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Conversational receptiveness: Improving engagement with opposing views
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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receptive_full.pdf | Accepted version | 1.19 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
Title: | Conversational receptiveness: Improving engagement with opposing views |
Authors: | Yeomans, M Minson, J Collins, H Chen, F Gino, F |
Item Type: | Journal Article |
Abstract: | We examine “conversational receptiveness” – the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then show that in contentious policy discussions, government executives who were rated as more receptive - according to our algorithm and their partners, but not their own self-evaluations - were considered better teammates, advisors, and workplace representatives (Study 2). Furthermore, using field data from a setting where conflict management is endemic to productivity, we show that conversational receptiveness at the beginning of a conversation forestalls conflict escalation at the end. Specifically, Wikipedia editors who write more receptive posts are less prone to receiving personal attacks from disagreeing editors (Study 3). We develop a “receptiveness recipe” intervention based on our algorithm. We find that writers who follow the recipe are seen as more desirable partners for future collaboration and their messages are seen as more persuasive (Study 4). Overall, we find that conversational receptiveness is reliably measurable, has meaningful relational consequences, and can be substantially improved using our intervention (183 words). |
Issue Date: | Sep-2020 |
Date of Acceptance: | 27-Mar-2020 |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/85402 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.011 |
ISSN: | 0749-5978 |
Publisher: | Elsevier BV |
Start Page: | 131 |
End Page: | 148 |
Journal / Book Title: | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes |
Volume: | 160 |
Copyright Statement: | © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Social Psychology 15 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences |
Publication Status: | Published |
Online Publication Date: | 2020-05-01 |
Appears in Collections: | Imperial College Business School |
This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License