Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Responses to Interability Communication Styles in the Workplace: Perspectives of People with Disabilities

Abstract

Guided by communication accommodation theory (Giles, 1973; 2016) and the Communication Predicament of Disability Model (Ryan et al., 2005), this experimental study examined interability communication in the workplace from the perspective of people with disabilities. Specifically, this study manipulated four communication styles (i.e., integrative, relational, dismissive, and directive talk) and tested their effects on participants with disabilities’ (N = 902) perceptions of communication competence and inferred motive of, satisfaction with, and communication anxiety toward the individual without a disability. In addition, this study examined the effects of the communication styles on participants’ internalized stigma and likelihood of using different adaptive response strategies (i.e., avoiding, obliging, problem-solving, and competing).Findings indicated that the individual without a disability’s communication style significantly affected participants’ evaluations of the person without a disability, as well as their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. In the integrative talk condition, participants perceived the coworker without a disability to be the most communicatively competent, satisfying, positively motivated, and participants reported the least communication anxiety and stigma, followed by participants in the relational talk, dismissive talk, and directive talk conditions. Additionally, participants in the integrative talk and relational talk conditions were more likely to use the accommodative adaptive response strategies (i.e., problem-solving and obliging) than participants in the dismissive and directive talk conditions. Results of this study also revealed significant indirect effects of the communication styles on the dependent variables through inferred motive and communication anxiety. This study contributes to our understandings of the interability, intergroup dynamics at play in the workplace, specifically when dealing with workplace accommodations due to an employee’s disability. Findings are discussed in light of communication accommodation theory (Giles, 1973; 2016), the Communication Predicament of Disability Model (Ryan et al., 2005), and organizational communication literature related to conflict and task management (e.g., Chaudry & Asif, 2015; Nicotera, 1993) regarding interability communication in the workplace.