A direct and comprehensive test of two postulates of politeness theory applied to uncertainty communication
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2015, Vol 10, Issue 2
Abstract
Applied to uncertainty communication, politeness theory postulates that when announcing bad news (1) speakers may intend not only to inform, but also to manage (e.g., save) the hearers’ or speakers’ own faces (i.e., face-managing intentions), and (2) speakers may perform face-managing intentions by altering the explicitly communicated probability. Previous research has assumed these two core postulates when explaining various reasoning and judgment phenomena in hearers, but has failed to test them empirically in a comprehensive and direct way: jointly in relation to speakers. To provide this critical evidence, we asked subjects to communicate a predefined numerical probability of two negative outcomes, using a verbal probability scale. Subjects reported their communication intentions afterwards. In line with the first politeness theory postulate, speakers intended not only to be informative but also to tactfully announce bad news or to avoid being blamed in case they made inaccurate (too low or too high) prediction. In line with the second politeness theory postulate, speakers altered their explicitly communicated probability more often and more substantially when adopting face-managing intentions than when adopting informative intentions. We discuss how this evidence corroborates the politeness theory and validates the previous research that focused on hearers.
Authors and Affiliations
Miroslav Sirota and Marie Juanchich
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678177
- DOI -
- Views 155
- Downloads 0
Different heuristics and same bias: A spectral analysis of biased judgments and individual decision rules
We used correlation and spectral analyses to investigate the cognitive structures and processes producing biased judgments. We used 5 different sets of driving problems to exemplify problems that trigger biases, specific...
Risky Decision Making: Testing for Violations of Transitivity Predicted by an Editing Mechanism
Transitivity is the assumption that if a person prefers A to B and B to C, then that person should prefer A to C. This article explores a paradigm in which Birnbaum, Patton and Lott (1999) thought people might be systema...
Age-related differences in adaptive decision making: Sensitivity to expected value in risky choice
While previous research has found that children make more risky decisions than their parents, little is known about the developmental trajectory for the ability to make advantageous decisions. In a sample of children, 5-...
Why are lotteries valued less? Multiple tests of a direct risk-aversion mechanism
Recent studies have identified the uncertainty effect (UE), whereby risky prospects (e.g., a binary lottery that offers either a $50 or $100 gift certificate) are valued less than their worst possible outcome (a $50 cert...
The coexistence of overestimation and underweighting of rare events and the contingent recency effect
Previous research demonstrates overestimation of rare events in judgment tasks, and underweighting of rare events in decisions from experience. The current paper presents three laboratory experiments and a field study th...