Gendered Expectations for “Agreeableness” in Response to Requests and Opinions

Abstract

To address the need for more direct assessment of gendered expectations for communication behaviors, we devised a novel experimental approach that tests whether expectations for “agreeableness” are more salient when evaluating male or female speakers in their affirmative responses to a friend’s request or expression of opinion. Briefly, as lag times are introduced, it appears that females are expected to be more agreeable (or male delay is more tolerated), particularly when alignment with opinion is at stake or when a female is responding to another female. Findings are discussed in the context of Expectation Violations Theory.

Keywords:

• Conversation
• Expectation Violations
• Gender
• Silence

Notes

[1] See Roberts and Francis (2013) for details on procedures for acoustic measurements and features of the tokens.

[2] By using two gap conditions, we could approach the limit of what listeners would accept as a reasonable or normal delay (1200 ms) as well as test what might be considered a more subtle or less easily noticed delay (600 ms).

[3] Although this imbalance in sex of study participants might have caused some concern, there was no statistically significant effect from the sex of study subjects.