Evaluative and behavioral responses to nonverbal liking behavior

Abstract

An intuitive notion regarding the communication of liking is that it is consistently associated with positive relational outcomes. An alternative possibility is that when expressions of liking comprise a negative violation of expectancies, they produce outcomes that are actually more negative than those produced by the absence of such expressions. The current experiment tests this prediction with respect to evaluative and behavioral responses to nonverbal expressions of liking. Ninety-six adults were paired with same-sex strangers and induced to expect the strangers either to like or dislike them and to desire that the strangers either like or dislike them. The strangers, who were trained confederates, enacted nonverbal behaviors associated either with liking or disliking during a short experimental interaction with participants. Participants' evaluations of confederates were most favorable when confederates' behaviors matched participants' desires, whether the desire was to be liked or disliked. Behaviorally, participants matched desired behavior from confederates and reacted with complementarity to undesired behavior. These results suggest the counterintuitive notion that expressions of liking are not consistently associated with positive relational outcomes, but that factors such as receivers' desires and expectations largely determine what outcomes will be produced. The results also raise important issues for how expectations are conceptually and operationally defined.