Accounting for the Process of Communicative Competence Evaluation

Abstract

The inferential approach to the study of competence evaluation assumes that an observer's evaluation of a communicator's competence is at least a two-stage process. First, the observer forms an impression of the communicator that is based on observed behavior, including unobserved behaviors and traits associated with the observed behavior in the observer's implicit theories of communicative competence. Second, the observer makes an evaluation of the communicator's competence, based on the implications of the entire impression. To test this approach and a series of complicating factors relevant to it, participants with known implicit theories judged an observed communicator on a set of competence-relevant characteristics and for overall competence, both immediately after observation and after a month's delay. Overall, inferential models predicted these judgments well. Traits were better predictors of competence evaluations than behaviors, and the delay resulted in predictable schematic biases. However, the addition of situation- and competence-level-specific judgments did not increase predictability.