Aune - Tests of A Theory of Communicative Responsibility

Journal of Language and Social Psychology
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Tests of a Theory of Communicative Responsibility

R. Kelly Aune, Timothy R. Levine, Hee Sun Park, Kelli Jean K. Asada and John A. Banas
Journal of Language and Social Psychology 2005; 24; 358
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X05281425
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10.1177/0261927X05281425
JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / December 2005
Aune et al. / COMMUNICATIVE RESPONSIBILITY
TESTS OF A THEORY OF
COMMUNICATIVE RESPONSIBILITY
R. KELLY AUNE
University of Hawaiì at Manoa
TIMOTHY R. LEVINE
HEE SUN PARK
KELLI JEAN K. ASADA
Rutgers University
JOHN A. BANAS
University of Maryland
Two studies are presented that provide the first empirical tests of a theory of communica-
tive responsibility. The theory posits that individuals in communicative situations make
systematic judgments of the extent to which each party is responsible for contributing to
the process of creating understanding in a communicative event. These judgments affect
the extent to which communicators engage in implicature and inference-making during
the communicative event. The first study demonstrates that judgments of communicative
responsibility affect communicative performance. Respondents’ judgments of their per-
sonal communicative responsibility in a direction-giving task were positively associated
with the length of their directions. The second study showed that a communicator’s failure
to behave in a communicatively responsible manner was associated with negative per-
ceptions of the communicative behavior. Communicative responsibility theory would be
useful in a number of areas of communication research, including natural language
processing, relational communication, misunderstandings and conversational repair,
communication competence, and deception.
Keywords: conversational implicature; inference; understanding; collaboration; com-

mon ground; discourse
The Cooperative Principle (CP) (Grice, 1989) has been invoked suc-
cessfully and repeatedly to explain how interactants are consistently
able to communicate more information with a message than is readily
apparent in a surface assessment of the message. The CP states simply
that one should “make your conversational contribution such as is
AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors are indebted to Krystyna S. Aune for her helpful contri-
butions with earlier drafts of this article. Please address correspondence to R. Kelly Aune,
University of Hawaiì at Manoa, Office of the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, 2500
Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822; e-mail: kaune@hawaii.edu.
JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY,
Vol. 24 No. 4, December 2005 358-381
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X05281425
Ó 2005 Sage Publications
358

Aune et al. / COMMUNICATIVE RESPONSIBILITY 359
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or

direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (p. 26).
Yet, the very simplicity of the CP belies the greater complexities of
its application. The manner in which cooperativeness manifests in our
communicative behavior ranges from the timely use of oblique and
indirect comments to carefully worded, even excruciatingly detailed,
messages. Communicators are sometimes expected to make huge
inferences regarding what another means by what he or she has
stated; other situations allow for aggressive interrogation to ascertain
another’s communicative intentions. Krauss and Fussell (1996)
acknowledge the help that the cooperative principle offers in explain-
ing message production but claim we are still left to resolve communi-
cative choices regarding when to be direct and when to be indirect.
Clearly, communicators are reasonably facile and adept at determin-
ing how to “make (one’s) conversational contribution such as is re-
quired” across a variety of communicative contexts. Still, the question
remains: How is this accomplished?
There have been various attempts to answer this question and some
progress has been made. For example, some of the variance in
inference-making and implicature can be explained with Speech Act
Theory (e.g., Searle, 1969). We often are able to infer a message source’s
intentions, even when such intentions are not readily apparent, by
recognizing the communicative act that is being performed. Another,
more interpersonal approach can be found in Politeness Theory
(Brown & Levinson, 1987). Politeness Theory invokes face manage-
ment concerns to explain why we use indirectness on occasion and how
others are able to make sense of our indirect communicative behavior
by considering face needs.
Recently, Aune (1998) articulated a theory in which he asserts that
much of the variance in our communicative use of implicature and
inference-making can be traced to our judgments of our own and our
conversational partner’s communicative responsibility. The theory is
predicated on the assumptions that people approach a communicative
event with the implicit belief that their primary goal is to establish a
state of shared meaning or understanding between themselves and
that each communicator bears a measure of responsibility for bringing
about that state.
Certainly, the concept of communicative responsibility is implicit in
Grice’s (1989) cooperative principle. In fact, the wording of the CP indi-
cates that cooperativeness manifests in communicative partners rec-
ognizing and accepting their respective communicative responsibili-
ties in service of the goal of creating understanding. However, Aune’s
(1998) communicative responsibility theory (CRT) attempts to take
the CP a step further by examining the process by which communica-
tors determine what their communicative responsibilities are and how
they should satisfy those responsibilities.

360 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / December 2005
Aune (1998) embeds the argument for communicative responsibil-

ity in the growing body of work devoted to examining the constraints of
communicators and communicative context that influence how
interactants will cooperate to achieve the goals of communication. For
instance, Clark (1996) looks at communication as a joint activity, an
activity that requires the collaboration of two or more parties to
achieve a goal of mutual concern. Fussell and her colleagues (e.g.,
Fussell & Krauss, 1989, 1992) have shown how speakers—to maximize
likelihood of creating understanding—will construct different mes-
sages designed to meet the needs and abilities of specific receivers.
These researchers call attention to the need for communicators to rec-
ognize the demands of a communicative situation and—to be coopera-
tive—respond to those demands. Aune (1998) argues that responding
to the demands of a communicative situation can be thought of as a
communicator’s responsibility and that communicators’ burden of
communicative responsibility is neither uniform across communica-
tive situations nor is it necessarily symmetrically distributed among
participants across communicative situations.
Finally, Aune (1998) claims that our judgments of each other’s com-
municative responsibility will influence the extent to which we engage
in the use of conversational implicature and inference-making. Gener-
ally speaking, as our judgment of our personal communicative respon-
sibility increases, we will engage in less implicature and make fewer
inferences.1 We will be increasingly explicit and redundant about what
we are trying to communicate; similarly, we will engage in more solicit-
ing of information and redundancy from our communicative partners.
Behaviorally, this should manifest in the use of increasing interroga-
tion or requests for clarification.
A theory of communicative responsibility would be useful in a vari-
ety of areas of research in human communication, ranging from inter-
personal and relational concerns such as perceptions of communi-
cative competence and relational messages associated with one’s
communicative behavior to message processing concerns such as mis-
understandings, conversational repair, and deception. CRT also could
inform aspects of artificial intelligence, notably those associated with
natural language-processing concerns. First, however, CRT needs to be
subjected to initial testing of its claims and predictions.
The purpose of this article is to present the results of initial tests of
CRT. Two studies are reported. The first study was designed to demon-
strate the effects of judgments of responsibility on communicative
behavior. The second study shows how communicative behavior that is
not consistent with perceivers’ judgments of communicative responsi-
bility can lead to negative perceptions of a communicator’s behavior.

STUDY 1
Study 1 was designed with two specific goals in mind: (a) to demon-
strate that people make judgments of communicative responsibility
and (b) to examine the influence of communicative responsibility on
communicative behavior.
CRT states that as communicators assign to themselves greater
communicative responsibility, they will increase the explicitness of
their message. More specifically, a message source who assigns to him-
self or herself greater communicative responsibility can be expected to
increase the redundancy of a message, as well as increase the amount
of information the message offers. Redundancy can be increased via
repetition of information, creating associations among units of infor-
mation, and incorporating additional communicative codes and media
in construction of the message (Aune, 1998). In the present study, this
hypothesis is tested by asking participants to give directions to a ficti-
tious other who is described as either similar or dissimilar to the par-
ticipant in cultural background.
Providing directions is an example of what Aune (1998) described as
an asymmetrical distribution of the locus of the meaning, which is to
be shared. In any communicative situation, the meaning that is to be
shared may reside asymmetrically in the interactants, that is, the
meaning exists in a more articulated state in one interactant relative
to the other. This is the case in situations such as instructing, teaching,
giving directions, and explaining. One interactant has meaning that he
or she wishes to share with another. The more meaning is believed to
reside asymmetrically, in the party wishing to share that meaning, the
more communicative responsibility will be assigned to that person.
Conversely, meaning may reside relatively equally in both parties.
This is the case when, for instance, interactants are arranging to meet
at a particular time at a mutually known place. Because the mean-
ing that is to be shared is believed to reside relatively equally in both
parties, perceptions of communicative responsibility will be more
symmetrical.
In other situations, meaning may not reside clearly in either party,
as in a problem-solving situation. Meaning that is diffused, not con-
ceptually articulated, or yet to be formed also creates a situation in
which both parties perceive themselves as sharing in communicative
responsibility.
A direction-giving task by itself should create a situation charac-
terized by asymmetrical perceptions of communicative responsibility.
However, the manipulation of perceived cultural dissimilarity be-
tween communicators should lead to judgments of relatively greater
personal communicative responsibility for the source who is commu-
nicating with a culturally dissimilar partner. Aune (1998) claims this
is due to the communicators’ beliefs regarding the degree of common

ground (Clark, 1996) they share. Communicative responsibility is pos-

ited to be more symmetrical in situations characterized by perceptions
of significant common ground. The more cultural, social, personal, gen-
eral, and contextual/situational knowledge communicators believe
they share, the more they will assume that each is capable of contribut-
ing to their communicative goals by referring to their common ground
to make appropriate implicatures and inferences. Models of conversa-
tion typically invoke the concept of common ground to account for the
degree of implicating and inference-making found in conversations
(Clark, 1996; Grice, 1989; Fussell & Krauss, 1989, 1992; Hilton, 1995;
Hirst, McRoy, Heeman, Edmonds, & Horton, 1994; Krauss & Fussell,
1991; McRoy & Hirst, 1995).
In the present study, message sources who must give directions to
another who is culturally dissimilar bear a proportionally greater bur-
den of communicative responsibility due to the limited ability of their
conversational partners to contribute to the creation of understanding.
A culturally dissimilar communicative partner who is limited in social,
cultural, and situational knowledge is unlikely to be able to make
many inferences or even ask the right questions. Consequently,
sources giving directions to the culturally dissimilar other are ex-
pected to attribute greater personal communicative responsibility to
themselves than will sources dealing with culturally similar others.
Increased communicative responsibility should lead, in turn, to
increases in message elaboration and redundancy used by the source
when encoding directions. This should manifest in communicative
responsibility being positively associated with overall message length.
METHOD
Overview. Research participants were asked to imagine themselves

in a scenario in which they were in an unknown city and had been
asked to give directions to a new acquaintance over the phone. Partici-
pants judged their personal communicative responsibility for achiev-
ing understanding with the target in the scenario. All participants
were given a map and asked to record on audiotape their direction-
giving as if they were talking with the target over the phone.
Participants. Ninety-four (36 women, 58 men) undergraduate stu-

dents from a variety of speech communication classes at a large univer-
sity in the Western United States took part in the first study. Partici-
pants’ ages ranged from 17 to 52, with a mean age of 22.4 years (SD =
5.89).
Procedures and manipulation. Participants volunteered to take

part in a study that was examining how people give directions. Individ-

ual participants were met by one of the researchers in the assigned

room. The researcher provided an overview of the task and summa-
rized the nature of the scenario. The participant was then instructed
regarding the order in which to perform the tasks. When the partici-
pant indicated that he or she understood and was comfortable with the
task, the researcher left the room, allowing the participant to work at
his or her own pace.
Each participant was asked to read one of two scenarios. The scenar-
ios differed only in whom the participant was speaking with when giv-
ing directions. In the “similar” condition (i.e., high common ground),
the target was another student from the participant’s university,
although not a student who was known to the participant. In the “dis-
similar” condition (i.e., low common ground), the participant was asked
to provide directions to a student from a university in South Africa.
The scenarios can be found in Appendix A.
After reading the scenario, half of the participants proceeded
directly to studying the map and recording their directions. After
recording their directions, these participants completed a question-
naire assessing their personal communicative responsibility in the
given context. To counterbalance the design and detect possible order
effects, the other half of the participants completed the personal com-
municative responsibility questionnaire prior to recording their direc-
tions. After all tasks were completed, the participant was debriefed,
thanked, and excused.
Map. The map from which participants were to provide directions

was fictitious, created for the purposes of the study. This ensured that
all participants had the same initial level of familiarity with the map.
Street names were commonplace for the United States (e.g., North
Grand Avenue, State Street), and natural landmarks (e.g., lakes,
woods), structural landmarks (e.g., airport, buildings), and cultural
landmarks (e.g., K-Mart, The Gap) were placed throughout the area
depicted by the map. Participants could choose from among several
routes when providing directions. The full-color map was created using
Corel Presentation software and was presented to participants on
standard-sized, white paper protected with a plastic cover. The map
can be found in Figure 1.
Communicative responsibility. All participants responded to five 7-

point Likert-type items bounded by strongly disagree and strongly
agree that assessed the extent to which they felt communicatively
responsible in the scenario. The responsibility items (see Appendix B)
had an alpha reliability of .79 and were averaged to create a personal
communicative responsibility scale with higher numbers indicating
greater communicative responsibility.

Figure 1. Stimulus Map Used in Study 1
Message length. Each of the audiotaped directions was transcribed.

A simple estimate of message elaboration and redundancy was ob-
tained by counting the number of words each participant used in
encoding the directions to the target. All words directly pertaining to

the directions were counted. Telephone greetings or introductions (e.g.,

“Hello, my name is ____.”) and parting remarks (e.g., “We are looking
forward to seeing you.”) were not counted. Words were counted using
the word count function of WordPerfect 8.0.
RESULTS
Given that the manipulation was designed to create perceptions of

greater or lesser similarity and shared cultural knowledge, data analy-
ses included only those participants who were most likely to perceive
themselves as having a similar cultural background with the local uni-
versity student described in the manipulation. Specifically, hypotheses
were tested on the data from the 67 participants who recorded their
cultural background as “Mainland American,” “Local” (i.e., culture
peculiar to Hawaii residents), or “Hawaiian.” Remaining participants
whose data were not analyzed were largely Chinese national or
Japanese national transfer students.
A 2 (stimulus student’s home: local student or South Africa) ´ 2 (task
performance order: record directions before or after completing per-
sonal communicative responsibility items) ANOVA was used to test
whether the manipulation of the stimulus student’s home affected par-
ticipant’s personal communicative responsibility in the predicted
manner. Order of task performance was included to ascertain whether
completing the personal communicative responsibility scale affected
the manner in which participants encoded directions.
Results showed that participants reported greater personal commu-
nicative responsibility when dealing with the student from South
Africa (M = 5.23, SD = .90) than when dealing with the student from
their own university (M = 3.89, SD = .92), F(1, 62) = 35.99, p < .01, h2 =
.35. There were no significant differences in communicative responsi-
bility as a function of the order in which the participant completed the
task: directions prior to completing scale, M = 4.39, SD = 1.29; direc-
tions after completing scale, M = 4.73, SD = .94, F(1,62) = 2.33, ns. The
interaction between the two variables was not significant, F(1,62) =
1.47, ns.
A path analysis was conducted to test the expectation that de-
creases in source-receiver common ground would produce increases in
personal communicative source responsibility, which would, in turn,
lead to increases in the number of words used by the source to encode
directions. The analysis was conducted using the path analysis sub-
routine of the PACKAGE computer program (Hunter & Hamilton,
1986). The stimulus student’s home (i.e., Hawaii or South Africa) was
coded as 1 or 2, respectively, and was entered as an exogenous variable.
Participants’ personal communicative responsibility was entered as a
first-order endogenous variable and the number of words participants
used in their directions was entered as a second-order endogenous

Table 1
Path Analysis of the Theoretical Model
Zero-Order Correlations Between Stimulus Student’s Home,

Participants’ Communicative Responsibility for Creating Understanding,
and Number of Words Used in Directions
Student’s Home Communicative Responsibility Number of Words
1. .59** .26*
2. .40**
3.
Errors (actual-reproduced)
Student’s Home Communicative Responsibility Number of Words
1. .00 .02
2. .00
3.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
.59 .37
Student’s Home-----------> Communicative Responsibility ------------> Number of Words
Figure 2. Theoretical Model With Path Coefficients Depicting the Relation-

ships Between Stimulus Student’s Home, Participants’ Communica-
tive Responsibility, and Number of Words Used in Directions
variable. The correlations used for the path analysis and the errors are
presented in Table 1 and the theoretical model with path coefficients is
presented in Figure 2.
The results of the path analysis show statistically significant path
coefficients from the stimulus student’s home to participants’ personal
communicative responsibility, b = .59, and from participants’ personal
communicative responsibility to the number of words they used when
giving directions, b = .37. The model was consistent with expectations
and the overall chi-square goodness-of-fit test was nonsignificant, c2 =
.02, df = 1, ns.
Additional analyses. The results indicate that participants’ assess-

ments of their personal communicative responsibility were associated
with longer messages as expected. However, the results do not indicate
the specific reason that these messages were longer. According to CRT,
messages encoded by a higher responsibility source will be more
explicit and more redundant, suggesting longer messages. However, a
message can be longer because it offers more information and it can be
longer because it repeats information. The results of the initial test do
not indicate whether the longer messages of the higher responsibility

sources gain their length from additional information, repetition of

information, or both.
Guidance in answering this question can be found in Berger’s (1997)
Hierarchy Principle, which asserts that individuals tend to approach
information processing tasks with an eye toward parsimony and mini-
mizing cognitive effort. In the present study, this reasoning would sug-
gest that longer messages would gain their length via repetition, which
would be a relatively low-effort method of increasing redundancy. Con-
sequently, additional analyses were performed on the data to test this
reasoning.
A type-token ratio was created that provided an estimate of the
number of unique words used relative to the total number of words
used. A lower type-token ratio would indicate that longer messages
were not deriving their length from the introduction of new informa-
tion; rather, their relative length is more likely attributable to repeti-
tion of information that the source deemed important. The correlation
between personal communicative responsibility and the type-token
ratio was negative and significant, r(61) = –.36, p < .05. The more com-
municative responsibility that participants attributed to themselves,
the lower was the type-token ratio of their message, indicating that the
messages created by the participants who believed themselves to be
more communicatively responsible were characterized by greater
repetition of words.
Additional analyses also were conducted to examine how other
aspects of message content might have been related to communicative
responsibility. Message sources would presumably make use of per-
ceived common ground when encoding directions (Clark, 1996). More
specifically, sources would be more likely to refer to characteristics of
the map that would be of most use to the hypothetical receiver. Conse-
quently, we would expect some variability in source references to natu-
ral landmarks, which ought to be most generally useful to an unknown
other, and street names or cultural landmarks, which may be less use-
ful than natural landmarks in orienting an unknown other who may be
less familiar with American street names or cultural landmarks.
After partialing out variance due to the total number of words spo-
ken, correlations were run between personal communicative responsi-
bility and the number of references made to natural landmarks, cul-
tural landmarks, and street names. Results showed that judgments of
personal communicative responsibility were positively correlated with
references to natural landmarks, r(58) = .26, p < .05, indicating that as
participants judged themselves more responsible for creating under-
standing in the scenario, they made more frequent references to the
natural landmarks. Partial correlations between personal communi-
cative responsibility and references to cultural landmarks and street
names were not significant.

DISCUSSION
Study 1 tested hypotheses derived from CRT by examining how

judgments of one’s personal communicative responsibility would be
affected when encoding a message for a person with greater or lesser
common ground as depicted by degree of cultural similarity. Results
show that in situations in which meaning is asymmetrically distrib-
uted and the source is the locus of that meaning (such as providing
directions), a message source talking with a dissimilar other will feel
more communicatively responsible than will a source talking with a
person of similar background.
The means for both the similar and dissimilar condition are consis-
tent with what would be expected from CRT. Personal communicative
responsibility in the similar condition approached the midpoint of the
scale, which would be consistent with a fairly high degree of perceived
common ground. In the dissimilar condition, the means were above the
midpoint, suggesting that participants felt greater personal communi-
cative responsibility than they attributed to the hypothetical student
receiver. The results also show that the more communicative responsi-
bility respondents attributed to themselves, the longer their messages
became. Finally, in the present study, personal communicative respon-
sibility was associated with a lower type-token ratio. This would sug-
gest that participants were creating more redundancy in their mes-
sages by repeating important information and perhaps drawing more
connections among units of information. These results are consistent
with Berger’s (1997) Hierarchy Principle, which asserts that individu-
als, when faced with the thwarting of communicative plans, will invoke
lower level changes in their plan hierarchy before moving on to more
abstract plan levels. Results also suggest that participants drew from
their assumptions about common ground when composing their mes-
sages. The positive correlation between communicative responsibility
and reference to landmarks indicates that participants incorporated
into their directions content that would be most generally useful by
their hypothetical partner. Cultural landmarks (such as commercial or
retail signs) and street names may not have as generalizable recogni-
tion value as natural landmarks (e.g., lakes, woods).
The results also are consistent with other studies examining mes-
sage production as a function of target characteristics. Fussell and
Krauss (1989) found that participants generated longer descriptions of
nonsense figures when their descriptions were to be used by another
student to identify the figures (social condition) than when the partici-
pants were to use the descriptions themselves, at some future point, to
identify the figures (nonsocial condition). Fussell and Krauss invoked
a common ground explanation, claiming that participants in the social
condition would write descriptions they believed would be most useful
to the nonspecific target. That explanation is consistent with CRT, but

CRT also would hypothesize that the message source in the social con-
dition experienced a greater sense of communicative responsibility
than would the source in the nonsocial condition. The message source
in the social condition must develop a message that will create a state
of understanding with a nonspecific other who is unfamiliar with the
stimuli figures. In CRT terms, there is a greater asymmetry of locus
of meaning; the message source has much more of the information
the target needs. The source’s communicative responsibility is com-
pounded by the fact that the target will not be able to interrogate the
source for additional information, increasing the burden of responsi-
bility for the success of the communicative event on the source. In the
nonsocial condition, the target for the source is the source at Time 2,
some point in the future. In this condition, there is greater symmetry of
locus of meaning between the source and the target: the target knows
what the source knows. In sum, CRT offers another perspective that
may account for additional variance in lines of research that examine
source-target characteristics and relationships.
This study adds weight to the assertions that (a) we assess commu-
nicative responsibility for creating understanding in communicative
situations, (b) contextual cues in the communicative situation contrib-
ute to the assessment of communicative responsibility, and (c) percep-
tions of communicative responsibility influence our communicative
behavior in a manner consistent with CRT predictions.
Study 2 examines the implications of failing to behave in a manner
consistent with judgments of communicative responsibility. CRT sug-
gests that failure to behave in a manner consistent with the level of
communicative responsibility another has associated with us may lead
the other to question our communicative competence (Aune, 1998). In
such situations, we might even find ourselves the subject of negative
attributions, such as that we are attempting to withhold informa-
tion or be deceptive (McCornack, 1992; McCornack, Levine, Solowczuk,
Torres, & Campbell, 1992). Study 2 examines how perceptions of a com-
municator can be affected when that person fails to behave in a man-
ner consistent with a level of communicative responsibility associated
with a communicative context.
STUDY 2
Grice (1989) associates a receiver’s communicative competence with

the ability to “work out or grasp intuitively” (p. 31) an implicature. It is
likely that many judgments of communicative incompetence arise in
part from differing judgments of communicative responsibility made
by a source and receiver. If one’s communicative behavior is not con-
sistent with a partner’s assessment of one’s communicative responsi-
bility, then one may be seen as engaging in unexpected and perhaps

erratic communicative behavior. Furthermore, differing judgments of

communicative responsibility can lead to expectancy violations
(Burgoon & Le Poire, 1993; Burgoon, Stern, & Dillman, 1995) that beg
explanation. For instance, consider a situation in which James sees the
communicative responsibility of himself and communicative partner
Larry to be symmetrical and only moderately high, whereas Larry sees
an asymmetrical assignment of communicative responsibility in which
Larry believes he is highly responsible for achieving understanding.
We would expect Larry’s communicative behavior to be characterized
by greater explication and interrogation relative to James. Further-
more, given their differing perceptions of communicative responsibil-
ity in the scenario, it is likely that James would judge Larry’s behavior
as condescending, perhaps indicative of mistrust.
In a casual, everyday conversation between two people with a high
degree of common ground, we expect communicators to make signifi-
cant use of implicature and inference-making. Even if the meaning is
asymmetrically distributed—residing largely in a message source—
the receiver in such a context is still expected to infer much of the
meaning. Interrogation on the part of the receiver would not be seen as
appropriate communicative behavior and could be perceived as com-
municatively incompetent at best, perhaps indicative of a negative
relational message such as lack of trust for the source at worst.
Study 2 provides a test of this reasoning by examining the rami-
fications of not behaving in a manner consistent with judgments of
communicative responsibility for a situation. In the present case, a dia-
logue was created wherein one party engages in interrogating behav-
ior. However, the context of the conversation was manipulated such
that the interrogator was either engaging in a professional interview
or a casual conversation. It was expected that the interviewer would be
judged as more communicatively responsible than the casual commu-
nicator. Consequently, we expected that the interrogating behavior of
the casual communicator would be perceived as more inappropriate
relative to the same behavior exhibited by the interviewer.
METHOD
Overview. Research participants read and then responded to a fic-

tional conversation between “Anna” and “Mike.” Although all of the
participants read the same dialogue, the conversational context was
manipulated to produce an interrogation-appropriate situation and an
interrogation-inappropriate situation.
Participants. Thirty-five undergraduate students (15 men, 20

women) from a large university in the Western United States took part
in the study. The average age of participants was 22.7 years (SD =

5.53). Several ethnic and cultural backgrounds were represented in

the sample.
Procedure. Data were collected during regular class sessions. Each

participant was given a packet that reported a fictitious dialogue
between Anna and Mike and a paragraph describing the setting in
which the dialogue occurred. In addition, each packet contained a
questionnaire with several items assessing participants’ judgments of
Anna’s and Mike’s communicative responsibility as well as their evalu-
ations of Anna’s and Mike’s communicative behavior. Participants
were asked to read the dialogue and then respond to the items. The
stimulus dialogue can be found in Appendix C.
Manipulation. Although all participants read the same dialogue,

the context of the conversation was manipulated so that approxi-
mately half of the participants were told that the dialogue occurred in
an interrogation-appropriate setting and half of the participants were
told that the dialogue occurred in an interrogation-inappropriate set-
ting. For the interrogation-appropriate setting, participants were
given the following scenario:
Anna is an anthropology professor who is conducting research on the

night life and recreational behavior of university students. Mike has vol-
unteered to be part of her study and has come in to be interviewed by
Anna. Anna and Mike have been talking for a while and the topic has
now turned to Mike’s activities on the previous evening.
The interrogation-inappropriate setting was presented in the follow-

ing scenario:
Anna and Mike are university students having lunch together. They are
girlfriend and boyfriend and have been seeing each other for about a year
now. Anna and Mike go out together almost every Friday and Saturday
night if they are free from work. Weekday evenings they do not get to
spend together very often because Anna usually works in the evening.
Anna and Mike have been talking for a while and the topic has now
turned to Mike’s activities on the previous evening.
Measurement. After reading the dialogue, participants were asked

to respond to several statements concerning Anna’s and Mike’s behav-
ior. They were instructed to consider the situation and context in which
Anna’s and Mike’s conversation took place when responding to the
items. Participants recorded their level of agreement with the state-
ments on 7-point Likert-type scales bounded by strongly disagree and
strongly agree. Four items measured participants’ perceptions of
Anna’s communicative responsibility. Alpha reliability for these items
was .71. Three items assessed participants’ perceptions of Mike’s com-
municative responsibility (a = .76). Six items assessed how appropri-

ate participants perceived Anna’s behavior to be (a = .81). Five items

assessed how appropriate participants perceived Mike’s behavior to be
(a = .71). All of the scales were averaged, yielding communicative
responsibility and appropriateness of communicative behavior scales
for both Anna and Mike. Items were reflected so that higher scores
indicated perceptions of greater communicative responsibility or more
inappropriate communicative behavior. All items can be found in
Appendix D.
RESULTS
Data were analyzed using two 2 (context: interrogation-appropriate

or inappropriate) ´ 2 (sex of respondent) ANOVAs on the communica-
tive responsibility and the inappropriateness of communicative behav-
ior scales for both Anna and Mike. Sex of respondent was included to
test for any effects that might arise from men and women differently
perceiving the conversation between the dating Mike and Anna.
As expected, Anna was attributed more responsibility for creating
understanding in the interrogation-appropriate context (i.e., the
interview setting) (M = 5.21, SD = .77) than in the interrogation-inap-
propriate context (i.e., casual conversation setting) (M = 3.54, SD =
1.07), F(1, 31) = 27.72, p < .001, h2 = .42. There was no effect for sex of
respondent, F(1, 31) = 1.82, and the interaction between context and
sex of respondent was not significant, F(1, 31) = 1.18.
Of interest, Mike was attributed a higher responsibility for creating
understanding in the interrogation-inappropriate context (M = 4.03,
SD = 1.62) than in the interrogation-appropriate context (M = 3.01, SD
= .90), F(1, 31) = 4.79, p < .05, h2 = .13. Neither the main effect for sex of
respondent, F(1, 31) = .18, nor the interaction between context and sex
of respondent was significant, F(1, 31) = .01.
Also consistent with expectations, Anna’s communicative behavior was
perceived as more inappropriate in the interrogation-inappropriate
condition (M = 4.96) than in the interrogation-appropriate condition
(M = 3.09), F(1, 31) = 23.52, p < .001, h2 = .42. The main effect for sex of
respondent was not significant, F(1, 31) = .00, ns. However, a disordinal
interaction between sex of respondent and context was significant, F(1,
31) = 4.23, p < .05, h2 = .08. Although the pattern of means was identi-
cal, it appears that male respondents made more extreme assessments
of Anna’s behavior (interrogation-inappropriate context M = 2.69,
interrogation-appropriate context M = 5.36) than did the female respon-
dents (interrogation-inappropriate context M = 3.48, interrogation-
appropriate M = 4.56).
Perceptions of Mike’s communicative behavior reflected assess-
ments of his communicative responsibility. Mike’s behavior was per-
ceived as more inappropriate in the interrogation-inappropriate

condition (M = 3.86) than in the interrogation-appropriate condition

(M = 2.92), F(1, 31) = 5.50, p < .05, h2 = .15.
A separate ANCOVA on perceptions of communicative behaviors
was conducted after controlling for the effect of perceived communica-
tive responsibility. This was done to test for any additional variance
that the interrogation appropriate/inappropriate manipulation may
have had on perceptions of communicative inappropriateness beyond
that contributed by perceptions of communicative responsibility. The
possibility that the interrogation appropriateness manipulation might
have implications for face threat and face management warranted this
more detailed analysis.
After controlling for the effects of perceived communicative respon-
sibility, Anna’s communicative behavior was still perceived as more
inappropriate in the interrogation-inappropriate condition relative to
the interrogation-appropriate condition, F(1, 30) = 9.92, p < .005, h2 =
.18. The main effect for sex of respondent was not significant, F(1, 30) =
.00, but the disordinal interaction between sex of respondent and con-
text continued to be significant, F(1, 30) = 4.35, p < .05, h2 = .08.
After controlling for communicative responsibility, the main effect
for the interrogation appropriateness manipulation on perceptions
of the communicative inappropriateness, Mike’s behavior only ap-
proached significance, F(1, 30) = 3.15, p < .09, h2 = .08.
DISCUSSION
The results of Study 2 add support to Study 1 for the claim that we
make judgments of communicative responsibility in conversations.
The results also provide support for the claim that failing to behave in
a manner consistent with judgments of communicative responsibility
can result in negative perceptions of one’s communicative behavior.
Of interest, the results also illustrate how judgments of communica-
tive responsibility are malleable within a conversation and are made,
in part, as a function of the dynamics of the communicative interaction.
In the present study, Mike is attributed greater responsibility in
the casual conversation context than he is in the interview context.
Granted, an examination of the means shows that perceptions of
Mike’s communicative responsibility fall below the midpoint of the
communicative responsibility scale in the interview context and are
exactly on the midpoint for the casual conversation context, indicating
that Mike is judged consistently very low in communicative respon-
sibility, as would be expected. Still, it would appear that Anna’s inter-
rogating behavior in the casual conversation context may have led
respondents to see Mike as not forthcoming enough given her probing.
Although respondents perceived Anna’s interrogating behavior as
inappropriate, they apparently believe Mike should be somewhat ac-
commodating, be more forthcoming, and offer more explicit responses

given Anna’s persistent questioning. Furthermore, when Mike did not

accommodate, his communicative behavior also was judged as more
inappropriate, albeit the harshest judgments of Mike’s inappropri-
ateness were still very low on the inappropriateness of communication
scale.
The results of Study 2 also indicate that engaging in interrogation
can affect perceptions of communicative appropriateness in multiple
ways. The data show that inappropriate interrogation certainly affects
perceptions of communicative responsibility, as CRT asserts. However,
even after controlling for perceptions of communicative responsibility,
it appears that the interrogation appropriateness manipulation af-
fected perceptions of communicative inappropriateness. This is likely
a result of the perceived violations of politeness norms associated with
inappropriate interrogation and the resulting face threat that such
violations would produce. This finding raises the issue of a relationship
between perceived violations of communicative responsibility and
attributions regarding those violations, suggesting some fruitful ave-
nues for research discussed below.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The two tests presented here offer initial support for a theory of com-
municative responsibility. Both studies provide support for the asser-
tion that we assess communicative situations and the interactants
involved and make consequent judgments concerning the extent to
which each of the interactants is responsible for achieving the level of
understanding associated with that communicative situation.
Study 1 illustrated the role that perceived common ground can play
in influencing judgments of communicative responsibility. In addition,
Study 1 offered evidence that communicative responsibility can affect
communicative behavior as well. Results are consistent with those of
Fussell and Krauss (1989, 1992) who showed that respondents produce
more elaborate answers for targets with whom they have less common
ground. In Study 1, participants who judged themselves more respon-
sible for achieving understanding provided longer directions for a tar-
get. In addition, the results of Study 1 are consistent with the Hierar-
chy Principle (Berger, 1997), which indicates that individuals faced
with thwarted communicative plans will initially alter their plans in a
manner that is less cognitively demanding. In the present study, the
data suggest that participants required to create messages for an indi-
vidual of a different cultural background from themselves employed
repetition to increase the effectiveness of their messages. Finally,
results of Study 1 are consistent with those of Fussell and Krauss, in
which respondents composed messages incorporating more commonly
used concepts and language when creating messages for unknown

others. Participants in the present study who judged themselves more

communicatively responsible made more reference to natural land-
marks in their messages.
Given the results of Study 1, research should begin to examine more
closely the behavioral correlates of communicative responsibility.
Although Study 1 provided evidence that communicative behavior can
be affected by communicative responsibility, it did not examine behav-
ior to the extent detailed by CRT. CRT provides very specific predic-
tions regarding the communicative behavior that ought to change as
a function of communicative responsibility. More specific tests that
examine the relationship between communicative responsibility and
the specific forms of redundancy outlined in CRT are warranted. An
appropriate avenue of investigation would be to assess the degree of
cognitive difficulty associated with encoding different forms of redun-
dancy and investigate whether increasing communicative respon-
sibility is associated with the use of increasingly more cognitively
demanding forms of redundancy (Berger, 1997).
Study 2 provided evidence that communicative responsibility is
associated with evaluative judgments of communication behavior as
well. Persons who do not behave in a manner consistent with perceived
levels of communicative responsibility are judged more harshly than
those who do. However, Study 2 only assessed judgments of appropri-
ateness or inappropriateness of communicative behavior. Research
will further benefit from employing an attributional perspective. Re-
search must examine what attributions are made when a communi-
cator fails to adhere to expectations of communicative responsibility.
Holtgraves (1998) points out that a hearer will generate inferences
about a speaker’s motives when the speaker violates a conversational
maxim. Research has shown that attributions of deceptive intent can
arise from perceived violations of conversational maxims (McCornack,
1992; McCornack et al., 1992) and communicative expectations (Aune,
Ching, & Levine, 1996). What other attributions might be formed to
explain another’s failure to meet our communicative responsibility
judgments? CRT suggests that failures to behave consistently with
expectations regarding one’s communicative responsibility may be
explained in reference to the particular constraint or constraints that
produced the judgment of responsibility. For instance, we might form
judgments of communicative responsibility for another based on an
assumption of a high degree of common ground only to find that the
person’s communicative behavior is not consistent with our expecta-
tions. In such cases, we might rethink our assumption concerning the
degree of common ground we share with this person before making an
attribution of, say, deception or communicative incompetence.
Data from Study 2 suggest how such an attributional process might
play out. Study 2 showed that judgments of communicative responsi-
bility and violations of same were associated with perceptions of the

violator’s communicative inappropriateness. However, Study 2 also

showed that communicative behavior was judged as even more inap-
propriate in interrogation-inappropriate settings than would be pre-
dicted by perceptions of communicative responsibility alone. The lat-
ter finding suggests that research participants’ negative judgment of
girlfriend Anna’s communicative behavior was a function of both her
perceived violation of communicative responsibility as well as the re-
lational messages participants associated with her communicative
behavior. Her communicative behavior may have been judged harshly
not simply because it was inconsistent with her perceived communica-
tive responsibility but her inappropriate interrogation suggested a
high level of mistrust of Mike.
Conversely, although the expected relationship between Mike’s per-
ceived communicative responsibility and the inappropriateness of his
communicative behavior was found, controlling for communicative
responsibility produced a considerably weaker relationship between
the interrogation-appropriateness manipulation and perceptions of
Mike’s communicative appropriateness than was found with Anna.
This finding would suggest that participants were judging Mike’s com-
municative appropriateness more on his adherence to their percep-
tions of his communicative responsibility, and participants were less
inclined to form attributions of specific relational messages when his
behavior was not consistent with their perceptions of his communica-
tive responsibility. It must be remembered that participants did not
see Mike as very high in communicative responsibility and they did
not judge his communication behavior as extremely inappropriate. It
may be that the impetus to form attributions to explain another’s viola-
tions of communicative responsibility is a function of the degree of con-
fidence a perceiver holds in his or her judgment of another’s commu-
nicative responsibility and the extent to which the other violates
perceptions of communicative responsibility. Perhaps lesser violations
or violations of less confidently held perceptions of communicative
responsibility create less urgency to explain those violations. In
the present study, Anna’s violations were seen as more extreme and
begged explanation; Mike’s violations, conversely, were noticeable but
perhaps not aberrant enough to warrant explanation.
One limitation to the above studies is that they focused largely on a
message source’s communicative responsibility and subsequent com-
municative behavior. Communicative events were limited somewhat
to situations in which participants’ roles were fairly fixed as a source or
receiver. Manipulations in both studies affected the message source’s
personal communicative responsibility, whether the source was a par-
ticipant or a fictional source. In actual conversations, however, people
rarely play static source or receiver roles. Rather, they switch fluidly
back and forth between the two roles. Furthermore, Study 2 suggested
how judgments of communicative responsibility can be malleable,

changing with the dynamics of actual conversation. Future research

into the effects of judgments of communicative responsibility on com-
munication behavior will benefit from live interaction between
communicators.
In sum, the studies reported here provide an initial basis of empiri-
cal support for the theory of communicative responsibility. Further
testing of many of the specifics of CRT awaits; however, these ini-
tial tests suggest that the study of a broad range of communication
behavior—impression management and communicative competence,
deception, conversation planning and repair—may benefit from appli-
cation of CRT principles.
APPENDIX A
Scenarios for Direction-Giving Task
Similar Target Scenario
You are attending a conference of university students from around the

world. The conference is being held in a medium-sized city on the Mainland.
Tonight, you are attending a special dinner for student participants at a res-
taurant some distance from the hotel. One of the students calls the restaurant
from the hotel saying that he is missing his map with the directions to the res-
taurant. He has a rental car and is planning on driving over after somebody
from your group gives him the necessary directions. You get the job of providing
him with the directions. You remember talking with this student earlier.
Though you never met him before the conference, you know that he is from the
University of Hawaii. He has lived on Oahu all his life and is currently major-
ing in sociology. Please take a few minutes to study the map. When you are
ready we will begin recording. You may refer to the map as much as needed
while recording.
Dissimilar Target Scenario
You are attending a conference of university students from around the

world. The conference is being held in a medium-sized city on the Mainland.
Tonight, you are attending a special dinner for student participants at a res-
taurant some distance from the hotel. One of the students calls the restaurant
from the hotel saying that he is missing his map with the directions to the res-
taurant. He has a rental car and is planning on driving over after somebody
from your group gives him the necessary directions. You get the job of providing
him with the directions. You remember talking with him earlier and you know
that he is an international student whose English is quite good. He is a student
at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. He has lived in
South Africa all his life and is currently majoring in sociology. Please take a few
minutes to study the map. When you are ready we will begin recording. You
may refer to the map as much as needed while recording.

APPENDIX B
Communicative Responsibility Scale
1. Given the circumstances, the responsibility for making certain that we
understand each other about the directions is mostly mine.
2. I feel more responsibility to give good directions in this particular situa-
tion, and with this particular student, than I do in most situations where
I have to give somebody directions.
3. I believe this student is expecting me to make an extra effort to provide
very clear and easy-to-follow directions.
4. In this situation, I have a bigger share of responsibility than the other
student has for the understanding that should result from our
communication.
5. It is appropriate, under the circumstances, that I should work harder
than this student to make certain we understand each other.
APPENDIX C
Dialogue Stimulus for Study 2
Anna: So, what did you do last night?

Mike: I went out with the guys, had a few beers.
Anna: Which guys? I mean, were these guys your best friends? Guys
from work? Guys you know from school?
Mike: Oh, I guess it was Ronnie, Joey, the guys I usually hang with,
and a couple of other guys that I know from where I used to
work.
Anna: So where did you go? A bar? Did you go eat anywhere?
Mike: Nah. We went to the usual places—Ryan’s, D.J. Dog’s,
Shipley’s.
Anna: Did you drink at each of these places? How much did you
drink?
Mike: Oh, I had a couple of beers at each place, maybe three. Not too
much. Hey I had to work today y’know.
Anna: How late did you stay out? When did you get in?
Mike: Not too late. Maybe 11, 11:30. Had to work.
Anna: Do you plan to do this again tonight?
Mike: Oh I dunno, I hadn’t thought about it yet. Haven’t talked to
the guys. Maybe I will. Gotta see what happens.
APPENDIX D
Communicative Responsibility Scales and
Negative Perception Scales
Please consider the situation and context in which Anna and Mike’s conver-
sation took place when responding to the following items.

Items Assessing Anna’s Communicative Responsibility
1. Given the context in which their conversation is taking place, the re-
sponsibility for making sure that Anna understands Mike is mostly
Anna’s.
2. In this context, Anna is more responsible than Mike for making certain
she understands everything Mike is saying.
3. I would expect Anna to make an extra effort to understand everything
Mike is saying.
4. It is appropriate, in this context, that Anna should work harder to make
certain she understands Mike.
Items Assessing Mike’s Communicative Responsibility
1. In this context, Mike has a much bigger responsibility for creating

understanding between them than Anna does.
2. It is Mike’s job here to make sure that Anna fully understands every-
thing he says.
3. Given the context, Mike is more responsible than Anna for making cer-
tain Anna understands everything about what Mike did last night.
Items Assessing Negative Perceptions of Anna’s Behavior
1. I believe Anna’s behavior is perfectly normal for the context.

2. Anna appears to be suspicious of Mike’s responses.
3. Anna is asking an unusual number of questions, considering the context
of their conversation.
4. There is nothing wrong with the questions that Anna is asking.
5. Anna is asking questions because she thinks Mike is concealing things
from her.
6. If I were in Anna’s shoes, I would behave exactly the same way.
Items Assessing Negative Perceptions of Mike’s Behavior
1. Mike’s answers are quite typical, considering the context.

2. Mike is deliberately trying to withhold information from Anna.
3. There is nothing wrong with the answers Mike is providing Anna.
4. If I were in Mike’s shoes, I would behave exactly the same way.
5. Mike is being very honest with Anna.
NOTE
1. The hypothesized linear relationship between communicative responsibility and

implicature and inference-making described in the present article is limited to communi-
cative situations in which information-sharing, as opposed to social or relational func-
tions, is a primary function. The relationship between inference-making, implicature,

and communicative responsibility is probably more curvilinear rather than linear when
we take into account those levels of communication that serve more social/relational
functions than functions of information-sharing. Phatic communication, for example, is
engaged less for purposes of information-sharing and more to establish simple social con-
nections. As such, there is very little in the way of inference-making or implicature tak-
ing place except in the most general sense. Communicative responsibility is arguably
minimal—perhaps almost irrelevant—when engaged in phatic communication. How-
ever, as the need to share more information, and more specific information, increases,
communicative responsibility increases as well. This should manifest initially in com-
municators creating messages that incorporate implicature that is minimally
cognitively demanding, that is, intended meaning is easily discernible with very little
inference-making required. As the communicative process focuses more on information
exchange, communicative responsibility should continue to increase, and messages will
incorporate somewhat more elaborate implicature reflective of the greater and more spe-
cific information being shared. The obligation to discern intended meaning via more
elaborate inference-making will increase as well. Communicators will be increasingly
expected to complete the line of reasoning necessary to make sense of a source’s message.
This pattern should continue until some critical point in which the amount and specific-
ity of information being exchanged leads to a level of communicative responsibility that
warrants changes in communicative tactics. At this point, the linear relationship speci-
fied by communicative responsibility theory (CRT) takes over, and increasing commu-
nicative responsibility is associated with decreasing implicature and inference-making,
as described in the current article.
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Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Tests of a Theory of Communicative Responsibility

The online version of this article can be found at:

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Keywords: conversational implicature; inference; understanding; collaboration; com-

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required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or

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Aune (1998) embeds the argument for communicative responsibil-

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ground (Clark, 1996) they share. Communicative responsibility is pos-

Overview. Research participants were asked to imagine themselves

Participants. Ninety-four (36 women, 58 men) undergraduate stu-

Procedures and manipulation. Participants volunteered to take

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ual participants were met by one of the researchers in the assigned

Map. The map from which participants were to provide directions

Communicative responsibility. All participants responded to five 7-

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Figure 1. Stimulus Map Used in Study 1

Message length. Each of the audiotaped directions was transcribed.

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the directions were counted. Telephone greetings or introductions (e.g.,

Given that the manipulation was designed to create perceptions of

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Zero-Order Correlations Between Stimulus Student’s Home,

*p < .05. **p < .01.

Figure 2. Theoretical Model With Path Coefficients Depicting the Relation-

Additional analyses. The results indicate that participants’ assess-

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sources gain their length from additional information, repetition of

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Study 1 tested hypotheses derived from CRT by examining how

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Grice (1989) associates a receiver’s communicative competence with

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erratic communicative behavior. Furthermore, differing judgments of

Overview. Research participants read and then responded to a fic-

Participants. Thirty-five undergraduate students (15 men, 20

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5.53). Several ethnic and cultural backgrounds were represented in

Procedure. Data were collected during regular class sessions. Each

Manipulation. Although all participants read the same dialogue,

Anna is an anthropology professor who is conducting research on the

The interrogation-inappropriate setting was presented in the follow-

Measurement. After reading the dialogue, participants were asked

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ate participants perceived Anna’s behavior to be (a = .81). Five items

Data were analyzed using two 2 (context: interrogation-appropriate

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condition (M = 3.86) than in the interrogation-appropriate condition

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given Anna’s persistent questioning. Furthermore, when Mike did not

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others. Participants in the present study who judged themselves more

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violator’s communicative inappropriateness. However, Study 2 also

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changing with the dynamics of actual conversation. Future research

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You are attending a conference of university students from around the