Effects
of Question Specificity and Anxiety-producing Messages on Verbal Fluency in the Initial
Interview
|
Aron Wolfe
Siegman and Benjamin Pope
|
|
| Abstract |
| An experimental analogue of the initial
interview is used to investigate the effects of interviewer specificity and topical focus,
i.e., a low anxiety-arousing vs. a high anxiety-arousing topic, on interviewee's verbal
behavior. It was found that low-specificity interviewer remarks are associated with
verbal indices of caution and hesitation ("ah's," a slow articulation rate and
silent pauses). It is suggested that a conceptualization of the specificity variable
in terms of informational uncertainty provides a parsimonious explanation for the above
findings. The anxiety-arousing topic was associated with disrupted speech
("non-ah" speech disturbances). |
|
|
| Siegman, A.
& B. Pope 1965 Effects of Question Specificity and Anxiety-producing Messages on
Verbal Fluency in the Initial Interview. In Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 2/4: 522-530. |
