Cognitive complexity, situational influences, and topic selection in intracultural and intercultural dyadic interactions

Abstract

The present study investigates whether variation in cognitive complexity is related to the pattern of topic selection in dyadic conversations between members of the same culture (U.S. Americans) or between members of different cultures (U.S. American‐East Asian). Findings indicate that cognitive complexity is not associated with the overall pattern of topic selection; however, communicators with high cognitive complexity used significantly fewer Situationally‐Evoked topics than their low cognitive complexity counterparts when situational variation was considered. Both HCCs and LCCs also exhibited somewhat different topic patterns between the two situations. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.