Conversation as a resource for influence: evidence for prototypical arguments and social identification processes
✍ Scribed by Scott A. Reid; Sik Hung Ng
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 170 KB
- Volume
- 30
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0046-2772
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Members of eight single-sex groups each consisting of three pro-and three anti-capital punishment adherents discussed their views for 30 minutes, and afterwards individually rated ingroup and outgroup members on social in¯uence ranking, prototypicality, and social attractiveness. From the intragroup hypothesis that speaking turns are a resource for in¯uence (Ng & Bradac, 1993), we predicted and found that turns were correlated strongly with in¯uence in the intergroup context. Further, using self-categorization theory (SCT;Turner, 1985), we hypothesized that social identity processes would interact with turns, especially with turns obtained through interruptions. Interruptions encoded in prototypical utterances were more strongly correlated with social in¯uence and prototypicality, but not social attraction, than interruptions encoded in non-prototypical utterances. Further, interruption attempts enacted in prototypical utterances were found to be more likely to be successful than unsuccessful in obtaining turns, while those enacted in non-prototypical utterances were more likely to be unsuccessful than successful. Additionally, interruption turns were longer when enacted in prototypical over non-prototypical utterances. Overall, the ®ndings suggest that the power/in¯uence of language is interactively organized and constructed around salient self-categorizations.