA) oriented. Uncertainty oriented people strive
for reducing their uncertainty by facing it, while certainty focused people tend to ignore it.
Power distance describes the extent to which low power individuals accept unequal power.
When PD is high, people dont question orders and restrict their communication to in-groups
which have more power than out-groups. Low levels of PD leads people to ask for the why of
order and to be less restricted in their communication.
Lastly, masculinity- femininity describes the amount of certain masculine or feminine
attributed present in a culture. Masculinity is defined by power, assertiveness, achievement
and more same sex relationships. Femininity is defined by emphasizing the quality of life,
service and interdependence. Yes, this is sexist.
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Cultural similarities and differences in display rules

Matsumoto (1990)
Past research has shown that there is a certain universality to facial expressions, as long as
people are alone. When in company of others, people tend to modify their facial expressions
according to their cultural display rules. Japanese people tend to mask their negative feelings
by smiling to overcome the innate facial affect program. This has led to the neuroculutral
theory of emotion in which universal expressions are governed by social norms. This is
supported by the notion that display rules become differentiated with age.
The current study examines the effects of individualism (I) or collectivism (C) and Power
distance on the perceived appropriateness of facial expressions. In this context in-group and
out-group membership is also considered. In C cultures it is more common to have one
major in-group in which cohesion and harmony is highly valued. In I cultures however there
are several in- groups for each
individual and the in- and out-group
distinction is not as important.
The predicted cultural differences are
summarized in table 1. It is expected
that C should lead to a greater
display of negative emotions towards
out-group members and positive
emotions towards in-group members,
whereas I should lead to a greater
display of negative emotions towards
the in-group and positive towards the
out-group. It is also assumed that C
coincides with high power distance
(vertical culture) and I to low power
distance (horizontal culture). It is
expected that in high PD cultures positive emotions will be displayed to high status others
while negative emotions will be displayed to low status others. The opposite is expected for
low PD cultures.
Results showed that Japanese participants rated anger and fear more appropriate towards
out-groups than did Americans. Americans rated disgust and sadness to in-group more
appropriate than did the Japanese . Japanese rated anger as more appropriate towards
lower status individuals than Americans. Surprisingly, Americans rated happiness higher
when alone and Japanese rated fear and surprise to both in-group and higher status
individuals more appropriate than Americans.
Overall, Americans rated happiness as more appropriate (also in public) while Japanese
rated anger fear and surprise as more appropriate than Americans.
Some of the cultural differences could be supported. Americans seemed to display more
positive emotions towards out-groups as this is not sanctioned in I cultures. Japanese
seemed to display more negative emotions to out-groups since the display toward in-group
members might decrease harmony and cohesion. Japanese allow the expression of
emotions towards lower status others while this is discouraged in horizontal cultures.
Of course the display rules were only operationalized by perceived appropriateness in this
study and further research should focus on different operational definitions
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I love you, man: Overt expression of affection in male-male interaction

Morman, Floyd (1998)
Past research has shown that affection and its display are a fundamental part of the human
nature. However displaying affection always comes with numerous risks, such as
misinterpretations of the intent behind the behavior. This is magnified when it comes to malemale relationships as overt affection in those is not prohibited by cultural norms. Also, many
men are afraid of being regarded as homosexual, which of course would be the end of the
world as we know it. This has been called covert intimacy perspective.
It has been reported that certain situations can produce marked physiological distress, such
as hugging another man. Generally displays of affection are seen as more appropriate when
there is at least one woman involved. Women display affection more overtly in regardless of
whether it concerns a same sex relationship or one with a man.
It was hypothesized that there are factors which can moderate the appropriateness of
affection in male same sex relationships. Three factors were proposed:
1. Type of the relationship
2. Emotional intensity of the context
3. Privacy level of the context
As for the type of the relationship it was suggested that affection between brothers might
been shown more freely than between unrelated men. This might be due to the fact that
there is less of a chance that it might be understood as a romantic relationship, at least as
long as relationships between siblings are culturally sanctioned.
The emotional intensity of the context plays a role because male friends might be more likely
to show affection in the context of a funeral of a wedding than in a more neutral setting.
Also it is expected that men are reporting to be more likely to show affection in public than in
private. Since the public behavior will most likely be seen by others there is a greater chance
that it is not intended to be a romantic display of affection, since those are mostly restricted
to private situations.
The hypotheses thus are:
1. Affection is more appropriate between brothers than friends
2. Affection is more appropriate in emotionally charged contexts
3. Affection is more appropriate in public than in private
4. The difference between emotionally charged and not charged situations is bigger in
private than in public settings
Everything was beautifully supported.
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The role of the self in responses to health communications: A cultural perspective

Sherman, Uskul, Updegraff (2011)
Since there are many health threats that are emerging in many different cultures causing
more and more problems there has been the question whether there are pan cultural (e.g.
applicable for all cultures) health solutions.
Many studies have shown that messages are most effective when they are tailored to the
recipients cognitive, affective or motivational characteristics. For example messages are
more convincing when they match the recipients attitude- relevant thoughts and feelings or
their motivational orientation.
Of course culture shapes these psychological characteristics and is thus worth to be studied
in the context of health messages. The most defining difference between western and east
Asian cultures is their individualistic or collectivistic orientation.
In individualistic cultures people tend to have a strong independent self that is characterized
by personal autonomy and self-expression. They see themselves as agentic and causal
determining their decisions and actions. The motivation focuses on pursuing opportunities
rather than to avoid mistakes. Collectivistic cultures however are defined by social relations
and membership in groups. It is beneficial to fit in with a group and maintain social harmony.
Social disruption is very problematic as well as disappointing others. The focus is rather on
avoiding mistakes than on pursuing goals. In past research these distinctions in selfconstrual and self-regulatory tendencies have proven to be useful for health persuasion.
Since collectivistic cultures are rather prevention focused and concentrate on the presence
or absence of negative outcomes. Therefore it is expected that messages emphasizing the
negative outcomes of a behavior will be more effective in those cultures. The opposite is true
for individualist cultures, which are generally promotion focused and value the presence or
absence of positive outcomes. Therefore gain frames will be more successful here.
Above that individual differences such as avoidance or approach orientation will play a role,
with avoidance being related to loss framed messages and approach with gain frames.
The relationship of loss-collectivistic and gain-individualistic may be moderated by the selfregulatory focus. Independent selves will be more motivated by personal goals whereas
interdependent selves will be more affected by relational goals. It has been shown that
acceptance of health threats was higher when the message was framed in a way that
matched the personal self- construct as well as the culture. This effect can be magnified
when persons are reminded of their cultural values by priming. It is not possible however to
prime people to other cultures values to make them endorse different messages.
Another aspect that needs to be considered is possible defensive reactions and reactance.
Increased personal relevance of a topic can lead to those reactions especially if the message
concerns self-threatening health information. It has to be clarified when tailored information
leads to reactance and when to higher levels of acceptance.
One way to overcome defensive behavior is by implementing some form of self- affirmation.
To be effective the self-affirmation must be matched with a persons cultural background.
Again, avoidance affirmation is more effective in Asian Americans and approach affirmation
in European Americans. Cultural tailoring is thus an important tool when working with health
related messages.
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Lecture 5: How do we understand the complexity of communication?

Expectancy Theories
Burgoon, Burgoon (2001)
Expectancy has been defined as the act, action or state of expecting. In communication it
refers to the enduring cognitions about the anticipated verbal and nonverbal communication
of others on a continuum from macro (sociology) to micro (psychology) observations. There
are predictive and prescriptive expectancies. Predictive ones describe behavior that is
assumed to be happening while prescriptive ones describe behavior that is seen as
appropriate to be happening. In Language expectancy theory (LET) ther is the assumption
that language is a rule governed system that is influenced by the expectancies people
develop. People are also said to be developing preferences concerning the
language/message strategies employed by others in persuasive attempts. These are linked
to cultural and social norms. When expectations are positively violated (e.g. someone reacts
more positively than expected) it changes the our affect and our reaction towards the
message. When an expectation is negatively violated, this is perceived as way more
negative than a similar positive violation.
With regard to the credibility of the source it can be said that males are generally perceived
to be more convincing. They can apply aggressive as well as non-aggressive strategies
efficiently. Sources low in credibility are not successful in applying aggressive strategies. The
same seems true for females. Their bandwidth of communication behavior is thus restricted.
People have normative expectations about the level of fear arousing appeals, opinionated
language, language intensity, sequential message techniques and compliance gaining
attempts varying in instrumental and verbal aggression appropriate to persuasive discourse.
When people are put into a negative mood prior to the persuasion attempt, they are more
likely to listen to message, when a non-aggressive message is used.
The expectation state theory (EST) concerns group behavior and group performance. It
focuses on evaluations of the self and others in terms of power prestige and order. Several
attributes are evaluated which can be general (age, status, occupation, IQ, attractiveness) or
specific (individual characteristics). The specific attributes have a bigger influence . Statusvalued-external characteristics lead to better performance expectations about the individual.
Reward expectations refer to characteristics that are differentially linked to rewards for the
actor of the group and are therefore positively evaluated. They can be categorical (age,
gender), ability related (context dependent knowledge) or outcome related (accomplishments
during task). When people are positively evaluated, nonconformity of their action is regarded
as genius and increases their image even further. When they are regarded as incompetent
though, nonconformity is rather harmful for their image.
Expectancy violation theory says that violations of expectancies are rearded as more
extreme than confimations. The expectancies are formed based on actor related attributes
(gender, age), relation attributes (familiarity) or the communication context.
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Discrepancy arousal theory and cognitive valence theory

Guerrero, Alberts, Heisterkamp (2001)
Both the discrepancy arousal theory (DAT) and the Cognitive valence theory (CVT) basically
say that arousal changes in the recipient shape his or her reaction to certain stimuli and are
therefore central to the communicative process. A moderate to high arousal change predicts
how people adapt to other another persons behavior, whereas low arousal change does not
seem to have an impact. In this context adaptation means the process whereby peoples
verbal and non-verbal behaviors are mutually influenced by another leading to increased
similarity or dissimilarity.
If someone interacts with us, there are two possibility to respond: reciprocity and
compensation. Reciprocity refers to situations in which the actor responds in a similar or
contingent way to the partners behavior, while compensation describes situations in which
the actor responds with behaviors of comparable functional value, but in the opposite
direction (e.g. someone tries to hug you and you move away). Reciprocity is given when an
attempt to approach is answered with an approaching reaction or when both actors behave
in an avoiding way. Compensation takes place when there is a mismatch in either direction
between one of the actors approaching or avoiding and the other doing the opposite.
According to DAT persons have an acceptance region of others behavior. This is basically a
bandwidth of behaviors that are expected to be performed. When a response falls outside
that region there is a good chance that we perceive it as inadequate. There is a bit of
flexibility in that model meaning that a reaction that is only a little more extreme can still be
accepted. However it comes with a change of arousal that influences our reaction. A problem
with this model is the arbitrary definition of the acceptance region which can hardly be
measured. All in all, this theory offers a link between actions, arousal change and resulting
reactions in a rather affect oriented way.
The CVT is a more cognitive model which takes into account the valence of certain aspects
of the interaction. It proposes, that increased immediacy (approach/avoidance) first leads to
a change of arousal. When this change is low or high, this leads to negative situational and
relational outcomes. When the arousal is moderate however there can be either positive or
negative relational and situational outcomes. This is dependent on the evaluation of 6
cognitive valencers: culture, situation, relationship, personality, temporary states and
interpersonal valence. When all 6 are rated positively, reciprocity will occur; when one or
more are rated negatively, compensatory behavior is more likely. In this model it is
questionable whether reciprocity will really only occur if all six valences are rated positively.
For further research it has been proposed to focus on different kinds of arousal
(orienting/defensive) to better explain when it leads to reciprocity and when to compensation.
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Communication Accommodation Theory

Shepard, Giles, Poire (2001)
The aim of this theory is to explain shifts in interactions. It also seeks to describe, predict and
explain underlying motivations, communication processes and consequences of behavior.
Originally it was set up to explain modifications in speech style but now the focus in more on
a macro (sociological) level. The main assumption is that individuals use strategic behaviors
to negotiate the social distance. Those strategies are:
1. Convergence (changing speech to be more similar to partner)
2. Divergence (accentuate differences)
3. Maintenance (keeping own style, disregarding convergence or divergence attempts of
partner)
4. Complementary: tone etc. used to underline own identity (e.g. deepening of voice to
appear more masculine)
5. Interpretability: focus on receivers ability to interpret language
6. Discourse management: focus on other persons needs and attune to then (e.g.
topics)
7. Interpersonal control: attempt to direct course or nature of interaction
In convergence we put a lot of emphasis on keeping the conversation going smoothly as well
as highlighting similarities, which leads to more positive evaluations of ourselves. In
divergence we show differences of even dislike of the other which of course leads to less
favorable evaluations.
This process is moderated by different factors such as the power structure. When the
conversation is directed upwards, there is a consensus to shift to a more prestigious variety
of behaviors. In a downward situation stigmatized communication is more often the case.
This direction can be partially or fully present uni- or multidirectional and symmetrical (both
accommodate) or asymmetrical (not both equally).
Accommodation is to a certain degree expected by communicators, but it can also be too
exaggerated which leads to overaccommodation. Stereotypes have a big influence on or
perception of (over-) accommodation, an even bigger one than the actual, measurable
accommodation taking place.
The theoretical origin of the CAT is the equilibrium theory which stated that interactants will
strive to maintain the status quo of intimacy in their relationship. Of course the sociohistorical context has an impact on this as well as the accommodation orientation of people
which can be interpersonal, intrapersonal or intergroup directed. Socio-psychological states
also have an impact as well, they might make us more or less likely to engage in interaction
in the first place or influence how we engage. Lastly, the immediate situation also impacts on
if and how we communicate and therefore accommodate.
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Lecture 6: How do we communicate through new media?

The role of emotion in computer-mediated communication: A review
Derks, Fischer, Bos (2008)
The article examines the degree to which emotions are a feature of computer mediated
communication (CMC). There is a variety of CMC ranging from message systems to
electronic conference systems which can be supported by audio and video links. A distinction
is being made between synchronous (e.g. chat) or asynchronous (e.g. email) forms of
communication.
CMC has often been assumed to be a cold and impersonal medium, where emotions are
very difficult to express in contrast to face-to face communication (F2F). Some research has
shown that these differences are not that large and might also resolve over time. This review
tries to focus on differences between explicit and implicit emotions in an interaction between
two or more individuals. Explicit communication involved references to discrete emotions
(e.g. I am angry) of emoticons. Implicit communication includes personal involvement, selfdisclosure and language use etc. In addition the concept of sociality is considered. One the
one hand there is the physical dimension, where someone is actually located at the same
place as the communication partner. It is non-existent during CMC, which makes bodily
contact impossible. Reduced visibility (except in video conferencing) also plays an important
role. The social dimension refers to the extent to which the presence of the other person is
salient. The relative anonymity of CMC is also a factor which could have an impact on the
salience of social norms, since social control is very limited in CMC. However the Social
Identity of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE) proposes that CMC can make social norms more
rather than less salient, since many social cues are not directly assessable. It is also
questionable whether social presence is automatically reduced on CMC. It is assumed that
the expression of negative emotions is easier in CMC. Further it is assumed that the reduced
visibility of emotions strengthens emotional style and content and makes it easier to express
emotions, especially when the
individual finds this hard in real
life. It might also be that
emotions are harder to
perceive, especially when they
are not very intense (Fig. 1).
First, emotion talk was
examined. People have the
need to talk about and reflect
their emotions, which is called
social sharing. It is elicited as
soon as the emotion is evoked
with shame being the only
exception. Men are more likely
to talk to women about their feelings while women make no such difference. Women also talk
more about positive emotions than men. Contrary the belief that what we tell others is
confidential, it is very commonly shared with third persons. Social sharing is an important
way to improve interpersonal relationships and social integration.
For a long time it has been assumed that the lack of non-verbal cues makes it hard to
communicate emotions in CMC. There is much direct and indirect evidence against that.
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First, the huge success of services like MSN shows that CMC is not only widely used but it
can also be an opportunity for those who find emotional expression hard normally to do so in
a less direct way.
Second, computer mediated therapy has shown to be as successful or even better than face
to face sessions in some cases. This might be also due to the fact that emotional expression
is facilitated in CMC. There is no evidence against the theory that emotions are less likely to
be expressed in CMC compared to F2F.
CMC seems to provide a safer environment so that negative emotions can be more easily
expressed in CMC because the consequences dont have to be feared as much.
The second area that was examined is the expression of emotion in F2F and CMC.
Research in F2F has shown that social presence influences the extent to which one displays
emotions. It has been shown that it is easier for women to express negative emotions in a
more anonymous context. This is in line with the idea that men and women appraise the
effects of their own emotions on others differently. These social appraisals are more likely to
be important when someone is actually present. In CMC it plays a minor role and makes
more direct emotional display possible.
CMC has also been studied with regard to flaming. Flaming has been described as the
expression of strong opinions accompanied by the display of negative, antagonistic emotions
in the form of insulting, swearing, offending of hostile comments. It occurred more often in
settings where the context was completely anonymous than in those where some contact
took place. It is however unrelated to (a-) synchronicity. It can be reduced if the opportunity is
offered to reflect on messages that are written and is overall relatively rare.
Thirdly, the lack of non-verbal cues (NVC) was investigated. NVC usually resolve ambiguity
in social situations and intensify of tone down messages. It was shown that emotions are still
easily and strongly evoked in CMC but that the potential of misinterpretation is higher.
Emoticons are a good way to make emotional expression less ambiguous. When available,
subjects always used emoticons in their messages. Women use them more to communicate
humor and solidarity while men use them more to convey sarcasm. When in mixed-sex
groups both men and women use more emoticons than when in same sex groups. The only
aspect that is absent in CMC is mimicry that usually occurs between friends when in a
conversation.
In working together in groups CMC groups outperformed F2F groups interpersonally (more
positive ratings of groups members). This supports the Social information processing theory
(SIP) which states that despite initial differences in relational and social communication
between CMC and F2F these differences tend to disappear over time.
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Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online

dating profiles
Toma, Hancock, Ellison (2008)
People have always tried to present themselves as positively as possible to their possible
mating partners. Recently the use of online dating platforms has become very important in
the formation of new romantic relationships. This study examines the degree of deception
that is used by users of these online services. On the one hand people may wish to present
themselves as positively as possible, on the other hand the prospect of engaging in a
relationship with the other might discourage lying. Also, according to self-verification theory
people prefer partners that they see as themselves rather than as perfect.
The hyperpersonal model states that CMC enables selective self-representation a strategic,
controlled and optimized version of the F2F presentation. The asynchronicity of the context
enables users to create more thought through messages. Also the reduction of
communication cues reduces some of the stressful aspects of F2F communication. By the
relocation of cognitive resources, all the metal effort can be put into creating positive profiles.
The recordability of profiles however might reduce deception as it allows comparing the
profile to the actual self once a real meeting has taken place. The more online dater wish to
meet someone in person the more honest their profiles are expected to be. Warranting also
reduces deception. The two most important warrants are the profile picture and whether or
not the social network of the user knows about the profile.
The hypotheses of the study are:
1. Men will lie more about their status and their height and will find lying in these two
categories more acceptable than women.
2. Women will lie more about their age and physical attractiveness and will find it more
acceptable to lie in these categories than men.
3. The more warranting information there is in the profile the more honest the profile will
be.
Results suggest that participants are indeed aware of the inaccuracies of their profiles, they
are not mere inaccuracy. It was found that 81% of participants lied to some degree on their
profile. The magnitude was usually small and would be hard to detect in F2F interactions.
Lying on one characteristic did not increase chances of lying somewhere else.
Participants reported being most accurate about their relationship status and least accurate
about their pictures. They seemed to be enhancing their self-representation while bearing in
mind the possibility of a future F2F meeting. People who did post pictures of themselves
were most likely not to lie and lying was considered least unacceptable here. The knowledge
of the social environment significantly decreased the degree of deception that was used.
Men systematically overestimated their height while women underestimated their weight. The
participants that were differing most from social norms were lying the most. Age related
deception was minor and did not differ by gender. Men and womens self- reported ratings of
their accuracy did not differ. Men indicated more tolerance for deception about the status.
Women did not report more tolerance about deception about physical attractiveness.
I was proposed that dishonesty might be constrained by internal reward mechanism that
operate even in the absence of external constraints such as anticipated future interaction.
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Therapist behaviours in Internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy: Analyses of

e-mail correspondence in the treatment of generalized Anxiety Disorder
Paxling, Lundgren, Norman, Almlov, Carlbring, Cuijpers, Andersson (2013)
Therapist factors have an important impact on the outcome of psychological interventions. As
much as one third of the chance for a positive outcome has found to be dependent on
variations of therapists behavior. For the current study it is of interest how and which
therapist factors influence the outcome of internet delivered cognitive behavioral therapy
(iCBT). iCBT has been shown to be an effective way of treatment for a range of psychiatric
conditions and health problems such as major depression, social phobia, panic disorder,
tinnitus and insomnia. However the approaches within iCBT vary greatly ranging from patient
therapist contact via email when it is needed to real life conversations via chat or telephone.
The research in this area has resulted in a variety of findings concerning how much contact
between patient and therapist is actually needed. In one study non-guided groups did just as
well as groups that communicated with a therapist. In another study it made no difference
whether patients communicated with a clinician or a technician who did not have any
therapeutical background. In these studies dropout rates tended to be high especially for
those groups who did not communicate to someone to support them. On the other hand
there have been studies that suggested that a higher frequency of contact has positive
effects on the treatment outcome.
The aim of this study is to explore which therapist behaviors are used, as well as their
frequency and their correlation with adherence and outcome of the program. This was
analyzed in a sample of GAD patients who could contact their therapist via email. The
therapists were not trained to use specific behaviors prior to the study but were told to foster
adherence to the program as much as possible. The analysis revealed eight factors that
were frequently employed (in descending order): task reinforcement, self- efficacy shaping,
alliance bolstering, psychoeducation, empathic utterances, deadline flexibility and selfdisclosure.
Task reinforcement and self-efficacy shaping (the behaviors most often displayed by the
therapists) are both aspects that reinforce the progress of the patients. They were correlated
positively with the outcome of the iCBT, which suggests that they could be focused on in
future clinical work. Interestingly deadline flexibility (e.g. giving the clients some more time to
finish a task) was negatively correlated with therapy outcome. Homework adherence was
also related to a positive outcome as well as therapeutic alliance. Therapist competence and
therapist adherence were only weakly correlated with the outcome.
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Lecture 7: How can we communicate with computers?

Designing persuasive robots: How robots might persuade people using vocal and
nonverbal cues
Chidambaram, Chiang, Mutlu (2012)
Robots might be beneficial in various areas that relate to persuasion such as education,
health and well- being. This positive influence largely depends on their ability to persuade
people. One of the attributes of human communication is nonverbal immediacy (NVI), which
describes the perceived closeness of a communication partner. This can be conveyed
through proximity, gaze, gestures, facial expressions, touching and vocal cues such as tone
and expression. NVI has been shown to be linked to persuasive ability as well as to
likeability and attractiveness. In this study a robot is used to mimic human NVI find out
whether NVI has an impact in communication through robots. The hypotheses of the current
paper are:
1. Participants perceptions of the persuasiveness of the robot and compliance with the
robots suggestion will be higher when the robot displays nonverbal cues.
2. Participants perceptions of the persuasiveness of the robot and compliance with the
robots suggestions will be higher when the robot displays only bodily cues than when
it displays only vocal cues.
3. Women are more persuaded, as they can read bodily cues more easily.
The gaze behavior was expected to enhance persuasiveness as it enhances the social
accessibility of an individual. The persuasiveness should be higher when proximity
increases; as long as ones intimate space is not invaded. The robot varied between the
personal and the social space. As for the gestures, four types were distinguished. First,
iconic gestures, which are closely related to the semantic content of the speech and can be
subdivided in action phrases (drinking gesture when proposing to drink more) and quantifiers
(raising arms so signal higher). Second, metaphoric gestures, which relate to speech in an
abstract way (e.g. forefinger tips that form a circle to indicate precise). Third, deictic
gestures that direct the attention to the physical environment (e.g. pointing) and lastly beat
gestures which have the purpose emphasize certain words or phrases or to underline the
general beat of speech. Vocal cues were manipulated as either being highly monotonic or
highly expressive. There were four conditions; one without vocal cues or gestures one with
vocal cues, one with gestures and one with both. Strong support was found for the first two
hypotheses. People complied with the robots suggestions more when it employed nonverbal
cues. The presence of vocal cues alone did not affect participants compliance while bodily
cues alone led to higher compliance on participants than vocal cues alone did. The third
hypothesis was not confirmed. Gender did not seem to have an impact on persuasiveness
and compliance in this study.
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The psychology of tailoring-ingredients of computer-tailored persuasion

Dijkstra (2008)
The article examines the theoretical framework of computer tailored messages in persuasive
messages. Mixed evidence is available from past research suggesting that computertailored persuasion (CTP) is sometimes more effective than non-tailored persuasion.
Generally, a system
requires information about
the individual and decision
rules by which the
persuasive message is
composed. It may use
prepared texts from a
library and may include
information such as the
persons name or details
about their health behavior
(e.g. smoking habits). This
makes it a more interactive
and individualized output
than other messages.
Three main mechanisms to
consider here are adaptation, personalization and feedback. Adaptation refers to the
adjustment of the content information to individual characteristics. Persuasive messages use
two main types of information: arguments and recommendations. In adaptation the
complexity and number of the arguments can be adjusted to the individual needs. The
recommendations can also refer to the personal habits.
Personalization refers to incorporating recognizable aspects of a person in the content
information. These aspects (e.g. the name) provide no persuasive content themselves but
still seem to have an impact.
Feedback refers to the provision of information to the target person about one aspect of his
or her psychological or behavioral state.
Adapted messages are written as if they are directed at a general audience. The idea of
adaptation is derived from the principle of group segmentation where different segments (e.g.
subgroups) are exposed to different information. With CTP there can be as many segments
as there are individuals.
In the context of the elaboration likelihood model, CTP might be processed by different
routes. Matching (e.g. adapted information) might increase central processing as it is
recognized as self- relevant and fulfills a need. When CTP matches a persons psychological
of behavioral style or perceptual schemas, similarity effects will arise which lead to central
processing. This has been shown to wok when the locus of control or the need for cognition
was matched. In addition matching might increase perceptions of validity of the presented
arguments and might be easier to process. It might be that detected matches may serve as
peripheral cues that may positively bias the evaluation of the centrally processed arguments.
It might also be that matches have an impact only when information is processed centrally. I
has been proposed to distinguished participants with mainly and actual- ideal discrepancy
and those with an actual- ought discrepancy. The former were hypothesized to be frustrated
in striving for positive outcome and should thus be sensitive to information on positive
outcomes. The latter feel endangered by negative emotions and should therefore be
sensitive to those. This was true, but only if involvement was high. It is unclear whether
match effects only work in heuristic processing or careful evaluation.
Including the name of the participant has been shown to be effective, but only if it is
mentioned several times throughout the text.
Personalization might work through self-affirmation, which generally lowers defensive
processing. People with a positive self- esteem would benefit most from the self-image that is
provided through personalization.
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A first theoretical perspective on feedback comes control theory (CT) one of the cybernetic
theories. In CT feedback (input) provides and individual with information about the effects (on
the environment, ones own body) of ones psychological or behavioral state (output). The
feedback is interpreted against the background (comparator) of the goals an individual
strives for (standards). The objective input (e.g. You lost 5kg.) is open for interpretations by
the individual. Therefore some objective information might be added (e.g. You lost 5kg.
Thats a lot.), which allows the interpretation of the information on the basis of the persons
own standards or goals. In interpretative and evaluative feedback the individual is compared
to his or her own goal (e.g. You lost 5kg, you planned to lose 10kg. You are halfway there.).
Lastly adjustment feedback makes suggestions about how goals can be achieved (e.g. You
lost 2kg, that is not much. You should to XY.).
Feedback intervention theory aims at understand the effects of providing people with
feedback about their performances. It explains the effect of positive and negative feedback
(input). Positive feedback means that an individuals psychological state or behavior (output)
has effects that are in line with a goal or standard. Negative feedback means that an
individuals psychological state or behavior is not entirely in line with a goal or standard. For
example, positive feedback might lead people to slack off, as then think they reached their
goal. When the individual thinks putting more effort into reaching a goal pays off, negative
feedback can be motivating.
The influence of gazing and gestures of a storytelling robot on its persuasive power
Ham, Bokhorst, Cabibihan (2013)
Gazing and gestures are two of the core behavior in human communication. It has been
shown that people who were gazed at more remembered more of the content of a story than
those who were gazed at less. Men are more likely to like robots when they gaze at them
more, while women prefer less gazing. The current study hypothesizes that combining
several social cues in a robot will lead to more persuasive power than each of the cues
would alone. Gazing and gestures were independently manipulated. The persuasiveness of
a storytelling robot was measured. The hypotheses are:
1. Gazing will affect persuasiveness and attitudes towards the robot positively.
2. Gestures will affect persuasiveness and attitudes towards the robot positively.
3. Both together will lead to a significant interaction.
In fact a main effect for gazing was found in this study. No such effect was found for
gestures, disconfirming Hypothesis 2. This might be due to the lack of fluidity of the robots
movements. Gestures and gazing together lead to an interaction, which is in line with social
agency theory which suggests that the combination of gestures and gazing should have the
strongest effect on persuasiveness. It might be that it is so uncommon in daily life to
experience gestures without gazing that the social conversation schema was not sufficiently
primed in this experimental condition.
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Artificial intelligence and immediacy: Designing health communication to personally

engage consumers and providers
Kreps, Neuhauser (2013)
Health communication is not as effective as it could be, as it often makes use of overly
generic, impersonal, confusing and boring messages. It may even have unintended
boomerang consequences when the audience members fail to respond as intended. It has
been proposed that artificial intelligence (AI) in e-health communication might increase
effectiveness by enhancing immediacy, authenticity and enthusiasm.
Since personnel is a scarce resource in most health care settings AI might be a good way of
informing patients about their progress and their illness in a patient nonjudgmental way,
which might to a better overall attitude and adherence to prescriptions.
Most of all it is supposed to enhance immediacy, which is a relational dimension of human
communication than influences physical and emotional closeness, comfort, engagement,
caring, personal involvement, intensity, enthusiasm, authenticity and enjoyment in human
interactions. AI can personalize messages in using the persons name, phrase sentences
with we and us instead of you, provide specific congruent feedback to consumers and
answer any questions. An avatar can further enhance feelings of empathy, especially when
combined with gazing, gestures and vocal cues. Also the design can enhance engagement
and make it easier to keep track of the many bodily symptoms and functions that patients
often have to record. One such project was the Chronology MD pilot project which was
enthusiastically embraced and enhanced patients personal records from 40 to 90%.
Machines and mindlessness: Social responses to computers

Nass, Moon (2000)
The article summarizes a lot of research on the notion that individuals mindlessly apply social
rules and expectations to computers. Of course a computer is not a person and does not
warrant human treatment or attribution, which all participants (at least the adults) were
completely aware of. So how come that we still display a strong tendency towards
anthromorphism, which is the assignment of human traits and characteristics to computers?
We dont just overuse human categories such as gender and ethnicity but are also not able
to engage in overlearned social behavior such as politeness and reciprocity towards
computers. Also, we exhibit cognitive commitments with respect to computers as
demonstrated by responding to a mediums labeling as a specialist.
Mindless behavior occurs as a result of conscious attention to a subset of contextual cues.
These cues trigger various scripts, labels and expectations which focus our attention on
certain information while diverting attention away from other information. Individuals
responding mindlessly prematurely commit to overly simplistic drawn in th past rather than
think things through. In this case they apply scripts of human- human interaction to the
context of human- computer interaction. It might be that certain characteristics of computers
are so universal to them and to humans that they might cue humanness. These
characteristics include and output in form of words, interactivity and the fact that they are
filling in roles that are traditionally filled by humans.
The first study found that a female voice output lead participants to perceived a computer to
be more competent when providing information about females topics. The same was true for
a male computer on a male topic. Feedback was always perceived as more valid when given
by a male voice.
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A second study found that when there was a face from someone who belonged to the same
ethnical group as the participant, the output was perceived as way more positive.
When put in the same or in another opposing team as the computer, participants were
more likely to cooperate with the computer when it was on their team, even though the
categories were arbitrary color codes.
Overlearning refers to the phenomenon that some behaviors are so deeply ingrained that
they are more or less automatically activated in response to some script. One such behavior
is politeness, which participants actually displayed towards a computer as soon as it asks
questions referring to itself (i.e. using I statement). Another overlearned behavior is that of
reciprocity, which basically states that one should help anyone who has helped you in the
past. Participants displayed reciprocity as well as retaliation when working with helpful or
unhelpful computers once they were given the chance to do so. More striking than that this
phenomenon expands to reciprocal self-disclosure. When a PC disclosed personal
information, even when it didnt do so in the I-form, participants provided longer and more
detailed answers to personal questions.
However mindlessness is different from mere overlearning as it can be triggered by a single
event. An example is that people tend to believe information more easily when it is given by
an authority figure. A study addressed this issue by showing participants identical videos on
two TV sets that only differed in a label that was attached to a corner of them stating either
News TV set or Entertainment TV set. The content was rated as better in quality when it
matched the label.
Another aspect is that of personality. In accordance with the principle of similarity- attraction
dominant participants rated PCs which were more directive and leading as better, while
submissive participants gave higher ratings to more submissive computers. When
personality similarity is cued this can even overcome the self-serving bias and thus make
people give more credit to the computer while at the same time blame the computer less
often for failures.
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Social interaction with computers. An interpretation of Weizenbaums ELIZA and her

heritage.
Pruijt (2006)
The article discusses the abilities and limitations of the chatterbot ELIZA, a program
designed to lead intelligible conversations with people. A test was conducted to find out
whether the program was actually able to think. The Tourings test is a game in which a
person (C) is engaged in two chats, one with a man (A) and one with a woman (B). C is
asked to determine which chat partner is A and which one is B. Bs role is to help C while As
role is to cause confusion. Touring proposed to accept as proof that computers can think
when a computer could take over the role of A. However the main assumption was that
artificial intelligence can hardly be more than simulated rather than emulated intelligence.
ELIZA works by mimicking a non directive psychoanalyst by picking out key words in the
typed input and printing out modifications of a stock of standard phrases. This happens in 4
steps:
1. The program discards everything after the first (semi-) colon
2. ELIZA substitutes words according to a search and replace table (e.g. you for I)
3. The input is broken down into components (which are given numbers according to
position in input) according to decomposition rules.
4. An output phrase is assembled (e.g. Why should it be that 3?, where three is the
third part of the sentence)
ELIZA was tried to be used in a context of a student approaching a lecturer. Despite the lack
of factual knowledge about the students request it might help them order their thoughts and
arrive at a solution themselves. In this approach, students themselves could improve the
script in small groups. Of course, common sense knowledge about the world is crucial in
order to lead conversations. A computer can only possess these when they are broken down
into discrete elements and rules are defined that connect them. This has been compared
with an example of a Chinese Room. A nonspeaker of Chinese is asked to process or copy
Chinese characters while following a set of instructions. While Chinese observers will find
them indistinguishable, this does not mean that the person producing them has understood
anything about their meaning.
Nevertheless people have the tendency to treat responsive computers as more intelligent as
they really are and infer intentionality. This has been called the ELIZA effect.
It is helpful to limit the use of ELIZA-like programs to therapist- client or lecturer- student
situations because there are clear boundaries between virtual and ordinary life.

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