Listening Competence in Initial Interactions II: Applying Trait Centrality to Discover the Relative Placement of Listening Competence Among Implicit Competency Theories

Abstract

This article explores the relative placement of listening competence within other implicit theories used to form judgments of interlocutor competence. Two studies explore the relations among communicative competence, social skills, and listening competence and various attributes that are purportedly implied by each. Study 1 reveals that very few attributes are uniquely related to any one implicit theory. Study 2 demonstrates that listening competence is located subordinately to communicative competence. The discussion focuses on what these studies add to the competency literature and how future research can continue to explore implicit competency theories.

Keywords:

• Communication Competence
• Implicit Personality Theory
• Social Cognition
• Social Skills

Notes

Participants were allowed to mark multiple identity categories.

Although traditional power analysis is not available for this technique, it is instructive to note that our results should be interpreted as a conservative estimate of nonoverlap. Indeed, two means (or for paired data the mean of the differences) can overlap and still be statistically different from each other (i.e., a t test with p < .05) (Cumming & Finch, 2005). Distributions that do not overlap generally meet p < .01.

We chose not to adjust the alpha level from the conventional .05 since this particular “family” of tests only represents a small sample of the possible number of pairwise tests available (D. J. O'Keefe, 2003). Moreover, decisions regarding alpha adjustment for this study could result in considering all 28 pair relations as the “family” or only those within a given multivariate relationship (e.g., CC-Attributes, n = 5). We are comforted, though not engaged in wishful thinking (D. J. O'Keefe, 2007) by the fact that the overall multivariate test was both statistically significant and large, thus suggesting some pattern to the pairwise relations. In addition, we utilize the information from the more focused multivariate tests to suggest that LC has a primarily symmetrical relationship with attributes rather than using the one significant result within that “family” of tests to determine our discussion points. Power to detect a small effect for each dependent samples t test was .70, while power to detect a moderate or large effect was above .99.

For the sake of being thorough, we also ran the trait-pair relations for the attributes. As seen in Table 4, half were asymmetrical and half symmetrical. Within these traits, the only consistent result seems to be associated with attentive; it appears that more of the attributes imply attentive than vice versa.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graham D. Bodie

Graham D. Bodie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College and Visiting Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.

Michelle E. Pence

Michelle E. Pence is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

Michael Rold

Michael Rold is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.

M. Daniel Chapman

M. Daniel Chapman, Jamie Lejune and Lisa Anzalone were undergraduate research team members in the LSU Listening Lab and are graduates of the LSU A&M Department of Communication Studies.

Jamie Lejune

M. Daniel Chapman, Jamie Lejune and Lisa Anzalone were undergraduate research team members in the LSU Listening Lab and are graduates of the LSU A&M Department of Communication Studies.

Lisa Anzalone

M. Daniel Chapman, Jamie Lejune and Lisa Anzalone were undergraduate research team members in the LSU Listening Lab and are graduates of the LSU A&M Department of Communication Studies.