THE EFFECTS OF DIALECTICAL SIMILARITY,STEREOTYPING, AND MESSAGE AGREEMENT ON INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTION

This project was undertaken to investigate the interrelationships among three variables—dialectical similarity, stereotyping, and message agreement—and their effect on the speaker evaluation variables of source competence, character appeal, interpersonal attraction and message coherence. The main experiment consisted of four stimulus conditions; two levels of dialect (Southern and Midwestern); and two messages (one relevant and one irrelevant to the Southern stereotype). The results of the study indicated that (1) the relationship between dialectical similarity and stereotyping was contingent on message context; (2) an interaction occurred between the message relevant to the stereotype and the dialect associated with the stereotype producing disproportionately low means; and (3) stereotyping appeared to be more strongly associated with the dependent variables than message agreement, but dialectical similarity was less strongly associated than message agreement.