Chapter in: Kecskes, I., & May, J. Ed. (2008). Intention, Common Ground and the Egocentric Speaker-Hearer. Mouton De Gruyter.
Egocentric processes in communication and miscommunication1
1. Int rod uction
Ne wly married , my wife and I visited my family for Passove r. We we re bro wsing through an English language bookstore in downto wn Jerusalem , when my wife pointed to a table that had a variety of Hagadas, the text used during the Seder (the traditional Passover meal), and said “So, the S eder is going to be all in Heb re w? ” “ Of course ” I r eplied and proce eded to look around She didn’t talk to me for a couple of days. Eventually, I understood why. Wh at she me ant was “let’s buy a Hagada in English,” becaus e it was clear to both of us that she didn’t know Hebre w I und erstood her question as a request for information In fact, she thought that her intention to get the book in English was so obvious, that I must have understood it Given that, my response was plainly rude. In this paper I a rgue that my wi fe and I are not alone , and that this miscom munication is rooted in the systematic way we process language To explain our behavior, I will show that com munication in
1 This paper is an updated version of: K eysar, Boa z 2007. Com munic ation and m isco mmunica tion : The role of egoc entric proce sse s Intercu ltura l Pragmatics 4; 1 : 71-84
The wr iting of this paper benef ited from the support of PHS gran t R01 MH49685-06A1.
general pro ceeds in a relatively ego centric manner , with addressees routinely interpreting what speak ers say fro m their o wn perspe ctive, and speakers disambiguating their utterances with little consideration to the mental states of their addressees. Speak ers also tend to overestimate how ef fectively they com municate , believing that their message is understood more often than it really is. I will present findings from my laboratory and fro m the literature that suggest such systematic causes for miscom munication
2. Co mmunicatio n an d coope ration
Most people, most of the time , think that what they say is pretty clear Ambiguity is not routinely noted when people nor mally com municate. In contrast, linguists and psychologists who study the use of language notice potential ambiguity every wher e. The newspap er is a goldmine for unintended meanings, as in this recent classified ad: “Bedroo m furniture – Triple d resser with mirror , armoire , one night stand.” But students of language also know that even if it said “one nightstand,” the text cannot be devoid of ambiguity because e ver y t ext can hav e mo re than one meaning. Even a simple statement such as “this chocolate is wonderful” is a mbiguous because it could be a state ment of fa ct, an o ffer , a request for more , and so on. Despite such ubiquitous ambiguity, there are two re asons why people may not be confused. They use context for disambiguation, and they assume that the writer or spe aker is a cooperative agent ( Gri ce 1975). With both power ful tools, language users take a linguistic system that has a huge potential to fail, and use it suc cessfully
The coope rative principle explains why com munication succeeds Language users
presume that their co mmunic ation partner is cooperative, and use this to extract a specific meaning that preserv es this assumption What the partner believes , thinks and knows is central to this process For instanc e, cooperativeness requires a cert ain level of informativeness A speaker is expected to be infor mative in the sense that she is not providing too little information or too mu ch infor mation When a colleague asks where I live, and I do not wish to offend him , I do not say “in Chicago” even though it is perfectly true. We work together; he obviously knows I live in Chicago. In this sense, what I know about what my colleague kno ws, and wh at I assume about wh at he doesn’t know, should be central to what I say
Not only must others’ mental states be central to com munication, but the re is a good reason to believe that people hav e a unique ability to make inferen ces about these mental states quickly and accur ately Sp erber and Wilson (2002) argued pre cisely that Bec ause conversation is so quick, with rapid turn taking and facile inf erenc es, they conclude that the human mind is designed to take into account the beliefs of the other e ffortlessly and automatically This would suggest the existence of a mental module that is dedicated to the consideration of beliefs during language processing (Fodor 1985).
In this paper I challenge these assumptions. I argue that when people com municate they do not routinely take into account the mental states of others, as the standard theory assumes P eople don’t rely on the beliefs and kno wledg e of their addr essees to design what they say, and addressees do not routinely consider what the spe aker kno ws to interpret what they hea r. Of course, som etimes they might But such consider ation of the mental state of the other is not done systematically So I will argue that when people succe ed in avoiding ambiguity, it is not necessarily because they are following the principle o f coop eration
Why would languag e users beh ave in such a strange way that defies “com mon sense?” Why would they not do as they “should” and take into account systematically the mental state of their com munication partne r? The reason is
that our own perspective, knowl edge and beliefs, have priority over anything else we kno w about others’ perspective, kno wledge and beliefs (Decety and Su mm erville 2003; Epley et al 2004). Our o wn perspe ctive, then, does not allow us to follow the cooperative principle’s assumption Taking the perspective of the other requires considerable attention and effort This, in turn, can explain miscom munication Misunderstanding, then, is not what occ asionally happens wh en rando m ele ments interf ere with com munication; it is not only a product of noise in the system. It can b e explained systematically as a p roduct of how our mind works .
3. Un de rstan ding ego cen trically
Young children kno w ho w to speak b efore they know ho w to re ason well about other’s belie fs. Only at around four to five years of age can children distinguish between what they kno w and what others kno w ( Wellm an, 1990; Wellman, Cross and Watson 2001). Be fore age four they behave as if their o wn beliefs a re shared by others Th eir reasoning about mental states is relatively egocentric. Their private knowledge ove r whelms their thinking The most compelling demonstration of this is the false belief task (Pe rner , 1991; Perne r, Le eka m and Wi mm er 1987). The child hides a candy together with Sally and then Sally leav es the room. Th e child then moves the candy to a different hiding location When Sally returns to the room, the child is asked where Sally will look for the candy Young children think that Sally will look for the candy wher e it r eally is, in the ne w hiding plac e. Probably b ecause they know whe re it is and this private kno wledge over whelms their reasoning. Around age four , children start to distinguish what they kno w from wh at others know, and they are more likely to think that Sally will look for the c andy in the old hiding place, wher e she believes it is. This developmental tr ajectory se ems universal, as it is typical not only of Western children but also in places with a very diff erent culture such as China (S abbagh, Xu , C arlson and Moses , and Le e 2006), and ev en in isolated, pre -literate cultures ( Avis and Harris 1991) .
3. 1. F rom childhood to adulthood
Though it seems that children’s thinking is transform ed from egocentric to allocentric , we have shown that the basic egocentric tendency persists through adulthood In an experiment whe re subjects followed instructions, we investigated whether their interpretations of the instructions were egoc entric ( Epley , More wedge and Keysar 2004). The subject sat a cross the table fro m a “director , ” and the dir ector told the subjects what objects to move around on the table. For instance, the re wer e two trucks , a large one and a sm aller one , both visible to the subject and the director , and the dir ector said “Move the s mall truck ” As with the hidden candy task, the re was a third, even smaller , truck, which was visible only to the subject but not to the director. We made it painfully clear to the subjects that the director could not see the smallest truck, and that h e will not ask the m to move it. I f they ar e not egocentric , then they should not think that the director intended the m to move that truck.
We found that children tended to interpret “the s mall truck” quite egoc entrically Young children re ached for the truck that only they could see, almost half of the time. We also discovered an interesting similarity between children and adults, as well as an inter esting differenc e. We found that the initial process of interpretation is identical for children and adults By tracking subjects’ gaz e, we could tell which object they are considering as the intended one. Adult subjects were just as quick as young children to initially look at the hidden truck This initial process, then, confounds what the subject can see and what the dir ector c an see . To eventually interpret the instructions as intended, the subjects must then re cover fro m their egocentric interpr etation and find an object that can be se en by the director. Children we re much less effective in this recovery than adults. On ce they found an egocentric referent, they took much longer than adults to find the intended one . Even mor e, children were less able to recov er from it altogether. Once they looked at the hidden object, they were mor e likely to make an error and rea ch for it ( fifty-one per cent) than adults (twenty-one per cent).
Wh at we discovered , then, is that even though children are eventually able to represent the beliefs of others, this ability does not guide their interpretation of others’ actions Even adults initially behave as if they confound the knowledge of the other and their o wn, but eventually use their understanding of beliefs to correct their interpretation In this sense, adults are not allocentric in how they understand others, they ar e just mor e pr acticed in overcoming an inher ent egocentric tendency The sa me is true for the very ability to think about beliefs (Bir ch and Bloom , 2007). Adults fail the false belief task if the task is a bit mo re complex. Five y ear olds are already able to predict that Sally would look for the candy whe re s h e believes it is, not wh ere t h e y know it is. But wh en asked to deter mine the probability that Sally would look in any one of diff erent locations, even adults think that she is mo re likely to look in the place t h ey kno w the candy really is, only because they know that. So people have an egoc entric tendency in both thinking about other’s beliefs and in interpreting what they say; they have experien ce recov ering fro m that, but they don’t always succ eed.
The egocentric tenden cy that we discovered is no small matter. Though adults do better than kids, they still show a surprising disregard for the perspe ctive of the other. Why would adults move the truck wh en they clearly know that the director could not have known about that particular truck? When ever adults did this in our experiments, they we re unambiguously committing an egocentric error . In fact, the great majority of adult subjects in our experiments ( around eighty perc ent) co mmitted such error at least once during the session (Keysar, Lin , and Ba rr 2003). And this was not because their private knowledg e was mo re compelling than the knowledge shared with the director. When the hidden truck is smaller than the intended truck, the hidden truck is a better , more co mpelling refe rent than the intended one . But this differ ence was not crucial. Even when the two trucks wer e of the same size, adults we re just as likely to commit the egocentric error (Lin and Keysar 2005) In this case, they tended to ask “which truck ,” neglecting to use their knowledge that the director could only have
meant the one he could see If asym metry betwe en the intended and private object cannot explain the egoc entric beh avior, wh at c an?
3 .2 . A ttention and egocentric understanding
One could explain the egoc entric tendency we discovered in at least two ways First, one’s own perspective is dominant and provides a compelling interpretation of wh at others say Secondly, the consideration of other’s beliefs is n o t automatic. Instead, it is an effortful process; it requires cognitive resources, and is easily disrupted If this is true, then people’s interpretations should depend on the resources available to their working me mory People diff er in the cap acity of their working me mory, and this difference aff ects perfor man ce on a variety of cognitive tasks (Baddley 1986; Just and Carpente r 1992). Typically, p erfor man ce on tasks that depend on me mory capacity deteriorates as working me mory capacity decre ases In contrast, automatic pro cesses a re unaffected by working m emory va riations. We compar ed the pe rfor manc e of p eople with a high-capacity working m emory to those with low cap acity in our perspective taking task. Indeed, p eople with relatively low working me mory c apacity sho wed a much stronger egocentric tendency than those with high capacity: They wer e much mo re likely to be distracted by the hidden truck (Lin and Keysar 2005).
Va riation in capacity deter mines ho w much working me mory is available to diff erent individuals, but memory resources c an also vary as a function of external demands. Fo r instance, a phone conversation while driving could deplete attentional resour ces, thus leaving the driver less able to respond to unexpected problems (Stray er and Johnson 2001). We manipulated such extern al “cognitive load” by asking subjects to keep in mind either t wo (lo w load) or five (high load) sets o f numb ers while following instructions. Indeed, with a high external load subjects wer e mu ch mo re egocentric than with low extern al load; they behaved like subjects who have a low working me mory capa city. Th e ability to consider other’s beliefs, then, is very vulner able. It is the first
thing that is affected by the la ck of mental resources In contrast, ego centric interpr etations are robust and less vulner able to fluctuations in working me mory and r esources
3. 3. Attention and non-egocentric understanding: Culturally-induced habits
Our findings that lack o f attentional resour ces makes understanding even more ego centric raises the possibility that focused attention can eliminate the egoc entric ele ment fro m compreh ension altogether. We have tried to eliminate it in a variety of ways, by stressing the irrelevanc e of one’s privileged information, by giving feedback ove r the course o f the experiment and so on While such attempts attenuated the egocentric element, they never eliminated it. We therefo re considered the possibility that a much stronger force may be more ef fective – long-term , ingr ained cultural habits
Cultural psychology documents a systematic differ ence bet ween individualistictype cultures and more collectivist-type cultures (e.g., Triandis 1995; Triandis, Bonte mpo, and Villare al 1988). Individualist cultures, typical of Western countries , tend to engender a mo re independent self, which is defined in t erms of one’s wishes, choices and achieve ments. In contrast, collectivist cultures, typical of East Asian countries tend to engender an interdependent self, which is defined in relation to other relev ant individuals (Ma rkus and Kitaya ma , 1991; Ross, Xun and Wilson 2002; Shweder and Bourne 1984). M embe rs of a collectivist culture, then, have a lot of experience focusing their attention on the other. For instance , Cohen and Gunz (2002) demonstrate that people from an East Asian culture are mo re likely than Westerners to take an “outside” perspective on themselves, as if seeing themselves fro m another person’s ey es Such culturally-induced habits, then, could allo w listeners to focus attention on the other’s perspective, eliminating the egocentric tendency we discovered with our mostly Western subjects
We tested this idea using the sa me com munication gam e we desc ribed above , but
the listeners were students at the University of Chicago who wer e either native English speakers or native speakers of M andarin ( Wu and Keysar 2007a). They rec eived instructions to “move the block,” ref erring to a mutually visible block Again, there was another block, which was hidden fro m the director but clearly visible to the subject The only diff eren ce betwe en the t wo groups was that the Chinese students received the instructions in Mandarin and the native-English speakers received the m in English The results wer e stunning The nativeEnglish speakers sho wed the sam e ego centric tendency we have se en befor e: The majority of them wer e confused at least once during the experiment ( “ which block?”) , and ev en when they wer e not explicitly confused they were delayed in finding the intended block. In stark contrast, the Chinese students were al most never confused, and they wer e not delayed bec ause of the hidden block. They we re faste r and mo re effe ctive, as if their attention was so focused on the director that they could “see” the array of objects from he r perspe ctive. It se ems , then, that me mbers of collectivist cultures focus their attention on the other, allowing the m to avoid the egocentric element that me mbers of individualist cultures consistently show when they understand what othe rs say.
3 .4 . Cooperativ enes s and asse ssing mental states
The assumption of cooperativeness in compreh ension depends on assessing the mental states of the speaker. But understanding does not seem to be guided by what the speaker knows. Instead, listeners interpret what speak ers say from their o wn p erspective. Th ey do consider the mental states of the spe aker if they need to correct an error , or when culture provides the m with powerful tools to put themselves in the shoes of the spe aker .
Perhaps coop erativeness would be mo re likely to play a role when people conv erse ov er time, accu mulating shared experiences and establishing common ground (Cla rk, Schreud er and Buttrick 1983; Clark and C arlson 1981). People tend to converge on similar ter minology over time ( Krauss and Glucksberg 1977) We
may start calling something “the worst bush,” and continue to c all it that, even wh en context changes and the re is no longer a n eed to distinguish it from other bushes Wh en we persist in using the same term , it is as if there is a tacit ag ree ment on the m eaning It see ms cooperative be cause if we change what we call it, it might signal a change in referent ( Clark 1987). Brennan and Clark (1996) argued that such cooperativeness is at the heart of people’s tendency to use terminology consistently over time. I f you call a bush a bush, and then suddenly switch and call it a shrub, people a re surprised (Metzing and Brenn an 2003). It see ms that people establish mutual terminology and expect e ach othe r to coop erate and adhere to it
But listeners’ exp ectations are a ctually independent of cooperativeness When people establish with a partne r a p articular way of calling an object, they expe ct even a ne w pa rtner to adhere to that terminology They know that the ne w partner is not privy to the tacit agree ment they established with someone else to call that thing a bush, but they expect it nonetheless (Barr and Keysa r 2002). The expectation to call it a bush, then, could not be based on cooperativeness Th e sam e happens when a partner suddenly switch es to “shrub,” violating a tacit agreem ent to call it a bush Listeners are indeed surprised wh en that happens, but they are just as surprised if the speaker established the agreement with a different person and then s witched to a ne w ter m when talking to them, even if the speak er doesn’t know that they know about that “agre em ent” (Shintel and Keysar 2007) Listeners do have expe ctations that speakers keep using the sa me ter m fo r the sam e thing, but not because they assum e the speake rs a re cooperative; it is because they assume the speakers are consistent.
People’s tenden cy to converg e on the same te rminology, then, is not governed by considerations of cooperativeness People do that regardless of what they believe about the other’s knowledge and belief. Most strikingly, people behave the sa me way even wh en they can’t re me mber past events at all Hippoca mpal amnesiacs who repe atedly converse on a set of objects showed the typical converg ence ov er
time on a consistent set of ter ms, just like non amnesiac controls ( Du ff et al 2005). Keeping track of other’s beliefs, then, is not nec essary in order to explain what looks like a coop erative behavior.
The rese arch I revie wed strongly suggests that people understand language from their own perspective , without much consideration for the m ental states of the speaker, ex cept wh en they need to correct an error or wh en culture provides help with powe rful tools. Su ch ego centric p rocess could be a systematic cause of misunderstanding and miscom munication but not necessarily If speakers assum e most of the responsibility for disambiguation, if speak ers make sure they tailor what they say to the beliefs , kno wledge and expectations of their addressees, then com munication will not suffer from the listener’s egocentric tendency Next I will evaluate if speake rs atte mpt to do that
4. S pea king ego cen trically
It is unrealistic to expect people to speak unambiguously. Sources of ambiguity are so numerous that so me ambiguity is virtually guaranteed. But as with any per form ance , speaking need not be devoid of pitfalls in order to function well. A good enough perfo rm ance is sufficient (Ferr eira, Ferr aro, and B ailey, 2002). Indeed, speak ers have many tools to constrain ambiguity and reduc e it to an ac ceptable lev el. And they use these tools routinely. For example , “He broke the glass under the table ” has at least two syntactic structur es. In one case “under the table” is the location of the glass that he broke, and he may have brok en it somewh ere else In the other case, “under the table” is wher e he broke it. To convey only the first me aning, one could explicitly use a relative clause “ He broke the glass that is under the table.” Tools such as this syntactic one are readily available to speakers. The question is, do they use them to com municate cooperatively?
4 1 S p ea ker s d i s a mb i g u a t e t h ei r s p eech f o r t h ei r o wn b en ef i t
Sever al studies suggest that though speakers use such tools to disambiguate meaning, they don’t
do that in the service of cooperation They do not disambiguate their speech for the ben efit of their addressee. Fer rira and Dell (2000) investigated speakers’ tendency to disambiguate expressions such as “ The wo man kn e w you …” by distinguishing between “ The wom an kne w you when you wer e a baby” and “ The wo man knew that you were cute ” The only thing that determined their use o f the disambiguating cue was its av ailability in memory. So while speakers were sensitive to how ambiguous what they said sounded to them, they wer e not sensitive to how ambiguous it was for a particular addr essee (Se e similar findings in Arnold et al. 2004)
Speake rs can use diffe rent wo rds to com municate more cle arly, but they can also say the same thing with a differ ent intonation Saying “I should apologize” with a stress on “I” means that I should, but with a questioning intonation on the “I” suggests someone else should apologize. Ho w things ar e said is a powe rful tool that af fects wh at meaning is conveyed, but there is little evidence that it is used for the bene fit of addressees For instance , Kr aljic and Brennan (2005) sho wed that while speakers use prosody for disambiguation, they do this whether their addressee needs it or not They use intonation even wh en the addr essee has sufficient kno wledge to understand that it could only be me who should apologize. So speakers disambiguate because it seems better to them, not because they attempt to be cooperative.
Speake rs also pronounce words with varying degre es of clarity. When they talk about something for the first time, they pronounce their words more cl early than when they continue to ref er to it (Fo wler and Housum 1987). This makes s ense for com munication and is indeed functional for the addresse e. When your friend starts gossiping about a ne w colleague, it is useful that h e pronounces h er name , Tzimisc e, very clearly Wh en he m entions it again and ag ain, his pronunciation is not as clear any mor e. Vo wels ar e reduced and he says it faster. This is useful fo r you, b ecause the first time you hear it is when you need h elp, when you need it to be very clear. Aft er that, your me mory fills in the missing information and you
have no difficulty understanding the redu ced form Though this helps the addressee, there is no evidence that speakers do it to be cooperative. They pronounce words clearly initially and less clearly subsequently independently of the needs of their addressee (Bard , Ande rson, Sotillo, Aylett, Doh ertySneddon, and Ne wl ands 2000).
Being informative is a central part of being cooperative. So when my colleague asks me whe re I live I do not tell him “in Chicago” because this would clea rly be under -inform ative. Indeed, Engelhardt, Bailey and Ferr eira (2006) found that speakers avoid being under informative. But they also found that spe akers systematically err in the other dir ection. They tend to be over -inform ative. This is an alogous to answering the question “wher e do you live” by providing my exact address, wh en my colleague was just trying to mak e conv ersation
But there are cases when people see m to be perf ectly inform ative. Inde ed, wh en people tell stories they seem to provide information at the “right” level. They are mor e likely to spell things out precisely when things are not obvious. So when they tell a story about stabbing, they are mor e likely to mention the instrument when it is an ice pick than when it is a knife. In general, they ar e mor e likely to provide information wh en it is atypical than typical An ice pick is a relatively rare tool for stabbing, a knife is more com mon. So it seems that spe akers are beh aving in line with cooperativeness. They take the knowledge and beliefs of their addressees into account, and use inform ation accordingly. As it turns out, speakers are not really doing this because they are sensitive to the knowledge o f their addresse es They ar e just as likely to provide atypical information when their addressees are uninfor med as when their addressees ar e already infor med ( Bro wn and Dell 1987; Dell and B ro wn 1991). Speake rs a re less likely to mention typical information not because it is obvious to their addressees, but because it is obvious to the m.
4 .2 . Ava i l a b i l i t y, a n ch o r i n g , a n d a d j u s t men t wh en s p ea ki n g
Availability of information is a powerful determinant of how the mind works ( Tversky
and Kahne men 1973). It also see ms to play an important role in wh at inform ation speakers rely on What deter mines speakers ’ behavior is not what they believe to be available to their addressee , but what is available to them When doctors answer patient’s questions they could infer ho w savvy the patient is about m edical issues from the way the patient asks the questions It makes sense that they would then use technical language if the patient used technical language, but use mor e ev eryday language if the question did not include technical ter ms. This is what Jucks, B rom me and Becke r (2005) found. But they also found that the tendency to use technic al language was just as high wh en the p atient’s question was nontechnical, but the medical expert consulted a source that used te chnical ter ms. The sour ce made the technical ter ms available, and so the expert was more likely to use them, even though the patient had no acc ess to that source . Availability of information could make speakers look like they are being cooperative wh en they are not.
A fe w studies sho w that speak ers do attempt to take their addressee ’s mental states into account When we asked people to identify pictures for addressees, they tended to use shared context more than their o wn private context. But under pressure to communicate quickly, they were just as likely to rely on private context as on context shared with the addressee ( Horton and Keysar 1996). Robnagel (2000, 2004) found a similar p attern with a different methodology; speakers wer e less able to tailor their speech to their addressees when they wer e under cognitive load than when their attentional resources we re undisturbed. This suggests that though speakers are fund amentally egocentric when plan what to say, they monitor and attempt to corre ct erro rs to tailor their speech to their addressees . But they anchor on the initial egocentric plan, and when the monitoring process is interrupted, with time pressure or cognitive load, they f all back on purely egocentric spee ch.
Speake rs do not seem to be able to monitor for ambiguity very effectively A purely linguistic ambiguity is particularly hard to detect. Wh en speak ers atte mpt to identify a
picture of a baseb all bat for addresse es, they often call it a bat, even if this m ay le ad the addressees to select an animal bat In contrast, it is easier for speakers to avoid referential ambiguity; when two animal bats are present, they often distinguish them by adding an adjective, like “the large bat” ( Fer reira , Slevc , and Rogers 2005). Speak ers sho w a similar difficulty with linguistic ambiguity when trying to use intonation to disambiguate syntactically ambiguous sentences Acoustic analysis shows that though speakers attempt to, they do not include the nec essary a coustic cues ( Allbritton, Mc Koon, and Ratcliff 1996).
4 3 Do speake rs know wh en they a re unclear? The problem of construal
Speake rs’ difficulty in disa mbiguating wh at they say could lead to misunderstanding, but it doesn’t have to If speakers can gauge their effe ctiveness, they may be able to anticipate that their addressee would have difficulty understanding them. So speake rs need not necessarily be always clea r, but the qu estion is, are they calibrated ? C an they tell when they conveyed their intention successfully and they when didn’t succe ed?
We found that speakers are not calibrated. They are system atically biased to think that they are understood when they a re not (Keysar and Henly 2002). We asked subjects to say syntactically ambiguous sentences so that another subject will understand them as unambiguous. For instanc e, they said “ Angela killed the man with the gun,” trying to convey the idea that Ang ela used the gun to kill the man , not that he had the gun Then we asked the m which of the t wo me anings the listener understood, and co mpar ed it to the m eaning the listener actually understood Only about 10 % we re calibrated and a f e w underestimat ed The great majority of speake rs tended to overestimate their ability to convey the message The overestim ation was quite dr am atic. When speakers thought they were unde rstood, 50 % of the time they wer e wrong On e might suspect that such overestimation is exaggerated because of the experi mental situation, but it is probably the other way around In the experi ment
speakers were p rovided with both me anings, and actively attempted to disambiguate the sentence. This must have helped the m contrast the meaning and exagge rate the one they intended to convey In a typical conversation speakers do not normally consider alternative me anings to what they say So in “re al life” they may not even re alize that there is a ne ed to disambiguate it This surely would result in an ev en mo re dramatic over estimation.
Wh en and why do speakers overestimate their effectiveness? The ans wer is, under many types of circumstances, and for m any reasons Com munication affords a variety of situations that lend themselves to such overestimation. Wh en speakers attempt to use intonation to disambiguate syntactic ambiguity, they use cu es So they would exaggerate the stress on Angela to convey that she was the one who killed him. But they know wh at they attempt to convey, and they know how they are doing it This private knowledge m akes the stress on Angela sound objectively clear. But it only sounds like that to them, be cause they alr eady kno w what they a re trying to convey Such “construal” is fundamental to our interpretive system (Griffin and Ross 1991; Ross 1990) and it introduces a paradox to com munication: Be cause we kno w what our intention is, our com munication see ms to convey it uniquely; it seems to have only that meaning This illusion was de monstrated with non-linguistic communication by having people tap a song so that an audience would be able to identify it. Just like our speakers, tappers greatly overestimated their effe ctiveness ( Ne wton 1990). Instead of a mental orchestra that acco mpanies the tapping, our speakers had in mind their intended meaning, which caused them to he ar what they s aid as eff ective.
This construal problem in com munication is very pervasive, making people less calibrated about their effe ctiveness For instance, it is easier to com municate on the phone than via em ail It is easier to co m municate face to fa ce than on the phone. These diff eren ces are particularly clear when intonation is important Fo r instance, people were asked to convey either a sarc astic m essage or a since re one, and to estimate whi ch m essage their addressee understood. Given that a sarc astic tone
is much e asier to convey in spe ech, people managed to convey it much mor e eff ectively by speaking than via email Ho wever , they thought that they we re just as e ffe ctive in both media (Kruger et al 2006). Kruge r et al found that people are not sensitive to difficulties that different media introduce and don’t appre ciate the handicap of lack of intonation in email messages; but ev en when they c an use intonation, they overestimate the effectiveness of those cues (Keysar and Henly 2002). Given that media variations abound and that cues to meaning a re of many sorts, spe akers h ave a mple opportunity to wrongly conclude that their addressee understood them .
One way that speakers may be cooperative is to actively consider the mental states of their addressees in order to tailor their com munication to them. They would evaluate what they say vi s á vi s what they kno w about what their addresse e kno ws This might be too daunting a task for the human mind Instead , speakers may use a roughe r heuristic of who knows what They may not consider if each piece of inform ation is known by the other, but instead keep track of how much info rm ation they share with the other. Under so me circumstanc es, this may lead people to miscom municate mor e with people who share a lot with them than with people who shar e little information with them. This is precisely what we found ( Wu and Keysar, 2007b). The mo re information people share, the more they tend to confuse their addresse e when they co m municate over ne w infor mation. This is particularly pertinent to the possibility of miscommunic ation because people typically expect the opposite. They expect to co m municate better when they share mo re with others than when they sha re less.
5. Con clusion
Listeners r ely on their own persp ective when they understand language; they do not routinely use knowledge of the spe aker ’s mental states when they understand what the spe aker s ays They sho w a fundam ental egocentric tendency coupled with an e arnest attempt to understand the speaker from his or her own perspe ctive.
Assumptions of cooperativeness , then, co me into play only as part of a corrective mech anism, if they do at all Speakers do not seem to be guided by cooperativeness either. They disambiguate what they say, but mainly bec ause it see ms ambiguous to them, not because of ho w ambiguous it is for their addr essee.
Egocentric spee ch and egocentric understanding could introduce a systematic reason for miscom munication. Private knowledge affe cts processing in two ways. Sometim es it seems to be shar ed when it is not. With the use of effortful processes one could undo this The mor e insidious impact co mes from its “construal” eff ect. Private kno wledge can m ake an ambiguous utteranc e see m unambiguous by “construing” it Once it see ms unambiguous, it seems objectively unambiguous; it seems independent of the private kno wledge that disa mbiguated it This is particularly relevant for speak ers who are trying to convey an intention, which is always private knowledge , via an utter ance , which is al ways ambiguous Consequently, speake rs have difficulty gauging their ability to convey their message and they systematic ally overestimate their effectiveness Th ere fore , they are less likely to be able to design their utterances for the benefit of their addressee, and less likely to notice wh en their addressee misunderstands them.
If this is true, then why is com munication so successful? Why are people so effe ctive in conveying and unde rstanding intentions? One ans wer is that successful com munication is overdetermined . Ev en when people are not acting as cooperative agents they may com municate suc cessfully bec ause the context is powerful Th e other answer is that we don’t know ho w suc cessful co mmunic ation really is It took me t wo days to figure out why my wif e was not talking to me, and it took her two yea rs to agre e that one could understand what she s aid differently fro m what she me ant Further more , mu ch of misco mmunication may simply go unnoticed You m ay tell a friend you really liked that movie about the journalist fro m Ka zakhstan who is touring the United States, and the friend may think you were being sarcastic. You proc eed to talk about other
movies without ever kno wing that he misunderstood you By d efinition, we don’t know ho w often miscom munication goes unnoticed This cluelessness distorts our
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