The Influence of Cue Information on Impression Formation of Dyadic Conversations(<Special Issue>Investigating Verbal Behaviour with Experiments)

Abstract

This study examined the influence of differences in cue information on impression formation of dyadic conversations. Participants were exposed to four natural conversation conditions: text condition, text + response latency condition, sound condition, and video condition, and were asked to rate the speaker and the conversation according to affability and social desirability, etc. Based on the Social Presence Theory (Short et al., 1976), it was hypothesized that the affability and attractiveness of the speaker would be evaluated in decreasing order from video condition, sound condition, text + response latency condition and text condition. The results indicated that affability in the video condition was evaluated higher than in the text or the text + response latency conditions, which partially supported the experimental hypothesis. Moreover, social desirability was evaluated higher in the sound and video conditions in comparison to the text or text + response latency conditions. The results also suggested that sound information was an additional cue that influenced impressions regarding the speed of conversation and response.