PSY 3102 Lecture 10: Communication

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 3102
• Professor: Yaroslav Konar

Document Summary

Men and women interact differently and communicate differently: men prefer side-by-side interactions; while women prefer face-to-face interactions. Women establish topics early in a conversation, and discuss them to death (i. e. high topic cohesion) Men show low topical cohesion and cover a lot of topics for shorter periods of time: these gender differences exist in 6 year olds and 25 year olds. Men and women may have different expectations about communication based on their preferred style of communication (i. e. discussing one topic vs. many topics) Prediction: men interrupt women more to discuss a new topic: the goal of interruption is to reestablish dominance. 6/20 studied showed men interrupting; 13/20 showed men and women interrupting; 2/20 found women interrupting men more often. Interruptions function for con rmation (clari cation or agreement), rejection (disagreement), and discon rmation (making light of the speaker"s statement, ultimately to change topics) Kennedy and camden (1983) found that women interrupted more than men: 50% were con rmation interruptions.