Subjects' Expectations About Their Own Interpersonal Communication: A Multidimensional Approach

A questionnaire study was conducted in order to dis cover the conceptual structures people implicitly use in coding interpersonal communication. In the section of the questionnaire discussed in this report subjects made semantic-differential-type ratings of a large number of hypothetical communication episodes. Each "communication episode" was comprised of a dyadic relation involving the subject (e.g., "you and a coworker") and a situa tional context (e.g., "attempting to work out a compromise when your goals are strongly opposed"). A multidimensional analysis of the data revealed five dimensions, which were interpreted as "cooperative and friendly vs, competitive and hostile," "informal and open vs, formal and cautious," "intense vs. superficial," "equal and symmetric vs, unequal and asymmetric," and "task-ori ented vs. non-task-oriented." The relative importance of the interpersonal relations and the situational contexts varied con siderably for different dimensions.