The Effects of Vocalics and Nonverbal Sensitivity on Compliance A Speech Accommodation Theory Explanation

A speech accommodation theory explanation for the interaction between a receiver's decoding ability and a speaker's voice tone on compliance with requests for help was tested. It was predicted that good decoders would speak faster than poor decoders. Speech accommodation theory predicts that given this speech style difference, good decoders would make more favorable interpretations of a fast request that converged toward their faster speech rate; whereas poor decoders would make more favorable interpretations of a slow request that converged toward their slower speech rate. Requests receiving more favorable evaluations should result in greater compliance, because compliance with requests for help was predicted to follow an identification process. An experiment involving 168 participants confirmed this explanation. Good decoders spoke faster than poor decoders. Moreover, good decoders rated the fast request as more intimate and immediate, while poor decoders rated the slow request as more intimate and immediate. Good decoders, in turn, complied more with the fast request, which they rated more intimate and immediate, whereas poor decoders complied more with the slow request, which they rated more intimate and immediate.     

Patients’ Characteristics Affecting Physician-Patient Nonverbal Communication

Previous research has reported that nonverbal elements of physician-patient communication influence medical outcomes such as patients’ understanding, compliance, and saris/action with health care delivery. This investigation examined the impact of various patients’ characteristics (age, sex, education, anxiety, and relational history with the physician) on patterns of nonverbal communication exhibited in 41 physician-patient interactions at a family practice clinic. Several findings were noteworthy. First, although they were relatively consistent in their nonverbal responses to different patients, physicians generally reciprocated patient's adjustments in response latency, pauses during speaking turns, body orientation, and interruptions and compensated patient's modifications in turn duration and gestural rates. Second, physicians nonverbally interacted with patients over 30 years of age in a less domineering and more responsive fashion (e.g., comparable turn durations, more vocal back-channels, and more nonverbal behavior reciprocity) than they did when conversing with patients under 30. Third, physicians appeared responsive to patients experiencing various degrees of anxiety. Specifically, relative to their interactions with less worried patients, physicians used less task touch with anxious patients and to a greater degree compensated the worried patients nonverbal responses. Finally, the patients sex, education, and visit (i.e., first versus repeat) had little impact on the structure of physician-patient nonverbal exchanges.     

Moral Reasons: Internal and External1

The view defended is one sense externalist on the relation between moral reasons and motivation: A's having a moral reason to do X does not necessarily imply that A has a motivation that would support A's doing X via some appropriate deliberative route. However, it is in another sense externalist in holding that there are the kind of moral reasons there are only if the relevant motivational capacities are generally present in human beings, if not in all individuals. The process of socialization is an attempt to embed the recognition of what we have moral reason to do in the intentional content of one's feelings. E.g., learning that about others' suffering embeds their suffering as a reason to help in the intentional content of incipient compassionate feelings. This endows the reason with motivational efficacy while conferring further direction to the feelings in ways that shape us for social cooperation.