A Voice is Worth a Thousand Words: The Implications of the Micro-Coding of Social Signals in Speech for Trust Research

Abstract

While self-report measures are often highly reliable for field research on trust (Mayer and Davis, 1999), subjects often cannot complete surveys during real time interactions. In contrast, the social signals that are embedded in the non-linguistic elements of conversations can be captured in real time and extracted with the assistance of computer coding. This chapter seeks to understand how computer-coded social signals are related to interpersonal trust.