Production Principles for Turn-Taking Rules in Social Interaction: Socially Anxious vs. Socially Secure Persons

Turn-taking rules are one of the social abilities that are widely shared among social actors. Mutual adherence to these rules allows social interactions to proceed smoothly as the back and forth flow of speaking and listening roles are regulated. Evidence reviewed here suggests that certain behaviours involved in turn-taking rules, in particular eye gaze aversion, body-focused gesture, and pausing, are employed differently by socially anxious and socially secure persons. Possible reasons for such differences in the production of these behaviours by these two groups are discussed. The cognitive load experienced by socially anxious persons may explain why high anxious persons would exhibit more of these behaviours than low socially anxious persons. A secondary data analysis is reported testing this hypothesis on high and low socially anxious persons under conditions of greater and lesser cognitive load. Results supportive of the hypothesis were obtained for gesture and for pausing (but only for males) indicating that high socially anxious persons exhibit more of these behaviours under high load than do the less socially anxious. The data for gaze aversion did not support the hypothesis, exhibiting a trend in the opposite direction for males. Implications for training are discussed.