Why People Have Trouble Communicating
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Some of people’s biggest communication problems come in sharing new information with people they know well, newly published research at the University of Chicago shows.
Because they already share quite a bit of common knowledge, people often use short, ambiguous messages in talking with co-workers and spouses, and accordingly unintentionally create misunderstandings, says Boaz Keysar, Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago. “People are so used to talking with those with whom they already share a great deal of information, that when they have something really new to share, they often present it in away that assumes the person already knows it” said Keysar.
In order to test the theory, the researchers created a communications game in which parties had unequal amounts of information. They prepared line drawings of unusual shapes and gave them made-up names and then trained University of Chicago students to recognize different numbers of the shapes. During this game students were tested to see how well they could communicate to a partner the identity of one of the shapes. Students, who with their partners shared a great deal of knowledge about the shapes, used names more often in identifying the shapes while students who did not have a great knowledge of the shapes described the shapes rather than naming them.
The students were more likely to confuse the partners they shared more information with because they would automatically use the name of a shape rather than the description, assuming that their partner would know what they were talking about, when in reality he or she did not recognize the name.
