The Mediation of Attitudes by Speech in Dyadic Conversations

Abstract

In this study, the relationships among personality characteristics, speech characteristics, and evaluative attitudes were investigated in dyadic conversations between peers. In previous research, it has been proposed that long utterances from a speaker in a conversation is perceived by the listener as expressing a positive attitude. Furthermore, a positive relationship between cognitive variables and utterance length has been found. While the latter finding was replicated, the former was not. It was proposed that the failure to replicate previous results in this respect was due to differences in the definitions of utterance, but also to restrictions in situations used in previous research. It was suggested that the definition of utterance used in this study is appropriate, if a good account of the speech process in everyday conversations is to be sought.