IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v160y2020icp131-148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conversational receptiveness: Improving engagement with opposing views

Author

Listed:
  • Yeomans, Michael
  • Minson, Julia
  • Collins, Hanne
  • Chen, Frances
  • Gino, Francesca

Abstract

We examine “conversational receptiveness” – the use of language to communicate one’s willingness to thoughtfully engage with opposing views. We develop an interpretable machine-learning algorithm to identify the linguistic profile of receptiveness (Studies 1A-B). We then show that in contentious policy discussions, government executives who were rated as more receptive - according to our algorithm and their partners, but not their own self-evaluations - were considered better teammates, advisors, and workplace representatives (Study 2). Furthermore, using field data from a setting where conflict management is endemic to productivity, we show that conversational receptiveness at the beginning of a conversation forestalls conflict escalation at the end. Specifically, Wikipedia editors who write more receptive posts are less prone to receiving personal attacks from disagreeing editors (Study 3). We develop a “receptiveness recipe” intervention based on our algorithm. We find that writers who follow the recipe are seen as more desirable partners for future collaboration and their messages are seen as more persuasive (Study 4). Overall, we find that conversational receptiveness is reliably measurable, has meaningful relational consequences, and can be substantially improved using our intervention (183 words).

Suggested Citation

  • Yeomans, Michael & Minson, Julia & Collins, Hanne & Chen, Frances & Gino, Francesca, 2020. "Conversational receptiveness: Improving engagement with opposing views," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 131-148.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:160:y:2020:i:c:p:131-148
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597819303425
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan S. Gerber & Gregory A. Huber & David Doherty & Conor M. Dowling, 2012. "Disagreement and the Avoidance of Political Discussion: Aggregate Relationships and Differences across Personality Traits," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(4), pages 849-874, October.
    2. Friedman, Jerome H. & Hastie, Trevor & Tibshirani, Rob, 2010. "Regularization Paths for Generalized Linear Models via Coordinate Descent," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 33(i01).
    3. Karina Lloyd & Diana Boer & Joshua Keller & Sven Voelpel, 2015. "Is My Boss Really Listening to Me? The Impact of Perceived Supervisor Listening on Emotional Exhaustion, Turnover Intention, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 509-524, September.
    4. repec:nas:journl:v:115:y:2018:p:9216-9221 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    6. Feng Shi & Misha Teplitskiy & Eamon Duede & James A. Evans, 2019. "The wisdom of polarized crowds," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(4), pages 329-336, April.
    7. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    8. M. Keith Chen & Ryne Rohla, 2017. "The Effect of Partisanship and Political Advertising on Close Family Ties," Papers 1711.10602, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2018.
    9. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2011. "Ideological Segregation Online and Offline," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1799-1839.
    10. C. Marlene Fiol, 1994. "Consensus, Diversity, and Learning in Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(3), pages 403-420, August.
    11. Shanto Iyengar & Sean J. Westwood, 2015. "Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(3), pages 690-707, July.
    12. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2012. "Causal Inference without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, January.
    13. Ferrin, Donald L. & Bligh, Michelle C. & Kohles, Jeffrey C., 2008. "It takes two to tango: An interdependence analysis of the spiraling of perceived trustworthiness and cooperation in interpersonal and intergroup relationships," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 161-178, November.
    14. Gavan J. Fitzsimons & Donald R. Lehmann, 2004. "Reactance to Recommendations: When Unsolicited Advice Yields Contrary Responses," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 82-94, September.
    15. Blunden, Hayley & Logg, Jennifer M. & Brooks, Alison Wood & John, Leslie K. & Gino, Francesca, 2019. "Seeker beware: The interpersonal costs of ignoring advice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 83-100.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Minson, Julia A. & Bendersky, Corinne & de Dreu, Carsten & Halperin, Eran & Schroeder, Juliana, 2023. "Experimental studies of conflict: Challenges, solutions, and advice to junior scholars," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ximeng Fang & Sven Heuser & Lasse S. Stötzer, 2023. "How In-Person Conversations Shape Political Polarization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Nationwide Initiative," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 270, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    2. François Fall & Akim Almouksit, 2016. "The impact of formal financing on small informal enterprises in Comoros," Working Papers hal-01566389, HAL.
    3. Kube, Roland & von Graevenitz, Kathrine & Löschel, Andreas & Massier, Philipp, 2019. "Do voluntary environmental programs reduce emissions? EMAS in the German manufacturing sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(S1).
    4. Iandoli, Luca & Primario, Simonetta & Zollo, Giuseppe, 2021. "The impact of group polarization on the quality of online debate in social media: A systematic literature review," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    5. Weber, Olaf & Ahmad, Adnan, 2014. "Empowerment Through Microfinance: The Relation Between Loan Cycle and Level of Empowerment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 75-87.
    6. Eugen Dimant, 2020. "Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 029, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    7. Kausar Yasmeen & Mohd Zaini Abd Karim, 2014. "Impact of Interaction Term between Education and Loan Size on Women’s Decision Making," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation, Macrothink Institute, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation, vol. 1(1), pages 123-141, June.
    8. Gerhard Krug, 2017. "Augmenting propensity score equations to avoid misspecification bias – Evidence from a Monte Carlo simulation [Erweiterung der Propensity Score Gleichung zur Vermeidung von Fehlspezifikationen? Ein," AStA Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistisches Archiv, Springer;Deutsche Statistische Gesellschaft - German Statistical Society, vol. 11(3), pages 205-231, December.
    9. Ravi Bapna & Alok Gupta & Gautam Ray & Shweta Singh, 2016. "Research Note —IT Outsourcing and the Impact of Advisors on Clients and Vendors," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 636-647.
    10. Joseph, George & Hoo, Yi Rong & Moqueet, Nazia Sultana & Chellaraj, Gnanaraj, 2023. "Early-life exposure to unimproved sanitation and delayed school enrollment: Evidence from Bangladesh," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    11. Camila F. S. Campos & Shaun Hargreaves Heap & Fernanda Leite Lopez de Leon, 2017. "The political influence of peer groups: experimental evidence in the classroom," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 963-985.
    12. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Russell Smyth, 2020. "Friendship network composition and subjective well-being," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 191-215.
    13. Jeremy A Frimer & Linda J Skitka, 2020. "Are politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners shorter than politically uniform ones?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-27, October.
    14. Berenger Djoumessi Tiague, 2023. "Floods, Agricultural Production, and Household Welfare: Evidence from Tanzania," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 85(2), pages 341-384, June.
    15. Nikolay Osadchiy & William Schmidt & Jing Wu, 2021. "The Bullwhip Effect in Supply Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(10), pages 6153-6173, October.
    16. Christiane Bode & Jasjit Singh & Michelle Rogan, 2015. "Corporate Social Initiatives and Employee Retention," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(6), pages 1702-1720, December.
    17. Yan-ying Chen & Long Wu & Qing-guo Zhai, 2019. "Does ISO 9000 Certification Benefit Service Firms?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-18, October.
    18. Lundberg, Ian & Brand, Jennie E. & Jeon, Nanum, 2022. "Researcher reasoning meets computational capacity: Machine learning for social science," SocArXiv s5zc8, Center for Open Science.
    19. Sun, Sizhong & Anwar, Sajid, 2019. "R&D activities and FDI in China’s iron ore mining industry," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 47-56.
    20. Corsini, Alberto & Pezzoni, Michele, 2023. "Does grant funding foster research impact? Evidence from France," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:160:y:2020:i:c:p:131-148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.