1 Cognitive Editing DALE HAMPLE University of Maryland, USA People do not always say the first thing that comes to mind. Sometimes they abandon their first impulse and substitute another one. Sometimes they keep the first thought but revise it, perhaps to make it simpler or nicer. These processes of suppressing or revising messages before they are uttered are called cognitive editing. Most of the cognitive editing research to date has dealt with persuasion in some form, usually making a request of someone. The standard methodology employed in this research has been to ask participants to pretend that they are in some sort of situation (e.g., asking a friend to come along to a type of movie the friend does not like very much), and then to look at a list of possible messages that participants might use to induce their friend to comply. Respondents are invited to endorse as many messages as they like (that is, to indicate they would be willing to say that thing to the friend). For each rejected message, participants check off a reason for not saying it. Development of the editorial standards (the reasons for not saying things) was the first main achievement of the research program (Hample & Dallinger, 1987). Inventories of messages Editing is a part of a more general message production process. Most often, this production process is theorized as a situation–goals–plans–action sequence (Dillard, 2004). In this sequence, a person comes into contact with a social situation, one that seems to call for communication. The person then spontaneously forms a primary communication goal to frame the activity (for example, persuasion or comforting), and this goal immediately stimulates potential messages that might be said. These messages are then compared to secondary goals (for example, being polite, avoiding exploitation), and the person cycles back and forth between possible utterances, their consequences, and their revisions (Meyer, 1997). This is the editing process, a part of the more general process of message planning. Finally, once a projected message meets all the standards the person applies, the plan is approved and the message is made public. A key fact in this process is that people are capable of thinking of several things that they could say in order to pursue the same set of goals; that is, they have or can easily form inventories of possible messages. Confronted with situations designed to call forth persuasion, comforting, or forgiveness, people can easily list about seven things The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication, First Edition. Edited by Charles R. Berger and Michael E. Roloff. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI:10.1002/9781118540190.wbeic0204 2 that they could say (Hample, 2005). Probably only one of them will be immediately said, and it may be revised prior to utterance. The inventories include boilerplate messages that have been used before, adaptations of those preset messages to the present situation, and perhaps even genuinely creative possibilities, thought of for the first time. It is the editing process that promotes one of those messages from the private inventory to the public stage where the message is performed. Editorial standards The earliest studies of cognitive editing gave people possible messages that could be used in response to a simple situational stimulus, asked them which messages they would be willing to use, and which messages they would not deploy. For the rejected messages, people were also asked to provide open‐ended explanations of the reasons the messages were found wanting. These reasons were coded into categories, and after several such studies, a simple list of rejection rationales was developed. Subsequent work has considered this list as a checklist that people could quickly use to explain their editorial decisions. The checklist has nine choices. The first is endorsement (“I would be willing to say this”) and the last is a residual category (“I wouldn’t be willing to say this, but for some unlisted reason”). The other seven reasons are the main concern here. The first of these is effectiveness. People use this category to indicate that they would not use a message because they project that it would not work. Second is principled objection. This reason refers to messages that are rejected on some principled grounds: this is just not the sort of message this person would use, perhaps because it is a threat or bribe or something else that seems generally inappropriate. The next three reasons for suppression are often collected together under the title of person‐centered editorial standards. Harm to self is the first of these. This rationale is used to reject messages that might damage one’s self‐ image or projected identity. Either self or other would think less of the speaker if he or she said this. Harm to other is next. In this case, messages are rejected because they might make the other person upset, or angry, or humiliated. They would damage the other person’s face. The last person‐centered editorial standard is harm to relationship. This reason is used to reject messages that might threaten or undermine whatever relationship exists between the speaker and the listener. Many respondents appear to use harm to other and harm to relationship almost interchangeably, and they tend to produce the same patterns of correlates. The last two standards are sometimes called discourse competence. The first of these is false. This criterion is used to justify rejecting messages that seem factually incorrect to self or other, or that the speaker could not provide evidence for, if pressed to do so. Finally, messages can be rejected because they are irrelevant, either in the view of the speaker or in the anticipated view of the listener. Hample and Dallinger (1992) designed a study that permitted the editorial standards to be factor analyzed. For various stimuli, either two or three factor solutions appeared. Effectiveness was a consistent factor, including endorsement, principled objection, and the effectiveness criterion. Person‐centered reasons also emerged consistently. This factor included harm to self, harm to other, and harm to relationship. When there was 3 a third factor, it was the two discourse competence standards: truth and relevance. When there were only two factors, truth and relevance joined with the effectiveness standards to be part of that factor. The editorial standards can be thought of in several ways. The first and most obvious is that these are the reasons that people employ to suppress or revise imperfect potential messages. But the editorial criteria can also be thought of as representing people’s interaction goals. The message production process involves comparing candidate messages to their consequences and evaluating those consequences in terms of the goals they promote or violate. The editorial standards comprise a list of those goals: to be effective, to protect face, to preserve the relationship, and to satisfy basic standards for communication (Grice, 1975). As will be detailed momentarily, these standards are used in systematically different ways by different sorts of people, and so the usage profiles suggest whether people orient mainly to task requirements (effectiveness) or interpersonal relations (person‐centered criteria), and how they balance those motives. So the third way of thinking about the standards is as a list of behavioral tendencies and sensitivities. Suppressing and revising processes Meyer (1997) has theorized that message production can be thought of as using two key resources stored in people’s cognitive systems. The first of these she called situation– action associations. Recognizing a social situation with various characteristics, people privately connect situations of that type with various actions that are connected to it. These connections may have been formed by observation of what other people have done, or may reflect one’s own experiences, or some combination of those. The actions that are immediately activated in this way are the first draft of one’s message. If the person does not engage in editing or any further planning, that message is the one that will be uttered (Hample, Richards, & Skubisz, 2013). Often, however, the initial message gets some further processing, and the second sort of cognitive resource comes into play. Those are action–consequence associations. The nominated message (the action) is cognitively connected to the consequences that that sort of message has had in the past, or which are expected to occur. These outcomes are evaluated according to the person’s social goals (e.g., politeness). If the consequences are negative, the normal outcome is for the message to be abandoned or revised. Given enough time (see Kellermann & Park, 2001), people will pass through as many revision or replacement cycles as are needed for an acceptable message to be generated. In one study, Hample (2000) asked people to think aloud as they wrote out persuasive messages. The idea was that by studying what people said as they wrote their messages, fairly direct evidence could be obtained to describe their editorial activity. Quite a few of the revisions had to do with things not mentioned in the standard checklist. Spelling was corrected, grammatical mistakes were noticed and fixed, and stylistic choices also received focused attention (e.g., using the same word twice in one sentence). However, when the persuasive content of the messages was a focal concern, people displayed editorial work that exemplified the matters on the checklist. Issues such as harm to self 4 or other were obviously being taken into account, and people revised their messages to soften blows or avoid problems. Messages were also revised to be more effective, or to avoid lying (although some people noticed that they were being untruthful and decided to include that material anyway). A significant contribution of this study is that it shows how cognitive editing processes contribute to revisions, rather than mere suppression and substitution. The action–consequence associations that Meyer theorized were clearly in play, and people attended to the possibility of untoward impressions as they revised and improved their written notes. Types of editors People express their personalities and their understandings of the social world in the way in which they edit their messages. A substantial amount of the cognitive editing research has aimed at connecting editorial strategies with personality traits. The clearest generalization from that research (though it lacks nuance) is that there are two kinds of people: those who focus on effectiveness, and those who focus on person‐centered considerations (for data summaries, see Hample, 2005, ch. 6). The effectiveness cluster, as noted above, refers to the endorsement, effectiveness, and principled objection choices on the standard checklist. People who are unusually likely to endorse messages (some of which were of course rejected by other people) have these characteristics: they prefer to approach arguments, they are verbally aggressive, they are high in self‐monitoring, they rate themselves as very effective arguers and also very appropriate in their interactions, and, if married, closely match their spouse’s endorsement decisions. The effectiveness criterion for suppression is especially used by people high in verbal aggressiveness and low in interpersonal orientation, by people who rate themselves high in arguing effectiveness, by those who have high masculinity scores and, when married, by those who match their spouse’s effectiveness standard usage. The last editing standard in the effectiveness cluster is principled objection, and here results are somewhat more scattered. This standard is used particularly by people who are other‐directed and introverted. To sum up: task‐oriented editors tend to be aggressive and to consider themselves as unusually effective arguers. The other main cluster of editorial criteria is person-centered, and it includes harm to self, harm to other, and harm to relationship as reasons not to say things. Harm to self is used by people who rate themselves as low in masculinity. Harm to other is a characteristic editorial concern for those who avoid arguing, are not verbally aggressive, are high in interpersonal orientation, are sensitive to social desirability, do not describe themselves as masculine, and who match their spouse’s use of this standard. Concern for relationship is also used by those who self‐describe as low in masculinity and who match their spouse’s use of this criterion. This group of people contrasts with those who are task oriented. The person‐centered editor is quieter, less aggressive, more considerate, and more sensitive to other people’s needs and face wants. Editorial behaviors can be used to predict or show the effects of specific personality traits, and hypotheses of this sort have often been made. However, the basic result emphasized here is that task‐oriented and person‐centered people have different editorial profiles 5 and, consequently, produce different sorts of messages. Task‐oriented communicators are willing to say a thing that will succeed at the primary aim, even if some personal harm is done along the way. Person‐centered people, on the other hand, might very well suppress a potentially effective message in order to avoid damage to face or relationship. Situational responsiveness In a given moment, people not only express their enduring predispositions but they also respond to the circumstances in which they find themselves. Research has indicated that people edit differently according to the social situation’s characteristics. The standard research study on cognitive editing would have two or three situational stimuli, but these were not enough to justify any generalizations about situational effects from a single study. Consequently, Hample and Dallinger (2002) cumulated all those individual studies and retrospectively obtained ratings of all the situational stimuli used in the research program. This permitted some generalizations about how situations affect editing (for a data summary, see Hample, 2005, ch. 6). The main situational features under study were drawn from Cody, Woefel, and Jordan’s (1983) analysis of compliance‐seeking situations. These characteristics include whether the situation seems to have the potential for personal benefits for the message producer, whether he or she might be apprehensive about communicating, whether the target seems likely to resist, whether the source has a right to engage in persuasion at all, whether the message producer is dominant in relation to the target, whether the situation seems intimate, and whether or not there are likely to be substantial relational consequences. More endorsement choices are made when the situations seem to offer more potential benefits to the arguer, when she or he has more situational apprehension, when the target is seen as having dominance over the arguer and might be expected to be more resistant, when the situation is less intimate, and when there are fewer expected relational consequences. The overall picture for endorsement seems to reflect motivation: marginally acceptable messages are endorsed when personal gains are in the offing, which might explain why there might be more apprehension and why the target may have a superior position and be seen as hard to move. These are the circumstances that seem to call out more message activity. Use of the effectiveness standard follows this pattern, but only to some degree. Messages will be suppressed out of concern that they might fail when the arguer is less apprehensive, when expected resistance is high, and when there are minor expected relational consequences. The pattern of usage for principled objection is exactly opposite to that for the effectiveness standard. Results for the person‐centered standards are more consistent with one another. Harm to self, other, and relationship are all more likely to be suppression criteria when expected resistance is low. These standards are also more likely to be in play when relational consequences are not expectably substantial. In addition, harm to other is a more common consideration when few personal benefits are available, when there is little situational apprehension for the message producer, and when the source is dominant over the target. The general profile here is that person‐centered criteria will be salient when the message 6 producer is not greatly concerned about relational outcomes, and in fact does not need to be especially worried about whether the influence attempt will succeed. These are circumstances in which a light touch is possible, without necessarily sacrificing effectiveness. One other study has shed light on situational effects (Hample & Dallinger, 1998). In that investigation people completed the editing instrument three times. The first time, they were simply asked to persuade a person. After filling out that page, however, they were informed that the other person had refused the request without giving any real reason. They then completed the editorial measure again with different candidate messages, indicating what they would be willing to say after one rebuff. Then they turned the page and found that the person had again refused without a reason, and they indicated what they would be willing to say after a second rebuff of the same request. Results showed that as people worked through the rebuff sequence, they became less and less interested in person‐centered matters. They endorsed more potential messages, and increased their emphasis on effectiveness and task issues as the main reasons for not saying something. This investigation showed a particular sort of interaction between situational features and editorial standards: as people went through a series of blunt refusals, their preferred editorial criteria changed. They became more aggressive and less concerned about face and the possibility of relational harm. These results comport with other studies showing that persuaders whose influence attempts are repeatedly rejected tend to become progressively more coercive with each rebuff. For the most part, situational variables have had smaller effects on editorial behavior than have personality variables; however, this contrast may be a fault in the research program rather than a secure conclusion. With the exception of Hample and Dallinger (1998), situation has not been a focal research concern. The cumulative study (Hample & Dallinger, 2002) used other people’s post facto ratings of the situations to predict message producers’ editorial choices. It seems likely that stronger effects would have appeared if the editors themselves had rated the situations. The most likely hypothesis, that editorial choices result from an interaction of personality trait and perceived situational characteristics, has not yet been systematically tested. Closing notes The cognitive editing research program has studied invisible messages, those that are never uttered or that are revised before ever being exposed to public scrutiny. Research shows that people very commonly engage in such editorial work. Some people decline to do it very often, and we call those people blurters (Hample, Richards, & Skubisz, 2013). Performance of editorial work reveals whether a person is task oriented or person-centered, and what balance a person makes between those two impulses. The place of situational considerations in this balance is not yet well understood. SEE ALSO: Arguing; Communication Styles; Conflict Styles and Strategies; Facework; Goals–Plan–Action Theory; Identity Management; Influence Goals and Plans; Interpersonal Communication Skill/Competence; Planning Theory; Politeness and Social Influence; Request Production; Verbal Aggressiveness 7 References Cody, M. J., Woefel, M. L., & Jordan, W. J. (1983). Dimensions of compliance‐gaining situations. Human Communication Research, 9, 99–113. doi: 10.1111/j.1468‐2958.1983.tb00686.x Dillard, J. P. (2004). The goals–plans–action model of interpersonal influence. In J. S. Seiter & R. H. Gass (Eds.), Perspective on persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining (pp. 185–206). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 3. Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Hample, D. (2000). Cognitive editing of arguments and reasons for requests: Evidence from think‐aloud protocols. 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Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hample, D., Richards, A. S., & Skubisz, C. (2013). Blurting. Communication Monographs, 80, 503–532. doi: 10.1080/03637751.2013.830316 Kellermann, K., & Park, H. S. (2001). Situational urgency and conversational retreat: When politeness and efficiency matter. Communication Research, 28, 3–47. doi: 10.1177/009365001028001001 Meyer, J. R. (1997). Cognitive influences on the ability to address interaction goals. In J. O. Greene (Ed.), Message production: Advances in communication theory (pp. 71–90). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Dale Hample is an associate professor of communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. His primary research interests are argumentation, interpersonal communication, and message production. A past editor of Argumentation and Advocacy, he is also the author of Arguing: Exchanging Reasons Face to Face.