“Sad Monkey See, Monkey Do:” Nonverbal Matching in Emotional Support Encounters

Abstract

The current study examined the interpersonal coordination of nonverbal immediacy behaviors in the emotional support process. Participants (N = 216) disclosed a distressing event to a confederate who was trained to exhibit emotional support that varied in high, moderate, or low nonverbal immediacy. After the 5-minute conversation, participants evaluated the confederate on several scales. Trained coders coded 10 immediacy cues of confederates and participants. Results indicated that participants tended to match confederates, regardless of the immediacy condition. Perceived liking for the helper did not moderate immediacy matching and exerted only a main effect on confederate immediacy; participants reported liking better highly immediate helpers than either moderately immediate or nonimmediate helpers. The study also generated several sex differences, such that, with the exception of eye contact, women tended to match confederates more than did men.

Keywords:

• Emotional Support
• Interaction Adaptation
• Matching
• Nonverbal Immediacy

Data for this study were collected as a part of the first author's dissertation under the direction of Laura Guerrero. An earlier version of the manuscript was presented at the National Communication Association conference, Chicago, IL, November 2004. We would like to thank Ascan Koerner for his helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We also would like to thank Jessica Immel, LeeAnn Price, Brendan MacFarlan, and Casey Moran for serving as confederates, and Kristina Olson, Erin Kavaney, Ely Sluder, Jeremy Altschafl, Kristy Heimbigner, and Pakou Vang for coding the data.

Notes

Note: N = 216. n = 72. Means (and standard deviations) are confederate nonverbal cue means for that particular immediacy condition. r = Correlation coefficients for participants' and confederates' nonverbal cues.

∗p < .05

∗∗p < .01.

Note: N = 216. n = 108.

∗p < .05

∗∗p < .01

∗∗∗p < .001

While both matching and mimicking refer to behaviorally identically synchronization patterns, mimicking has been specifically and consistently used to refer to response patterns that are nonconscious, unintentional, and automatic (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; van Baaren et al., 2004). We view these terms as synonymous.

A multiple regression analysis with confederate person centeredness and confederate immediacy as predictors and target immediacy as the dependent measure confirmed a significant main effect for confederate immediacy only, F(2, 213) = 21.88, p < .001. Targets' nonverbal immediacy behaviors increased only as a function of confederates' immediacy behaviors, β = .41, t = 6.59, p < .001. For the purposes of the current study, we will examine only effects associated with immediacy. For effects associated with person centeredness, please see Jones & Guerrero (2001).

We advance this claim even though we did not assess matching outcomes for verbal person centeredness. As has been mentioned earlier, because matching is most commonly assessed with correlations for similar sender and receiver cues (e.g., sender eye contact is correlated with receiver eye contact), it did not make much sense to us to correlate sender person centeredness with receiver immediacy cues. As expected, an ANCOVA similar to the one conducted for H1 but with person centeredness as the covariate, revealed no significant results for person centeredness. Results can be obtained from the first author.

This manuscript was accepted by the previous editor, Professor Jim L. Query.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susanne M. Jones

Susanne Jones (Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2000) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota.

John G. Wirtz

John G. Wirtz is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.