Misunderstanding and mutual recrimination le unfortunately fairly common, participants often operate with difference rules and expectations about the way in which the conversation should proceed something that is particularly evident when people of different cultural backgrounds interact. But even within a culture, different ‘rules of interpretation' may exist.
It has been suggested for example, that there are different rules governing the way in which men and women participate in a conversation. A common source of misunderstanding is the way both parties use head nods and mhm noises while the other is speaking –something that women do much more frequently than men. Some analysts have suggested that the two sexes mean different things by this behaviour. When a woman does it, she is simply indicating that she is listening and encouraging the speaker to continue. But the male interprets it to mean that she is agreeing with everything he is saying. By contrast when a man doses it, he is signalling that he does not necessarily agree, whereas the woman interprets it to mean that he is not always listening. Such interpretations are not always plausible, as it is argued, because they explain two of the most widely reported reactions from participants in cross-sex conversations – the male reaction of ‘It's impossible to say what a woman really thinks', and the female reaction of ‘ you never listen to a world I say!”