Speaker Credibility in Persuasive Business Communication: A Model Which Explains Gender Differences 1

Hovland’s Yale Communication Model defines source credibility as trustworthiness and expertise. However, even when men and women are objectively equal on these dimensions, receivers perceive men as being more persuasive as speakers than women. In addition, these two dimensions do not account for other measures of credibility which affect persuasive business communication. This paper expands the model to in-clude dimensions which explain gender differences in speaker credibility in persuasive business communication with support from the gender literature. Research proposi-tions are suggested, and implications of this research are discussed. enley and Thorne (1977) report that female public speakers are H superior to men in vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar, and less fidgety and better integrated than men. Male public speakers are less withdrawn, more animated, and have greater confidence and more useful physical activity than women. In fact, subjects evaluate the same speech differently based on the gender of the speaker. Aries (1987) reports that subjects perceived male speakers dquo;as more honest,