Vocal interruptions in dyadic communication as a function of speech and social anxiety

Abstract

Interruptions have been defined as a breach of the "turn-taking" contract in interpersonal communication. The relation between a speaker's personality and his or her propensity to interrupt was examined in 30-min unstructured conversations for 36 dyads (12 male, 12 female, and 12 mixed sex). The following predictions were made: (a) Interruptive behavior is inversely related to speech anxiety and positively related to confidence as a speaker; (b) interruptive behavior is inversely related to social anxiety (avoidance-distress; fear of negative evaluation). A stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed, controlling for the systematic effects of sex, the conversational partner's personality and amount of speech, and the speaker's use of back-channel responses. These hypotheses were confirmed for rate of total interruptions and rate of successful interruptions, for percentage of successful interruptions, and for mean duration of interruptions; the results withstood cross-validation analysis.