APA Dictionary of Psychology

in communication, the difference between what a speaker intends to convey and the impact of the message on a listener. Many factors contribute to this gap, some related to the speaker’s encoding of the message and others to the listener’s decoding of it. Research has shown that speakers often assume that their intent is more transparent to listeners than it actually is, a tendency called the signal amplification bias, which may lead speakers to perceive that their listeners are less responsive than they would like them to be.