Elaborating the Cognitive Rules Model of Interaction Goals: The Problem of Accounting for Individual Differences in Goal Formation

Abstract

Current theories of message production typically assume that speakers design messages to accomplish goals, but provide limited detail about how speakers form goals. The cognitive rules (CR) model presents one explicit set of assumptions about how interaction goals are formed. To date, predictions from the model have fared well for individuals high in interpersonal construct differentiation, but have received little support for less differentiated individuals. This chapter offers two suggestions for how the CR model might be elaborated to accommodate individual differences in goal formation. One possibility is that highly differentiated individuals possess more complex schemata for forming goals than do less differentiated individuals, which allow highly differentiated persons to process evaluatively inconsistent information but also make them prone to perceptual biases. A second possibility is that highly and less differentiated individuals rely on different heuristic principles when framing interaction goals, especially in situations where they lack the ability or motivation to process goal-relevant knowledge systematically. Both possibilities suggest interesting hypotheses for future work on goal formation and message production.