Rate‐dependent perception of interpersonal characteristics

Abstract

The hypothesis, derived from the similarity‐attraction literature, was that listeners describe speakers in more positive ways when they judge speakers' global speech rates to be similar to their own. Forty‐five male and female listeners judged the global rates of three male and three female speech samples and how those rates compared with their own rates. The speaker of each sample was evaluated in terms of ten unipolar, adjective scales, each of which ranged from 0 to 9, with the higher score having the higher valence. The scores of the ten scales were then averaged to provide a total attribution valence score, and were also divided to provide “competence” and “affability” factor scores. The scores were subjected to appropriate regression analyses that included as independent variables speaker and listener gender and the perceived and actual differences between the speaker and listener rates. In support of the hypothesis, listeners assigned more positive total attribution values to those speakers whose rates were similar to their own, although their gender and the actual differences between their rates and the speakers' rates jointly influenced their evaluations of competence.