Showing papers on "Interpersonal communication published in 1974"

Change; principles of problem formation and problem resolution

Abstract: This classic book, available in paperback for the very first time, explores why some people can successfully change their lives and others cannot. Here famed psychologist Paul Watzlawick presents what is still often perceived as a radical idea: that the solutions to our problems are inherently embedded in the problems themselves. Tackling the age-old questions surrounding persistence and change, the book asks why problems arise and are perpetuated in some instances but easily resolved in others. Incorporating ideas about human communication, marital and family therapy, the therapeutic effects of paradoxes and of action-oriented techniques of problem resolution, Change draws much from the field of psychotherapy.

Failures in Upward Communication in Organizations: Three Possible Culprits

Abstract: The impact of trust in the superior, perceived influence of the superior, and mobility aspirations of subordinates on upward communication behavior was examined. While the importance of trust as a ...

Interpersonal Competence: Rationale, Philosophy, and Implementation of a Conceptual Framework

Abstract: The authors argue that learners who have achieved excellence in interpersonal communication should be able to set and achieve learning goals, collaborate with others, and adapt to situational changes. Five skills derived from the interpersonal competence paradigm are offered as potential focal points for instruction: empathic communication, descriptiveness, owning, self‐disclosure, and behavioral flexibility. Several teaching‐learning strategies are proposed, and methods of evaluating directly observable communication behaviors are presented.

The functions of silence: A plea for communication research

Abstract: (1974). The functions of silence: A plea for communication research. Western Speech: Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 25-35.

Cross-Sex Friendship.

Abstract: The structural opportunities and normative constraints affecting the cross-sex friendships of men and women were explored. Interview data from 800 middle-aged and elderly urban residents revealed that while only a minority report cross-sex friends, they constitute a significant segment of the interpersonal resources of a number of adults. Women had fewer opportunities and were subject to more constraints with respect to the formation of cross-sex friendship ties than men.

Looking Out, Looking In

Abstract: Used by more than a million students, LOOKING OUT/LOOKING IN, Fourteenth Edition, maintains its outstanding tradition of combining current information with a fun, reader-friendly voice that links course topics to your everyday life. You'll discover how you will benefit from improving your interpersonal skills and sharpening your critical understanding of the communication process. Diverse and compelling examples illustrate and reinforce how communication skills can affect both the world around you and your own lives. Improve your relationships and your future career success with this engaging text that teaches interpersonal concepts through popular music, art, movies, and television.

Time Urgency and the Type A Coronary-Prone Behavior Pattern1

Abstract: Two experiments were conducted to examine behavioral consequences of a sense of time urgency, which presumably characterizes individuals classified as manifesting a so-called “Type A” coronary-prone behavior pattern. Experiment I indicated that time-urgent Type A Ss were reliably less successful than noncoronary-prone “Type Bs” in performing a task requiring a low rate of response for reinforcement (DRL). Type As were not only unable to delay their responses; they also showed greater evidence of tension and hyperactivity than Type Bs during DRL performance. Experiment II extended these results to the interpersonal domain. Time-urgent Ss became more impatient and irritated than less urgent Ss when both types were systematically slowed down in their efforts to reach a solution on a joint decision-making task. The results were discussed in terms of a conceptualization of the A-B dimension as reflecting differential expectations of and needs for environmental control. Additional evidence was presented in support of this approach. Consideration was also given to possible physiologic mechanisms mediating the relationship between psychological variables such as the Type A pattern and actual occurrence of coronary heart disease.

Trust in interpersonal communication

Abstract: A new conceptualization of trust is presented, drawing from the game theory, credibility, and sensitivity training literatures. It is argued that trust occurs only in interpersonal relationships having specified characteristics and that the cognitive state of trust must be differentiated from trusting behaviors. An individual's cognitive state of trust involves his perceiving another person as knowledgeable of the nature of the contingency between them, competent to perform his intended acts, and motivated to prevent the trusting person from receiving unacceptably negative outcomes in their relationship. Trusting behaviors occur in a variety of forms but share the characteristics of increasing the individual's vulnerability to the other.

Cognitive complexity and impression formation in informal social interaction

Abstract: While awaiting the arrival of the experimenter, pairs of subjects participated in ten minutes of spontaneous casual interaction. The impression which each formed of the other was assessed. Analyses of these impressions compared subjects differing in initial level of cognitive complexity. High complexity subjects, in comparison with noncomplex subjects, formed more differentiated, more abstract, more highly organized, and less evaluatively polarized interpersonal impressions. These differences, consistent with the results of related research not based on direct social communication, are interpreted as supporting a cognitive‐developmental approach to impression formation.

Effects of Medium of Communication on Experimental Negotiation

Abstract: Pairs of subjects performed a simple negotiation task over one of three media of communication (face-to-face, closed circuit television, or a loud-speaking audio link). One person was required to argue a case which was consonant with his personal views; the other person was required to argue a case that bore no necessary relationship to his personal views. Medium of communication had a significant effect on the outcome of the negotiation: the side whose case was consonant with his personal views was more successful under face-to-face than under audio-only communication. Results in the video condition resembled those in the face-to-face condition. The findings are interpreted in terms of a greater emphasis on interpersonal considerations (as opposed to interparty considerations) in face-to-face discussions than in audio discussions.

Social skills training and psychotherapy: a comparative study

Abstract: A comparison is made between two forms of treatment for patients with interpersonal difficulties—one, an established treatment in the form of brief psychotherapy, and the other, social skills training, a form of behaviour modification designed to provide or improve the social skills necessary for successful social interaction. In a pilot study using social skills training, six out of seven patients showed marked clinical and social improvement. In the controlled trial, there was evidence that both types of treatment improved behaviour, but that social skills training tended to maintain its effect for longer, even though psychotherapy patients had more than twice the number of therapy hours.

Children's physical and interpersonal characteristics that effect student-teacher interactions.

Abstract: Research on the impact of student characteristics on the quality of the teacher-student interaction was investigated in an ecological setting. Ss for the study were classrooms and teachers at the kindergarten, fourth, and seventh-grade levels. Ratings of teacher-student interactions were analyzed as a function of the characteristics of the child. Analysis of the data suggested that physical characteristics of the child had a more potent influence on the teacher-student interaction during the first week of the school year.

Talk show radio as interpersonal communication

Abstract: (1974). Talk show radio as interpersonal communication. Journal of Broadcasting: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 171-180.

Participation and leadership in small groups.

Abstract: This paper suggests the fruitfulness, for studies of verbal participation in discussions, of shifting from studying participation per se to studying the interpersonal control of participation. Focusing first on the nature of the data to be analyzed, the paper then analyzes the data and reconciles it with other findings in the literature to develop the concept of a hierarchical structure of communication. In this concept, leadership roles and levels of participation are seen as coincidental, arising out of interpersonal interchanges ultimately directed toward achieving coordination and consensus.

Oral imagery, accuracy of perceiving others, and performance in Peace Corps training.

Abstract: Psychoanalytic theory suggests that people with oral characteristics should be dependent on others and should develop skills in predicting the responses of others. Using previously unacquainted students, the experimenters found that males who reported many oral images were better than low-oral males at predicting male personality test responses. Orality was unrelated to accurate perception by males of females or to accuracy of females' interpersonal perception. To corroborate this finding, Peace Corps trainees, previously well acquainted, were studied. Results were identical: Orality was significantly related to accurate interpersonal perception for males predicting males but only in that case. An independent assessment of fitness for Peace Corps work was positively related to both oral imagery and accurate interpersonal perception. The personality characteristics of accurate judges. These results were explained on the perceivers of others are not well understood. Because of the methodological problems involved in obtaining measures of accuracy of perceiving others (Cronbach, 1955; Shrauger & Altrocchi, 1964), the question has not been widely investigated. It is known that an important influence in shaping perceptions of others is "the manner in which the perceiver structures his interpersonal world fDornbusch, Hastorf, Richardson, Muzzy, & Vreeland, 1965, p. 440]." Psychoanalytic typology provides one model for the way in which perceivers structure their perceptual world. Gordon (1966, 1967), using a task that avoided many of the pitfalls described by Cronbach and Shrauger and Altrocchi had graduate students in clinical psychology evaluate a sample projective protocol. She found that judges scoring low on a penciland-paper test of anality showed more confidence in their ratings, saw the test subject as having fewer healthy aspects, and reported him to be less likable than did high-anal 1 Preparation of this paper was aided by a grant to the first author from the Foundations' Fund for Research in Psychiatry while he was a visitor for the academic year at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London.

The Hierarchical Structure of Attitudes Toward the Exceptional

Abstract: The structure of attitudes toward the exceptional was investigated using hierarchical factor analysis. The subjects were 132 men and 132 women college students who completed a 78 item social distance questionnaire (6 interpersonal situation and 13 categories of exceptionality-nonexceptionality). The results revealed a general factor concerning attitudes toward the disabled. This factor represented a common core of attitudes which cut across categories of disability and interpersonal situation. The general facto was differentiated into attitudes toward the physically disabled (with certain special emphases), attitudes toward the psychologically disabled, and attitudes toward the mildly retarded-nonexceptional. The last named factor was particularly provocative, indicating that, except for the closest interpersonal relationships (marriage and acceptance as close kin by marriage), the mildly retarded shared in the same configuration of attitudes as are held toward the nonexceptional. Attitudes toward the gif...

The Determination of Locus of Control in a Geriatric Population and a Subsequent Test of the Social Learning Model for Interpersonal Distances

Abstract: Summary An attempt was made to measure locus of control in a geriatric population and to apply this measurement to the social learning model for interpersonal distance. Results suggested that the elderly group studied were no more external than middle-aged adults. This was discussed from several theoretical points of view. Interpersonal distance results, although not in direct support of theory, provided a source for further development and alteration of the model.

A theory of sense of humor

Abstract: .— Humor is a strategem for relating the collective social reality of a group of persons (the rational world) to their personal imaginations of alternative social worlds, meanings, or identities (the irrational world). The humorist is committed to the rational world. At the same time he permits idiosyncratic phantasies to occur within the social context if they are accompanied by an explicit message saying that the performance is made for fun. By such communications the rational social world is kept stable as well as more tolerable. The comical situation is composed of three essential elements: (1) the message, (2) the audience, and (3) the target or content treated by the message. The message brings the target to the irrational level, where it is brought into disrespect in favor of the alliance between the humorist and his audience. Laughter is the announcement that the disrespect is accepted just for fun. A person may, however, keep a straight face for different reasons. A conceptual scheme is proposed for prediction of laughter. It is based upon three dimensions of the comic situation: (1) the humorous message, (2) the interpersonal likings, and (3) the permissiveness towards actual laughter. The corresponding personal dispositions are the habitual sensitivity to such messages, the habitual tendency to favor comical situations and persons, and the habitual need for emotional-impulse control. Suggestions are made as to the modification of laughter by constellations of high and low values on these variables.