Toward a Theory of Goal Detection in Social Interaction

Abstract

The inferences individuals make about others' goals is an integral, but neglected, aspect of empirical and theoretical work on social interaction. An original theoretical framework is proposed to account for interindividual agreement and certainty of goal inferences. Two experiments applied the framework to explain how contextual ambiguity and tactical functionality affected agreement and certainty. Results generally support hypotheses regarding agreement, such that goal inferences converged (i.e., interobserver agreement increased) as the context and tactic became more compatible, yet results largely do not support hypotheses for inference certainty, as the only significant effect that emerged was that certainty was higher in unambiguous than ambiguous contexts. A reconsideration of the theoretical framework on goal detection is discussed and implications are advanced.

A Phasic Analysis of Strategy Sequences and Their Mediating Effects on Interaction Goals and Negotiation Outcomes

“…People also detect goals based on the contexts, relational types, behavioral tactics, and other communicative aspects (verbal or nonverbal) of the interaction. Palomares (2008) found that the accuracy and certainty of goal detection is positively associated with the congruence of the interlocutors’ goals. In negotiation, unless a noticeable discrepancy is detected between dyad members’ goals, which may then activate their conscious (re)assessment of the situation, negotiators who prioritize competitive goals will likely engage in distributive reciprocity, whereas those with cooperative goals, integrative reciprocity.…”

“…Considerable scholarship suggests that people infer others’ goals throughout conversation, sometimes automatically or implicitly and sometimes consciously (Berger, 2000; Hassin, Aarts, & Ferguson, 2005; Palomares, 2008). Such an inclination may be innate, as infants (Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, 1992) and even infant chimpanzees (Uller, 2004) were found to infer others’ goals.…”

Mirroring, Mentalizing, and the Social Neuroscience of Listening

“…This is because listening requires not simply a comprehension of what others are saying and how they are saying it, but also why they are saying it: what caused them to say that and to say it in that way? Utterances are typically designed to achieve a specific end, the speaker's intent or goal, and can be used to infer the speaker's underlying motives, beliefs, and dispositions (Palomares, 2008). Inferring these kinds of entities-mental states and dispositions-is often referred to as an act of mentalizing (Frith & Frith, 2006).…”

“…When listening to others, verbal utterances and their nonverbal concomitants demand a great deal of active interpretation, a process which serves to provide the listener with an understanding of what the speaker intends to communicate, what they might be hiding, and generally, the beliefs, motives, and dispositions of the speaker which are implied by the message (Edwards, 1998;Happe, 1993;Palomares, 2008). Although the majority of neuroimaging of the MZS have not explicitly examined its role in the interpretation of verbal utterances, studies have suggested a critical role for this system in decoding the connotative aspects of messages, such as metaphor and sarcasm (Uchiyama et al, 2011) and indirect replies (Shibata et al, 2011).…”

“…Finally, why it was said involves an inference about the speaker's underlying state of mind (e.g., intent in saying that, attitude toward me and the talk). This distinction between how and why mirrors the distinction between bottom-up and top-down processing described by Edwards (2011), where how it was said involves encoding incoming stimulus information (e.g., intonation, facial expression) in bottom-up fashion, while why it was said requires the use of prior knowledge (e.g., this colleague doesn't like theory X) and inferential rules (e.g., if a person says they like something and you believe they do not, they are probably being deceptive) to reach conclusions about stimuli in a top-down fashion (see Palomares, 2008).…”