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ABSTRACT
One of the main problems in current interpersonal communication research is the lack of an
research to date has often used inadequate measures of interpersonal communication styles.
In this research, a multi-phase lexical approach was used to uncover the main communication
styles. In the first three phases, adjectives were selected based on their ability to describe a
communication style. In the fourth and final phase, 200 respondents provided self-rating on
Analysis, which provided evidence of seven main communication style dimensions. This
paper describes the lexical research process and the content and interrelations of the seven
INTRODUCTION
communication, almost all people will tend to feel lost and lonely (Adler, Rosenfeld, &
measures (Rubin, Palmgreen, & Sypher, 1994) lists two instruments that deal explicitly with
‘normal’ (e.g., not dealing with aggression or apprehension) styles of communication; the
Communicator Style Measure (CSM; Norton, 1978) and the Relational Communication Scale
(RCS; Burgoon & Hale, 1987). Since these instruments are well known, one would expect
them to contain scales that are reliable and valid. According to Nunnally (1981), a reliable
instrument is one that has a reliability >.70 for explorative research and >.80 for research in
which one tests hypotheses. Rubin, Palmgreen, and Sypher (1994) report reliabilities as low
as .37 for one of Norton’s CSM scales and .42 for one of Burgoon’s RCS scales, which is
clearly insufficient for explorative research, let alone for hypothesis testing.
become available (Gudykunst et al., 1996), up until now, there has been no consensus on the
number of dimensions of communication styles and the exact content of these dimensions.
For instance, it has been suggested that communication styles may be captured by two main
dimensions (Dillard, Solomon, & Palmer, 1999; Sorenson & Savage, 1989) but no
fundamental research in communication science has been done to either confirm or falsify
this assumption. However, a similar assumption with respect to interpersonal relations has
been tested in psychology. In 1957, Leary proposed that the interpersonal relation domain can
best be represented using two dimensions, namely affiliation and control. These two
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 3
dimensions span the main axes of a circle that is known as the interpersonal circle or
circumplex (Figure 1). A lot of research has been conducted on the interpersonal circumplex
(e.g., Acton & Revelle, 2002; Gurtman, 2001; Tracey, Ryan, & Jaschik-Herman, 2001;
Wagner, Kiesler, & Schmidt, 1995), especially on the notion of circularity of measurement
instruments derived from the framework and the complementarity of behavioral responses in
interpersonal relations.
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Although the instruments used to measure the two dimensions and its facets are more
advanced (e.g., Benjamin, 1996; Moskowitz, 1994; Wiggins, Trapnell, & Phillips, 1988) and
the two dimensional and circumplexical framework is more encompassing than the
science scholars are looking for when studying interpersonal communication and its effects.
For instance, adjectives such as ‘neighborly’ and ‘antisocial’ load on the interpersonal
circumplex (De Raad, 1995), but can hardly be considered ‘communicative acts’. These
adjectives can be considered ‘transitive’ because they require another person (the neighbor or
the person one is being antisocial to) as an object of the interaction. Adjectives such as ‘loud’
(luidruchtig) and ‘businesslike’ can be considered communicative acts, but they are
considered ‘intransitive’ because they do not require another person as an object of the
circumplex, are transitive, and they seem to provide a meaningful description of one’s
communication style.
From this we can infer that the interpersonal relations concept overlaps with
communication acts and styles, and is both somewhat ‘broader’ and ‘narrower’ than
communication acts and styles (Figure 2). The interpersonal circumplex shows overlap with
communication styles in the case both refer to communicative behaviors that are transitive.
that are transitive but not communicative. On the other hand, the interpersonal circumplex is
narrower because it excludes communicative styles that are intransitive. Furthermore, it may
be true that the interpersonal circumplex is also somewhat restricted by focusing on two
dimensions only. It may be argued that these two are the main dimensions of transitive
behaviors, but some intransitive behaviors may also be said to constitute communicative
styles. For instance, emotionality is not part of the interpersonal circumplex, but emotional
style. Thus, the interpersonal circumplex, although providing a starting point for discussion
on the framework for interpersonal communication styles, cannot be considered the ultimate
framework.
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LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 5
The interpersonal circumplex is closely related to two of the main dimensions derived
from lexical personality research (Trapnell & Wiggins, 1990). Although the consensus
among personality psychologists for the last 20 years was that there are five major
dimensions of personality, recent re-analysis of data from the major lexical studies has
actually revealed that there are six instead of five main personality dimensions (Ashton, Lee,
Perugini, Szarota, de Vries, Di Blas, Boies, & de Raad, 2004). These six dimensions, known
and agreeableness are commonly equated with the two main interpersonal circumplex
(abstract) object (whether time, matter, or ideas; for instance: punctual, orderly, precise,
etc…). The three other dimensions fall somewhere in between the interpersonal and
Hofstee, de Raad, & Goldberg (1992), the interpersonal circumplex may have to be expanded
to include (the Big Five) Emotional Stability. Thus, emotionality seems to be a prime
candidate as a communication dimension, notably since emotionality will often express itself
content seems to be related to unassuming (low on control & high on agreeableness) in the
interpersonal circumplex. The difference between emotionality, openness, and honesty (not
so much humility) on the one hand and extraversion and agreeableness on the other, is that
the former may be less ‘transitive’ than the latter. It is impossible to be extravert and
experience, and honest when alone. However, as we said before, intransitive behaviors that
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 6
take part in the presence of others can be very communicative, i.e., intransitivity alone should
research on adjectives in the tradition of the lexical approach (see Ashton et al., 2004; De
Raad, 1995). This type of research is relatively rare in communication science (but for an
exception see Burgoon, Johnson, & Koch, 1998). In personality psychology, however, this
type of research has been used to uncover the main personality dimensions. The principle
behind lexical research in the personality psychology tradition is that everything that can be
said about personality is represented in language and thus in any representative dictionary of
a language. The same argument that has been made for personality psychology can be applied
to communication styles. In fact, Burgoon et al. (1998) have used a similar approach to study
adjectives, they used an inductive approach. This paper reports a large study, which tries to
deductively arrive at the adjectives that describe communication styles. The research question
that we try to answer in this study is: “What are the main dimensions of communication
derive scales from these dimensions and investigate whether men and women use different
communication styles.
METHOD
The research was conducted in four phases. In the first three phases a selection was
made of the adjectives that represented communication styles. In the fourth phase, 200
respondents provided self-ratings on the final list of 749 adjectives. The phases and the
Phase 1
In phase 1 we collected all relevant adjectives from the Dutch ‘Van Dale’ dictionary,
which is the most extensive and complete dictionary of the Netherlands. The following
criteria were used to select adjectives from the dictionary: 1) at least one of the meanings of
the adjectives, or none in the case of monosemes, did not contain a label referring to either
time, slang, or technical jargon, except for technical words referring to communication or
psychology; 2) selected adjectives have a frequency of two or higher in the previous five
years of five main national newspapers. The number of adjectives that fulfilled, which criteria
was 7765. Additionally, we included a list of 1203 Dutch personality adjectives of Brokken
(1978). A great number of words from this list showed overlap with the list from the Dutch
dictionary; of the 1203 adjectives only 153 were added to the Van Dale list of 7765
adjectives. Thus the final list at the end of phase 1 contained 7918 adjectives.
Phase 2
In phase 2, 7918 adjectives were rated twice, with an interval of 2 weeks, by three
style,
medium).
(e.g., arrowy),
good)
- it was unknown, highly unusual, or the meaning of the word was ambiguous (e.g.,
infemal)
Since the three raters rated the adjectives twice, the range of scores was from 0 to 6.
Adjectives receiving a score of ‘3’ or higher (1931 adjectives) passed on to the next round.
Adjectives receiving a score of ‘0’ did not go on to the next phase. Adjectives that received a
score of 1 or 2 were submitted to an additional selection using the same three raters.
Adjectives were scored on a five-point scale, ranging from ‘5’ (adjective provides a clear
image of the way somebody communicates) to ‘1’ (adjective does not or provides an unclear
image of the way somebody communicates). Adjectives with a mean score ≥ 3 or which
received from one of the three raters a score of ‘5’ were added to the next round. In total 283
adjectives were added to the next round, making for a total of 2214 adjectives for the third
phase.
Phase 3
which 20 students were in their final years of communication science and 20 were in their
final years of Dutch language studies. The respondents were asked to rate the adjectives on a
five-point (disagree – agree) scale using the following sentence: “Does this adjective summon
a clear image of somebody’s communication style?” The average correlation between the 40
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 9
raters was .31 and the inter-rater reliability was .82. Adjectives with a score ≥ 3.5 were
deemed to be sufficiently communicative. In this way 749 adjectives were selected to pass on
to phase 4.
Phase 4
Phase 4 constituted the final study. Through e-mail 700 people from a pool of
return, a financial compensation was provided. Of the 700 people who received the e-mail,
200 (28.6%) participated. The sample consisted of 65 men and 135 women, with age ranging
between 18 and 56 years. Respondents provided self-ratings using the following sentence:
“During a conversation, I tend to communicate ….”, in which the dots had to be replaced
with each of the 749 adjectives. Answers were provided on a five-point (disagree – agree)
scale.
RESULTS
The data was ipsatized before being subjected to a principal component analysis.
Based on the scree plot, a 6- or 7-factor solution seemed preferable for the data. Based on the
content, a 7-factor solution, explaining 25,2% of the variance, was chosen. In Figure 2, a tree
diagram of the relation between the factors from the first to seventh factor solution is
provided. The final 7-factor solution appears to contain variants of the HEXACO scales
(Ashton & Lee, 2004) plus Incivility. For now we will use the better-known names of the
HEXACO scales to denote the communication styles, although they could also be described
to experience), and True (Honesty-Humility). Extraversion is the most consistent factor in all
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 10
of the factor solutions, already appearing as the main factor in the single factor solution,
although the factor is mainly defined by its negative, i.e., introversion, consisting of
adjectives such as shy, bashful, and closed, but also contains adjectives referring to an
extravert communication style, such as catchy, articulate, and talkative (see Appendix). In the
factor solution these two split into separate factors. Although agreeableness contributes to
openness in the 5-factor solution and emotionality in the 6-factor solution, the core meaning
of agreeableness – the 3d factor in the 7-factor solution – remains the same in the 7-factor
solution, consisting of adjectives such as friendly, nice, and tolerant, and (negatively loading)
vehement, offensive, and reproachful. Incivility also remains virtually unchanged, with as its
main loading adjectives rude, mean, and unsociable, although in the 7-factor solution it splits
unchanged up until the 7-factor solution and is defined by adjectives such as well-studied,
disciplined, and precise on the one hand and messy (-), chaotic (-), and incoherent (-) on the
other. In the 5-factor solution openness to experience appears as a new factor, although
receiving some contribution from agreeableness. It should be noted that openness (to
experience) has a somewhat negative connotation; apart from adjectives such as poetic,
the 5-factor solution after receiving some variance from Agreeableness. In the 7-factor
affected, emotional, and moody versus calm (-), stonesober (-), and cool (-). In the 7-factor
solution, honesty appears as a separate factor, receiving contribution from both incivility and
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 11
emotionality. The main defining adjectives of honesty are honest and sincere versus smooth
Beyond the first seven factors lie mainly smaller factors. The 8-factor solution
contains a ‘moodiness’ factor, which receives contributions from both agreeableness and
ninth factor, a separate ‘humorous’ factor emerges. Finally, in the 10-factor solution, a
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Using the 30 highest loading items of each of the seven factors, we constructed
adjective scales from the non-ipsatized (raw) item scores. In Table 1, the reliabilities and
intercorrelations of the scales formed from the factors are shown. As can be seen, all of the
scales have reliabilities exceeding .80; the first four factors (extraversion, conscientiousness,
agreeableness, and incivility) even have reliabilities exceeding .90. Except for three
correlations, those between agreeableness, incivility and honesty, none of the correlations
exceed .30. Incivility correlates -.63 with honesty and .52 with agreeableness. Agreeableness
correlates .52 with incivility. The means of incivility and honesty are respectively somewhat
lower (2.09) and higher (3.74) than the other means, reflecting social desirable answering
tendencies. Additionally, the standard deviations of these two adjective scales are somewhat
narrower than the others (except emotionality), reflecting the restriction of range associated
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conducted a t-test on each of the seven adjectives scales (see Table 1). Except for the
adjectives scales incivility, honesty, and openness to experience, no differences between male
style that was less rude (lower on incivility) than men (mw = 1.99, sdw = .34 versus mm =
2.29, sdm = .51;t = 4.91, p < .01), more true (higher on honesty-humility) than men (mw =
3.85, sdw = .33 versus mm = 3.51, sdm = .39; t = -6.56, p < .01), and less complex (lower on
openness to experience) than men (mw = 2.90, sdw = .44 versus mm = 3.08, sdm = .46; t =
2.78, p = .01).
communication styles. The study shows that communication styles are captured by seven
main style dimensions that resemble the HEXACO constructs (Lee & Ashton, 2004) in
personality psychology plus an additional dimension Incivility. In this study, the main
dimensions obtained the following labels: extraversion (or: eloquence), conscientiousness (or:
truthfulness), openness to experience (or: complexity), and emotionality. Scales derived from
these constructs are shown to have high to very high reliabilities, with all reliabilities
exceeding .80.
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 13
The intercorrelations between the adjective scales are lower than .30, with the
exception of three scales that highly intercorrelate, i.e., agreeableness, incivility, and honesty.
The relation between agreeableness and honesty has been observed in personality research as
well. According to Ashton and Lee (2001), agreeableness and honesty, along with
emotionality, can be interpreted as traits that involve prosocial versus antisocial tendencies.
Lee, Ashton, and de Vries (2004) observe that content associated with altruistic (prosocial
emotionality. This is clearly the case in this research as well. In the five-factor solution, there
was no emotionality factor present, which only showed up in the six-factor solution as a
derivative from the general agreeableness factor. Emotionality, in its turn, shed some of its
honesty-humility obtained additional content from the incivility factor. Thus, although the
between the five- and seven-factor solution, content of the four factors agreeableness,
incivility, honesty, and emotionality that have to do with the communication of altruism show
The resemblance between the six of the seven communication style factors and the
HEXACO personality factors is striking and confirm the link between personality and
interpersonal communication styles that has been suggested by other scholars (Leung &
Bond, 2001; McCroskey, Heisel, & Richmond, 2001). However, there are some differences
between personality and communication styles as well. The most notable differences occur in
in the introduction, the personality factor conscientiousness can be regarded as the least
transitive of the personality factors, since it describes the handling of (abstract) objects such
as time, matter, and ideas. Openness to experience involves the handling of ideas or
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 14
experience, together with extraversion can be interpreted as traits that involve the active
(extraversion). It is not surprising that extraversion emerges as a primary factor in the factor
solutions and shows clear one-to-one mapping on the personality trait extraversion. However,
both conscientiousness and openness to experience do not primarily belong to the social
domain, and thus it is surprising that they emerge as communication style dimensions. The
as involving the handling of ideas. In this sense, they are less transitive than the other five
factors in the seven-factor solution, but still describe a communication style. A conscientious
or precise communication style is one that involves the structure of one’s communication,
one’s communication, such as poems, philosophy, or scientific analysis. Note that some
content-related adjectives, such as academic, theoretic, and scientific, that load highly on
This research has also investigated whether there are differences between men and
women in communication styles. The outcomes show no differences between men and
and emotionality. Although the stereotype of women involves the communication of emotion
and emotionality while communication (Popp et al., 2003), this research does not confirm
differences between men and women with regard to emotional communication. This study
supports findings of Street (2002) and Aruguete & Roberts (2000) in the absence of
differences between men and women with respect to emotional communication. However,
the research does find significant differences between men and women with respect to
future research.
There are several other paths for future research. In the first place, studies should
investigate the relation between the personality constructs, such as measured by the
HEXACO-PI (Lee & Ashton, 2004) and the communication dimensions. Secondly, it is
worth testing the relationships between other communication style constructs, such as the one
proposed by Gudykunst et al. (1996) and the communication style dimensions presented here.
Gudykunst et al. (1996) distinguish between 8 communication styles, inferring meaning, use
positive perception of silence. Some of these show clear conceptual similarities with the
dimensions found in this study. Thus one would expect preciseness to correlate with
dimensions with some of the other constructs of Gudykunst et al. (1996) are not as clear-cut
A third issue is whether adjectives are the right word class to measure communication
styles. Maybe verbs constitute a better word class to investigate communication, since verbs
involve specific acts instead of broader styles (De Raad, 1992; 1999). Thus, if one would like
However, for broader patterns of communication depicting the way someone communicates
with someone else, adjectives seem to be the right class of words. A fourth issue is whether
shows that the main dimensions of personality are clearly replicable in lexical studies in
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 16
different countries and languages (Ashton et al., 2004). Based on these results, I expect the
same communication style dimensions to appear in different countries and languages as well.
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 17
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LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 19
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TABLE 1
Descriptive statistics, correlations and reliabilities (on diagonal) of the scales derived from
FIGURE 1
Assured-
Dominant
Arrogant- Gregarious-
Calculating Extraverted
Cold- Warm-
Hearted Agreeable
Aloof- Unassuming-
Introverted Ingenuous
Unassured-
Submissive
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 23
FIGURE 2
Overlap and non-overlap of the domains of the Interpersonal Circumplex and the
communication styles
Interpersonal Communication
Circumplex styles
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 24
FIGURE 3
E Emotionality
LEXICAL COMMUNICATION DIMENSIONS 25
APPENDIX
Factor Adjectives
1. eXtraversion shy, bashful, closed, ponderous, reserved, boring, silent, catchy,
(Eloquent) introvert, articulate, having the gift of the gab, restrained, awkward,
extravert, unsure, talkative, high-spirited, energetic, smooth, inhibited,
eloquent, ill at ease, chatty, listless, passive, exuberant, speechless,
expressive, timid, contagious
2. Conscientiousness well-studied, messy, long-threaded, disciplined, chaotic, precise,
(Precise) charming, crystal-clear, professional, lucid, incoherent, perceptive,
well-considered, thoughtless, mature, expert, consistent, substantive,
accurate, meticulous, confused, well thought-out, heated, clumsy,
functional, academic, lax, theoretic, scientific, nonchalant
3. Agreeableness piqued, vehement, friendly, nice, reproachful, offensive, contrary,
(Friendly) rock-hard, short-tempered, pissed off, worked up, peeved, amusing,
heated, touchy, stubborn, hot-headed, accommodating, venomous,
obstinate, hard, suave, tactical, social, peremptory, patient, insincere,
vicious, recalcitrant, tolerant
4. Incivility rude, mean, unsociable, subtle, impolite, loutish, bad-tempered,
(Rude) reassuring, vulgar, indecent, bad-mannered, coarse, aggressive,
callous, sadistic, pitiful, loving, denigratory, concerned, sneaky,
conciliatory, obliging, rascally, uncivilized, daft, cheering, insulting,
compassionate, complimentary, unfriendly
5. Honesty smooth, cunning, sincere, sly, honest, empathetic, boastful, arrogant,
(True) cold-blooded, sly, hard as nails, amicable, conceited, bluffing,
interested, sympathetic, heartfelt, intuitive, grandiloquent, attentive,
self-congratulatory, personal, incessant, fake, involved, sensitive,
supercilious, instinctive, moved, clearly
6. Openness to poetic, philosophical, poetic, busy, mysterious, strange, analytic,
experience clear, complicated, abnormal, secretive, intellectual, contemplating,
(Complex) rebellious, predictable, complex, diplomatic, short-sighted, ironic,
thorough, optimistic, idealistic, woolly, positive, profound, self-willed,
cynical, simple, provocative, in-depth
7. Emotionality affected, emotional, pedantic, calm, moody, upset, dejected,
(Emotional) sentimental, oversensitive, stonesober, overanxious, hypersensitive,
narrow-minded, cool, quick-witted, teasing, good-humoured,
resentful, sensitive, short-tempered, cross, frustrated, passionless,
humoristic, unmoved, hysteric, stern, critical, attentive, cocky