Politeness in Teams: Implications for Directive Compliance Behavior and Associated Attitudes & Considering Etiquette in the Design of an Adaptive System

Summary: This article reports an experiment in which college students and professional combat air controllers performed a simulated team interaction task designed to explore the effects of the degree of politeness used by a directive giver and the degree of "social distance"(roughly, team affiliation and affinity between the directive giver and the recipient), on directive compliance behaviors and attitudes. The design and experimental approach was informed by the functional theory of politeness in social interactions developed by Brown and Levinson, although hypotheses are advanced that extend this essentially perceptual model to effects on behaviors and attitudes. Results showed that increased politeness in a directive significantly improved attitudes toward the directive giver. Social "nearness” operated similarly and influenced the degree of politeness perceived even when the request itself was unchanged. Both effects operate similarly for novices and experts. Compliance rates (and one portion of reaction time) were similarly affected by the politeness of the directive giver but, interestingly, were affected differently for novices and experts. The politeness of the directive giver increased compliance for novices but decreased it for experts. This result suggests that politeness perceptions are an important influence on work performance but that their interpretation can be influenced through training and/or work "culture."