Part V: Control

Large file: Patience please.

Intrapersonal communication is used in managing communication interaction. Sense-making, compliance gaining, control and communication apprehension are areas of study which relate well to intrapersonal processing. In this section, you can examine some of the ways that we manage interaction through intrapersonal communication.

Interpersonal Deception : XIII, Suspicion and the Truth-Bias of Conversational Participants (David B. Buller and Frank G. Hunsaker)

Making Sense of Interpersonal Conflict: Interpersonal Communication Effects on Intrapersonal Sense-Making Processes (Denise Haunani Cloven and Michael E. Roloff)

The Role of Nonverbal Communication in Compliance Gaining: Research and Uses (Andrew F. Hayes and Judith A. Barnes)

Topics, Turns, and Interpersonal Control: Using Serial Judgment Methods (Mark T. Palmer and Abby M. Lack)

The Effect of Information Processing Objectives on Persuasion (Lori A. Roman and Mark A. deTurck)

The Impact of Communication Apprehension, Gender, and Time on Perceptions and Behavior in Extended Interactions (Joe Ayres, Tim Hopf, Kevin Brown, and Julia Suek)

The Effects of Planned and Spontaneous Delivery on Familiar and Unfamiliar Lies: When Does it Pay to Plan? (Patrick diBattista)

Compliance-Gaining Behavior: An Analysis of Cognitive Processes Underlying Message Production (Elizabeth M. Goering and Melissa M. Spirek)

Interpersonal Deception: XIII. Suspicion and the Truth-Bias of Conversational Participants

David B. Buller and Frank G. Hunsaker

About the Authors: David B. Buller, Ph. D. is associate professor of Communication at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, telephone (602)621-1366, where Frank G. Hunsaker, M. A. is a doctoral candidate This project was funded in part by the U. S. Army Research Institute (Contract #MDA903-90-K-0113). The views, opinions, and/or findings in this report are those of the authors and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or decision. See the reference list for the series of articles on interpersonal deception written by these and other authors.

Abstract: Past experiments showed that (a) conversational participants attribute more honesty to conversational partners than do observers, (b) cognitive demands of conversational management may impair their deception detection abilities, and (c) participants rely on facial cues when evaluating honesty. This experiment investigated whether suspicion would alter these differences between participants and observers. Ninety-two interactions from a prior experiment examining suspicion and probing were shown to 92 observers. As expected, participants attributed more honesty to both truthtellers and deceivers than did observers. This truth-bias persisted even when they were informed that deception had been manipulated in the experiment. Participants, though, were no less accurate at detecting deception, perhaps because sources' anti-detection strategies mislead observers. Suspicion had little impact on participants' truth-bias, but it did produce a lie-bias in observers. Participants showed a facial primacy when evaluating source veracity, but channel reliance was not affected by suspicion.

Perspective:

1. How do conversational tasks such as impression management, turn-taking, encoding and decoding messages affect the focus and perceptions of conversational participants compared to outside observers of the conversation?

2. Which strategy is better for catching liars, confronting them yourself or watching as a friend confronts them?

3. Does suspicion improve your ability to detect deception?

Most research on deception detection has focused on the detection skills of observers rather than on participants in deceptive conversations (Brandt, Miller & Hocking, 1980, 1982; deTurck & Goldhaber, 1988; Ekman & Friesen, 1969, 1974). While these experiments have provided many interesting and informative results, they have ignored the mutual influence of both source and receiver. Buller, Burgoon, and their colleagues (Buller & Burgoon, in press; Buller, Comstock, Aune, & Strzyzewski, 1989; Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991; Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Burgoon, Buller, Dillman, & Walther, 1992; Burgoon & Buller, 1994a, 1994b; Hunsaker, 1991) have developed an Interpersonal Deception Theory that views deceptive messages as typically embedded within a mutually negotiated interaction context of moment-to-moment strategic moves and countermoves reflecting each participant's motives for engaging in interaction. Judgments of observers, who are not entangled in this web of mutual influence, may have limited generalizability to conversational participants.

Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) (see Buller & Burgoon, in press; Burgoon & Buller, 1994a and b; Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991; Burgoon et al., 1992) holds that interactive deception differs fundamentally from noninteractive deception. In particular, messages related to credibility are a central feature of interpersonal exchanges and deviations from truthful behavior cause receivers to become suspicious. This suspicion is manifested in a combination of strategic and nonstrategic behavior which can be detected by senders (i.e., truthtellers or deceivers). When senders perceive suspicion, they alter their behavior to convey a truthful demeanor and allay suspicion. Thus, deceptive interactions contain strategic moves and countermoves by both deceiver and deceived. Consequently, research on observers of deceptive conversations may not be entirely applicable to conversational participants (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Hunsaker, 1991).

The Truth-Bias of Participants

A potentially important difference between conversational participants and observers is participants' tendency to attribute more honesty to another than observers (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991). Participants may base their judgments on conventions or heuristics rather than on the behaviors manifested by senders (Fiedler & Walka, 1993; McCornack & Parks, 1986; Stiff et al., 1989). Truthfulness is a fundamental and essential maxim of conversation, allowing communicators to infer indirect meaning rather than relying entirely on what is made explicit (Clark & Clark, 1975; Grice, 1975; Kraut & Higgins, 1984). It may be particularly useful to participants as they manage on-going conversations. Participants have many pressing conversational tasks: They must encode and decode messages, provide relevant feedback, stay on topic, negotiate relational dynamics, manage their images, and maintain conversational continuity through appropriate turn-taking (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Burgoon & Newton, 1991; Street, Mulac, & Wiemann, 1988). By comparison, observers have few conversational responsibilities, save the decoding of incoming messages. Thus, they are more capable of focusing on the sender's performance when judging veracity, while participants choose to assume truthfulness in order to cope with conversational demands (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Ekman & Friesen, 1969).

Fiedler and Walka (1993) have identified several conventions that people rely on to form veracity judgments including infrequency (infrequent or unexpected responses are judged as more dishonest), falsifiability (falsifiable information is evaluated as more dishonest than information that cannot be easily falsified), and conspicuousness (more conspicuous nonverbal cues are incorporated in judgments of honesty than subtle cues). Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker (1991) suggest that the fundamental attribution erroróthe tendency of participants to attribute their own behavior to situational factors and observers to attribute participants' behavior to their dispositionsómay account for the higher honesty judgments of observers is consistent with Fiedler and Walka's conspicuousness heuristic. Environmental stimuli may be more conspicuous to participants than to observers, making situational attributions more plausible (Jones & Nisbett, 1971; Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, & Maracek, 1973; Storms, 1973). Participants also may hesitate to make negative dispositional evaluations because the relationship with the sender is more important, at least temporarily, to them than to observers (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Burgoon & Newton, 1991).1

Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker's (1991) finding that participants overlook or ignore deception cues, while observers may recognize deception cues and feel unobliged to avoid attributions of deceit is consistent with this reasoning. Participants, as a result, attribute more honesty to sources than observers. Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker (1991) also found that observers were more accurate detectors than conversational participants. They speculated that the conversational demands on participants instantiated the truth-bias heuristic and caused them to overlook cues to deception. By contrast, the fewer conversational demands on observers, the lack of the truth-bias heuristic, and the observational setting may have made observers more sensitive to behavioral changes linked to deception. Notably, participants relied more on facial cues, which may be more conspicuous due to their close physical proximity to the sender (Hall, 1973), whereas observers relied more on vocal cues when judging veracity.

Recently, however, Hunsaker (1991) failed to confirm the general truth-bias of conversational participants and their insensitivity to deception cues, perhaps due to his low power to detect the relatively small effect sizes (.03 to .06). A small effect size questions whether the differences between participants and observers are meaningful and sufficient to consider deception detection during conversational participation dissimilar from detection while observing a conversation. These small effects correspond to a minimum binomial difference of .42 versus .58 and a maximum binomial difference of .38 versus .62 (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1984) and appear to be too large to ignore (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991).

These conflicting findings require another look at the honesty judgments of conversational participants and observers. This experiment, then, investigated the predictions that participants will have a stronger truth-bias (H1) and be less accurate detecting deception (H2) than observers.

Suspicion

In IDT, receivers' suspicions are an important aspect of deceptive conversations. Suspicion affects receivers' actions and reactions to messages from senders in interpersonal exchangesóaltering probing questions (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991) and attendant nonverbal and verbal behavior (Burgoon et al., 1992; Buller, Burgoon, Buslig, & Roiger, 1992)óand honesty attributions, producing a lie-bias and greater uncertainty in honesty judgments (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991; Burgoon, Buller, Ebesu, & Rockwell, 1994; Toris & DePaulo, 1985).

Conversational participants may be at a greater disadvantage relative to observers when their suspicions are aroused. Suspicion places additional cognitive demands on participants who already have many conversational responsibilities. Consequently, participants may be less capable of surveying in-coming communication and judging its veracity while maintaining a smooth, coherent conversation than are observers. Buller, Strzyzewski, and Comstock (1991) reported that suspicious participants had longer response latencies, were more deliberate in their verbal presentation, and made more speech errors than nonsuspicious participants, all signs of increased cognitive activity. Similarly, Burgoon et al. (1992) found that suspicious conversational participants made a poorer impression and did not manage their conversations as well as nonsuspicious participants. These competing demands placed on conversational participants by suspicion and the resulting uncertainty caused by their limited ability to judge veracity may cause participants to abandon their truth-bias and rely instead on a heuristic that assumes dishonesty, thereby manifesting a lie-bias.

By contrast, observers should have considerable untapped cognitive reserves to analyze in-coming communication and determine its validity. Therefore, suspicious observers should find a lie-bias less necessary. Further, their detection abilities may improve substantially as suspicion triggers closer surveillance of the partners' communication and increase the salience of deception as a possible explanation for unexpected or abnormal behavior, resulting in greater detection accuracy.

It is possible, though, for suspicion to aid conversational participants. Suspicion may elicit detection strategies unavailable to outside observers, like exerting more control over the conversation (Burgoon et al., 1992; Toris & DePaulo, 1985) or attempting to mislead the partner into believing that the participant is not suspicious of them (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991). Such detection strategies provide less, or erroneous, feedback on deception success to the sender and reduce the sender's ability to hide deceit. However, such moves increase conversational complexity, nullifying their benefits to participants.

Another potential advantage of suspicion is that it may attenuate participants' facial primacy (i.e., over-reliance on facial cues) when judging deceit (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991) in favor of more telltale vocal cues (Buller & Burgoon, 1994; Zuckerman, Spiegel, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1982; Zuckerman & Driver, 1985). Suspicion also may make them sensitive to nonverbal channel discrepancies (Zuckerman et al., 1982).

The present experiment, then, investigated whether suspicion had differential effects on conversational participants' and observers' judgments of veracity, in terms of a truth- or lie-bias and detection accuracy (RQ1). It also investigated whether suspicion reduces participants' reliance on facial cues when judging deception (RQ2). Finally, the experiment attempted to replicate that nonsuspicious conversational participants generally rely more on facial cues than nonsuspicious observers when judging honesty (H3).

Method

Overview

Ninety-two videotaped interviews between strangers from a study investigating the effects of probing and suspicion were evaluated by observers (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991). Half the interviewees were instructed to lie in the interactions. After one minute of interaction, half of the participants (i.e., interviewers) probed the interviewee for additional information to help clarify their responses. Further, half of the participants were induced to be suspicious of sources' answers. Likewise, half of observers were induced to be suspicious; suspicion condition was matched for participants and observers. Participants and observers judged the honesty of interviewees immediately following the interviews and again after being informed of the deception manipulation.

Subjects

The original study from which the interviews were obtained involved four hundred twenty-three (423) lower-division undergraduates from a large southwestern university. One hundred eighty-four (184) students were recruited individually and paired to form stranger dyads and one hundred eighteen brought a friend to form friendship dyads (118). Only the 92 stranger dyads were included in the present study. Ninety-two (92) undergraduate students from the same southwestern university were recruited from lower-division communication courses to act as observers. All students participated voluntarily for extra credit in their classes.

Participant and Observer Pretest

Subjects assigned to the participant and observer roles completed Wheeless and Grotz' (1975) Generalized Trust Scale (alpha reliability =.72), F(1,209)=304.69, p<.05, eta2=.59 (friend M=64.06; stranger M=47.55).

Interviewee Pretest

To provide topics for discussion, interviewees completed Crowne and Marlowe's (1964) Social Desirability Scale with a true or false answer format.

Participant Procedures

Upon arrival at the interaction laboratory, subjects were told that the study examined how people communicate with friends and strangers. They were randomly assigned to interviewer (the "participant" in this analysis) and interviewee roles and to deception and suspicion conditions.

In a separate room, the interviewee completed the pretest. Meanwhile, the participant was seated on a sofa approximately 3.5 feet in front of a swivel chair and completed the pretest. A video camera filmed the interviewer from across the room; a camera behind a one-way mirror recorded the interviewee.

In the nonsuspicious, probing condition, the participant was provided a blank copy of the Social Desirability Scale and instructed to question the interviewee about her or his responses. The participant was told that the study was concerned with how people respond to different styles of questioning. The participant was instructed to manipulate question-asking behavior. Initially, the participant was to ask simply whether the interviewee answered true or false to each question. Then, on a signal from the experimenter (i.e., the experimenter walking across a doorway to an adjoining room) that could only be seen by the participant, the participant was to probe for additional information as to why the interviewee answered each question true or false, until the participant felt she or he understood the reasons for the answer.

In the nonsuspicious, non-probing condition, the participant was told to ask for the true-false response to each question and not to ask any follow-up questions. The participant did not know the significance of the experimenter walking across the doorway although it still occurred to maintain equivalence.

In the suspicious, probing condition, the participant was told to begin the interview by asking the source about her or his answers in the same simple question-response format without follow-up questions. The experimenter then asked the participant to help with a problem in the study. The participant was told that the experiment was being conducted because data from an earlier study had been discarded because some interviewees lied during the interactions. To ensure that the same problem did not arise again and, if it did, to help the experimenter understand this behavior, the experimenter had the interviewee answer a second pretest, containing very similar but not identical questions. The experimenter would check to see if the interviewee's responses in the interview corresponded with the answers on the second pretest. If they did not, the interviewee might be lying. If this happened, the experimenter wanted the participant to ask in-depth questions following each response (i.e., probes) to find out whether the person was being honest or not. The experimenter would signal the participant to begin probing responses by walking across the doorway to the adjoining room. This cue induced probing and suspicion.

In the suspicious, non-probing condition, the participant was given the same suspicion induction, except that she or he was not told to ask any follow-up questions. Instead, on the experimenter's signal, she or he was to be careful of the interviewee's answers. Deception, then, appeared to be an interviewee decision, not an experimental manipulation, to increase external validity.

Meanwhile, a second experimenter instructed the interviewee to discuss their answers to each question on the pretest. In the truth condition, the interviewee's last instruction was to be honest in all answers to the participant. In the deception condition, the interviewee was told that the primary interest in the experiment was to see if people could tell whether someone was answering truthfully on personality questions. The interviewee was asked to lie about her or his responses to all the true-false questions and provide false answers to any questions posed by the participant.

Following this last instruction, the interviewee was immediately escorted into the room where the participant was waiting. The experimenter briefly reviewed the instructions and told the participant to start the interview. After one minute, the experimenter walked across the doorway. After another minute, the experimenter stopped the interaction. The interviewee and participant completed posttests in separate rooms.

During the interaction, the second experimenter recorded the interviewee's true-false responses and verified that the deception manipulation was successful. For the entire experiment, 62 interviewees in the truth condition told the truth on all true-false questions (the 46 who did not averaged only 1.85 false answers/interview) and 70 deceivers answered all true-false questions dishonestly (the 32 who did not gave 1.94 true answer/interview). Further, truthtellers reported that 97.1% of the information they delivered was true, while deceivers said that 16.7% of their information was true, F(1,208)=93.72, p<.05, eta2=.31.

Observer Procedures

Observers arrived at the communication laboratory in groups of five at 15-minute intervals. The study was introduced as an investigation of how people interact in conversations in an interview setting. Each observer was seated at individual carrels equipped with VCRs and color monitors and instructed to complete the pretest.

The observer was told that she or he would be watching two people discussing choices that people make in social situations and that she or he would see and hear the person being interviewed (i.e., interviewee) but only be able to hear the interviewer (i.e., participant). (The camera perspective gave observers a view of interviewees over the shoulder of participants.) The experimenters were interested in the observers impressions of the interviewee. In the nonsuspicious condition, the observer was told to watch the interview in its entirety and then complete the posttest about the interviewee. In the suspicious condition, the observer was told that the interviews were from an earlier study in which some interviews had to be discarded because some of the interviewees did not answer questions honestly. The observer was told that the experimenter had discovered inconsistencies in the interview she or he was to watch, which may indicate that the interviewee was lying. The observer was told to watch the entire interview and then completed the posttest. After completing the posttest, the deception manipulation was revealed and observers judged the veracity of the interviewee again.

Posttests

Participant and Observer Posttest. A 35-item version of Burgoon and Hale's (1987) Relational Communication Scale (RCS) was completed by participants and observers following the interview. Attributions of honesty were assessed by the sum of "she or he was honest" and "she or he was insincere" (hereafter referred to as the "honesty rating") (alpha reliability =.77). Ratings on the trust dimension (referred to as the "trust rating") (alpha =.76) of the RCS provided a second measure of honesty attributions. After completing the RCS, the deception manipulation was revealed to participants and observers and they were asked to indicate whether they thought honesty or deception had occurred to obtain a final dichotomous measure of honesty (the "honesty judgment").

Embedded in the RCS was a question that asked whether participants and observers were suspicious of the interviewee. Unfortunately, suspicion condition did not affect participants rating of suspicion, F(1,178)=.68, p>.05, eta2=.003. Consequently, a follow-up study was performed on 59 dyads (32 strangers, 27 friends) in which 22 dyads completed a posttest measuring expectation of deceit (alpha =.53), attention to interviewee's behavior (alpha =.59), and motivation to detect deception (alpha =.62) immediately after receiving the suspicion induction and 37 dyads interacted until just after receiving the suspicion cue, at which point they completed the posttest. Participants in the suspicion condition were more attentive to interviewee behavior than in the no suspicion condition, F(1,43)=3.52, p<.05, eta2=.06 throughout the interview. Expectation of deceit, F(1,14)=4.58, p<.05, eta2=.11, and motivation to detect deception, F(1,14)=3.32, p<.05, eta2=.15, was evoked initially but dissipated after one minute (Fs=.00 in delayed posttest group). While not as strong and persistent as intended, the suspicion induction initially evoked vigilance, expectation of deceit, and detection motivation, and it altered participants subsequent conversational behavior (see Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991).

Interviewee posttest. Interviewees also completed the RCS (with two items measuring perceived suspicion), and questions verifying the deception manipulation: (a) whether they told the truth or lied and (b) percentage of responses that were truthful.

Measurement of Interviewee Behavior

Five pairs of undergraduate students coded the interviewees' nonverbal behaviors identified in past research as consistent deception indicators (Buller & Aune, 1987; Buller & Burgoon, in press, Buller et al., 1989): frequency of speech errors (Ebel's intraclass correlation for interrater reliability, r=.71), speaking turns (r=.76), responses to a question (r=.58), gazes (r=.75), head nods (r=.74), smiles (r=.76), head shakes (r=.77), and laughs (r=.92); counts of illustrators (r=.91) and adaptors (r=.60-.86) using Friesen, Ekman, and Wallbott's (1979) measurement system; duration of talking time (r=.94), response latency (r=.60), and time spent gazing (r=.87); and 5-point bipolar ratings of facial animation (r=.73) and facial pleasantness (r=.67). Counts of interruptions, talkovers, and shrug emblems were omitted due to low interrater reliabilities (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991). Behaviors were coded in 15-second intervals, 45 seconds prior to and 45 seconds after the first probe.

Statistical Analysis

The effects of perspective (participant v. observer) (H1 and H2) and suspicion (RQ1) on honesty attributions were tested by 2 (perspective) X 2 (suspicion condition) X 2 (honesty condition) X 2 (probing condition) analysis of variance. One ANOVA examined honesty rating, while another examined the trust or receptivity rating. The final honesty judgment, after subjects were told about the deception manipulation, was analyzed by chi-square tests.

The prediction that participants would rely more on facial cues than observers when making honesty ratings (H3) and the potential influence of suspicion on channel reliance (RQ2) were tested by multiple regressions on honesty and trust ratings and by a multiple discriminant analysis on final honesty judgment. Three blocks of predictors were entered in the following order: (a) main effects of perspective, suspicion condition, and the 19 nonverbal behaviors, (b) two-way interactions between nonverbal behaviors and perspective, nonverbal behaviors and suspicion, and perspective and suspicion, and (c) three-way interactions between nonverbal behaviors, perspective, and suspicion. Predictors whose t- or F-tests were less than 1.00 were pooled into the error term and reduced models produced the final parameters.

Results

Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2: Truth-bias and Detection Accuracy

Hypothesis 1: Truth-bias. As predicted in hypothesis 1, conversational participants attributed more honesty (M=10.01), F(1,167)=13.62, p<.05, eta2=.07, and trustworthiness (M=36.07), F(1,167)=5.02, p<.05, eta2=.05, than did observers (Ms=8.14 and 33.69, respectively). This truth-bias persisted even when subjects were informed about the deception manipulation: Participants felt that 71% of sources were honest, while observers considered only 52% of sources to be honest, Chi2(1, N=171)=6.34, p<.05, eta2=.04.

Hypothesis 2: Detection Accuracy. Hypothesis 2, predicting that participants would be less accurate detectors of deception than observers, was not supported in either honesty rating, perspective by deception F(1,167)=.29, p>.05, or trust rating, perspective by deception F(1,167)=1.34, p>.05. The analysis of honesty judgments after being informed of the deception manipulation also failed to show that participants were inferior detectors. Both participants (81% of truthtellers and 60% of deceivers judged to be honest), Chi2(1, N=92)=4.82, p<.05, eta2=.05, and observers (62% of truthtellers and 42% of deceivers considered honest), Chi2(1, N=79)=2.87, p=.09, eta2=.04, (judged fewer deceivers to be honest [52%] than truthtellers [72%], Chi2[1, N=171]=7.50, p<.05, eta2=.041). This general accuracy was also reflected in the fact that participants and observers considered deceivers to be less honest (deception M=8.57), F(1,167)=4.60, p<.05, eta2=.02, and trustworthy (M=33.80), F(1,167)=4.38, p<.05,eta2=.02, than truthtellers (Ms=9.58 and 35.94, respectively), prior to being informed about the deception manipulation.

RQ1: Effect of Suspicion on Honesty Attributions

Truth-bias. Suspicion had no effect on participants' truth-biases. There was no significant interaction between suspicion and perspective on honesty ratings, F(1,167)=.37, p>.05, or trust ratings, F(1,167)=1.09, p>.05,

Table 1

Significant Behavioral Predictors of Honesty Attributions

*p<.05

and it did not affect the truth-bias of participants once they were told about the deception manipulation, participants Chi2(1, N=92)=.08, p>.05, observers Chi2(1, N=79)=1.47, p>.05.Detection Accuracy. Prior to informing deceivers of the deception manipulation, suspicion did not affect the detection abilities of participants or observers: three-way interaction on honesty ratings, F(1,167)=.74, p>.05 and on trust ratings, F(1,167)=.23, p>.05. However, when warned about the deception manipulation, suspicion appeared to make observers less accurate than participants, at least when evaluating the honesty of truthtellers. Specifically, suspicious observers considered 44% of truthtellers to be honest whereas nonsuspicious observers considered 76% of truthtellers to be honest, Chi2(1, N=39)=4.13, p<.05, eta2=.10. By contrast, suspicion did not affect participants' evaluations of truthtellers (suspicious participants =79% honest; nonsuspicious participants =83% honest), Chi2(1, N=47)=.09, p>.05, observers' evaluations of deceivers (suspicious observers =44% honest; nonsuspicious observers =41% honest), Chi2(1, N=40)=.05, p>.05, or participants' evaluations of deceivers (suspicious participants=63% honest; nonsuspicious participants=58% honest), Chi2(1, N=45)=.14, p>.05.

In sum, the effects of suspicion were disappointing. It did not reduce the truth-bias of participants or improve the detection accuracy of observers during the conversations. Interestingly, it produced a lie-bias in observers when they were warned about the deception manipulation.

Hypothesis 3 and Research Question 2: Channel Reliance

H3: Facial Primacy. As Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker (1991) found,

Table 2

Correlations Between Honesty Attributions and Nonverbal Behaviors

*p<.05

participants displayed a facial primacy when judging deception relative to observers.

Table 1 presents significant regression and discriminant coefficients for the reduced models. Specifically, when rating honesty, participants were affected more by head shaking than were observers (Table 2). Participants continued to rely on facial cues more than did observers after being informed about the deception manipulation. In particular, participants' honesty judgments were associated more strongly with head nodding, smiling, head shaking, facial animation, and facial pleasantness than were observers' ratings (Table 3). In all cases, increases in these cues lead participants to judge sources as more honest.

Participants did not completely ignore vocal and body cues, particularly once they were informed of the deception manipulation. Participants' final honesty judgment was more strongly associated with response latencies than were observers' judgments, with longer latencies producing more honesty judgments (Table 3). Further, this judgment was related to brief body and long body adaptors and postural shifts. What is particularly noteworthy about these relationships is that conversational participants seemed to overlook body movement by interviewees, while observers considered body movement a sign of deception (Table 3). The same contradiction was true for gazing; increased gaze produced judgments of honesty among participants but judgments of deception among observers (Table 3).

RQ2: Effects of Suspicion. Suspicion did not have a clear, consistent, or substantial effect on channel reliance. Suspicion seemed to increase participants' reliance on head shaking, when rating honesty, and decrease their attention to brief head and face adaptors, when rating trust. Suspicion also decreased observers' attention to turn length, when rating honesty, and brief head and face adaptors, when rating trust (Table 2). Suspicion when coupled with being informed of the deception manipulation enhanced participants' attention to brief object adaptors, whereas it altered observers' interpretations of these adaptors. When not suspicious, observers associated these adaptors with truthfulness, but when suspicious, they associated them with dishonesty (Table 3).

Discussion

Participants' Truth-bias

Conversational participants have a greater truth-bias than observers. Truth is a fundamental maxim of conversations (Grice, 1975; Kraut & Higgins, 1984), and the presumption of truth may be instrumental when participants are enmeshed in a conversation that requires adept

Table 3

Mean Scores on Behaviors Predicting Honesty Judgment for

Interactions Between Nonverbal Behaviors and Perspective and Suspicion

conversational management and formulation of messages, and creates a relationship between the participant and conversational partner. In such instances, a truth-bias becomes a valuable heuristic freeing cognitive capacity to manage conversations and a product of the favorable relational climate that develops between interactants (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Fiedler & Walka, 1993).

The strength of this conversational truth-bias is debatable. The present data, along with Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker's (1991) and Hunsaker's (1991) estimates suggest that perspective accounts for 4% - 7% of the variation in honesty attributions. While not large in absolute terms, it was greater than the effect of deception on honesty judgments in the current experiment and represents a maximum binomial difference of .37 versus .63 (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1984).

Further, this truth-bias persists even when participants are warned about deception. Kraut and Higgins (1984) contend that participants often assume that sources actually adhered to conversational maxims even when given reason to believe otherwise. The truth-bias also may persist because conversational participants remember and interpret behaviors differently than observers when warned after the fact. Participants continued to rely more on facial behaviors to judge deception after the warning than on cues in the body or voice. Facial cues are less likely to reveal deception than vocal or body cues (Buller & Burgoon, 1994; Ekman & Friesen, 1969; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981; Zuckerman & Driver, 1985) and may have contributed to participants' continued belief that the interviewee was honest. Further, participants considered random body activity, like adaptors and postural shifts, to be signs of honesty, but observers felt they indicated deceit. Participants may expect a certain degree of random movement and consider it a sign of relaxation, while observers may believe that such movement implies arousal or anxiety. Thus, they continued to rely on conspicuous nonverbal cues and may not have had the skills to accurately judge the authentic deception cues that were available (Fiedler & Walka, 1993).

To summarize, participation introduces a consistent, albeit small, truth-bias in honesty evaluations. It may arise (a) as a means of coping with conversational demands, (b) from differences in the frame of reference, or (c) from differences in attention to, and memory for, conversational behavior.

Detection Accuracy

By contrast, conversational participation did not affect overall detection accuracy (although by assuming more truth, participants were less accurate when it came to identifying deceivers but more accurate when detecting truthtellers than were observers). The cognitive and communicative tasks related to conversational management did not apparently impair participants' abilities to distinguish between truthtellers and deceivers in this experiment. They were able to make such distinctions just as much as observers, but they started with a greater presumption of truth than observers. This result may have stemmed in part from anti-detection strategies utilized by interviewees, such as reducing body movement when perceiving suspicion from the participant (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991). It is possible that these changes misled observers, who were expected to be more sensitive to the interviewees' behaviors because of their fewer concomitant tasks, because observers focused more on body cues than participants. Consequently, they may have mistakenly felt that less active interviewees were more honest, reducing their detection advantage witnessed in Buller, Strzyzewski and Hunsaker's (1991) earlier study.

Effects of Suspicion on

Honesty Attributions

The effects of suspicion were disappointing but may not be too surprising given the earlier discussion of how communicators often ignore information suggesting that conversational maxims have been violated (Kraut & Higgins, 1984). During the conversations, suspicion neither aided observers by increasing their surveillance of interviewee behavior nor did it help participants enact successful detection strategies (although Buller, Strzyzewski, and Comstock, 1991, did report that suspicious participants in the original experiment encoded less skeptical probing questions).

Contrary to popular belief, past studies have provided little evidence for the benefits of suspicion in deception detection. It seems that the most common effect of suspicion on receivers is to evoke a lie-bias. It does not appear that greater detection motivation and vigilance (the two aspects of suspicion most strongly manipulated in this study) produce real improvements in people's abilities to evaluate a source's honesty or dishonesty. Instead, the expectation of deceit may have the most pervasive effect on attributions.

Notably, the truth-bias created by conversational participation overrode the lie-bias associated with suspicion. Participants were unaffected by the suspicion induction. It may be that the conversational tasks required them to assume truth in order to enact a smooth conversation. Or, it may be that the anti-detection strategies enacted by senders mislead participants.

Suspicious observers, however, showed the lie-bias characteristic of suspicion, but interestingly only when watching truthtellers. Perhaps, truthtellers engaged in fewer anti-detection strategies than deceivers (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Comstock, 1991) and, therefore, exhibited some behaviors that observers consider signs of dishonesty, like more random body movement, reinforcing the lie-bias. Deceivers, though, may have attenuated observers' lie-bias, because they muted their bodily activity.

Channel Reliance in Honesty Attributions

Participants' Facial Primacy. The facial primacy in participants' honesty attributions reported by Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker (1991) emerged again in this experiment, contradicting past studies that have reported a visual primacy by observers (Berman, Shulman, & Marwit, 1976; DePaulo, Rosenthal, Eisenstat, Rogers, and Finkelstein, 1978; Stiff & Miller, 1986; Stiff, Kim, & Ramesh, 1988; Storms, 1973). It may be that conversational demands make it harder for participants than observers to shift away from facial cues (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1989). Also, the physical immediacy of interaction may make facial cues more conspicuous because they take up more of the visual field (Hall, 1973). By contrast, observers of videotaped conversations see the sender at a farther distance in which facial cues do not overwhelm the observer's focus.

Reliance on facial cues is likely to mislead a receiver when judging deception, because they are well controlled by communicators (Buller & Burgoon, in press; Ekman & Friesen, 1969; Zuckerman et al., 1981; Zuckerman & Driver, 1985). Therefore, participants' truth-bias may be in part a perceptual bias as well as a conversational assumption or cognitive heuristic. Participants believe that most conversational partners are truthful because they focus on the channel which provides the least accurate cues to honesty.

Finally, observers did not rely on vocal cues as much as they appeared to in Buller, Strzyzewski, and Hunsaker's (1991) experiment. This may have occurred because fewer vocal cues were analyzed in this experiment due to reliability problems with measures of vocal behavior.

Effects of Suspicion. Suspicion had almost no effect on channel reliance, and the few relationships that emerged revealed no systematic pattern. Moreover, the suspicion manipulation did not mimic the postwarning that deception had been manipulated in the experiment. This is somewhat surprising, as the two situations increased the expectation of deception. Telling a receiver that a source may choose to deceive (i.e., the suspicion induction) may not evoke the same sort of suspicion as telling a receiver that a source was required to either deceive or tell the truth in the experiment (i.e., the postwarning). Deception is less certain with the former than the latter induction. This uncertainty may reduce suspicions' impact on cognitive processing of subsequent communication in the former induction.

This raises concerns over the generalizability of studies in which subjects are told ahead of the communication that the source will either be deceiving or telling the truth. Suspicion in many day-to-day situations is accompanied by some uncertainty, especially if it is triggered by unexpected or unusual conversational behavior. Deception probably is rarely considered a 50-50 chance, like it often is presented in deception experiments (and it is possible with such inductions receivers consider deception much more likely than that). Uncertainty actually may work against detectors, because it may not engender sufficient vigilance to accurately detect deception, allowing the truth-bias in conversations to override suspicion. Consequently, participants attribute honesty despite a nagging sense that all is not completely right with the senders' communication.

Summary

This study further substantiates that judging deception from the vantage of a conversational participant is different from judging it as an outside observer. Conversational participation creates a small but consistent truth-bias, arising from several cognitive, perceptual, and memory differences.

Thus, our understanding of deceptive communication should not be based entirely on evidence from studies of observers because the conversational interplay creates a different frame of reference and places different requirements on participants. This further confirms our belief that an interpersonal approach to deception, such as reflected in our Interpersonal Deception Theory, will enhance our understanding of this common communicative phenomenon. However, conversational participation may not harm detection accuracy. Suspicion may be of limited utility to either conversational participants or observers and any lie-bias it creates seems easily overpowered by the truth-bias created by conversational participation.

Notes

1In the original conceptualization of the fundamental attribution error, conversational participants actually are a form of observer, because they are evaluating the behavior of the conversational partner, not their own behavior. However, several studies on interpersonal interaction have shown that the fundamental attribution error also produces more favorable attributions by conversational participants than by observers (Buller, Strzyzewski, & Hunsaker, 1991; Burgoon & Newton, 1991; Street, Mulac, & Wiemann, 1988).

2Probing condition was also entered into the analyses. Only one significant effect involving probing emerged. Probing decreased all receivers' (participants' and observers') abilities to detect deception (probing: truth M=9.43, deception M=9.57; no probing: truth M=9.71, deception M=7.61), probing by deception condition F(1,167)=4.11, p<.05, eta2=.02.

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Response from Leonard J. Shedletsky

An intriguing finding in this study is the difference between participants' and observers' perceptions of conversational features. The authors speculate on the reason for the difference. But the finding, especially since it is not the only study of communication behavior that shows a participant/observer difference in perception, deserves further study. How might we pursue the issue of participant/observer difference? And what alternative explanation can you offer for this finding? What implications does this finding hold for communication research?

Making Sense of Interpersonal Conflict: Interpersonal Communication Effects on Intrapersonal Sense-Making Processes

Denise Haunani Cloven and Michael E. Roloff

About the Authors: Denise Haunani Cloven is on the faculty of the Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vilas Communication Hall, 821 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706 (telephone 608-262-2543). Michael E. Roloff is on the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, 1815 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208 (telephone 708-492-7179).

Abstract: This article clarifies how people use intrapersonal communication to make sense of interpersonal conflicts and examines how this process is shaped by the interpersonal communication context in which sense-making occurs. Differences between intrapersonal sense-making in the presence versus absence of prior communication with the conflict partner are described. We then define three effects of anticipating interpersonal communication about conflicts on intrapersonal sense-making activities: the "cognitive tuning effect," the "accountability effect," and the "prevailing affect effect." The research reviewed suggests that interpersonal communication experiences and intention shape intrapersonal communication and the conclusions individuals reach when making sense of interpersonal conflicts.

Perspective:

1. How do interpersonal communication experiences and intentions influence intrapersonal communication directed toward making sense of conflicts?

2. What are the pros and cons of avoiding and engaging in interpersonal communication about conflicts in terms of intrapersonal sense-making processes?

3. How might the effects of interpersonal communication on intrapersonal sense-making result in or perpetuate biases in perceptions of interpersonal conflict?

Close interpersonal relationships are defined by a high degree of interdependence (Berscheid, Snyder, & Omoto, 1989). As a result of this interdependence, relationship partners have ample opportunity to interfere with, as well as facilitate, the accomplishment of personal goals (Altman & Taylor, 1973; Berscheid, 1983). Hence, intimate associations are also characterized by a heightened potential for interpersonal conflict.

When faced with interference from a relationship partner, individuals are likely to engage in intrapersonal communication directed toward comprehending the threat posed by the partner's behaviors. Ample evidence suggests that negative life events (Goodhart, 1985; Sarason, Potter, & Sarason, 1986), adverse interpersonal experiences (Camper, Jacobson, Holtzworth-Munroe, & Schmaling, 1988; Holtzworth-Munroe & Jacobson, 1985), interruptions to desired behavioral sequences (Millar, Tesser, & Millar, 1988), and unresolved disputes (Klos & Singer, 1981) induce a high degree of sense-making or ongoing thought. Moreover, intrapersonal processes influence the form and intensity of reactions to potential threats (Berkowitz, 1990; Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989), as well as an individual's personal well-being (Goodhart, 1985; Kendall, Howard, & Hays, 1989; Rush & Weissenburger, 1986).

The goal of this chapter is to describe intrapersonal processes associated with interpersonal conflict and to explicate the effects of interpersonal communication experiences and plans on these sense-making processes. First, the role of intrapersonal communication in making sense of conflict is reviewed. Then, we examine how interpersonal communication contexts influence intrapersonal sense-making activities.

The Sense-Making Process

Our model assumes that sense-making is evoked by the perception of potential threats to the self embodied in the disruptive behaviors of a close relationship partner. We further assume that the intrapersonal process of sense-making takes the form of an internal dialogue similar to interpersonal searches for causal explanation (cf. Mead, 1934; Hilton, 1990). In particular, intrapersonal interrogation involves an internal dialogue wherein the same individual is both the provider and receiver of explanations (Hilton, 1990).

Once instigated, sense-making activities have a primary goal of determining whether a threat actually exists and requires action (Berkowitz, 1990; Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989). In addition, issues addressed during sense-making are relevant to devising solutions to relational problems, should they be defined as sufficiently threatening. For example, individuals often try to evaluate the severity and cause of interpersonal problems, and these evaluations shape reactions to relational difficulties (Cloven, 1992; Mitchell & Wood, 1980; Roloff & Cloven, 1990; Rusbult, Johnson, & Morrow, 1986; Showers, 1988; Sillars, 1980).

Hilton (1990) argues that the form of questions addressed during an internal dialogue depends in part on the subjective goals salient to the covert interaction. Moreover, the form of these questions will determine the causal explanations derived (Hilton, 1990; Showers, 1988; Strack, Schwarz, & Gschneidinger, 1985). Hence, the remainder of this chapter explores how intrapersonal sense-making and corresponding perceptions of conflicts can be influenced by the interpersonal communication context within which sense-making occurs.

Interpersonal Communication Effects on Intrapersonal Sense-Making

Responses to interpersonal threats can involve communicating with others about problems (Planalp, Rutherford, & Honeycutt, 1988; Witteman, 1988) or refraining from communication (e.g., Roloff & Cloven, 1990). Interactions about a partner's disagreeable behavior may further vary in cooperativeness and directness (Rusbult, Zembrodt, & Gunn, 1982; Sillars, Coletti, Parry, & Rogers, 1982). We argue that whether interpersonal communication occurs, whether individuals anticipate interpersonal communication, and the character of conflict-related interactions affect intrapersonal sense-making and the corresponding perceptions of the severity and cause of relational difficulties (cf. Pennebaker, 1989; Pennebaker, Hughes, & O'Heeron, 1987).

Sense-Making in the Presence or Absence of Interpersonal Communication

When a person does not anticipate communication about a relational problem, her or his own perspective may be the only view represented in the internal dialogue. Individuals thinking about situations where partners have negatively affected them have little motivation to consider the others' perspectives (cf. Gould & Sigall, 1977, Regan & Totten, 1975, and Wegner & Finstuen, 1977). Hence, this process may be generally self-affirming and prone to demean the partner (cf. Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990).

Given the one-sidedness of internal dialogue in the absence of interpersonal communication activity, ongoing thought is likely to have negative personal and relational consequences. Indeed, Sadler and Tesser (1973) demonstrated that thinking in isolation about a negative social encounter increases hostility toward an interaction partner. Furthermore, individuals who report thinking most about relational disputes are also likely to report feeling depressed and lonely (Harvey, Wells, & Alvarez, 1978). Finally, Cloven and Roloff (1991) found that the frequency of intrapersonal communication focused on a roommate conflict was positively associated with perceptions of problem severity and partner responsibility for the conflict, and this positive correlation was greatest among respondents who reported a low level of interpersonal communication activity.

In contrast, internal dialogue that occurs in conjunction with frequent interpersonal activity will be more likely to incorporate alternative perspectives on a conflict. Specifically, talking with partners can make new information and alternative views directly available and thereby reduce self-serving biases (e.g., Gioia & Sims, 1986). Accordingly, Cloven and Roloff (1991) found that the frequency of interpersonal communication about roommate conflicts was negatively associated with perceived problem severity and blaming the roommate. Moreover, engaging in intrapersonal sense-making did not have the negative effects noted previously, provided individuals reported frequent interpersonal communication activity.

Sense-Making in Anticipation of Interpersonal Communication

We believe interpersonal communication contexts influence evaluations of conflicts because interpersonal goals change how individuals think about conflicts during sense-making. Hence, the effects of interpersonal communication should also be apparent when individuals engage in intrapersonal activity in anticipation of interpersonal interaction.

When individuals anticipate interaction about conflicts, intrapersonal communication may take a form that incorporates the expected partner implicitly or explicitly in an imagined interaction or rehearsal for confrontation (Edwards, Honeycutt, & Zagacki, 1988; Stutman & Newell, 1990). Such internal discussions can serve to organize thoughts, to improve message selection, to reduce anxiety, to build confidence, and to provide an opportunity to practice or to plan for the ensuing encounter (Edwards et al., 1988; Honeycutt, Zagacki, & Edwards, 1990; Stutman & Newell, 1990). Furthermore, empirical investigations have revealed that imagined interactions are commonly about conflicts, typically involve intimate partners, and often occur prior to interpersonal exchanges (Edwards et al., 1988; Honeycutt et al., 1990). We extend this work by identifying three effects of interpersonal communication on imagined interaction about conflict: a "cognitive tuning effect," an "accountability effect," and a "prevailing affect effect."

The Cognitive Tuning Effect. Traditionally, cognitive tuning effects refer to information processing differences associated with transmitting versus receiving information. A "transmission tuning" was argued to promote resolution of contradictory information and to discourage the search for knowledge, whereas a "reception tuning" was thought to induce maintenance of contradictory information and information searches (Cohen, 1961; Zajonc, 1960).

More recent research suggests that cognitive tuning effects depend on whether individuals expect to encounter new information in an anticipated interaction, regardless of their roles as transmitter or receiver (Hoffman, Mischel, & Baer, 1984; Higgins, McCann, & Fondacaro, 1982). Specifically, when people anticipating communication about a target person do not expect new information, both senders and receivers construe the target's behavior in terms of global traits, dispositional attributions, and interpretations of actions (Hoffman et al., 1984; Higgins et al., 1982). In contrast, senders and receivers anticipating interactions involving new information about a target produce descriptive, neutral, and non-valuative messages (Higgins et al., 1982).

Individuals who communicate with others about events that produce relational uncertainty report that during such interactions they seek to gather information (Planalp et al., 1988). Hence, anticipating interaction about interpersonal problems should induce a "reception tuning" in which individuals think descriptively and examine or maintain a variety of ideas. Consistent with these arguments, Cloven and Roloff (1990) found that individuals anticipating communication with a friend or roommate about a roommate conflict reported a greater proportion of descriptive thoughts and a greater variety of thoughts during a think-aloud episode than did individuals who did not expect to communicate with anyone about their roommate conflicts.

The Accountability Effect. Anticipating interpersonal communication may also change the extent to which intrapersonal communication involves self-affirming versus self-deprecating thoughts. Venting frustration and gaining retribution are common goals associated with confronting partners (Newell & Stutman, 1991); therefore, intrapersonal communication preparing for interpersonal exchange may involve developing and rehearsing arguments. Conversely, imagined interactions may incorporate the partner's perspective in the form of explanations for behaviors, questions, or role reversal (Edwards et al., 1988; Honeycutt et al., 1990; Johnson, 1971).

Whether anticipating interpersonal communication about a relationship problem will evoke self-affirming rehearsal or self-critical perspective-taking will depend on whether individuals feel compelled to account for their views. Accountability effects refer to the tendency for people under social pressure to justify their views to think in a more complex, self-critical, or valuatively diverse manner (Tetlock, 1983; Tetlock, 1985a; Tetlock & Kim, 1987). Moreover, evidence that attribution biases are mitigated when people are made to feel accountable for those attributions (Tetlock, 1985a; Tetlock & Kim, 1987) suggests that accountability concerns promote consideration of a target person's perspective.

Although pressures to justify oneself are likely to be salient when people expect to communicate about conflicts (Tetlock, 1983), anticipating communication will not evoke accountability concerns equally for all persons. Accountability effects arise out of motivations to protect and enhance one's social image (Tetlock, 1981; Tetlock, 1985b). Thus, the accountability effect of anticipating interaction about conflict should be greatest among individuals who express concern with behaving in a socially appropriate manner, in general (e.g., Lennox & Wolfe, 1984).

Consistent with this view, Cloven and Roloff (1993) found that anticipating communication about roommate conflicts evoked self-deprecating thoughts about conflict situations contingent on a person's concern for social appropriateness. In other words, people who expressed concern for social appropriateness reported a greater proportion of self-deprecating thoughts when anticipating communication than did individuals who reported a low concern for behaving appropriately. In fact, anticipating interaction produced only a minimal accountability effect among individuals who expressed a low concern for following social rules.

The Prevailing Affect Effect. The two effects previously described emphasize the impact of impending interaction on intrapersonal communication; however, prior interpersonal experiences may also influence sense-making activities in anticipation of interaction. Sillars and colleagues (1982) identify three categories of behavior manifested in conflict interactions: Integrative behaviors emphasize cooperative problem solving, distributive behaviors are focused on competition and placing blame, and avoidant behaviors attempt to suppress the conflict interaction. Whereas Sillars (1980) has demonstrated that these conflict behaviors correspond significantly with conflict attributions and resolution, we extend his perspective by suggesting that the tenor of conflict interactions will also influence intrapersonal communication prior to further interaction.

People tend to judge integrative conflict behavior as more effective and more competent than distributive and avoidant tactics, and these judgments exert an indirect effect on relational qualities such as trust (Canary & Spitzberg, 1987). Moreover, people most prefer that partners express grievances to them in a calm and rational manner and least prefer complaints accompanied by yelling and personal attacks (Alberts, 1989). Similarly, when voicing their own complaints, individuals express a preference for partner responses characterized by acknowledgment or agreement, rather than yelling, arguing, or ignoring (Alberts, 1989).

We believe the affective climate of conflict interactions characterized by different conflict behaviors, coupled with evaluations of those experiences as desirable or undesirable, will have ramifications for intrapersonal sense-making processes. A person's mood can influence judgments and recall for interpersonal communication experiences (Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984). Accordingly, prior conflict interactions should influence how individuals construct imagined interactions wherein they role-play conflict discussions with partners.

Although integrative and distributive behaviors both provide information about a partner's perspective, distributive strategies are perceived to be more competitive, nonsupportive, and critical (Sillars et al., 1982). Conversely, integrative conflict behaviors promote conflict resolution, minimize blaming processes, and involve positive or neutral affect (Sillars, 1980; Sillars et al., 1982). Not surprisingly, then, Cloven and Roloff (1991) found that individuals who characterized their conflict interactions with roommates as integrative defined their problems as significantly less serious. In contrast, the frequency of intrapersonal sense-making was positive correlated with perceived problem severity and blaming roommates for conflicts among individuals reporting distributive conflict interactions with roommates. Although Cloven and Roloff (1991) did not examine the effect of prior conflict interactions on the content of intrapersonal communication, the effects demonstrated for judgments of problem severity and cause suggest that interpersonal communication experiences may define the affective climate that prevails during intrapersonal sense-making.

Summary

The process by which individuals make sense of conflicts in close relationships exemplifies the conjunction of intrapersonal and interpersonal communication. Conflict experiences often stimulate extensive and sometimes uncontrollable intrapersonal activity ultimately oriented toward determining the nature and degree of threat posed by a partner's behavior. However, these intrapersonal processes do not operate in a vacuum. Rather, the frequency, likelihood, and character of interpersonal communication experiences can serve to change the very nature of intrapersonal communication and, accordingly, the evaluations of conflicts derived from the sense-making process. Thus, whereas intrapersonal communication is presumed by several scholars to be central to other communication processes, our perspective suggests that interpersonal communication reciprocally and importantly influences intrapersonal processes.

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Response from Leonard J. Shedletsky

Cloven and Roloff argue persuasively that the extent and character of intrapersonal communication is influenced by life events. Anticipated interaction, style of conflict behavior, and absence or presence of interpersonal communication influence intrapersonal communication. They conclude: "Thus, whereas intrapersonal communication is presumed by several scholars to be central to other communication processes, our perspective suggests that interpersonal communication reciprocally and importantly influences intrapersonal processes." The line of evidence presented does not support the view that intrapersonal communication is not central to communication processes. Has a line been drawn between the twoó intra and interpersonal communicationó such that we can draw the theoretical lines of linkage between the two?

The Role of Nonverbal Communication in Compliance Gaining: Research and Uses

Andrew F. Hayes and Judith A. Barnes

About the Authors: Andrew F. Hayes is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Cornell University. Judith A. Barnes is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies, San Jose State University.

Abstract: Influence attempts have both a verbal and a nonverbal component. This article selectively examines literature on several nonverbal components of communication as related to increasing or decreasing compliance with requests: gaze, touch, proximity, physical appearance, and paralinguistics. Attention is focused first on basic laboratory and field research and then on several applied contexts, including surveying and opinion assessment, child rearing, education, and counseling. A call for process-oriented research is made to further our understanding as to the mechanisms underlying the relationship between nonverbal messages and compliance rates.

Perspective:

1. How do people feel when a stranger stares, touches, or invades one's space? What effects does this invasion have on evaluation of that person? Is positive or negative reaction a more likely behavior? Why?

2. Should teachers be allowed to touch their students? If so, why? If not, why not? Where does one draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate touch between teachers and their students?

3. In the Chaiken and colleagues (1976) study, attractive people elicited more agreement with the topic they discussed. Might physically attractive people be more persuasive? If so, why?

Interpersonal influence is a part of the daily lives of everyone. We are relentlessly inundated by television advertisers, salespeople, friends, lovers, teachers, and parents trying to influence our attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and preferences. One might even say that socialization itself is a continuous influence process as a society molds its individuals to think and behave according to the society's standards of appropriateness. A large portion of such influence attempts are verbal in nature: the advertiser telling you to buy their product, the politician requesting a vote, the mother telling the child to say hello to visiting neighbors. A less widely-recognized and acknowledged source of influence comes from the nonverbal cues emitted by people in their attempts to gain compliance. Their power lies in their subtlety. While we can often tell when someone is trying to persuade us to adopt their opinion or do them a favor by attending to their verbal messages, the nonverbal component of communication often operates below the level of awareness.

Many authors have written on the power of nonverbal communication in influence but most examine specifically the role of such messages in persuasion and attitude change rather than compliance gaining. This article explores selected research on nonverbal communication factors related to compliance gaining, helping, and when relevant, perceived persuasiveness. Not all possible categories of nonverbal communication are addressed and it is acknowledged that each category examined is incomplete. Entire books have been written on each specific class of nonverbal behavior (e.g., Montague, 1979). The specific studies presented here were selected because they represent the basic flavor of research conducted in the area and serve as a beginning guide to those interested in exploring this area of research in further detail. Indeed, much research is needed since, as the reader will discover, we still have much to learn about the processes by which nonverbal communication affects compliance rates.

Paralinguistics

Most influence attempts have some kind of vocal component. In the past, communication researchers have discounted the role of factors not related to verbal content in the communication process, believing that the delivery of a message was not important in effective communication (Pearce & Conklin, 1971). Now it is well known that how something is said is just as important as what is said. Researchers exploring vocalic or "paralinguistic" components of speech have concentrated on two factors in particular: speed of delivery and voice tone.

Miller, Maruyama, Beaber, and Valone (1976) presented audio-recorded speeches to subjects in a field setting and measured their subsequent agreement with the topic after listening to the speech, as well as subject perceptions of the speaker along the dimensions of knowledge, intelligence, and objectivity. The investigators manipulated both speed of delivery (110 versus 140 versus 190 words per minute) and message complexity (e.g., by manipulating the grammatical structure of the sentences, number of qualifying clauses). The results indicated that regardless of message complexity, faster delivery resulted in higher agreement with the speaker on the topic. Faster speakers were also rated as more intelligent, more knowledgeable, and more objective. Could this be due to the difficulty of forming counterarguments so quickly? This seems unlikely, since this effect existed even for simple messages on topics familiar as well as unfamiliar to the audience. The authors argue that such a speed effect will be most pronounced when the listener cannot rely on expert opinion and the speech is lengthy with numerous detailed facts, leaving the listener somewhat puzzled as to what they should conclude.

The extent to which vocal cues affect persuasion seems to depend on two major variables: perceived characteristics of the sender and the sensitivity of the receiver in nonverbal decoding. Pearce and Conklin (1971) demonstrated that targets rate the sender of a message using a conversational style rather than a dynamic style (with conversational defined as smaller vocal inflections, greater consistency in pitch and rate of speed, lower volume, and lower pitch) as more trustworthy, more attractive, and higher in education, income, occupational status, and generally more favorably. Hall (1980) found that senders who are trying to induce help naturally speak slower, calmer, and with a higher degree of "warmth" than senders who are trying to induce lower rates of helping behavior. Hall's experiment also revealed a peculiar interaction: requesters who tried to induce lots of help (measured in time volunteered), relying only on vocal cues, received more help from good nonverbal decoders and less from poor nonverbal decoders. However, targets who tried to induce little help through their use of vocal cues received more help from poor decoders (decoding ability was measured via the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity Test invented by Rosenthal et al.). Buller and Burgoon (1986) found a similar effect: good decoders volunteered more hours participating in research to a pleasant-sounding requester than did poor decoders, while poor decoders donated more hours to a hostile-sounding requester. These results demonstrate that just as is the case with verbal messages, it is important to consider how nonverbal messages are construed by the recipient.

Overall, it is difficult to assess just what type of voice style leads to more compliance. While speakers using a conversational style are perceived more favorably and more trustworthy, those vocal qualities that define "conversational" may be seen as less persuasive and are less spontaneously used by people who are trying to induce help. It appears that the vocal qualities related to high persuasiveness may not be the same as those related to high compliance-gaining.

Physical Appearance

One source of information about a person that becomes immediately salient in interpersonal interaction is the external, physical characteristics of the person. These characteristics fall into two broad categories: clothing and attractiveness.

Clothing. Numerous investigators have examined the relationship between attire and compliance. By far the most widely-known type of clothing effects are those involving the uniform. The classic study on uniforms was conducted by Bickman (1974) in which subjects were requested by experimenters wearing different uniforms to give a dime to a person whose parking meter had expired, pick up a piece of litter, or step away from the curb. The subjects were approached by an experimenter donning either civilian clothing, a milkman uniform, or a security guard uniform, who then made the request (e.g., "give him a dime!"). Compliance was much higher for the request made by the "guard" than by the "milkman" or "civilian" for both the dime request and the litter request. This result has been replicated in similar studies (e.g., Bushman, 1984).

The common explanation for this finding is that the status level of the requester is communicated by the clothing and that the subsequent power associated with that status leads to compliance. Joseph and Alex (1972) argue that uniforms exert their influence primarily through the legitimate power they project (French & Raven, 1968), authenticating or sanctioning the wearer as an authority. Bickman was able to rule out the possibility that this greater compliance was due to coercive or reward power. Interestingly, uninvolved subjects did not perceive the requests as legitimate for their roles, decreasing the likelihood that perceived legitimate power was responsible for the effect. The request made by the security guard may not have been perceived as legitimate because such a uniform conveys legitimate power only when the request falls within the domain of authority given to security guards. It is possible that perceived authority mediated this effect: subjects may have perceived the guard as a man of authority who was trustworthy and credible and therefore didn't question the request, whereas both the milkman and the civilian were perceived as low in authority so the request was dismissed or not taken seriously. Bushman's (1984) study lends support for this possibility. Essentially a replication of the Bickman study, compliance was high for requests coming from people dressed as "firefighters," moderate for requests from "businesspeople," and low for requests made by "bums." It seems likely that at least some uniforms communicate authority and topic-inspecific legitimate power and this is partially responsible for increased compliance.

Mixed effects have been found in investigations exploring the compliance rate for requests coming from experimenters who are dressed sloppily or deviantly (e.g., as a "hippie") versus neatly. Several studies indicate that a person who is approached by a neatly-dressed requester is more likely to lend a dime to the person (Kleinke, 1977a), participate in a survey (Walker, Harriman, & Costello, 1980), accept a leaflet (Darley & Cooper, 1972), or give directions (Schiavo, Sherlock, and Wicklund, 1974) than when approached by a sloppily-dressed requester. Elmswiller, Deaux, and Willis (1971), however, found that compliance was highest when the request was made by someone similar in appearance to the target person: a deviant-appearing person was most effective at eliciting compliance from someone dressed deviantly, while neatly dressed people received greater compliance from neatly-dressed people. Of course, this similarity effect may have been due not to the actual attire but by values, attitudes, and personality characteristics inferred about the person from their clothing. Indeed, several studies do demonstrate that clothing influences perceptions of the person (e.g., Harris, James, Chavez, Fuller, Kent, Massanari, Moore, & Walsh, 1983; Malandro, Barker, & Barker, 1989). Several of the previous studies can also be explained by this effect. Most people would perceive themselves as more similar to the "straight" dresser than the hippie deviant (either in terms of dress preference or values), so compliance would be higher for a straight, neatly-dressed requester.

There are, of course, alternative explanations for some of these effects. For example, many subjects were given two chances to comply before measurement of compliance. In some, if compliance was not gained by the first request, the subjects were given a reason why they should comply (e.g., "I [the experimenter] would give him a dime but I don't have any change," "it's kind of important"). Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz (1978) demonstrate that a reason, relevant or not to the request, is sufficient to increase compliance substantially, particularly for small requests. If initial resistance to the first request was not equal across experimental conditions, this represents a significant confound. It is unclear in many studies whether the experimenters were experimentally blind (e.g., Bushman, 1984; Elmswiller et al., 1971; Walker et al., 1980) and in some, the subjects were hand picked by the experimenter rather than some random procedure (Harris et al., 1983; Kleinke, 1977a; Walker et al., 1980). Interestingly, the one study that does report a significant experimenter effect failed to find a clothing effect (Harris et al., 1983). There are several studies, however, that appear experimentally sound that did produce substantial clothing effects (e.g., the classic Bickman study, 1974; Darley & Cooper, 1972). It would therefore seem that there is evidence that clothing, particularly uniforms, can increase compliance to the extent that they demonstrate the knowledge, credibility, power, or authority of the source, or communicate similarity between the requester and the recipient.

Attractiveness. Numerous studies on physical attractiveness have shown that those who have been endowed with a pleasant face receive many benefits from this gift (Berscheid and Walster, 1974). Attractive people are thought to have more desirable personalities, more likely to lead happy lives, and are generally more liked than are unattractive people (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster, 1972; Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, and Rottman, 1966). And one who appears to us as physically appealing may be more likely to induce compliance, receive help, and come off as more persuasive than those who are less physically appealing. Benson, Karabenick, and Lerner (1976), for example, found that lost graduate school applications were more likely to be mailed to their final destinations if a photo attached to the application indicated it was lost by an attractive person. In another study, Chaiken (1979) had 3 attractive and 3 unattractive student-confederates attempt to persuade target students that the dining commons on campus should stop serving meat at breakfast and lunch. Attractive persuaders elicited more reported agreement with the issue and got more signatures than did unattractive persuaders.

At least four explanations for these attractiveness effects are possible. First, the attractive people may really have been perceived as more persuasive (although all confederates were trained to give their persuasive speech in an identical manner). Second, perhaps attractive people elicit more attention and thus we are more likely to attend to requests from attractive people (cf. Faw & Nunnally, 1967; Kleck & Rubinstein; 1975). Third, complying with a request may be a form of self-presentation designed to elicit a favorable evaluation from the requester. Considering that attractive people are generally thought of as possessing more social desirable characteristics and are more likable, it makes sense that we would want to present ourselves favorably to them, perhaps even in the hope that this may increase the possibility of a initiating a friendship or, in the case of cross-sex interactions, romantic involvement. Indeed, some compliance studies have demonstrated higher compliance rates in cross-sex than same-sex dyadic interactions (e.g., Brocker, Pressman, Cabitt, & Moran 1982; Emswiller, Deaux, & Willets, 1971). Finally, attractiveness may influence compliance indirectly through its effect on liking, as attractive people are generally perceived favorably (and thus likable), and liking is related to compliance and helping (Cialdini, 1984).

Nonverbal Involvement

Behaviors which bring a person closer to a person physically or psychologically are said to enhance nonverbal "involvement" or intimacy. Once a person becomes nonverbally involved, it is difficult to escape through ordinary avoidance maneuvers such as ignoring the person or simply walking away. Nonverbal behaviors that enhance or decrease intimacy and involvement are also intertwined with affect and are natural responses in our interactions with others (Edinger & Patterson, 1983). For example, attraction toward someone is expressed nonverbally, often automatically and unconsciously, through increased eye contact, closer approach distances, increased touching, and positive facial expressions, all of which may induce positive affect in the target. At the other extreme, hatred or disgust is manifested through such behaviors as averted gaze, negative facial expressions, and increased distance. To the extent that nonverbal signals elicit some kind of affective response, behavior corresponding to that response may follow. There is abundance of research demonstrating that affect and such social behaviors as helping and cooperation are intimately associated (Isen, 1987). The three classes of nonverbal behavior discussed in this section may owe much of their effectiveness in increasing compliance rates through the induction of nonverbal in