Examining the Role of Perceived Immediacy as a Mediator: Revisiting the Relationships among Immediate Behaviors, Liking, and Disclosure

This dissertation purports to clarify the role of perceived immediacy in interpersonal communication. Immediate behaviors were first identified as behaviors associated with increases in receiver liking and self-disclosure. As such, the first study is a meta-analysis of immediate behaviors and self-disclosure and the second study meta-analyzes immediate behaviors and liking. The magnitudes of the effects yielded from both studies are consisted with indirect relationships. The third study is an experiment which uses a range of previously identified immediate behaviors from the literature as an induction and measures perceived immediacy, liking, and self-disclosure to test perceived immediacy as a mediating variable between immediate behaviors and these outputs. The results of the experiment are consistent with perceived immediacy mediating immediate behaviors and liking, but not immediate behaviors and disclosure.