Mindfulness and Interpersonal Communication

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 2000 by Judee K. Burgoon, Charles R. Berger, Vincent R. Waldron

Features of Communication That Elicit Mindfulness

The preponderance of communication literature related to mindfulness fits into the category of communication-as-cause-of mindfulness. In considering the role of mindfulness in addressing social issues, then, we need to specify which features of the communication situation, the communicators themselves, or their messages may naturally prompt greater mindfulness. Langer's early work (1978) and subsequent analyses by others (e.g., J. K. Burgoon & Langer, 1995; Hewes, 1995; Hewes & Graham, 1989; Motley, 1992; Schul & Burnstein, 1998) have identified the following as prompting people to become more thoughtful: (1) novel situations (i.e., those that have no script) or ones in which engaging in scripted behavior becomes effortful (perhaps because of new and greater situational demands), (2) novel communication formats (e.g., computer-mediated communication or human-computer interaction), (3) uninvolving situations, (4) interruptions by external factors that interfere with completion of a script, (5) conflict, compe tition, or confusion arising among two or more message goals and/or the means of achieving them, (6) anticipating negative consequences of a message yet to be transmitted, (7) nonroutine time delay or processing difficulty intervening between message formulation and actual transmission, (8) discrepant, asynchronous, or suspicion-arousing features of the modality, message, source, or situation (such as expecting invalid information, interacting with a reputedly untrustworthy source, or recognizing implausibilities in a message), and (9) experiencing a positive or negative consequence that is highly discrepant from previous consequences (e.g., experiencing a positive or negative violation of expectations or failing to achieve one's goals and plans).

Waldron (1997) reported that some of these mindfulness prompts were manifested in the conversations he studied. After finishing videotaped conversations, participants completed a cued-recall procedure in which they rated the importance of their goals during each 30-s segment of conversation and wrote interpretations of what had transpired during the segment. Participants rated five types of interpersonal goals (Dillard, 1990): arousal management, relational, self-identity, other-identity, and information seeking. Segments that included statistically significant shifts in goal priority were located, and the conversational events that prompted participants to rethink their goals were described.

The conversations were punctuated frequently by potential mindfulness prompts. Roughly 30% of the 30-s intervals involved a substantive reconfiguring of conversational objectives. Participants' self-reports and observational data indicated that mindfulness was encouraged by several factors consistent with the list provided above. Planning confusions and uncertainties about which actions to deploy in future conversational turns induced interactants to rethink their objectives. When plans were thwarted by the partner's lack of cooperation a similar effect occurred. Partner rule violations, including perceived invasions of privacy and excessive verbosity, elicited a mindful response, as did behavior that prompted suspicions about the partner's motives (e.g., perceived insincerity). Conversational intervals characterized by these apparently mindful reactions were associated with behavioral patterns, such as increased questioning, longer conversational turns, requests for evidence, and interruptions of the partne r, all of which suggest an active effort to assert control of the conversational situation.