Sequential analysis of social interaction: Assessing internal versus social determinants of behavior.

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Predictability and controllability of events influence attributions and affect in many research domains. In face-to-face social interaction, behavior is predictable from actor's own past behavior (internal determinants) and from partner's past behavior (social determinants). This study assessed how affect ratings are related to predictability of vocal activity from internal and social determinants. Time and frequency domain analysis of on-off vocal activity from 55 dyadic gettingacquainted conversations provided indexes of predictability from internal and social determinants. Greater predictability of vocal activity patterns from both internal and social determinants was associated with more positive affect. Future research should take internal as well as social determinants of behavior into account. The study of behavioral dialogues is emerging as an important research paradigm in social, developmental, and clinical psychology (Warner, 1991a). Investigators have examined time series data on the behavior, affect, or physiological states of social interaction partners to assess how social behavior is structured in time and how the behaviors of partners are interdependent. Researchers agree that social behaviors are nonrandomly sequenced and show mutual contingency between partners (Cappella, 1981), although there is not a consensus as to which statistics provide the best description of sequencing and mutual contingency. Now researchers are turning to the question of whether the degree of structure or interdependence in social behavior is related to evaluations of the quality of social interaction. Given the prominent role of predictability and controllability of events in theories of attribution, depression, and other social-psychological phenomena, it is logical to expect that the predictability and controllability of events in face-to-face social interaction influences attributions and evaluations of affect. In the present study, I looked at predictable patterning for a specific social behavior: on-off vocal activity patterns in conversations. It is important to note that both the nature of the predictable patterning and the meanings that people attach to more or less predictable behavior sequences may differ substantially for other kinds of behaviors such as gaze, body movement, facial expressions, levels of affective involvement, or physiological changes that occur during social interaction (cf. Cappella, 1988). This study illustrated a set of analyses that can be applied to all these kinds of data, but the conclusions that were reached may be specific to the type of behavior that was observed in this study: on-off patterns of talk and silence. The