It is widely believed that the voice is critical to success in telemarketing. While little research supports this directly, a large body of research related to vocal cues and social cognition establishes clear support for this point of view. This article finds that a fluent, slightly faster than listener, moderately loud voice using a standard dialect, clear diction, and a “normal” voice quality lends itself to greatest perceptions of credibility and social attractiveness for the speaker. This in turn should lead to greater persuasiveness and compliance on the part of the target.

Researchl supports ani attributional theory of leadership: that people judge as leaders those who matchi an implicit set of valued leadership behaviors. This study explores whether such value bases or whether distor-ted perceptions of procedural, task or analytical, or socialemotioncal communication behaviors occur. Results indicated that 150 subjects chose a proceduiral specialist 85.33% as leader and selected a task or analytical specialist as most influenitial 63.33% in smnall group decision-making discussion. Chi-square analyses on the choices and an analysis of variance and t tests on ratings of specialists'behaviors indicated that no perceptUal distortion seemed to occur and suggested support for the value-based, or attributional, theory of leadership.

The Interpersonal Perception Task-15 videotape served as a criterion measure to test hypotheses about individual differences in interpersonal perception. 160 undergraduates completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension Scale, the Shyness and Sociability Scale, and the Interpersonal Perception Task-15. Scores on the Communication Apprehension Scale were negatively correlated with Interpersonal Perception Task-15 scores, as predicted. Scores on the Shyness scale were negatively correlated with scores on the Interpersonal Perception Task-15, while Sociability scale scores were positively correlated. These results underscore the association between social anxiety and interpersonal perception.

This field study tested the arousal-valence model of nonverbal communication by examining the effect of selected immediate nonverbal communication cues exhibited by bank tellers on the satisfaction of their clients in banking transactions. Observations of teller nonverbal communication were compared with measures of customers' perceptions of the computer-assisted transaction and of the teller. An immediacy factor was predicted to relate positively to higher levels of satisfaction with tellers, bank, and transaction. Results were nonsignificant for canonical correlations of nonverbal communication and transaction measures, as well as for additional chi-square analyses of the data. Immediacy in brief impersonal transactions is not a significant predictor of satisfaction.

The assumption that the quality of group decisions depends on satisfying certain requisite communication functions underpins much research on small groups. Paradoxically, even when groups are knowledgeable about required functions, interactional and situational constraints can interfere with their use. This study tested whether imposing a reminder function into the group ensures a decision process that optimizes group effectiveness. Results indicate that groups trained in decision processes produce higher quality decisions than do untrained groups but that trained groups with nonleader reminders produce significantly higher quality decisions than do either trained or untrained groups.