Relational Judgments in an Influence Context

Abstract

We contend that communication episodes tend to focus interactants'attention on one or the other of two relational judgments: dominance or affiliation. Further, when one judgment is relatively more salient, individuals will use the salient judgment as the basisfor infm'ng other aspects of the relationship. To test that notion, a judgment study was conducted in which participants viewed a set of influence messages that varied in degree of dominance and explicitness. The influence context was chosen because it naturally highlighted dominance. After viewing the messages, participants provided ratings ofdominance, explicitness, and two aspects of affiliation: liking and involvement. When the resulting data were submitted to a structural equation analysis, it wasfound that judgments of liking depended on judgments of explicitness and dominance. Judgments of involvement depended on judgments of liking and dominance. Bothfindings support the claim that one relational judgment may provide the basis for another.henever two persons interact with one another they make judgments about the nature of their relationship on the basis of the W messages that they exchange. In large measure, those judgments are estimates of the relative dominance and affiliation of the two individuals. Attention to the content of those judgments reveals the impetus for a relational inference process; individuals are motivated to predict and understand the behavior of others because they are dependent upon them for the rewards that social actors desire.Illumination of the process by which those judgments occur has been, and will continue to be, a fundamental challenge for communication James Price Dillard is a professor of communication arts at the University of WisconsinMadison. Mark T. Palmer is an assistant professor of communication arts at Northwestern University. Terry A. Kinney is a doctoral candidate in communication arts at the University of Winsconsin-Madison,We are grateful to Kyle Tusing for his assistance with stimulus development and data collection and to Mike Cruz for his comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Loose with the Truth: Predicting Deception in Negotiation

“…To examine this, we capture negotiators' general impressions of the other party on two dimensions, benevolence (''goodness'') and power. Both the dimensions are used to characterize relationships in a wide range of settings, including negotiation (Deutsch, 1982;Dillard et al, 1995;Larrick and Blount, 1995;Moskowitz et al, 1994). We add a third dimension, integrity, to capture the perceived honesty and fairness of the other party.…”

Changing Conceptions of "Message Effects" A 24-Year Overview

“…K. Burgoon & Le Poire, 1993;deTurck & Miller, 1990;Dillard et al, 1995;Freimuth, 1976;Greene, OHair, Cody, &Yen, 1985;Hocking, Bauchner, Kaminski, &Miller, 1979;Knowlton & Berger, 1997; Le Poire & J. K. Burgoon, 1994;Thompson & Seibold, 1978), situations or scenarios (e.g., Clark & Delia, 1977;Dillard & b e y , 1994;Dillard et al, 1995;Doelger, Hewes, & Graham, 1986;Hewes, Graham, Doelger, & Pavitt, 1985;Neuliep & Mattson, 1990;Reeves, Lang, Thorson, & Rothschild, 1989), and tasks (e.g., Knowlton & Berger, 1997;Meyers, 1989).4 These studies show a long-standing if uneven attention to the contributions of replications to communication research.…”

Goal complexity and the perceived competence of interpersonal influence messages

“…For instance, a high status person might use a command rather than a simple request. Highly dominant messages generate negative emotional responses (Dillard & Harkness, 1992), appear to interfere with goal achievement (Dillard & Kinney, 1994), are perceived as unfair and unreasonable (Dillard & Kinney, 1994), and inhibit judgments of liking (Dillard et al, 1995) and politeness Kellermann & Shea, 1996), suggesting that such messages might be perceived as ineffective and inappropriate.…”

“…Dominance also has been identified as an important feature of interpersonal influence messages (Dillard & Harkness, 1992;Dillard & Kinney, 1994;Dillard et al, 1995;Falbo & Peplau, 1980;Harkness, 1990;Wiseman & Schenck-Hamlin, 1981). Dominance reflects the degree to which a source perceives he/she has power or control over the target.…”

“…Direct messages tend to be explicit (Cody, McLaughlin, & Jordan, 1980;Dillard & Harkness, 1992;Dillard & Kinney, 1994;Dillard, Palmer, & Kinney, 1995;Falbo, 1977;Falbo & Peplau, 1980;Wiseman & Schenck-Hamlin, 1981) and efficient (Kellermann & Shea, 1996). In the interpersonal influence context, explicit messages have the capacity to be intrusive (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and tend to generate negative emotional responses (Dillard & Harkness, 1992).…”