When Faithful Informational Exchanges Are Just Too Much Work: Repair Avoidance and Reformulation Cost

Recent research shows that people frequently avoid repairing communication problems, even in purely informational exchanges. We experimentally test a possible explanation: cognitive effort-saving. Participants will need to engage in effortful reformulations in order to repair a conspicuous communication problem. We hypothesize that greater reformulation costs lead to greater repair avoidance.