Verbal behavior of interviewees: The effects of several situational variables on verbal productivity, disfluency, and lexical diversity

Abstract

Interviewer status (high vs. low) and anticipated evaluation (positive vs. negative) were manipulated orthogonally to test competing predictions derived from Hull-Spence and Mahl-Osgood drive theory hypotheses. The effects of question specificity, interview topic, and interview segment were examined concomitantly. Verbal behavior measures were total words per interviewee response, mean segmental TTR (25), partial mean segmental TTR (25), and ratio of disfluency per response. Results for disfluency tended to support the Mahl-Osgood hypothesis. Lexical diversity results offered weak support for the Hull-Spence hypothesis. Results for verbal productivity failed to support either of the hypotheses and were interpreted as possibly supporting the Duffy-Malmo inverted U hypothesis. Generally, the results suggested that the unitary construct “drive” may be inadequate for explaining the effects of specific situational variables upon verbal behavior.