Effects of Explicitness

In this section we will discuss the effect of explicitness of making a promise.

Section 4.4.1 provides the result of the explicitness effects on our subjects‘

comprehension task, and Section 4.4.2 explores the interaction of explicitness and other factors. The discussion of explicitness effects is given in Section 4.4.3.

4.4.1 Effects of Explicitness on Promise Judgment

The descriptive statistics of yes responses to the comprehension task was presented in Table 4-11:

4 Id, ego and superego are the three components of the psychic apparatus defined in Freud‘s (1935, 1960) structural model of the psyche. They are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the superego plays the critical and moralizing role.

Table 4-11. Descriptive Statistics of Yes Responses to the Promise Judgment Questions Concerning Explicitness

Group Explicitness Number Mean SD

p-value

6-year-olds Explicit 20 0.71 0.29

0.032

Implicit 20 0.62 0.35

7-year-olds Explicit 20 0.73 0.28 0.073

Implicit 20 0.64 0.33

8-year-olds Explicit 20 0.85 0.24 0.063

Implicit 20 0.78 0.18

9-year-olds Explicit 20 0.91 0.16

0.002

Implicit 20 0.68 0.31

Control Explicit 20 1.00 0.00

0.004

Implicit 20 0.77 0.32

Most participants performed similarly that they showed sensitivity to the explicitness of promise in their scores. Significant differences between explicit and implicit promises were found in promise judgments of three groups: 6-, 9-year-olds, and control groups. In these three groups, promises made explicitly were more likely to be recognized as effective promises. Although no significance was observed in the other two groups, the p-value did approach statistical significance. The subjects still presented higher mean scores in the explicit condition than in the implicit condition (7-year-olds: 0.73 vs. 0.64; 8-year-olds: 0.85 vs. 0.78), suggesting that the subjects prefer a promise to be made explicitly rather than implicitly.

4.4.2 Interaction between Explicitness and Other Factors

Table 4-12 presents the descriptive statistics of the interaction between the factor of promiser‘s explicitness of making commitments and the promisee‘s social status.

Table 4-12. Interaction between Social status and Explicitness

Note : E = explicit promise; I = implicit promise

In the situation of making a promise to a person with higher social status, both scores of explicitness were higher than the scores in the situation of making a promise to a person with lower social status. However, differences remained significant in the two older groups (9-year-olds: p = .039; Control: p = .036). In the low social status condition, the 6-year-olds‘ performance also showed statistically significant differences (p = .007).

Table 4-13 presents the descriptive statistics of the interaction between the promiser‘s explicitness of making commitments and the promiser‘s sincerity.

Table 4-13. Interaction between Sincerity and Explicitness

Note : E = explicit promise; I = implicit promise

Compared with the promiser‘s sincerity, all of the subjects still showed preferences of recognizing an explicitly made promise as a real promise. In the sincere condition, our subjects around the age of eight began to show different judgments between explicit and implicit promises (8-year-olds: p = .029; 9-year-olds:

High Low

p = .002; Control: p = .007). On the contrary, in the insincere condition, participants

4.4.3 General Discussion on Effects of Explicitness

As mentioned in the previous subsections, significance between the explicit and implicit promises was found in the participants‘ promise judgments. A tendency was observed in all the groups that the subjects‘ scores of promise judgments were relatively higher in the explicit promise condition than in the implicit promise condition, indicating that the subjects preferred a promise to be made explicitly than implicitly.

When the subjects were asked to justify their promise judgments, they showed their sensitivity to the explicitness of promises, as shown in (6):

(6) Ta you jiangchu ta yao zuo de shi, erqie ta you shuo he have say he will do NM thing and he have say ta zuowan na jian shi yao zuo na jian shi.

he finish which CL thing will do which CL thing

‗He has already said what he is going to do, and he also said he will do it after he finished something.‘ (G4S1, Q15)

In (6), the 9-year-old participant (G4S1) referred to the explicitness of the promise content while making justification for his promise judgment. He thought Yuanyuan had made a promise because he had explicitly told the promisee what future action was going to be finished and when it will be carried out. On the contrary, in the implicit promise condition, he did not consider that the promise had been made because the promising content was not stated clearly, as in (7):

(7) Yinwei ta zhiyou shuo dengyixia, meiyou shuo yao dai ta because he only say wait NEG say will bring he qu chi bing.

go eat ice cream

‗(It‘s not a promise) Because he only said ‗wait a minute,‘ and he did not say that he would take him to get ice cream.‘ (G4S1, Q2)

The subject (G4S1) thought Yuanyuan did not make a promise simply because he did not tell the promisee clearly about the promising content.

In order to achieve the integrity and efficiency of communication, Grice (1975) formulated the Cooperative Principle⁵ to describe how people normally behave and interact with one another in conversation. He argued for the importance of quantity,

‗make your contribution as informative as is required,‘ and relevance, ‗a partner‘s contribution to be appropriate to immediate needs at each stage of the transaction‘

(1975:47). The maxim of quantity requires the speaker to provide the right amount of information to the addressee, which means not to be too brief or to give redundant information than the situation requires. The maxim of relevance requires the speaker to give relevant information while talking. When the promiser makes a promise implicitly, without adequate information, the promisee has to draw an inference according to the information received from the promiser‘s utterances. The more explicit the promiser‘s expression of the promise, the less inference the promisee has to make. Consider the following promise without explicit future act:

(8) Hao, dengyixia.

yes wait a moment ‗Sure, wait a moment.‘

In (8), only the promiser would know whether s/he had made a promise. For the

5 The Cooperative Principle can be divided into four maxims, describing specific principles emerged conventionally when people communicate with each other: Maxim of Quality, Maxim of Relevance;

Maxim of Quantity, and Maxim of Manner.

pomisee, ―wait a moment‖ could be inferred to have two different meanings: 1) the speaker would accomplish the future act in a short while 2) the speaker would talk about it in a moment. It is a promise only if the speaker means to accomplish the future act in a short while. However, if the speaker‘s intent is to discuss the issue later, it is not a promise. Misunderstanding may occur when a hearer misinterprets the intentional meaning of the speaker‘s utterance. This happens when the addressee looks for a totally different implication from that intended by the speaker (Lundström, 2004). If the promisee draws an incorrect inference, the inconsistency between his inference and the promiser‘s intention could cause a misunderstanding. For example, if Yuanyuan made a promise implicitly to his younger brother to help him with homework, ‗Hao, dengyixia‘ ‗Wait a moment,‘ and his brother assumed that Yuanyuan would help him later but Yuanyuan did not intend to do so, Yuanyuan‘s brother might wait for nothing. When a promise is implicitly made, it is challenging to judgewhether it is a real promise. Therefore, most of our participants, including the younger children, showed their preferences for a promise made with an explicit future act as an actual promise.