Interruptions in Group Discussions: The Effects of Gender and Group Composition

Conversations both reflect and maintain social inequalities. They import hierarchical structures from larger society and help perpetuate them by creating inequalities in the ability to accomplish interactional goals. In this study of speaker transitions in six-person, task-oriented experimental groups, we explore the well-known finding that men interrupt women more frequently than women interrupt men. We ask three questions about the structure of interruptions. Who attempts to interrupt whom and under what conditions? How does the affective character of interruptions vary across speakers and groups? What determines whether an interruption succeeds? We find that gender inequality in these task-oriented discussions is created by a mixture of attempts to use power and of differential success. In their interruptions, men discriminate by sex in attempts and in yielding to interruptions by others. Women interrupt and yield the floor to males and females equally. The sex composition of the group affects interruption patterns in complex ways. Men interrupt men with supportive comments in all-male groups, but these supportive interruptions drop as the number of women in the group increases. Supportive interruptions also succeed in gaining the floor more often in single-sex groups. Taken together, the results suggest a mixture of status and conflict models and reaffirm the importance of group composition in interaction.