Related Experiment Videos
Speakers' overestimation of their effectiveness
1The University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, IL 60637, USA. boaz@uchicago.edu
Psychological Science
|May 15, 2002
Summary
Speakers often overestimate how well their message is understood, leading to miscommunication. This study reveals speakers underestimate their own message ambiguity and overestimate clarity, impacting natural conversation.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Psycholinguistics
- Communication Studies
Background:
- Effective communication relies on anticipating potential misunderstandings.
- Speakers must accurately gauge addressees' comprehension for successful interaction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate speakers' ability to accurately assess their addressees' understanding.
- To identify potential biases in speakers' self-monitoring during communication.
Main Methods:
- Participants spoke ambiguous sentences with a specific intention.
- Speakers estimated their addressees' comprehension of the intended meaning.
- Overhearers' estimations were compared to speakers' estimations.
Main Results:
- Speakers consistently overestimated their addressees' understanding of the intended meaning.
- Speakers underestimated the ambiguity of their own utterances.
- Overhearers, when informed of the speaker's intent, did not overestimate effectiveness.
Conclusions:
- Speakers exhibit a bias in monitoring their own communication, underestimating ambiguity.
- This overestimation of communicative effectiveness is a potential source of miscommunication.
- The findings necessitate accounting for speaker biases in theories of language production.