PS373 -- Communication

Communication in Relationships

• Sensitivity and accuracy of a couple’s communications predicts their relationship well-being

• Can be subject to errors of encoding and/or decoding

Gender and Communication

• 48 married couples took turns encoding and decoding a message

• Separate group of participants observe the interactions and serve as decoders

  • Helped determine if people were able to accurately encode the messages they were meant to send

  • If encoding problem, neither spouses nor strangers should be accurate

  • If decoding problem, spouses should be less accurate than observers

• Results:

  • Wives better encoders than husbands, especially if messages were positive

  • Might explain why communication difficulties are associated with marital quality

  • Men who did well in the task reported being in more satisfying marriages

Follow-Up Study

• Called back the same participants

• Shown a video tape of strangers sending similar messages

  • Married people served as decoders for someone who was not their spouse

• Marital satisfaction and decoding abilities were unrelated

• Dissatisfied couples show differences in performance, not skill

  • Those with low marital quality are worse at decoding their spouse than decoding strangers

Motivation or Ability?

• 107 undergraduates — 53 women and 54 men

• Watched a video of a female discussing an academic problem

  • Had taken GRE and her math scores were not high enough to graduate

• Participants assigned to one of three conditions:

  • Control condition

  • Feedback condition -- Told they would be given feedback on their performance

  • Money condition -- Told they would get $2 for every ‘correct’ response

• Completed empathic accuracy procedure

• Motivation eliminated gender differences between men and women’s decoding

  • Extra motivation creates more accuracy

Attraction and Direct Communication