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Complaining Behavior in Social Interaction

DOI:10.1177/0146167292183004
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Mark D Alicke at Ohio University
Mark D Alicke
James C. Braun
James C. Braun
James C. Braun
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Jeffrey E. Glor
Jeffrey E. Glor
Jeffrey E. Glor
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Ml Klotz at Susquehanna University
Ml Klotz
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Abstract

Complaining is a pervasive and important form of social communication but one whose social communicative functions have yet to be subject to empirical investigation. The present study was the first to examine the role of complaining in everyday social interactions. College students kept diaries of the complaints they made to other people for 3 consecutive days, twice during the semester. Students recorded the complaint, the reason for expressing it, and the response it elicited. Over 75% of all complaints registered were non instrumental in nature, in that they were not directed at changing an existing state of affairs but, rather, were expressed for reasons such as to vent frustration or to solicit sympathy. The most frequent complaints involved specific behaviors of another person. The most frequent response to a complaint was to agree with the complainer's statement. The importance of complaining as a form of social communication is discussed, and a number of hypotheses are generated for future research.
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Personality and Social Psychology
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/18/3/286
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0146167292183004
1992 18: 286Pers Soc Psychol Bull
Mark D. Alicke, James C. Braun, Jeffrey E. Glor, M. L. Klotz, Jon Magee, Heather Sederhoim and Robin Siegel
Complaining Behavior in Social Interaction
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... Complaining exchanges often drift away from their initial topic, but always remain centered on their purpose of affect sharing between the complainer and complainee. In fact, many complaints do not relate "true" suffering but describe harmless or innocuous events of little importance (Alicke et al., 1992;Boxer, 1993). While eliciting empathy and affiliation by describing low-suffering situations may seem counter-intuitive, this communicative strategy effectively facilitates the empathic involvement of listeners in different types of social contexts, from routine rituals among intimates to ice-breaker conversations between strangers (Boxer, 1993;Kowalski, 2002). ...
... The relative ease for processing innocuous complaints confirms their non-instrumental nature: one can virtually complain about anything (Alicke et al., 1992;Boxer, 1993), as long as they can efficiently reconstruct and convey their affective state (Caffi & Janney, 1994;Selting, 2010). Prosody appears as the emotive device of choice in that regard, with a clear acoustic signature that is perceptually identifiable and processed from utterance onset , 2022b. ...
... Still, this study is the first to provide neurophysiological evidence that emotive prosody can take precedence over semantic information in complaining speech, complementing a sparse but growing literature in the fields of pragmatics (Drew & Walker, 2009;Edwards, 2005;Selting, 2010), acoustics (Acuña-Ferreira, 2002;Ogden, 2007;Rao, 2013), and experimental psychology . Behavioral results, however, suggest that this primacy is not absolute: while here, prosodic cues largely drove the perception of speaker pain, there is other evidence that perceptually hierarchize complaining topics even when spoken with an emotive voice (Alicke et al., 1992). ...
Complain like you mean it! How prosody conveys suffering even about innocuous events
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When complaining, speakers can use their voice to convey a feeling of pain, even when describing innocuous events. Rapid detection of emotive and identity features of the voice may constrain how the semantic content of complaints is processed, as indexed by N400 and P600 effects evoked by the final, pain-related word. Twenty-six participants listened to statements describing painful and innocuous events expressed in a neutral or complaining voice, produced by ingroup and outgroup accented speakers. Participants evaluated how hurt the speaker felt under EEG monitoring. Principal Component Analysis of Event-Related Potentials from the final word onset demonstrated N400 and P600 increases when complainers described innocuous vs. painful events in a neutral voice, but these effects were altered when utterances were expressed in a complaining voice. Independent of prosody, N400 amplitudes increased for complaints spoken in outgroup vs. ingroup accents. Results demonstrate that prosody and accent constrain the processing of spoken complaints as proposed in a parallel-constraint-satisfaction model.
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... It is because users usually perceive positive reviews as more useful than positive reviews (Eslami et al., 2018;Lee et al., 2017). Furthermore, according to literature (Alicke et al., 1992); Berkowitz, 1970;Berger, 2014), the more negative the attitude of users towards the brand, the greater their desire to vent. Therefore, users that have had negative experiences are more prone to extensive reviews rather than brief reviews. ...
... Nonetheless, it is striking that negative reviews predominate in the most extensive reviews rather than the shorter ones. According to Alicke et al. (1992), Berkowitz (1970) and Berger (2014), the more negative the attitude of users towards the brand, the greater their desire to vent. Therefore, users with negative experiences are more prone to extensive reviews rather than brief reviews. ...
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... Although consumers often have targeted and concrete motivations for speaking with companies (e.g., to seek compensation or improve a company's offerings), they often communicate with companies simply to be heard. In fact, studies of complaints have shown that over 75% of complaints are non-instrumental (Alicke et al., 1992) (Alick, Braun, Glor, Klotz, Magee, Sederholm, & Siegel, 1992. That is, they are not aimed at changing the current state of affairs but rather at satisfying emotional needs such as venting or eliciting sympathy. ...
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... People often express their dissatisfaction with others, this is very common in social life [7]. In the literature, the broadest definition of complaint is the expression of discontent, regardless of whether such discontent really exists or not [8]. ...
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... (Sezer et al., 2015). These statements involve a complaint, expressing discontent, displeasure, or an unfavorable attitude (Alicke et al., 1992;Kowalski, 2002), yet simultaneously allow speakers to showcase their enviably good qualities. Such humblebragging, masking success in the guise of complaint, is increasingly common and has attracted a large volume of media attention as one of the "excesses" of self-enhancement online (Alford, 2012;Dean, 2011;Wittels, 2012). ...
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... Complaints are verbal descriptions of a distressing, annoying, or painful event (Boxer, 1993;Drew, 1998). When addressed indirectly to a third party -as opposed to direct complaints addressed to the source of the distress (see Laforest, 2002) -complaints do not seek to resolve an issue, but rather, to foster the listener's affiliation to their suffering (Alicke et al., 1992;Drew and Walker, 2009). In order to negotiate this affiliation, speakers aim to trigger mechanisms of mood contagion and shared affect (Kowalski, 2002;Selting, 2010), as well as mentalizing processes for their listener to infer their subjective state (Edwards, 2005). ...
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