Mitigation of interpersonal conflicts: Politeness and time pressure

Kenichi Obuchi, Sachiko Chiba, Osamu Fukushima

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    27 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The prediction that behavioral politeness would evoke mitigating responses and compliance by the other participants was examined in a role-playing experiment. Seventy-three male Japanese students verbally interacted with a confederate opponent, who expressed her unreasonable requests politely or impolitely. Participants were pressed to respond to the request either immediately or after a 30-s delay. The effects of politeness were observed on compliance and on tactical dimensions; that is, participants more frequently complied with and gave more integrative and appeasing responses to the polite confederate than the impolite one. Time pressure was found to limit the effects of politeness only regarding the hostile-appeasing dimension of response.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1035-1042
    Number of pages8
    JournalPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
    Volume22
    Issue number10
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1996 Jan 1

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Social Psychology

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