Laughter and the management of divergent positions in peer review interactions

Raclaw, Joshua; Ford, Cecilia E.

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.005

Cited by 25 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…CLI’s turn is said in a lower voice, which could be oriented to the microphone, as if CLI wanted to report HAI’s fault to a third party (on delicate formulations , see Lerner, 2013 ). However, her laughter at line 04 allows CLI to mitigate her criticism “managing the socially delicate but institutionally required” ( Raclaw and Ford, 2017 , p. 1) voicing of a dissatisfaction. In the subsequent turn, HAI first takes the criticism upon himself (l. 05), but then laughs in overlap with CLI (Figure 2), showing that he does not orient to CLI’s turn as a serious matter.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Requests Within Hair Salons: Grammar and Embodiment in Action Formation

Horlacher

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Although requests constitute a type of action that have been widely discussed within conversation analysis-oriented work, they have only recently begun to be explored in relation to the situated and multimodal dimensions in which they occur. The contribution of this paper resides in the integration of bodily-visual conduct (gaze and facial expression, gesture and locomotion, object manipulation) into a more grammatical account of requesting. Drawing on video recordings collected in two different hair salons located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and in France (23 h in total), this paper analyzes clients’ negative requests by exploring how they interface with the participants’ embodied conducts. Contrary to what the literature describes for positively formulated requests, with negative requests clients challenge an expectable next action (or ongoing action) by the hairdresser. One linguistic format constitutes the focus of this article, roughly glossable as ‘You don’t do [action X] too much (huh)’. Our analysis of a consistent collection of such formatted turns will show that clients present them (and hairdressers tend to treat them) in different ways, depending on how they relate to embodied conduct: When these turns are used by the client as instructions, they are accompanied by manipulations of the client’s own hair and tend to occur toward the initial phase of the encounter, at a stage when hairdressers and clients collaboratively negotiate the service in prospect. When uttered as directives, these turns are not accompanied by any touching practices from the client and are typically observable in subsequent phases of the encounter, making relevant an immediate linguistic or/and bodily response from the professional, as shown by the client who is actively pursuing mutual gaze with him/her. Therefore, an action cannot be distinguished from another on the basis of the turn format alone: Its sequential placement and the participants’ co-occurring embodied conduct contribute to its situated and shared understanding. By analyzing the clients’ use of a specific linguistic format conjointly with the deployment of specific embodied resources, this study will advance our understanding of how verbal resources and embodiment operate in concert with each other in the formation and understanding of actions, thereby feeding into new areas of research on the grammar-body interface.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Requests Within Hair Salons: Grammar and Embodiment in Action Formation

Horlacher

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…Further, the effectiveness of discussion from less persuasive reviewers may be hindered by a passive chair compared to a more engaged and assertive chair. Previous research has reported the importance of score-calibration comments and even laughter in the effectiveness of panel discussion, although it is unclear if these are affected by chair facilitation [8,20,21]. Future studies should include a focus on the social influences and group dynamics between panel reviewers, informed by the literature on small group decision making in other contexts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grant reviewer perceptions of the quality, effectiveness, and influence of panel discussion

Gallo

Schmaling

Thompson

et al. 2020

Res Integr Peer Rev

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Background: Funding agencies have long used panel discussion in the peer review of research grant proposals as a way to utilize a set of expertise and perspectives in making funding decisions. Little research has examined the quality of panel discussions and how effectively they are facilitated. Methods: Here, we present a mixed-method analysis of data from a survey of reviewers focused on their perceptions of the quality, effectiveness, and influence of panel discussion from their last peer review experience. Results: Reviewers indicated that panel discussions were viewed favorably in terms of participation, clarifying differing opinions, informing unassigned reviewers, and chair facilitation. However, some reviewers mentioned issues with panel discussions, including an uneven focus, limited participation from unassigned reviewers, and short discussion times. Most reviewers felt the discussions affected the review outcome, helped in choosing the best science, and were generally fair and balanced. However, those who felt the discussion did not affect the outcome were also more likely to evaluate panel communication negatively, and several reviewers mentioned potential sources of bias related to the discussion. While respondents strongly acknowledged the importance of the chair in ensuring appropriate facilitation of the discussion to influence scoring and to limit the influence of potential sources of bias from the discussion on scoring, nearly a third of respondents did not find the chair of their most recent panel to have performed these roles effectively. Conclusions: It is likely that improving chair training in the management of discussion as well as creating review procedures that are informed by the science of leadership and team communication would improve review processes and proposal review reliability.

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“…Prior research finds laughter within multi-party institutional settings serves a variety of interpersonal functions, including changing topics, 3 reflecting status differences within a meeting 4 or managing delicate interactions. 5 Interpersonal pressure from the chair's SCT or SCT-invoked group laughter could introduce bias in an R01's final priority score by altering the range of scoring for all members of the study section. 6 Our findings should alert grant review participants, particularly chairs, to SCT and its potential consequences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laughter and the Chair: Social Pressures Influencing Scoring During Grant Peer Review Meetings

Pier¹,

Raclaw

Carnes

et al. 2019

J GEN INTERN MED

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INTRODUCTIONDuring NIH peer review meetings (Bstudy sections^), scientists discuss and assign Bpriority scores^to grant applications that largely determine funding outcomes. Although the final priority score is an average of each panelist's score, their individual score is anchored to the scores declared publicly by those scientists (usually three) assigned to review and report on the grant application in detail. We have identified Bscore calibration talk^(SCT), a discourse practice where a study section member discusses and interprets the scoring rather than the content of a grant application. We found two forms: self-initiated SCT, when a panelist provides commentary about their own scoring (e.g., BSo I gave it a four, which was probably generous^); and other-initiated SCT, when a panelist challenges the scoring of an assigned reviewer (e.g., BYeah, that was generous.^). Only other-initiated SCT correlated with changes from the initial to the final score among the assigned reviewers of NIH R01 applications. 1 To gain insights into which interactional patterns accompanying SCT influence score change, we examined in detail the five cases of SCT followed by immediate declaration of a score change. METHODSMeticulously adhering to NIH practices, we constructed and video-recorded four study sections where groups of 8-12 oncology researchers evaluated the same 25 R01 grant applications previously submitted to NIH. Pier et al. provides a full description of our methodology. 1 Participant-reviewers evaluated R01 applications previously reviewed by study sections within NIH's National Cancer Institute. Applications were donated by Principal Investigators identified using NIH's public access database, then de-identified and re-identified by the research team. All applications had been funded either on the first submission or after revision between October 1, 2012 and September 31, 2015.We transcribed all discourse with attention to verbal and non-verbal actions, timing of pauses, marking of overlaps, and details of sound production, including laughter. We identified the speaker who initiated SCT, the assigned reviewer who was the target, and whether or not the target announced a score change. We coded and analyzed data as a case series, 2 treating score change as the Bconditionû nder study and calculating the odds ratio-given Bexposure^to identified patterns of discourse associated with SCT. 2 RESULTSWe identified 15 cases of other-directed SCT, five featuring immediate, public score change (Table 1). Each announced score change was preceded either by shared laughter among study section members (N = 4) or SCT by the chair of the study section (N = 1). There were no cases of immediate score change when a panelist initiated SCT but no shared laughter ensued (7/15). No instances of score change in conjunction with SCT occurred without either laughter or the chair's initiation of SCT.Odds ratios indicated that score change was significantly more likely when laughter was present during SCT than when it was absent (OR = 16; 95%...

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Laughter and the management of divergent positions in peer review interactions

Cited by 25 publications

References 22 publications

Negative Requests Within Hair Salons: Grammar and Embodiment in Action Formation

Negative Requests Within Hair Salons: Grammar and Embodiment in Action Formation

Grant reviewer perceptions of the quality, effectiveness, and influence of panel discussion

Laughter and the Chair: Social Pressures Influencing Scoring During Grant Peer Review Meetings

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