Conversational alignment as an individual difference

Speakers in conversation reuse each other's words, structures, meanings, sounds and gestures. This phenomenon-known as conversational alignment-is regarded as a cornerstone of successful communication and has garnered attention from researchers studying individual differences. The concept of individual differences in alignment, however, lacks both a theoretical and empirical foundation. To test whether alignment exhibits the stability expected from a trait-like individual difference, we analysed four corpora with repeated measures, comprising 1375 adult-adult and parent-child conversations. Lexical, structural and semantic alignment scores exhibited correlations of approximately 0.50 within conversations and 0.20-0.25 across time, interlocutor and conversational context, providing little evidence for trait-like stability. Stability was generally higher in less conversationally skilled populations and across similar contexts. Based on our results, we hypothesize that individual differences in alignment reflect a skill, not a trait, and outline challenges for developing better measures.