Forty-six married couples participated in a standard communication task. When encoding messages they made a rating of clarity on a six-point scale, and when decoding they made a rating of confidence. Highly and moderately adjusted subjects were more confident for messages they decoded correctly than for those they decoded incorrectly. Subjects low in marital adjustment were equally confident for messages they decoded incorrectly and correctly. Highly adjusted subjects were also better able to predict whether their spouse would decode the message correctly or not, particularly the wives. There were no differences for clarity related to marital adjustment level. Negative messages were rated as clearer and were predicted more accurately. Neutral messages received lower confidence ratings and correct neutral messages received lower clarity ratings than other correct messages. Neutral messages were also predicted less accurately than other messages.
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Noller et al. (1986) studied this question.
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