The hierarchy principle in strategic communication

The hierarchy principle suggests that when individuals fail to reach social goals and they continue to pursue them, their first tendency is to alter lower level elements of message plan hierarchies concerned with speech rate and vocal intensity rather than higher level elements related to the structure and sequencing of message content. This pattern of message plan alteration is predicated on the notion that higher level alterations are more demanding of scarce cognitive resources. This postulate was examined directly in two laboratory and two field experiments in which geographic direction givers were led to believe their directions had been misunderstood because of communication failures located at different levels in the message plan hierarchy. Consistent with the hierarchy principle and the effort postulate, direction givers required to make more abstract alterations to their directions (route changes) showed higher levels of cognitive load as indexed by speech onset latency than direction givers required to make lower level alterations (landmarks and speech rate). The effects of time constraints, preinteraction planning, and failure pervasiveness were also examined. Both laboratory and field experiments showed general support for the hierarchy principle's predictions. Implications of the hierarchy principle for the study of strategic communication are considered.