Out of Sync' : Impression Formation as a Function of Response Latency
Date
1993
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate whether there exists an optimal duration in conversational interactions which conveys the most positive social evaluations. A series of experiments were performed to examine this hypothesis in four speech acts: honesty, compliance, confidence, and sincerity. A series of dialogue clips were generated which contain a question and a response. The purpose of Experiment One was to determine whether subjects consistently produce different durations for the response latency that correspond to different degrees of a given social attribute. The produced values from the first experiment were used to construct a set of stimuli for the Second Experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to determine if subjects' perceptions match the produced durations of the First Experiment. Subjects listened to the generated dialogue clips and rated them on their degree of a given social dimension. The results of the experiments confirmed that there is an optimal duration within which the most positive social evaluations are made. The optimal duration was a shorter value than was expected. The results also supported the hypothesis that the optimal duration is a function of an overall speaker congruence within conversation. The findings are related to a general nonverbal behavior framework and the importance of temporal characteristics for impression formation.