Interpersonal sensitivity: Expressivity or perceptivity?

S. E. Snodgrass (1985, 1992) examined interpersonal sensitivity within status-discrepant interactions. Using the correlation between how a participant thought another felt with how that person reported actually feeling, S. E. Snodgrass's measure of interpersonal sensitivity included both the expressivity of one person and the perceptivity of another person. The studies reported here were conducted to clarify the relative contributions of expressivity and perceptivity to this measure. Results indicated that interpersonal sensitivity was associated more with high expressivity on behalf of the sender than with the perceiver's perceptivity. Implications are discussed for research and theory on interpersonal sensitivity, and gender and leadership roles.