Don't you say it that way! Experimental evidence that controlling voices elicit defiance

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Abstract

Motivational messages can be communicated in a controlling or pressuring way, or alternatively, speakers can support listeners' sense of choice and self-initiation. Despite this being a key aspect of daily life, little is known about the outcomes of different motivational tones on listeners' experiences. In three experiments, we tested the extent to which a controlling – rather than an autonomy-supportive – tone of voice elicited defiance, a tense desire to do the opposite of what motivators are asking and hoping for. Study 1 found evidence that motivational speakers using a controlling tone were perceived as more pressuring than supportive and, through these perceptions, they elicited defiant reactions from listeners. Study 2 replicated this effect and identified a perceived controlling style to be the primary predictor of defiance, even when accounting for the reduced warmth and increased power communicated by speakers using controlling tone of voice. In a final study, we observed that both semantics (i.e., words) and prosody (i.e., tone of voice) independently communicate controlling versus autonomy-supportive messages and, through doing so, elicit defiant reactions. Yet, when used in combination – likely the most typical way that motivators communicate control – they elicited the most defiance from listeners. Findings are discussed in the context of developmental, organizational, and social literatures which are concerned with how listeners can be best motivated to act.

Section snippets

Controlling versus autonomy-supportive motivating styles and defiance

Central within Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017) is the claim that human beings have the natural desire to experience a sense of choice and psychological freedom in their thinking, feeling, and acting. When people have this inherent psychological need for autonomy met, they report a myriad of positive outcomes, including improved well-being (Yu, Levesque-Bristol, & Maeda, 2018), greater engagement (Jang, Kim, & Reeve, 2016), and more flexibility and openness (Hodgins & Knee,

Autonomy-supportive and controlling communication styles

Autonomy-supportive and controlling motivating styles do not solely differ in the type of practices being used (e.g. choice, giving a rationale), but also through the way socializing agents communicate with those that need to be motivated. Yet, only a minority of studies has zoomed in on the role of motivating language per se, thereby identifying and examining the effect of the words used to convey the same message in more inviting, informational, and autonomy-supportive or more threatening,

Different tones of voice

Apart from this shortcoming, past research sheds little light on the role that tone of voice may play in the effects that these motivational messages have. As far as motivating language is manipulated through written instructions, it suggests that semantics suffice to elicit different reactions and outcomes among those reading the message. If instructions are orally provided, both the semantics and tone of voice may be driving observed effects (e.g., De Meyer et al., 2016; De Muynck et al., 2017

Present research

While many speakers may be considerate of the words they use to stimulate others to act, they might underestimate the effect of tone of voice, and this oversight is echoed by a research body that has largely focused on listeners' reactions to semantics rather than prosody in controlling versus autonomy-supportive motivational speech (see Voße & Wagner, 2018; Weinstein et al., 2018 for exceptions). One meaningful way to explore listener reactions to these motivational styles of communicating is

Participants

Ninety-five native English speakers (50 males; 45 females) were recruited on Prolific Academic (Peer, Brandimarte, Samat, & Acquisti, 2017) for an Internet survey.1 Previous studies show that survey respondents from online platforms such as this provide similar data to students and evidence higher intrinsic enjoyment of

Preliminary analyses

Age correlated negatively with defiance, r = −0.22, p = .04, while being unrelated to perceptions of speakers. Gender did not relate to either defiance or perceptions, ps > 0.40.

Primary analyses

A multiple analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted simultaneously predicting both outcomes, while entering gender and age as covariates.2 Overall, condition

Participants and procedure

One hundred native English speakers (58% female, mean age = 34.9 years; SD = 11.2 years) rated their perception of warmth, power and defiance on Prolific Academic. New to this study, along with preparing participants for listening to audio files as in Study 1, we also asked participants at the end of the study “Did you listen to all the sentences in the link provided earlier in the study?” to account for the possibility that participants had access to the audio file but selected to leave their

Preliminary analyses

An independent t-test indicated that women perceived speakers to be more pressuring, t(98) = −2.38, p = .02, while age related negatively to defiance, r = −0.22, p = .03. No other associations were present with gender and age, ps > 0.09.

Primary analyses

A multiple analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted simultaneously predicting all four outcomes, and controlling for gender and age as covariates.5

Participants and procedure

Two-hundred and eighty-five native English speakers were recruited on Prolific Academic. Of these 158 (55.4%) were female and ages of participants averaged, M = 36.2 years (SD = 19.2 years), comparable to sample compositions for the previous study and well-representative of the adult population in terms of these two characteristics.

Participants were once again asked whether they had listened to all sentences serving as experimental stimuli. We recruited 45 participants per condition for a

Analytic strategy

As in previous studies, primary analyses were conducted using ANOVAs, but this time models examined the main and interacting effects of motivational quality (Autonomy-Supportive vs. Controlling) and mode of communication (Semantics vs. Prosody vs. Both) since the study used a 2 (motivational quality) × 3 (mode of communication) design. PROCESS models examined direct effects predicting perceptions of speakers and defiance from motivational qualities, separately for each mode of communication.

Discussion

SDT and reactance theory (Brehm, 1966; Deci & Ryan, 1985) suggest that controlling motivational climates elicit defiance – a tense desire to resist influence, yet we have little understanding about whether and how this happens through the spoken qualities of motivating communications. Here, we tested the possibility that merely by using controlling tone of voice, motivating speakers could produce defiance, suggesting that speakers' use of tone may in some cases backfire.

Consistent with our

Conclusions

Despite these findings, the experiments conducted in this paper were only the second to test the extent motivational prosody characterized by either control or autonomy support impacts listeners' experiences (following Weinstein et al., 2018) and the first of which we are aware to study its intriguing influence on defiance, an outcome which directly speaks to the effectiveness of these two motivational approaches. Further, our findings that controlling tone of voice elicited defiance were

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