?Subordination? and sensitivity to nonverbal cues: A study of married working women

Abstract

Women's superiority in decoding nonverbal cues of emotion has often been discussed as an adaptation to low status. To examine the relation of status to nonverbal sensitivity, “subordination” in 83 female employees of a large university was defined in terms of marriage traditionality, gender-role values, salary rank, and self-reported subordination at work. Sensitivity to nonverbal cues was measured using voice tone clips from the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS). Measures of subordination as defined by marriage and gender-role values showed that less subordinate women were better decoders of a female encoder than were more subordinate women. These measures were not significantly related to success in decoding a male encoder. The hypothesis that women in lower ranked jobs would have greater ability to decode nonverbal affect cues was significantly disconfirmed for one subscale of the PONS and received no support for the other subscales and total score. Among higherranked women only, subjective feelings of subordination on the job had a linear relation to one PONS subscore, such that better decoders felt more subordinate; there were also quadratic trends for other subscores showing that both the least and most subordinate-feeling were the most accurate decoders. Limitations and future directions for the subordination hypothesis are discussed in light of these findings.