The negativity effect occurs in the formation of judgments when disproportionate weight is given to negative information in contrast to equidistantly valenced positive information. While multiple explanations for such an effect exist, the extremity hypothesis advanced by Fiske (1980) can be modified and expanded not only to provide a thorough understanding of the negativity effect, but to explain positivity effects (where disproportionate weight is given to positive information when forming a judgment) as well. These negativity and positivity effects, taken to be manifestations of informativeness effects, are examined in the areas of vocal productivity, disclosure, and initial interaction. Informativeness effects appear to be widespread phenomena affecting, guiding, and resulting from interpersonal interaction. Data reveal that both negativity and positivity effects are possible in social interaction due to skews in the underlying distributions of social actors’ expectations about themselves and others. Rather diverse lines of research can be integrated under the rubric of informativeness effects for which the modified extremity hypothesis provides an encompassing explanation.

A review of social science literatures demonstrates that attorneys' questions put words in witnesses' mouths. Questions shape answers through word choice, response framing, assumptions made, and form. Subtle changes in language influence how witnesses understand and answer questions. Response framing suggests and excludes answers, limiting the questions that are acceptable and influencing the answers witnesses provide. Presumptuous questions that are unbalanced (one-sided) and/or assumptive lead witnesses to think differently, and so respond differently. A question's form amplifies and diminishes tendencies witnesses have to agree or disagree, to speak openly or save face, and to feel threatened or comfortable. Changes in word choice, suggested responses, presumptions and form of questions affect answers witnesses provide.

The literature regarding conversational topic is vast. Conversational topic, however, has various conceptualizations. For example, some studies examine topic changes, whereas others examine the broad subjects about which people talk. Four different perspectives (i.e., topic as a noun phrase, topic as a bounded unit, topic as a perception of language users, and topic as a subject matter of talk), focusing on different conceptions of topic for ostensibly different purposes, emerge across the literature, and, as a result, grasping the literature as a whole is difficult. This chapter highlights each perspective by pointing to the questions already answered and others remaining to be answered. In doing so, within each perspective, we review relevant research, offer critiques and suggestions for future research, and discuss conceptual issues. Spanning the four different perspectives, several general points elucidate commonalities throughout the conversational topic literature. We therefore present our own conceptualization of conversational topic following from our explication of the conceptual issues (such as topical abstractness, globality-locality, prototypicality, and focus) that emerge in light of the four perspectives. Finally, we draw conclusions based on our explication of conversational topic for various areas within the communication discipline.

This research examines how particular face threats intrinsic to compliance gaining goals constrain compliance gaining behaviors, finding that (a) threats to certain negative and positive face wants differentiate compliance gaining goals from each other; (b) compliance gaining goals are distinct from each other in their arrangements of the number and kind of both appropriate and inappropriate, and efficient and inefficient, compliance gaining behaviors, particularly the goals of stopping an annoying habit, getting a date, asking a favor, and ending a relationship; and (c) a compliance gaining goal’s restriction of cointeractants’ autonomy accounts for differences in which compliance gaining behaviors are judged more and less appropriate, and which more and less efficient, for different compliance gaining goals. Although compliance gaining goals differentially threaten aspects of both negative and positive face, a goal’s autonomy restriction, although not its negative affect potential, relates systematically to the appropriateness and efficiency arrangements of compliance gaining behaviors.

This research profiles the topics of everyday talk, pinpointing topical patterns that are emergent, co-occurring, and relationally defining. Participants reported topics of their conversations with particular types of people (e.g., parents, significant others, bosses, professors, service people, etc.). The most commonly emerging topics were those most central to participants' lives and that helped them "check in" with (i.e., update) and "check out" from (i.e., depart) others. Topics co-occurred to carry out conversational routines (e.g., starting and ending), fulfill communicative functions (e.g, informing), and achieve interpersonal agendas (e.g., comforting). Topics differed in their absolute prospects of arising within particular relational types and in their relative prospects of arising across relational types. The relational type was predictable more than 45% of the time by knowing only which topics occurred (and which did not). The profile of people's topical talk is one of patterns in the topics that arise in their lives, that co-occur in their conversations, and that define their relationships.

Age identification plays a significant role in young adults' mass, interpersonal, intergenerational, and intercultural communication. This research examines cultural and gender influences on young people's age identity by measuring the social age identity of male and female young adult members of five cultures varying in individualism/collectivism (Laos, Thailand, Spain, Australia, and the U.S.A.). We found cultural influences on age identity to be both unexpected in nature and modest in effect. American and Laotian respondents had similar and nominally higher levels of age identity than Australian, Thai, and Spanish respondents, with all having a markedly different age identities than those of Japanese respondents as reported by other researchers. No direct effect for gender on age identity emerged, though American females were more age identified than all other respondents. Across cultures, the social identity scale was found to be a reasonably adequate measure of age identity.

This research profiles the topics of everyday talk, pinpointing topical patterns that are emergent, co-occurring, and relationally defining. Participants reported topics of their conversations with particular types of people (e.g., parents, significant others, bosses, professors, service people, etc.). The most commonly emerging topics were those most central to participants’ lives and that helped them “check in” with (i.e., update) and “check out” from (i.e., depart) others. Topics co-occurred to carry out conversational routines (e.g., starting and ending), fulfill communicative functions (e.g., informing), and achieve interpersonal agendas (e.g., comforting). Topics differed in their absolute prospects of arising within particular relational types and in their relative prospects of arising across relational types. The relational type was predictable more than 45% of the time by knowing only which topics occurred (and which did not). The profile of people’s topical talk is one of patterns in the topics that arise in their lives, that co-occur in their conversations, and that define their relationships.

This research examines assumptions underlying the employment of group means in communication research. The vector of outcomes of a group mean typically represents outcomes of different individuals rather than different outcomes of an individual. When the vector represents different individuals' outcomes, the sample mean can violate criteria of unbiasedness, consistency, and sufficiency. This research explores whether different individuals' outcomes should be treated as equivalent to different outcomes of individuals. Data analysis reveals that the necessary assumptions for sample means to well-represent differing individuals' outcomes are often violated in that consistency, sufficiency, and unbiasedness of the sample statistic are not maintained. Therefore, a sample mean cannot be assumed to be a “good” statistic when the response vector represents different individuals' outcomes versus different outcomes of an individual. The implications for communication research are noted. It is recommended that individuals be modeled distributionally and that each individual's estimates be understood in the context of his/her response distributions.

Conversational Constraint Theory posits that preferred levels of efficiency and social appropriateness for particular conversational encounters fluctuate in response to situational, relational, and personal factors, and these fluctuations alter and determine which behaviors are acceptable tactics for achieving goals in these encounters. This research examines the situational factor of urgency, its influence on minimally preferred levels of efficiency and social appropriateness, and its influence on the acceptability of tactics for unilaterally withdrawing from conversations. A three phase research process finds that (a) efficiency and appropriateness assessments of conversational retreat tactics are goal dependent and within-goal variant, stable over time and across subpopulations; (b) situational urgency increases the preferred level for efficiency only; and (c) situational urgency alters tactical acceptability such that appropriate though less efficient tactics acceptable in nonurgent situations are unacceptable in urgent situations.

Threats, suggestions, hints, and promises are examined for their politeness and expediency in gaining others' compliance. The compliance gaining and politeness literatures rank‐order these verbal acts along a unidimensional scale where politeness and efficiency are treated as bipolar opposites (i.e., what is polite is inefficient and what is efficient is impolite). This research tested the predicted rank‐orderings of the politeness and expediency of threats, suggestions, hints, and promises stemming from these literatures and found that: (a) hints, while inefficient, are not among the most polite strategies for gaining compliance; (b) threats, while impolite, are not among the most efficient strategies for gaining compliance; (c) direct requests, while among the most efficient ways to get others to do things, are not impolite; (d) suggestions are neither as inefficient nor as polite as expected; and (e) promises are only moderately polite while equally efficient as threats. The value of politeness theory for accounting for instrumentally‐oriented behavior and the need for compliance gaining research to uncouple intuitions about strategy effectiveness from claims about strategy efficiency are discussed. Key concepts: Compliance gainingpolitenessthreatssuggestionshintspromises

This research examines how problems with classification systems limit knowledge claims that can be made about compliance gaining message behavior. Strategies and their operationalizations from 74 compliance gaining message classifcation systems were previously integrated into a 64–category scheme that lists each strategy along with all definitions and examples located in the literature representing that strategy (Kellermann & Cole, 1991). Difficulties encountered during this cross-taxonomy strategy integration motivated an assessment, reported here, of the nature and structure of these different classification systems. The findings of this assessment of compliance gaining strategy taxonomies are threefold. First, current classification systems for compliance gaining messages include strategies that vary in myriad atheoretical ways, producing lists of techniques that are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. Research findings reflect the structure of chaotic classifcation systems rather than the essence of compliance gaining message behavior. Second, conceptual definitions of the strategies are unclear, nonspecific, nonexclusive, and nondelimiting; these definitions make understanding the nature of the strategies difficult and classfication unreliable. Third, approximately two-thirds of the operationalizations used in the research literature are not valid representatives of the strategies for which they were initially generated. As a result, many “accepted” knowledge claims about compliance gaining message behavior are suspect, misstated, and/or of unknown validity.

This experiment compares the (a) rank ordering of cognitive differentiation scores by observers and actors, and (b) methods of construct sampling based on instructional set. Results indicate that observer and actor codings are inconsistent but that two different methods of sampling are consistent. Additionally, data suggest that the particular score of the RCQ assigned by observers using the established procedures may not reflect the actual construct system of the individual (actor).

(1992). Communication: Inherently strategic and primarily automatic. Communication Monographs: Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 288-300.

This research explores strategies and tactics persons use to unilaterally retreat from conversations. Based on metagoal theory, efficiency and social appropriateness were expected to differentiate retreat strategies from each other, with strategies used in mutually negotiated endings being located in the socially appropriate and relatively efficient area of the conversational retreat strategy space. Retreat strategies were found to include verbal bids such as hints (summaries, preclosings, future continuations, and positive statements), projections (ascribing excuses to the partner for parting), excuses, and departure announcement; changing one's focus onto another subject or person; and signaling rejection, restlessness or nonresponsiveness. As expected by metagoal theory, these strategies range in their efficiency and appropriateness, and are more diverse than (though they include) those strategies typically used in mutually desired partings.

Journal Article The Conversation MOP: II. Progression Through Scenes in Discourse Get access Kathy Kellermann Kathy Kellermann 1Kathy Kellermann is on the faculty of the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 17, Issue 3, March 1991, Pages 385–414, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1991.tb00238.x Published: 17 March 2006

Journal Article When Ignorance Is Bliss: The Role of Motivation to Reduce Uncertainty in Uncertainty Reduction Theory Get access Kathy Kellermann, Kathy Kellermann 1Kathy Kellermann is on the faculty in the Communication Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Rodney Reynolds Rodney Reynolds 2Rodney Reynolds is Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, University of Hawaii Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 17, Issue 1, September 1990, Pages 5–75, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1990.tb00226.x Published: 17 March 2006