Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | March 2020

Gender Differences in Communicative Abstraction

by Priyanka D. Joshi, Cheryl J. Wakslak, Gil Appel and Laura Huang

Abstract

Drawing on construal level theory, which suggests that experiencing a communicative audience as proximal rather than distal leads speakers to frame messages more concretely, we examine gender difference in linguistic abstraction. In a meta-analysis of prior studies examining the effects of distance on communication, we find that women communicate more concretely than men when an audience is described as being psychologically close. These gender differences in linguistic abstraction are eliminated when speakers consider an audience whose distance has been made salient (Study 1). In studies that follow, we examine gender difference in linguistic abstraction in contexts where the nature of the audience is not specified. Across a written experimental context (Study 2), a large corpus of online blog posts (Study 3), and the real-world speech of congressmen and congresswomen (Study 4), we find that men speak more abstractly than women. These gender difference in speech abstraction continue to emerge when subjective feelings of power are experimentally manipulated (Study 5). We believe that gender differences in linguistic abstraction are the result of several interrelated processes—including but not limited to social network size and homogeneity, communication motives involving seeking proximity or distance, perceptions of audience homogeneity and distance, as well as experience of power. In Study 6, we find preliminary support for mediation of gender differences in linguistic abstraction by women’s tendency to interact in small social networks. We discuss implications of these gender differences in communicative abstraction for existing theory and provide suggestions for future research.

Keywords: construal level theory; psychological distance; Gender; Communication; Leadership;

Format: Print Find at Harvard

Citation:

Joshi, Priyanka D., Cheryl J. Wakslak, Gil Appel, and Laura Huang. "Gender Differences in Communicative Abstraction." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 118, no. 3 (March 2020): 417–435.

About the Author

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Laura Huang
MBA Class of 1954 Associate Professor of Business Administration
Organizational Behavior

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