Vocal Accommodation Within Nonverbal Frequencies as a Marker of Status, Dominance, and Prestige
Abstract
Status and power are elementary dimensions of social life, influencing group interactions in both positive and negative ways. In many situations higher status people possess valuable skills and knowledge necessary to facilitate successful task outcomes, such as when an experienced medical doctor oversees and advises the work of a resident physician. On the other hand, status and power structures can inhibit successful task completion when stereotypes and cultural beliefs about lower status actors lead group members to overlook or ignore potentially valuable contributions. Because status organizing processes are non-conscious, individuals are largely unaware that they are acting on the basis of cultural status beliefs. Further, when individuals become aware of their status-based behaviors, they often deny them or construct biased accounts to rationalize their behavior and Òsave face.Ó In recent years, scientific advances have allowed researchers access to individualsÕ nonconscious processes and behaviors to an impressive extent. When examining socially sensitive processes like status inequality, examining non-conscious behaviors is useful for circumventing self-serving biases that might appear when directly asking individuals about their behavior. One such non-conscious behaviorÑvocal accommodation within the nonverbal frequency bands--may serve as an indicator of actorsÕ social status, whereby lower status actors engage in a substantially greater degree of behavioral accommodation than their higher status counterparts. Research on vocal accommodation offers the potential for an unobtrusive measure of status that can be obtained covertly. The purpose of the proposed research is to further knowledge on the relationship between social status and vocal accommodation within the nonverbal band by examining patterns of accommodation and social influence in status-differentiated task groups. Existing research about the relationships among status, dominance, prestige, and vocal accommodation points to a number of opportunities to advance the scientific understanding of the processes at work. The proposed studies can help advance knowledge on the non-conscious communication of dominance and deference in three ways: 1) by assessing the extent to which accommodation in the nonverbal vocal range predicts influence between status-differentiated task partners; 2) by comparing patterns of influence between groups engaged in cooperative tasks and those engaged in competitive tasks to examine how vocal accommodation functions based on specific task motivations; and 3) by differentiating the unique effects of dominance and deference on perceptions of social status. The proposed studies will advance the interdisciplinary social scientific understanding of status processes by linking status structures to biological processes. Additionally, the results offer potential benefits to the U.S. Army. For example, given the extent to which intelligence employs intercepted voice communications to gain information on potential threats, vocal accommodation findings may be useful for gleaning information conveyed unintentionally, such as determining the rank structure within a group of conspirators. Further, understanding the social and biological bases of status inequality can lead to the development of intervention and training strategies to optimize group performance.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 07, 2018
- Source ID
- W911NF1710008
Entities
People
- Joseph Dippong
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- United States Army
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill