Communication Yearbook 18

Brant R. Burleson, Brant R. Burleson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135152505
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Communication Yearbook 18 originally published in 1995 focuses on cognitive approaches to the study of human communication, examining topics such as the formation of interaction goals, cognitive models of message production, mindfulness and minlessness in message processing and attention to televised messages. Sections two and three concentrate on the communicative management of health and environmental risks, critical analyses of classical approaches to risk communication and the ways in which people are connected through diverse forms of communicative behavior, including supportive relationships, electronic mail systems and ideologies. Commentaries in each section provide alternative perspectives on the state of research, extend issues of significance and help engage the reader with contemporary debates.

Section 1

Cognitive Approaches To Communication: Planning, Producing, And Processing Messages

1 Elaborating the Cognitive Rules Model of Interaction Goals: The Problem of Accounting for Individual Differences in Goal Formation

Steven R. Wilson

Michigan State University

Current theories of message production typically assume that speakers design messages to accomplish goals, but provide limited detail about how speakers form goals. The cognitive rules (CR) model presents one explicit set of assumptions about how interaction goals are formed. To date, predictions from the model have fared well for individuals high in interpersonal construct differentiation, but have received little support for less differentiated individuals. This chapter offers two suggestions for how the CR model might be elaborated to accommodate individual differences in goal formation. One possibility is that highly differentiated individuals possess more complex schemata for forming goals than do less differentiated individuals, which allow highly differentiated persons to process evaluatively inconsistent information but also make them prone to perceptual biases. A second possibility is that highly and less differentiated individuals rely on different heuristic principles when forming interaction goals, especially in situations where they lack the ability or motivation to process goal-relevant knowledge systematically. Both possibilities suggest interesting hypotheses for future work on goal formation and message production.

Questions about message production have captured the attention of a substantial number of communication scholars (e.g., Cody & McLaughlin, 1990; Dillard, 1990). Although researchers are using a variety of concepts and perspectives to investigate message production, their work shares a common interest in explaining how individuals decide what to say in everyday interac- tions and a common belief that light can be shed on this issue through the ex- amination of the knowledge structures and cognitive processes that underlie message production.

The concept of goal has become a centerpiece in theorizing about message production. Consider recent work on the production of interpersonal influence messages. People define and orient to influence situations based on their knowledge of different compliance goals (Canary, Cody, & Marston, 1986; Dillard, 1989; Rule & Bisanz, 1987). Message sources often attempt to reconcile multiple, competing goals when seeking compliance (Tracy, Craig, Smith, & Spisak, 1984), and multiple goals set constraints on how compliance is sought (Dillard, Segrin, & Harden, 1989; Hample & Dallinger, 1987; Kim & Wilson, in press). Variations in the content and paralinguistic features of influence messages can be attributed in part to individual differences in prioritizing influence and interpersonal goals (Cegala & Waldron, 1992; Greene & Lindsey, 1989; O’Keefe & Shepherd, 1987). In turn, priorities assigned to multiple goals often change as interactions unfold (Sanders, 1991; Tracy, 1991; Wilson & Putnam, 1990). Message sources recall or develop plans for achieving influence goals (Berger & DiBattista, 1992; Waldron, 1990) and produce messages in light of anticipated obstacles to achieving goals (Roloff & Janiszewski, 1989; Wilson, Cruz, Marshall, & Rao, 1993). Design logics affect how message sources define influence situations and hence which goals they see as relevant, as well as how they conceive of managing conflicting goals (B. J. O’Keefe, 1988). In sum, theories of message production commonly presume that speakers design messages to accomplish goals. Much less work has examined how speakers form interaction goals.

In earlier work, I offered the cognitive rules (CR) model, which presents one explicit set of assumptions about how interaction goals are formed (Wilson, 1989, 1990). The CR model assumes that individuals possess cognitive rules, or associations, in long-term memory between representations of interaction goals and numerous situational features. An individual forms goals when he or she perceives a sufficient match between cognitive rules and the current situation (this matching process is explicated in detail below). Given these assumptions, an individual should alter his or her interaction goals in response to changes in salient information from the immediate situation, and hence should vary interaction goals across different situations.

I now believe that the CR model, as currently developed, is a better account of goal formation for some individuals than for others. In an initial test (Wilson, 1990), predictions from the model fared well for individuals high in “interpersonal construct differentiation,” but received little support for less differentiated individuals. Subsequent research has demonstrated that attributions made by less differentiated individuals also are surprisingly nonresponsive to alterations in seemingly relevant situational conditions (Wilson & Kang, 1991; Wilson, Cruz, & Kang, 1992b).

My purpose in this chapter is to discuss how the CR model can be elaborated to accommodate individual differences in goal formation. I pursue this purpose in three sections, the first of which offers a brief overview of the CR model’s assumption. The second section reviews recent research about interpersonal construct differentiation suggesting that the CR model fails to describe adequately how less differentiated individuals form interaction goals. In the last section, I propose two ways in which the CR model might be elaborated to explain such individual differences, and then discuss implications for understanding construct differentiation, interaction goals, and message production.

The Cognitive Rules Model of Interaction Goals

The cognitive rules model assumes that “people possess knowledge about a wide range of instrumental and interpersonal goals, and about numerous situational features relevant to each goal” (Wilson, 1990, p. 81; emphasis added). This goal-relevant knowledge is stored in a hierarchical associative network composed of nodes that represent concepts such as people, traits, roles, relational qualities, settings, and desired outcomes (for similar models, see Anderson, 1983; Anderson & Klatzky, 1987; Greene & Geddes, 1988; Srull, Liechtenstein, & Rothbart, 1985). Created through socialization and problem-solving experience, cognitive rules are patterns of association between nodes representing specific outcomes (goals) and nodes representing situational features. As an example, individuals from the United States might associate the goal “obtain a favor” with felicity conditions for making a request, relational qualities such as intimacy and status, and identity concerns about appearing competent and self- sufficient (Craig, Tracy, & Spisak, 1986; Wilson, Aleman, Miller, & Leathem, 1992).

The CR model assumes that a spreading activation process operates on this associative network (Anderson, 1984). A cognitive rule is activated directly by a match between perceived features of the current situation and situational conditions represented in the rule. A cognitive rule also may be activated indirectly, when activation spreads from a directly stimulated node to other nodes that are associatively linked. This activation process is assumed to occur in parallel, so that cognitive rules can be compared with situational perceptions without substantial demand on processing capacity, and situations can simultaneously activate rules for forming multiple goals.

Activation of a cognitive rule is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for goal formation. The CR model assumes that rules have an activation “threshold”: A goal is not formed unless a certain level of activation is reached, and once that level is reached a rule is “triggered” and forms a goal (Higgins, Bargh, & Lombardi, 1985). The probability of a rule being triggered is a function of three general criteria: fit, strength, and recency (Anderson, 1983; Greene, 1984).

Based on the fit criteria, the probability of goal formation increases when a larger rather than smaller number of situational conditions represented in a rule are perceived in the current situation. Thus a message source is likely to form the goal of “enforcing an obligation” when a target person of equal or lesser status knowingly fails to perform a promised action with tangible consequences for the source, but is less likely to do so when only some of these situational conditions are present (Canary et al., 1986; Wilson & Kang, 1991).

Aside from fit, situations also vary in ambiguity. In the making of attributions about unfulfilled obligations, for example, situations in which the target has a consistent history of violating obligations are clearer than those in which the target’s prior behavior is only moderately consistent and extenuating circumstances also are present (see Wilson, 1990). Ambiguous situations are open to multiple interpretations, and hence partially match and activate a larger number of rules than do clear situations. An important assumption of the CR model is that when both degree and clarity of fit are high, situational features are sufficient to trigger rules. When fit is moderate and ambiguity is high, however, strength and recency are more important determinants of goal formation (Srull & Wyer, 1979).

Both the strength and recency criteria relate to the accessibility of cognitive rules (for differing conceptions of construct accessibility, see Higgins et al., 1985; Smith & Branscombe, 1988; Wyer & Srull, 1986). Within ambiguous situations, cognitive rules are more likely to be triggered as the strength of association between situational conditions and goals increases. Strength is directly related to the frequency of prior activation of the rule; as strength increases, rules become “chronically accessible” (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Higgins, King, & Marvin, 1982; Markus, 1977). Within ambiguous situations, a cognitive rule also is more likely to be triggered if that rule already has been activated by a recent event (because an activated rule takes time to dissipate). Recency effects have been illustrated in research using a “priming paradigm,” in which activation of a cognitive structure by an earlier task affects performance on a subsequent, ostensibly unrelated, task (see Higgins et al., 1985; Wilson, 1990).

In sum, the CR model assumes that goals are formed when cognitive rules are activated past a threshold level, and that the probability of goal formation is a function of fit between rules and perceptions of the situation, rule strength, and recency of rule activation. Strength and recency are inconsequential when the fit between rules and situation features is high and clear, but become important in situations where the degree of fit is moderate and ambiguous. Although the CR model was intended as a general model of interaction goals, recent research suggests that its assumptions must be elaborated to accommodate individual differences in goal formation. I now turn to recent studies of construct differentiation to clarify this claim.

Construct Differentiation and Goal Formation

Traditional Conception of Construct Differentiation

Interpersonal construct differentiation refers to the number of dimensions individuals spontaneously utilize when making inferences and judgments about others. Constructivist scholars have argued that personal constructs—bipolar dimensions used to anticipate, interpret, and evaluate actions—are a fundamental social-cognitive element. With maturation, individuals develop systems of constructs that are more differentiated (larger in number), psychologically abstract, and organized (hierarchically integrated). Construct differentiation is domain specific, so that individuals may be differentiated regarding persons but not automobiles. In sum, persons high in interpersonal construct differentiation spontaneously utilize a larger number of dimensions of judgment about people than do their less differentiated counterparts (see Crockett, 1965; Delia, O’Keefe, & O’Keefe, 1982).

Interpersonal construct differentiation influences a wide range of social inferences and communicative functions. Burleson (1987) argues that “individuals with more developmentally advanced systems of interpersonal constructs will possess more sophisticated social perception skills than persons with less developed construct systems” (p. 310). Consistent with his claim, highly differentiated individuals are more likely to take the other’s view and to identify another’s affective states accurately, and less likely to rely on simple balance schemes when integrating inconsistent information about others (see Delia et al., 1982; O’Keefe & Sypher, 1981). Individuals high in construct differentiation also are more likely to produce “person-centered” or “elaborated” comforting, persuasive, and regulative messages (see Burleson, 1987). As one explanation for these findings, Barbara O’Keefe and her colleagues have argued that highly differentiated message sources are more likely than less differentiated sources to recognize the identity and relational consequences of influence attempts, and hence to address multiple goals in their regulative messages (see, e.g., O’Keefe & Delia 1982; O’Keefe & Shepherd, 1987).

Drawing on this traditional view, I reasoned that construct differentiation would be associated with the chronic accessibility of rules for forming supportive interaction goals. I expected that highly differentiated persons would possess accessible rules for forming goals such as “maintain the relationship” and “protect the other’s face,” whereas these same rules would be less accessible for less differentiated individuals. I incorporated this reasoning into the initial test of the CR model (Wilson, 1990), which included three experimental factors that corresponded to each of the factors affecting the probability of goal formation. Participants provided open-ended reports of their interaction goals in response to hypothetical persuasive scenarios involving unfulfilled obligations (e.g., a friend fails to repay a loan at the agreed time). To vary degree and clarity of fit, I created attributionally clear versus ambiguous scenarios by manipulating consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness information. In the attributionally clear scenarios, the target’s failure to fulfill the obligation was perceived by most pretest participants as either internally caused/intentional or externally caused/unintentional. In the attributionally ambiguous scenarios, both internal and external causes were judged as plausible. Recency of activation was manipulated through a “relational intimacy priming task,” because intimacy is a situational feature that has been associated with supportive goals (Baxter, 1984; Leichty & Applegate, 1991). Finally, participants completed the Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ) measure of construct differentiation as an indirect measure of rule strength (see Burleson & Waltman, 1988). Based on the CR model’s assumptions, both the intimacy priming manipulation and construct differentiation were expected to affect reports of supporting goals in the attributionally ambiguous but ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section 1: Cognitive Approaches to Communication: Planning, Producing, and Processing Messages
• Section 2: Communication about Health and Environmental Risks: Developments in Theory and Research
• Section 3: Modes of Connecting Through Communication: Discourse, Relationships, Technology, and Ideology
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Authors