Source (2/10)

Alkire, Armand A, Mary E. Collum, Jaques Kawan, & Leonaore R. Love. "Information Exchange and Accuracy of Verbal Communication Under Social Power Conditions." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 9.4 (1968): 301-308. Electronic.

This article studies the effect of social standing on communication, focusing both on receiving information and giving. In the experiment, researchers paired low and high status participants as the experimental group with similar status pairs as the control group. The results indicated that "information is directed upward toward high-status persons in a social hierarchy." More specifically, the low status talked more when paired with a high status than in the control group, and the high talked more in the control group than when paired with a low status subject. 


However, the most interesting conclusion was that "the high-status receiver became more active in clarifying and sharpening the messages" from the low status subject, but the low status subjects made fewer interruptions in the explanations from a high status sender. In other words, the low status subjects rarely asked clarifying questions or made comments about their level of understanding while the high status subjects talked in "detailed and detached terms." Thus it is important to "encourage the low-status receiver to sharpen and clarify what the high-status sender is attempting to convey." 


With regards to my project, I am almost exclusively studying the communication between a high status subject (the professor) and a low status subject (the student i. e. me). Knowing what happens with the quality of professor-student communication will help me circumvent miscommunication and be aware of my need to ask clarifying questions and be willing to own up to my lack of understanding when necessary.