Affective and cognitive manifestations of interaction involvement during unstructured and competitive interactions

The construct of interaction involvement was extended in this study by relating scores on the interaction involvement scale to individuals’ experienced mood state and information recall in two different communication settings. Consistent with hypotheses, highly involved persons felt more positive and less negative during an unstructured conversation and recalled more detail about the conversation than low‐involved persons. Similarly, highly involved persons felt more positive and less negative during a competitive negotiation than low‐involved persons. The results were interpreted to suggest that there is a significant affective component in interaction involvement which in part accounts for a disruption in the capacity for intersubjectivity on the part of low‐involved persons.