Interpersonality: Individual differences and interpersonal priming

Interpersonality: Individual differences and interpersonal priming Alastair J. Gill (A.Gill@ed.ac.uk) School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LW UK Annabel J. Harrison (annabelh@cogsci.ed.ac.uk) School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh 7 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ UK Jon Oberlander (J.Oberlander@ed.ac.uk) School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LW UK Abstract We study how Extraversion and Neuroticism influ- ence people’s language production in interpersonal interactive situations. A priming study used con- federate priming methodology to investigate syn- tactic priming behaviour. We expected that Ex- travert sociability would be related to the strength of priming effects, although Neurotic emotionality might also have an effect. Results indicate that Ex- traversion has no effect, but Neuroticism does have an effect. We discuss possible reasons and suggest further experimentation to investigate this finding. Implications and applications of this work are out- lined. Personality and interaction Individuals differ in the way they speak and write. Some of those differences are systematic, and can be attributed to apparently deeper differences, such as personality traits, like Extraversion and Neuroti- cism (or Emotional Stability). Level of Extraversion is intuitively related to sociability and communica- tion, and this is expressed through interpersonal be- haviour. However, level of Neuroticism appears to be more related to anxiety and inward focus, and thus having greater influence on solo behavior. In the past, it has been found that both these per- sonality traits do significantly influence an individ- ual’s language production behaviour in a variety of contexts (Pennebaker and King, 1999; Dewaele and Furnham, 1999). Recent work has investigated e- mail text, and suggested that even in that genre, there are characteristic sequences of words associ- ated with each end (High or Low) of both dimen- sions (Extravert or Neurotic) (Gill and Oberlander, 2002, 2003b). The majority of work on the relations between personality and language production has studied monologue only. Yet most everyday language oc- curs in the context of interpersonal interaction. So here, we aim to investigate the role of personality upon language use in a dialogue setting. Studies of conversational behaviour have demon- strated that individuals align with their interlocu- tors on a number of levels (Pickering and Garrod, in press). The phenomena have been examined from both social and cognitive perspectives. On the so- cial side, a key focus of interest is cooperation and audience design. On the cognitive side, a key focus is coordination and interpersonal priming. For example, sociolinguistic studies have shown that speakers adopt accent or dialectal variation or a level of lexical density appropriate to their audience. This variation operates at phonological, lexical, and syntactic levels (Labov, 1972; Coupland, 1980; Bell, 1984; Bradac and Wisegarver, 1984). Audience de- sign is regarded as a relatively conscious process over which the speaker has a certain amount of control. It may be a result of co-operativity, affiliation, or willingness to take another’s perspective (Haywood, Pickering, and Branigan, 2003). By contrast, from a cognitive perspective, coor- dination is viewed as an artifact of the underlying language production mechanisms. For example, it has been argued that references from the compre- hension system are recycled to provide output for the production system (Pickering and Garrod, in press). Alignment is found at the lexical level (Bren- nan and Clark, 1996; Branigan, Pickering, and Cle- land, 2000), the conceptual level (Garrod and Do- herty, 1987), and the syntactic level (Pickering and Branigan, 1998). Unlike cooperation, such coordi- nation is considered to be largely subconscious. Coordination therefore provides a more direct in- sight into underlying processing abilities, and is less prone to outside influence. In approaching the study of personality in dialogue, we therefore use an inter- personal priming paradigm. At the outset, our ques- tion is very general: Can differences in interpersonal priming be attributed to personality? To make this question more specific—and to at- tempt to answer it—the rest of this paper is struc- tured as follows. First, we introduce a little more background on personality theory. Then, we frame a possible explanation of recent findings on the re- lations between Extraversion, Neuroticism and lan- guage production; this leads to two hypotheses con- cerning the possible relation between personality and interpersonal priming. We then present the priming experiment which tested these hypotheses. The results were somewhat unexpected, and we con- clude by discussing their implications.