Social Cognitive Determinants of Face Support in Persuasive Messages

320 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.This thesis examines individual differences in the ability to manage a persuadee's public identity in discourse. It is hypothesized that the ability to protect a persuadee's public image, or "face," in compliance-gaining situations is partially a function of differences in cognitive schemas for differentiating the perspectives of others. Individuals with highly differentiated and abstract interpersonal construct systems should be more likely to provide face support in their persuasive messages than less differentiated and abstract perceivers. Coding systems for assessing face support were developed and two studies found some support for this hypothesis. Construct differentiation is moderately related to measures of face support. Construct abstractness is weakly related to measures of face support. Subsequent studies found that the relation of construct differentiation to face support is not due to differences in prosocial orientation, or to differences in cognitive monitoring. Sex of the subjects and measures of prosocial orientation are also related to measures of face support. A final study found that the relationship between construct differentiation and face support may partially be due to the priority highly differentiated perceivers give to supporting their listener's face wants in discourse. These findings have implications for understanding the relationship between social cognitive and communicative abilities, and for developing communication skills training programs.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD