Abstract
Although talkativeness seems to have an important influence on social perception, there is little evidence on the best way to measure talkativeness. Nineteen small discussion groups met on four occasions, and members simultaneously ranked and rated each other for talkativeness, leadership, popularity, and likeableness using a new rank-rate scale. Observers of the groups tallied emitted and received utterance frequency. Although there was adequate inter-observer agreement, these “objective” measures of talkativeness were only weakly related to the various peer judgments, while peer-judged talkativeness was closely and positively related to these variables. Subjective judgments appear to be more useful predictors of various social perceptions than objective tallies of emitted utterance frequency.
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Stang, D. J. & Russell, V. Stereotypes and self-descriptions of’ talkative and quiet people. Unpublished manuscript, Queens College, 1976.
Matlin, M. W. & Stang, D. J. The Pollyanna principle: Affect and evaluation in language, memory, and cognition. Book in Preparation, 1976.
References
Matlin, M. W. & Stang, D. J. Some determinants of word frequency estimates. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1975, 40, 923–929.
Stang, D. J. Effect of interaction rate on ratings of leadership and liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 27, 405–408.
Stang, D. J. & Matlin, M. W. Effect of meaningfulness and instructions on frequency estimation. Psychological Reports, 1975, 36, 164.
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We would like to thank the other researchers involved in this study: Shelley Adatto, Jay Bertin, Barnett Bezme, Joseph Faranda, Judy Kelly, Mary Jo McDermott, Deborah Meringolo, Michael Namer, Susan Novrotsky, Thomas Reap, William Riggio, Janice Smith, and Joseph Tuchinsky. We would also like to thank Donald Pascoe of the City University Mutual Benefit Instructional Network for running the video equipment.
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Stang, D.J., Castellaneta, J.A., Constantinidis, G. et al. Actual vs. perceived talkativeness as determinants of judged leadership, popularity, and likeableness. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 8, 44–46 (1976). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337070
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337070