SUBORDINATION AND SENSITIVITY TO NONVERBAL CUES - A STUDY OF MARRIED WORKING WOMEN

Women's superiority in decoding nonverbal cues of emotion has often be en discussed as an adaptation to low status. To examine the relation o f status to nonverbal sensitivity, ''subordination'' in 83 female empl oyees of a large university was defined in terms of marriage tradition ality, gender-role values salary rank, and self-reported subordination at work. Sensitivity to nonverbal cues was measured using voice tone clips from the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS). Measures of su bordination as defined by marriage and gender-role values showed that less subordinate women were better decoders of a female encoder than w ere more subordinate women. These measures were not significantly rela ted to success in decoding a male encoder. The hypothesis that women i n lower ranked jobs would have greater ability to decode nonverbal aff ect cues was significantly disconfirmed for one subscale of the PONS a nd received no support for the other subscales and total score. Among higher-ranked women only, subjective feelings of subordination on the job had a linear relation to one PONS subscore, such that better decod ers felt more subordinate; there were also quadratic trends for other subscores showing that both the least and most subordinate-feeling wer e the most accurate decoders. Limitations and future directions for th e subordination hypothesis are discussed in light of these findings.