SITUATIONAL FORMALITY, PERSONALITY, AND AVOIDANCE-AVOIDANCE CONFLICT AS CAUSES OF INTERPERSONAL EQUIVOCATION

This study explores the causes of a widespread and important communication phenomenon, interpersonal equivocation. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in three different interpersonal situations, manipulated to vary the level of situational formality, and to respond to a question from their hypothetical conversational partner. These questions were designed to manipulate the presence or absence of avoidance-avoidance conflict. Participants' responses produced equivocation scores for each situation and an overall score. Participants also completed the Revised Self-Monitoring Scale. As expected, results supported a strong role for avoidance-avoidance conflict as an influence on equivocation and also suggested that formality level and avoidance-avoidance conflict interact to influence the degree of equivocation. A surprising discovery was that higher self-monitoring results in less equivocation, a finding that is explained by the likelihood that higher self-monitors are more aware of the importance of Grice's Cooperative Principle for the smooth functioning of interactions.