Thinking About the Other Person in Conversations

Abstract: Effectively navigating social interactions requires people to communicate productively and create positive impressions on others. Yet, friction and conflicts often occur during communication, making it crucial to understand what behaviors are judged favorably by conversation partners. This symposium brings together five presentations examining how conversation partners’ behaviors toward one another impact impressions and decisions. The first three presentations provide insights into when a fast reply facilitates versus inhibits communication. Using lab experiments and field data with over 6.7 million observations, Hart, VanEpps, Sezer, and Amir show that employers evaluate job candidates with higher reply speeds more favorably and are more likely to hire them. However, a fast reply is not always preferred. As Nguyen and Ames demonstrate, quick responses in synchronous conversations influence impressions based on the judge’s level of responsiveness, highlighting individual differences in interpersonal evaluations. How does a fast reply impact impressions in failures and conflicts? Gordon and Schweitzer find that excuses delivered before (vs. after) negative outcomes are evaluated more positively. To further explore impression management after failures, Chen, Chaudhry, and VanEpps show that allocating (all or more) blame to oneself after joint failures increases warmth without hurting competence perceptions. Finally, whether a conversation progresses smoothly also depends on the topics being discussed. Welker, Mahaphanit, Schmidt, Chang, and Hawkins demonstrate that conversation topics impact people’s perception of shared alignment with their conversation partners and shape interpersonal dynamics. Taken together, this symposium highlights communication strategies that help people make positive impressions and effectively manage potential conflicts in conversation.

Keywords: Conversation, impression management