Communication misperceptions: Mispredicting the outcomes of interpersonal interactions

Although conversations are foundational to social functioning, emerging research suggests they are fraught with misperceptions. This symposium brings together novel research identifying communication misperceptions across domains such as interviews, conversations, contracts, and negotiations. The papers show that people (1) overlook social forces such as responsiveness that promote connection, leading them to undervalue communication media that entail dialogue; (2) overestimate how helpful communication cues are for evaluating others’ abilities; (3) overestimate recipients’ subjective feeling of consent to undesirable agreements, undermining trust and commitment; and (4) underestimate the normativity of negotiations and overestimate the likelihood of jeopardizing an agreement. The symposium highlights the fraught nature of interpersonal communication and underscores the importance of understanding and correcting these communication misperceptions in ways that improve dialogue and conflict management.