Rodney A. Reynolds

Strategies of conversational retreat: When parting is not sweet sorrow

This research explores strategies and tactics persons use to unilaterally retreat from conversations. Based on metagoal theory, efficiency and social appropriateness were expected to differentiate retreat strategies from each other, with strategies used in mutually negotiated endings being located in the socially appropriate and relatively efficient area of the conversational retreat strategy space. Retreat strategies were found to include verbal bids such as hints (summaries, preclosings, future continuations, and positive statements), projections (ascribing excuses to the partner for parting), excuses, and departure announcements; changing ones focus onto another subject or person; and signaling rejection, restlessness, or nonresponsiveness. As expected by metagoal theory, these strategies range in their efficiency and appropriateness, and are more diverse than (though they include) those strategies typically used in mutually desired partings.

The influence of gender and culture on language intensity

This study investigated the influence of communicator gender and cultural ancestry on the selection of intense language for use in persuasive messages. Men and women of Caucasian, Chinese, and Japanese ancestry completed proattitudinal persuasive messages. As predicted, gender and cultural background interacted to influence the intensity of language chosen. Specifically, men of Chinese and Japanese ancestry produced significantly more intense messages than did their female counterparts, while no significant differences were apparent between the messages produced by Caucasian men and women.

A validation test of a message elaboration measure

This report is on the development and testing of a message elaboration measure. The reliability of the message elaboration scale is high μ = .86 to .94 over several studies. Confirmatory factor analytic procedures support the structure of the scale. Patterns of correlations with existing measures of cognitive processes also support the validity of the message elaboration measure.

The Empirical Development of the Normative Message Processing Scale.

The empirical development of a Normative Message Processing Scale (NMPS) is presented. An argument is made for the need to develop an instrument that distinguishes between the tendency to engage in message processing that is selective, effortful, and highly deliberate and message processing that is unselective, low effort, and nondeliberate. Because self reported differences in exerted cognitive effort may indicate both quantitative and qualitative differences in message processing, effort‐based instruments do not allow specific predictions regarding the processing habits of low effort individuals. Understanding and measuring the processing characteristics of high and low effort individuals may explain observed differences in performances between individuals with a high or low need for cognition and between individuals induced to perform in a mindful or mindless manner. Five studies are presented, reporting on the development, conceptual validation, and behavioral validation of the NMPS. In addition, the ...

Understanding choice utterances

When individuals offer choices, they intend them to be mandatory (requiring action) or permissive (not requiring action), and they intend them to be open (allowing the choice of both options) or closed (not allowing the choice of both options). In two studies subjects were presented with sets of syntactically equivalent disjunctive sentences with varying content designed to represent four patterns of permitted choice. The research indicates that individuals distinguish four distinct uses of “or” in deontic contexts, and that individuals more often judge choices as mandatory than permissive. The research also compared responses to questions about choice giver intent and receiver choice. The data indicate that when judging intent, individuals are inclined to understand some choices to be permissive. However, when judging what action they might take as choice receiver, subjects tend to regard action to be mandatory. It appears that although people have some facility in assessing a permission givers intent, they often apply a more restrictive rule to themselves than is required by the choice giver.

Online Instruments, Data Collection, and Electronic Measurements: Organizational Advancements

One of the infinite rewards to continuously advancing technology is an increased ease and precision in organizational techniques. Online data collection and online instruments are vital ways to electronically measure and assess organizational areas relevant to management, leadership, and human research development.Online Instruments, Data Collection, and Electronic Measurements: Organizational Advancements aims to assist researchers in both understanding and utilizing online data collection by providing methodological knowledge related to online research, and by presenting information about the empirical quality, the availability, and the location of specific online instruments. This book provides a strong focus on organizational leadership instruments while combining them with practical and ethical issues associated with online data collection. Such a combination makes this a unique contribution to the field.

Side-Coaching the Public Speech: Toward Improvisational Delivery Adjustments in the Moment

Objectives: Students “feel” what it is like to stretch their delivery range (i.e., vocal variety, tone, non-verbal movements, etc.) and learn to adjust their communication to the rhetorical constraints of a speech presentation “in the moment” Courses: Public Speaking (or any course where speaking is required)