Hesitation in communication : does minority status delay responses?

Document Type

Journal article

Source Publication

Asian Journal of Social Psychology

Publication Date

9-1-2013

Volume

16

Issue

3

First Page

238

Last Page

248

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia

Keywords

comprehension, inhibition process, minority-slowness effect, utterance directness

Abstract

Past studies indicated that people in a minority (vs. majority) position are slower to express their public/political opinion, and the larger the difference between the size of the two positions, the slower the response. Bassili termed this the minority- slowness effect (MSE). In the current study, two experiments were conducted to demonstrate that MSE extends to people's understanding of utterances and explored the cognitive basis for this. Participants were asked to judge if an utterance is a ` direct' or an ` indirect' expression. The results show that participants in the minority (vs. majority) took longer to respond, and the larger the difference between the size of majority and minority, the longer the response latency (Study 1a). Furthermore, participants were aware of their own minority position (Study 1b). In Study 2, when participants were deprived of cognitive resources, MSE disappeared, presumably because participants lack the cognitive resources required to conform to utterance interpretation as favoured by the majority.

DOI

10.1111/ajsp.12028

Print ISSN

13672223

E-ISSN

1467839X

Publisher Statement

Copyright © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association

Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.

Full-text Version

Publisher’s Version

Language

English

Recommended Citation

Yeung, V. W. L., Lau, I. Y. M., & Chiu, C. Y. (2013). Hesitation in communication: Does minority status delay responses? Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 16(3), 238-248. doi: 10.1111/ajsp.12028

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