The subordinate status of women in our society may have led to their development of greater interpersonal sensitivity. This study investigated this subordinate role explanation for women's intuition by looking at interpersonal sensitivity within interacting dyads (women, men, and mixed-sex) and specifically examining the effects of sex and leader/subordinate role on interpersonal sensitivity. The results showed that subordinates were more sensitive than leaders to the feelings of the other dyad member. Women were not more sensitive than men, for there was no main effect for sex. However, mixed-sex dyads were more sensitive than same-sex dyads, and the sex of the other person had a greater effect on women than on men. These results provide evidence that sensitivity is an interactive process, affected by the respective roles of the interactants.

Past research has shown that, regardless of sex, those in a subordinate role are more sensitive to how their leaders feel about them than are the leaders sensitive to their subordinates, suggesting that the stereotypically greater sensitivity of women might be explained by their traditionally subordinate role to men. The present study further investigated this phenomenon, specifically in a boss-employee situation. A total of 120 Ss interacted in 96 pairs (male, female, and mixed-sex). Results revealed no significant sex differences but indicated that subordinates were more sensitive to how their leaders felt about them (the subordinates), and leaders were more sensitive to how their subordinates felt about themselves. Findings are discussed in relation to role requirements of leader and subordinate.

S. E. Snodgrass (1985, 1992) examined interpersonal sensitivity within status-discrepant interactions. Using the correlation between how a participant thought another felt with how that person reported actually feeling, S. E. Snodgrass's measure of interpersonal sensitivity included both the expressivity of one person and the perceptivity of another person. The studies reported here were conducted to clarify the relative contributions of expressivity and perceptivity to this measure. Results indicated that interpersonal sensitivity was associated more with high expressivity on behalf of the sender than with the perceiver's perceptivity. Implications are discussed for research and theory on interpersonal sensitivity, and gender and leadership roles.

This study examined the developmental acquisition, defined both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, of females' superiority in decoding nonverbal cues. Three age groups (250 pre-high school students, 109 high school students, and 81 college students) were examined cross-sectionally, and 48 children 11-14 years old were examined longitudinally. Decoding of four types of nonverbal cues (face, body, tone, discrepancies) arranged from the most controllable channel to the least controllable (most "leaky") channel, was examined. The analysis of variance and the appropriate contrast (the Linear Trend in Age X Linear Trend in Channel) showed that as age increased, females lost more and more of their advantage for the more leaky or more covert channels but that they gained more and more of their advantage for the less leaky channels (/> = .0022). The results of the longitudinal 1-year study supported those of the cross-sectional study-During the year, women lost more and more of their advantage in more leaky channels, r(2) = .96, p = .02, one-tailed. These results are consistent with a socialization interpretation that as females grow older, they may learn to be more nonverbally courteous or accommodating.Recently, the finding that females are superior to males in understanding nonverbal cues (Hall, 1978Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979) has been qualified in an important way (Rosenthai & DePaulo, 1979a, 1979b. Although females are in fact very much superior to males in decoding very overt and intentionally communicated cues (such as cues from the face, which is a very controllable channel), they are less superior, or not superior at all, at decoding more covert, "leaky," or unintended cues (such as cues from the body or the tone of voice). When different types of nonverbal cues were arranged from most controllable to least controllable (most leaky), women showed a systematic decrease Preparation of this article was supported in part by the National Science Foundation. An earlier version of this article was presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Montreal, August 1980. We would like to thank all the members of the Camp Wah-nee family for their cooperation and participation.Requests for reprints should be sent to Peter D. Blanck, Department of Psychology and Social Relations, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.in their superiority over men in going from the less to the more leaky channels. Rosenthai and DePaulo suggested that these results might show that women were more polite or accommodating in their decoding of nonverbal cues. That is, perhaps women politely refrain from decoding effectively the less controllable cues of the encoder. The operation of this kind of politeness mechanism would be consistent with traditional sex role standards.

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