Mutual Influence Processes in Physician-Patient Communication: An Interaction Adaptation Perspective

The current study proposes that physicians and patients become more similar over the course of the interaction in their nonverbal rapport-building behaviors and talk about roles and relationships; and, conversely, that they diverge from one another in their negative nonverbal behaviors and talk about the organization and delivery of care. Physicians and patients in continued-care interactions (N = 34) were videotaped and analyzed. Results provide evidence for physicians and patients becoming more similar in smiling and head nodding; diverging in their negative eye behaviors, sentence disfluencies, and talk about barriers to wellness; and changes in both similarity and divergence in their relationship talk. Implications for relationship-centered care and dyadic analysis of physician-patient interactions are described.