Verbal and nonverbal communication of warmth to children, foreigners, and retarded adults

Abstract

The verbal and nonverbal communication of warmth was examined in a study in which undergraduate women taught a block design task to a listener who was either a six-year-old child, a retarded adult, a peer who spoke English as a second language ("foreigner"), or a peer who was a native speaker of English. The degree of warmth conveyed by the speakers differed only minimally across different categories of listeners. However, these communications did vary systematically within each category, in accord with the levels of cognitive and linguistic sophistication of each particular listener. Speakers tended to fine-tune communications by conveying more warmth to the more sophisticated children and foreigners than to the less sophisticated members of these categories. To the more sophisticated retarded persons, however, they conveyed—nonverbally—less warmth than to the less sophisticated retarded persons. The relevance of these findings to the communication of expectancy effects and to the social psychology of stigma is discussed.