Attributing the sources of accuracy in unequal-power dyadic communication: Who is better and why?☆
Section snippets
Overview
In phase 1, participants were run in dyads and randomly assigned to be the owner of a mock art gallery (high-power role) or a person applying for the job of the owner’s assistant (low-power role), or to be equal partners (co-owners of the gallery). The owner conducted a job interview with the assistant and then they had a discussion about choosing several works of art (which were on display in the laboratory room) for the Gallery. During both tasks the owner was in the leadership position, and
Original dyads’ decoding accuracy (phase 1)
Although accuracy in the phase 1 dyads can equally be called encoding accuracy or decoding accuracy (because these are fully confounded), for simplicity we refer to their accuracy as decoding accuracy, for parallelism with the phase 2 scores reported later. We first examined decoding accuracy in the unequal-power dyads to determine if there were any differences between assistants and owners.
Discussion
The goal of the present research was to disentangle the sources of decoding accuracy when people in equal or unequal power dyads communicated affective messages to one another using nonverbal cues. We found that subordinates (assistants in a mock art gallery) were more accurate in decoding affective cues conveyed by their superiors (owners in the art gallery) than vice versa.
As explained earlier, there are two significant ambiguities about the sources of accuracy in a within-dyad communication
References (40)
- et al.
Towards a histology of social behavior: Judgemental accuracy from thin slices of the behavioral stream
- et al.
A study of the relationship between individual differences in nonverbal expressiveness and factors of personality and social interaction
Journal of Research in Personality
(1980) - et al.
The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(2002) Men and women in interaction: Reconsidering the differences
(1996)- et al.
Women and gender: A feminist psychology
(2000) - Deaux, K., & LaFrance, M. (1998). Gender. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey, Handbook of social psychology...
Controlling other people: The impact of power on stereotyping
American Psychologist
(1993)- et al.
Personality and the enactment of emotion
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
(1980) - et al.
Effects of power on perceived and objective group variability: Evidence that more powerful groups are more variable
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(2002) - et al.
Status roles and recall of nonverbal cues
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
(2001)
Status, gender, and nonverbal behavior: A study of structured interactions between employees of a company
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
“Subordination” and sensitivity to nonverbal cues: A study of married working women
Sex Roles
Subordination and nonverbal sensitivity: A hypothesis in search of support
“Subordination” and nonverbal sensitivity: A study and synthesis of findings based on trait measures
Sex Roles
Assigned and felt status in relation to observer-coded and participant-reported smiling
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
Body politics: Power, sex, and nonverbal communication
Gender as culture: Difference and dominance in nonverbal behavior
Power, approach, and inhibition
Psychological Review
Interpersonal perception: A social relations analysis
Cited by (53)
Relative Power and Interpersonal Trust
2022, Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyAre some students graded more appropriately than others? Student characteristics as moderators of the relationships between teacher-assigned grades and test scores in mathematics
2021, British Journal of Educational PsychologyThe routledge dictionary of nonverbal communication
2021, The Routledge Dictionary of Nonverbal CommunicationWhen smiles (and frowns) speak words: Does power impact the correspondence between self-reported affect and facial expressions?
2020, British Journal of PsychologyNonverbal Communication
2019, Annual Review of Psychology
- ☆
This article is dedicated to the memory of Sara Snodgrass. This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the first author. The authors are grateful to Sara Eltzroth, Jenna Lavery, Alycia Piccone, and Andrea Sparko for their help in conducting this study, Patricia Noller for sharing her communication task with us and giving permission to adapt it, and Marianne Schmid Mast for providing helpful comments on the manuscript.