An Experiment on How Naïve People Evaluate Interruptions as Effective, Unpleasant and Influential

Abstract

We conducted an experimental study on 144 participants to evaluate how naïve people evaluate different kinds of interruptions. We manipulated the point in which interruption occurs (early, late and no interruption) and the type of interruption (change subject, disagreement, clarification and agreement) on pre-built, acted and audio-recorded dialogues. Then, participants evaluated how much each interruption was effective, unpleasant and influential. The main results show that (a) with some exceptions, early and late interruptions were evaluated as more influential and unpleasant than control, and early interruption more unpleasant than late interruption; (b) change subject was more unpleasant and less effective than disagreement, and disagreement than clarification but only in not interruptive turn-taking while there was no difference between clarification and disagreement for effectiveness and unpleasantness; (c) the point was more important than type in determining the evaluation of interruption; (d) the perception of a turn-taking as an interruption was correlated with unpleasantness and only partially with influence; (e) all over the study, the effectiveness went in the opposite direction with respect to our hypothesis. Results are interpreted at the light of the literature on the effects of interruption and of politeness theory applied to interruption.