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Hesitation in communication: Does minority status delay responses?
Author(s) -
Yeung Victoria Wai Lan,
Lau Ivy Yee Man,
Chiu Chi Yue
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12028
Subject(s) - utterance , psychology , cognition , social psychology , politics , slowness , cognitive resource theory , public opinion , linguistics , political science , law , neuroscience , physics , quantum mechanics , philosophy
Past studies indicated that people in a minority (vs. majority) position are slower to express their public/political opinion, and the larger the difference between the size of the two positions, the slower the response. B assili termed this the minority‐slowness effect ( MSE ). In the current study, two experiments were conducted to demonstrate that MSE extends to people's understanding of utterances and explored the cognitive basis for this. Participants were asked to judge if an utterance is a ‘direct’ or an ‘indirect’ expression. The results show that participants in the minority (vs. majority) took longer to respond, and the larger the difference between the size of majority and minority, the longer the response latency (Study 1a). Furthermore, participants were aware of their own minority position (Study 1b). In Study 2, when participants were deprived of cognitive resources, MSE disappeared, presumably because participants lack the cognitive resources required to conform to utterance interpretation as favoured by the majority.