Expectations, influence and evaluations : examining the impact of language expectancies on compliance and outcome values

“Who says what to whom and of what consequence?” is a fundamentally communicative question. This dissertation provides answers to this question by examining receivers’ expectations about, perceptions of, and responses to, requests for compliance. This dissertation asks: What impact does source credibility have on responses to and evaluations of request for compliance? Do people who receive requests for compliance have different language expectations for high and low credibility sources? If receivers perceive self-benefit from complying with a request, will that affect their responses to or evaluations of the message or message source? To answer these questions, this dissertation responds to the call for studies to extend language expectancy theory by focusing on interpersonal influence attempts; the results herein provide researchers with the opportunity to offer refined specifications when making predictions about social influence outcomes. In addition, this dissertation is novel in that it examines the intersection between language expectancy theory and predicted outcome value theory.