Communication failure and plan adaptation: If at first you don't succeed, say it louder and slower

Abstract

The hierarchy hypothesis asserts that when persons initially fail to reach social goals but they continue to try to attain them, they will first alter such lower level elements of message plans as speech rate and vocal intensity rather than more abstract plan elements having to do with the organization and structure of message content. Support for this hypothesis was found in a study in which persons were thwarted in their attempts to provide geographic directions to others. Both the locus of communication failure (language‐based versus direction‐based) and the race of the persons receiving the directions were varied (Asian versus Caucasian). Directions given after being thwarted showed little evidence of changes in structure; although post‐thwarting directions manifested significantly less detail. By contrast, after being thwarted participants demonstrated significant increases in vocal intensity and decreases in speech rate (although, significant higher order interactions were observed for speech rate). These findings were discussed in terms of the hierarchy hypothesis.