Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Behavioral Analysis

First Advisor

David A. Wilder

Second Advisor

Catherine Nicholson

Third Advisor

Bryon Neff

Fourth Advisor

Patrick D. Converse

Abstract

Rapport can be defined as a positive relationship between people built through specific actions. Building rapport can benefit organizations by improving performance and increasing work satisfaction. Despite these benefits, research on rapport remains scarce. Curry et al. (2019) completed the most recent rapport study and found that rapport-building led to increased productivity and discretionary effort. The present study replicated and extended Curry et al. (2019) and addressed three limitations of their research: the lack of a control group, the large disparity in time spent with the experimenter, and the rigidity of their rapport conversation script. The study was completed in two parts. Experiment 1 addressed the limitation of conversation rigidity by observing participant interactions rated high in rapport and coding them for behavioral themes. These themes were used to create a new, more natural rapport conversation script. Experiment 2 addressed the other two limitations and evaluated the effectiveness of the new rapport conversation script. The results demonstrated that rapport-building led to significantly more checks completed and higher perceived rapport between the rapport and control groups. The rapport group also completed significantly more checks than the non-rapport group. The rapport group also spent less time between tasks than the control group. However, no significant differences were found in discretionary effort. The results indicated that rapport-building can influence productivity and perceptions of rapport. Limitations and possibilities for future research are also discussed.

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