Effect of Dyadic Context on Judgments of Rapport: Dyad Task and Partner Presence

The present studies investigated the effects of dyadic context on judgments of nonverbal behavior associated with rapport. As predicted, the task performed by a dyad, the visible presence or absence of both dyad members, and the sex of the observer affected observer judgments of responsiveness, friendliness, dominance, critical scrutiny, polite sympathy, and high status. The results suggest that dyadic context affects judgments of dyad members' facilitation of rapport by both constraining dyad behavior and affecting observer perception: (a) Dyad members received higher judgments on person-focused behaviors when engaged in a discussion as compared to a puzzle; (b) Visible presence of an interaction partner led observers to see a dyad member, on the whole, as inhibiting rapport in the interaction; and (c) Female observers perceived dyad members to exhibit more rapport-facilitating behavior. These results have major implications for the way rapport and person perception research is conducted and for understanding interpersonal perception in everyday life.     

Towards a Communication Dialectic: Embedded Technology and the Enhancement of Place*

Communication literature traditionally divides interaction into two forms: mass media and interpersonal communication. These ideal types are unquestionably useful heuristic tools. Yet their conceptual utility is often undermined when researchers place them at opposite ends of a linear, historical transformation in which mass media technology is believed to supplant interpersonal communication and the locations in which it occurs. This article abandons the polar, historical relationship in favor of a communication dialectic that recognizes the synthesis of ideal types into composite forms of interaction. Embedded technology demonstrates the dialectic by exploring how electronic media fixed within a physical location can combine with the interpersonal communication taking place there to enhance group interaction. The resulting hybrid defies the assumption that mass media simply displace interpersonal interaction, pointing instead to a dialectic relationship in which ideal types continually challenge and transform one another.     

Categories for Exchange Analysis in Small Groups: With an Illustration from Group Psychotherapy*

Longabaugh's category system for coding interpersonal behavior in mother-child dyads as social exchange is revised for use in small group analysis by using a more comprehensive set of content categories based on Parsonian functional (AGIL) theory. The notation for exchange analysis is illustrated with an extract from a group psychotherapy session.     

Gender differences in predicting high-risk drinking among undergraduate students

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in college students' high-risk drinking as measured by an estimated blood alcohol concentration (eBAC) based on gender, height, weight, self-reported number of drinks, and hours spent drinking. Using a developmental/contextual framework, high-risk drinking is conceptualized as a function of relevant individual characteristics, interpersonal factors, and contextual factors regularly mentioned in the college drinking literature. Individual characteristics include race, gender, and age; interpersonal characteristics include number of sexual partners and having experienced forced sexual contact. Finally, contextual factors include Greek membership, living off-campus, and perception of peer drinking behavior. This study is a secondary data analysis of 1,422 students at a large university in the Southeast. Data were gathered from a probability sample of students through a mail survey. A three-step hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed gender differences in the pathway for high-risk drinking. For men, high-risk drinking was predicted by a combination of individual characteristics and contextual factors. For women, interpersonal factors, along with individual characteristics and contextual factors, predicted high-risk drinking, highlighting the importance of understanding female sexual relationships and raising questions about women's risk-taking behavior. Implications for prevention and assessment are discussed.     

Nonviolent Action from a Social-psychological Perspective*

A social-psychological perspective, used in the analysis of three cases of nonviolent direct action, combines the “exchange theory” of Homans and the two and three dimensional approaches for the analysis of interpersonal behavior suggested by Leary and Bales. The three dimensions are: dominance-submission, positive-negative, and goal, oriented-deviant. Once the behavior of a nonviolent actor has been identified in this three dimensional space, the expected behavior of his opponent can be predicted.     

Children's Understanding of Emotion Communication in Families

SUMMARY

There is a paucity of research on children's awareness of how emotion communication varies within relationships. Indeed, we operate on the assumption that a very significant function of emotion is to regulate interpersonal interaction. In this essay we discuss how children come to understand such phenomena as: (a) emotional-expressive behavior can have powerful interpersonal consequences; (b) relationship dimensions such as degree of power and closeness interact with intensity of emotion in how emotion is communicated; and (c) maintenance of relationship quality (e.g., equilibrium, attenuation, or deepening) requires different strategies of emotion communication. Among the constructs that we address are several that are useful for understanding the dynamics of interpersonal communication; they have also proven their utility over a considerable period of time. However, these constructs derive from social psychology and family systems; they have not been systematically investigated from a developmental perspective     

The impact of computer based communication on the social structure of an emerging scientific specialty

This is a study of the impact of a computer conference on the formation of interpersonal ties among scientists. Various techniques from social networks analysis are adapted and used to study the structure of interpersonal ties among a set of scientists both before and during a computer conference. Although the data are not experimental, the results are suggestive. The computer, it seems, can perhaps take the place of protracted face-to-face interaction and provide the sort of social structure out of which a scientific specialty can grow.     

Nonverbal Communication in Humans

Nonverbal behavior includes all communicative acts except speech. Communication means conveying information through signals. We use body language without being aware of it, perceive and interpret other people's body language. Three classes of nonverbal behavior are the verbal-vocal, nonverbal-vocal, and nonverbal-nonvocal. Several gestures illustrate the relationship between verbal and nonverbal behavior. Nonverbal phenomena are most important in the structuring and occurrence of interpersonal communication and the movement-to-movement regulation of the interaction. Nonverbal signs help regulate the system, cueing hierarchy and priority among communicators, signaling the flow of interaction, and providing meta-communication and feedback. Experiences teach us unconsciously that space communicates.     

Beyond High School

Abstract

This study examined interpersonal heterosexist discrimination by examining self-reported anti-gay behaviors of heterosexual college students. Respondents were 226 college students; 94.9% had perpetrated some form of discriminatory behavior and 32.7% had committed a behavior that was rated as moderately harmful or higher. A higher amount of self-reported discriminatory behavior was associated with being male, having more homophobic attitudes, and having lower GPAs. Discriminatory behaviors were not related to political ideology, religious influence, or interaction with gay men and lesbians. Neither discriminatory behaviors nor homophobic attitudes were related to academic year, age, membership in a social fraternity/sorority, or membership on an intercollegiate athletic team.     

The influence of contextual variables on interpersonal spacing

Four studies examined the effects of contextual variables on interpersonal spacing. Contextual variables were defined as transitory factors that involved the setting in which an interaction occurs; these variables were delineated from personal and interpersonal characteristics. In each experimental setting, white male subjects were allowed to choose the distance at which they interacted with a stranger. The first study found that subjects who had experienced social isolation prior to the interaction chose greater distances than subjects who had not been isolated. The second study found that subjects chose greater distances when they believed their interaction would be observed by others than when the interaction was private. Results from the third study yielded an interaction between topic of conversation and expected length of conversation with greatest distance being chosen when subjects expected a long conversation to focus on a personal topic. In the final study, room size and shape influenced interpersonal distance; the interaction indicated that room size affected distance only in rectangular rooms. The results are discussed in terms of equilibrium model (Argyle & Dean, 1965). It is argued that contextual variables affect intimacy, and that the equilibrium model can explicate the effects of contextual as well as personal and interpersonal variables.The help of the following people in conducting the research and analyzing the data is gratefully acknowledged: Elizabeth Brown, Brad Reeves, Michael Satir, Sheryl Vaughn, Mary Holland, Quig Lawrence, William Webb, and Kerry Marsh. Thanks are also in order for an unusually thorough reviewer who raised a number of important issues.     

Participant and observer attribution of affect in interpersonal conflict: An examination of noncontent verbal behavior

This investigation explored the relationship between observer and participant attribution of affect intensity in interpersonal conflict interaction and the occurrance of verbal behavior. It was predicted that observer's judgments of affect intensity would account for more variation in verbal behavior that represents conflict than would participant's judgments of affect intensity. Videotapes of 37 dyadic conflict interactions were examined. The results indicate that one observer's judgment of affect intensity was a much better predictor of verbal behavior than were the other observer's judgment of affect intensity or either of the two participant's judgments of affect intensity. While some evidence was yielded to suggest that observers are more likely to be sensitive to behavior in their attribution of affect intensity than are participants, these results imply significant differences in the attribution of affect between some observers.     

Anxiety in Action: Sullivan's Interpersonal Psychiatry as a Supplement to Vygotskian Psychology

Psychiatric issues such as the formation of intimate bonds, personality, anxiety, and antisocial behavior tend to have little place in Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian studies, giving the impression that all humans are competent and cooperative participants in social interaction. Nonetheless, Vygotsky himself was interested in psychiatric issues and contributed to psychiatric practice. Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry is compatible with and adds to socio-historical psychology an account of the origins and consequences of anxiety and the anxiety system. Sullivan provided a Vygotsky-like account of a person trying to grow into the social world he or she is born into and trying to satisfy needs with available people, themselves already socialized, enculturated, and formed as selves. Anthony B. Gabriele's little-known practical elaborations of interpersonal psychiatry, further, are consistent with situated micro-analytical approaches to learning within social contexts.     

Effect of Target Position and Target Task on Judge Sensitivity to Felt Rapport

The present studies investigated the effects of target context on judge sensitivity to target felt rapport. The results suggest that judge sensitivity may be increased by: (a) positioning the target to the judge's left so that the judgment task may benefit from the specialization of the right hemisphere for processing nonverbal behavior, and (b) assigning targets to a task unconstrained by social norms that allows for more spontaneous and revealing target behavior. These results have major implications for the way that interpersonal sensitivity and rapport research is conducted and for understanding interpersonal perception in everyday life.     

Coordinated movement and rapport in teacher-student interactions

High school students in 19 teaching dyads were measured for their degree of interpersonal coordination and rapport. Two types of movement coordination were identified and rated by a group of untrained judges: the degree of perceivedmovement synchrony, and the extent ofbehavior matching. Ratings of movement synchrony in true interactions were significantly greater than similar ratings in pseudo interaction control clips (i.e., video clips that appeared to be of the teacher and student interacting but were, in fact, a combination of video clips of each interactant recorded fromdifferent points within their interaction). Self-ratings collected from interactants indicated a strong relationship between participants' rapport and the degree of movement synchrony perceived by raters. This relationship remained even after observer ratings of each interactant's friendliness, a possible confound, were partialled out. This result provided empirical evidence for the hypothesized relationship between rapport and interpersonal coordination (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1987). Ratings of behavior matching did not differ significantly between the true interactions and pseudo interaction control clips. Behavior matching failed to correlate significantly with dyadic rapport. It was, however, significantly predictive of self-reported anxiety.This research was supported by NIH Biomedical Research Support Grant RR07079 to the author and by a National Science Foundation Grant to Robert Rosenthal.Thanks go to Wendy Chen and Jim Tobin who assisted in the data collection, to Robert Rosenthal, Kevin Lanning, Martha Davis, and an anonymous reviewer who provided insightful comments on earlier versions of this article, and to Washingtonville High School in Washingtonville, NY.Portions of this paper appear in a doctoral dissertation presented to the faculty of Harvard University.     

Marital Instability in Men from Intact and Divorced Families:

While researchers have understood the short-term effects of divorce and its harmful effects during childhood, the long- range implications, or effects in adulthood, have largely been ignored. The scant research available on adult children from divorce (ACDs) indicated the presence of long-term effects, with men suffering more effects than women. Theorists have suggested marital instability was transferred to offspring from parents, but were unclear on the mechanics of this process. This study sought to better understand the mechanics of the transmission process by determining whether three variables could help explain marital instability: interpersonal behavior, intimacy, and cognitions or injunctions, in married and divorced men from intact and divorced families of origin. The subjects were 151 male adults, aged 21-42 years, who com- pleted the Injunction Inventory, the Waring Intimacy Questionnaire, and Leary's Interpersonal Checklist. Multiple and one-way analysis of covariance on the data revealed little interaction between early family structure and marital status, but significant results were found which indicated differences between men from divorced families and men from intact families. Male ACDs (adult children of divorce) had a higher frequency of "Don't be close" injunctions, a guarded- hostile interpersonal style, and were maladjusted in responsibility. Intimacy did not differ between the groups.     

The Relation of Transcestite Behavior to Self-Rated Personality Characteristics

The present study explored the relations of self-rated personality characteristics to transvestite behavior and attitudes. sixty-four transvestites completed questionnaires containing perceived control, self esteem, self-monitoring, and five behavioral and attitudinal measures. As expected, the frequency and variety of public behavior showed strong correlations with interpersonal control and social confidence, and confiding of cross-dressing behavior significantly correlated with interpersonal control. Perceived skill in cross-dressing suggested a multi-faceted construct, given significant correlations with interpersonal control, self-monitoring. and three self esteem measures. Contrary to expectation, knowledge of crossdressing did not correlate with self regard, though it did correlate with interpersonal control and social confidence. Acceptance of cross-dressing did not correlate with any personality characteristics. These findings are interpreted as offering support to using dispositional approaches to the study of transvestism. It is argued that future research devote a greater effort to the identification of the individual differences, as well as a greater concern toward verifying these behavioral differences through external observers.     

Recent Improvements in Portraying Acts in Symbolic Interaction Behavioral Specimens

Behavioral specimens are slices of ongoing interaction that take particular behavioral observations from beginning to end and report the temporal sequence of the behaviors under investigation. This article takes the position that behavioral specimens as a symbolic interaction tool preserve the context of natural interaction in interpersonal relationships. Whereas this technique of data collection was first used by Barker and Wright in 1954, over 30 years ago, the format of the specimen presented here is new, because nonverbal behaviors are now recorded in a fashion that reflects the timing of the behaviors in relation to verbalizations. The intent of the new specimen format is to enhance the ecological validity of recordings through a more accurate representation of the contemporaneous nature of nonverbal behaviors and to convey a working knowledge of the actors under analysis.     

Urgent engagement in 9/11 pregnant widows and their infants: Transmission of trauma

The potential effects of maternal trauma on mother–infant interaction remain insufficiently studied empirically. This study examined the effects of the September 11, 2001, trauma on mother–infant interaction in mothers who were pregnant and widowed on 9/11, and their infants aged 4–6 months. Split‐screen videotaped interaction was coded on a one‐second basis for infant gaze, facial affect, and vocal affect; and mother gaze, facial affect, and touch. We examined the temporal dynamics of communication: self‐contingency and interactive contingency of behavior by time‐series methods. We documented heightened maternal and infant efforts at engagement in the 9/11 (vs. control) dyads. Both partners had difficulty tolerating moments of looking away as well as moments of negative behavior patterns. Heightened efforts to maintain a positive visual engagement may be adaptive and a potential source of resilience, but these patterns may also carry risk: working too hard to make it work. A vigilant, hyper‐contingent, high‐arousal engagement was the central mode of the interpersonal transmission of the trauma to these infants, with implications for intervention.     

信任缺失:新生代农民工身份建构与政治认同

新生代农民工城市融入的本质是新生代农民工与城市市民、城市社会组织及政治的互动与认同,这种互动与认同以信任为基础。其中人际信任、组织信任与政治信任分别构成新生代农民工身份建构的基础、融入城市的社会资本与政治认同的基础。由于当前社会人际信任缺失、组织信任匮乏与政治信任偏低,导致新生代农民工陷入身份建构与政治认同困境。因此只有通过修复新生代农民工的人际信任、增进其组织信任、重构政治信任方能构建起积极的身份认同。     

Two Dimensions of Husband-Wife Interaction*

A method of analyzing social interaction is proposed which: (a) delimits the number of categories by reference to previous work supporting a two-dimensional model of interpersonal relations, (b) uses a molar rather than molecular definition of the unit act, and (c) classifies each act on both dimensions. Data from husband-wife pairs are analyzed using this system. Patterns of both intra- and interpersonal action tendencies are noted.