The purpose of this study was to more closely examine the association between avoidance and satisfaction during a potentially conflict-inducing conversation with one's dating partner. The results suggest that the way people respond to their own and their partner's conflict avoidance depends upon whether they are male or female. The perception of…

People's evaluations of stimuli may change when they verbally attempt to communicate the reasons underlying their judgments. The reported experiments demonstrate the interactive influence of expertise, verbalizability (i.e., the ease with which stimulus features can be linguistically encoded), and appraisal mode in the verbalization bias…

Despite a widespread acknowledgement of the relationship between account offerings and facework, little research has provided evidence showing that different types of accounting moves actually foster diverse assessments of attentiveness to face. Following Goffman (1955, 1967), we coded the primary types of challenges, offerings, and evaluations…

Uses conversation analysis to examine how doctors' and patients' practices of gaze and body orientation organize interaction such that doctors routinely initiate the sequence wherein patients disclose their chief complaint. Finds doctors use gaze/body orientation to communicate they are preparing but not yet ready to deal with complaints--while…

Explores beliefs about the vocal style that 40 young, 40 middle-aged, and 40 older adults would use in addressing two older targets--one fitting a negative and one a positive stereotype. Reveals a greater tendency to use patronizing talk with the negative than with the positive. Finds the context and age of the communicator also affected messages.…

Discusses study results indicating that self-esteem and communication apprehension are negatively related. (MH)

Examines how differences in the verbal and nonverbal behaviors available to persons influence their accuracy in detecting deceptive communication. (JMF)

Examines two factors (affirming/nonaffirming style and dyad sex) to determine if they influence perceptions of verbal aggression and argumentation behavior in an interpersonal dispute. Finds that fewer mistakes were made in the perception of verbal aggression in the conflict when they communicated with an affirming rather than a nonaffirming…

Examines affective facial expression in conversation. Demonstrates that the accuracy of affect-identification for conversational facial expressions generally is no better than chance. Demonstrates that most conversational facial expressions, regardless of true source emotion or the affect signaled in isolation, tend to be interpreted according to…

Considers how physicians' nonverbal communication is sometimes associated with patients' affective satisfaction. Examines the relationship between physicians' nonverbal rapport building and patients' disclosure of information related to the subjective component of illness. Considers implications for understanding the role of physicians' nonverbal…

Suggests that prominent themes in the conversations of spouses are metacommunication about relationships. Compares content themes of different marital types (traditional, separate, and independent) and more or less satisfied spouses. Finds marital satisfaction tends to be positively associated with communal and impersonal themes and negatively…

Presents three experiments examining the relationships among plan complexity, access to planned actions, and verbal fluency while pursuing a persuasion goal. Finds that complex planners are less fluent than less complex planners under high access to action alternatives, and that reduced fluency is not induced by decreasing self-confidence. (SR)

Examines patterns of oral communication in encounter groups and identifies three stages of group life: boundary-seeking, ambivalence and actualization. (MH)

Findings suggest that (1) the effects of rehearsal on deceptive success vary depending upon certain characteristics of the communicator/deceiver and (2) a relationship exists between certain behavior correlates of deceptive communication and observer accuracy in detecting deception. (PD)

A disqualification is a message that says something "without really saying it"--one that is evasive, indirect, or effectively ambiguous in some other way. This article describes the rationale for, and development of, an objective method for measuring the degree of disqualification in brief written messages. (PD)