Interpersonal Perception

Self-presentation is a fundamental aspect of social life, with myriad critical outcomes dependent on others' impressions. We identify and offer the first empirical investigation of a prevalent, yet under-studied, self-presentation strategy: humblebragging. Across 9 studies, including a week-long diary study and a field experiment, we identify humblebragging— bragging masked by a complaint or humility—as a common, conceptually distinct, and ineffective form of self-presentation. We first document the ubiquity of humblebragging across several domains, from everyday life to social media. We then show that both forms of humblebragging— complaint-based or humility-based—are less effective than straightforward bragging, as they reduce liking, perceived competence, compliance with requests, and financial generosity. Despite being more common, complaint-based humblebrags are less effective than humility-based humblebrags, and are even less effective than simply complaining. We show that people choose to deploy humblebrags particularly when motivated to both elicit sympathy and impress others. Despite the belief that combining bragging with complaining or humility confers the benefits of each strategy, we find that humblebragging confers the benefits of neither, instead backfiring because it is seen as insincere.

.....the double bind as constituting an entirely new, non-material, principle of evolution, major conceptual revisions may need to be made in our general understanding of evolution as contained within the “modern evolutionary synthesis”.

KEYWORDS:
behavior, communication, context, contradiction, deutero-learning, double bind, epistemology, evolution, incompleteness theorum, kinesics, learning, logical type theory, metacommunication, metamessages, metatheory, mystification, paradox, relationships, schismogenesis, schizophrenia,  scientific elegance, symmathesy, teleology, temporality, transcontextual, transdisciplinary, trauma

In this study, an objective, meaningful instrument-the Interpersonal
Perception Task videotape-was used to test hypotheses about the key components of the Self-monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974, 1987), the Self-consciousness Scale (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975) as well as the Shyness and SociabJity Scale (Cheek & Buss, 1981). Researchers in the area of self-monitoring and self-consciousness have been in heated debate over the validity and usefulness of those constructs (Briggs & Cheek, 1988; Carver & Scheier, 1987; Scheier & Carver, 1981; Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1987). Results from this study may help clarify the role that self-concept plays in an important social realm, interpersonal perception, by using the Interpersonal Perception Task, an instrument developed for studying nonverbal decoding skill (Archer & Costanzo, 1988).

The Interpersonal Perception Task videotape provided a criterion variable to test hypotheses about social information processing skills of socially anxious subjects. Results from 68 undergraduates show negative correlations between both shyness social anxiety and nonverbal decoding scores, and positive correlations between shyness and measures of test anxiety. Results are interpreted in light of cognitive conceptions of social anxiety and its role in decoding nonverbal communication.

Although the Ancients placed great emphasis on delivery, modern rhetorical scholars often overlook the oral dimensions of speech. Speech is powerful because of its ability to elicit a somatic response. Scholars in other disciplines are examining how speech affects the body, but contemporary rhetorical scholarship often overlooks their findings. This essay reviews scholarship both inside and outside of communication studies that demonstrates the interplay between rhetoric and orality, paying particular attention to how scientific scholarship can inform our conception of ethos and pathos. By drawing together scientific and rhetorical scholarship, scholars in all disciplines can gain a greater understanding of how speech affects the mind, body, and soul.

Organizational efficiencies and effectiveness significantly depend on the motivation, involvement and efforts of employees across all levels. Employee performance, however, is affected by the quality of interpersonal communications within the organization, which plays a key role in influencing relationships, teamwork, conflict resolution, and motivation. Therefore, we need to study interpersonal communication within organizations in order to augment our understanding of the key issues within the field of Organizational Behavior.
This exploratory study of interpersonal communication involved 368 randomly selected employees across three different levels from ten service-sector organizations.  The objective of the study was to investigate the role of several key variables that are known to affect interpersonal communication, and to identify possible themes for future research.  The data (quantitative and qualitative) was collected with the help of elaborate questionnaires and interviews, then tabulated and analyzed by applying relevant tests like Chi Square, ANOVA, and Regression Analysis, generating intriguing findings.
This paper focuses on the quality of the interpersonal relationships of the employees surveyed, and the role of key variables like Trust and Openness in affecting the perceived quality of these relationships. While the study found a positive relation between openness and the quality of interpersonal relationships within the organizations, surprisingly, it did not find a significant relation between trust and the quality of interpersonal relations. This seems to suggest that, within organizations, the quality of interpersonal relationships across the levels is influenced more by perceptions of openness than by the levels of trust between employees.

In this article the problem of perception is highlighted from a philosophical, physiological and psychological point of view. The essay (second update) is followed by a list of publications, journals and websites about perception. The author would be delighted to receive comments. He can be contacted at j[underscore]kuijper[at]online[dot]nl.

Acquisition of knowledge is based on discovery of new key relationships between cause and effect within prior knowledge, and/or on the opening links between elements of prior knowledge and new information domain. Prior knowledge is grounded in explicit and implicit memory. Previous research show that (a) an increase of the implicit memory improves students' performance on tasks and fills their solutions with confidence, (b) testing under particular features can be more efficient to learning, and (c) a collaboration in a group during problem-solving can significantly improve long memory. The current research studies an unconscious part of acquisition of knowledge. The more efficient learning methods introduce problem solving into curriculum, incorporating higher-order thinking with deeper levels of information processing to create a richer memory structure. One of the possibility to develop such problem based methods is to understand (i) how a teacher may efficiently introduce a new knowledge domain into the implicit memory of students, and (ii) how the curriculum can excite and increase students' implicit memory while solving problems to facilitate and speed up their learning in a predictable and reliable way. The paper introduces the new concept of non-perceptual social interaction. This research also assumes that non-perceptual social interaction can improve implicit memory and accelerate students' learning. The results of experiments on non-perceptual social interaction are presented.

The Interpersonal Perception Task-15 videotape served as a criterion measure to test hypotheses about individual differences in interpersonal perception. 160 undergraduates completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension Scale, the Shyness and Sociability Scale, and the Interpersonal Perception Task-15. Scores on the Communication Apprehension Scale were negatively correlated with Interpersonal Perception Task-15 scores, as predicted. Scores on the Shyness scale were negatively correlated with scores on the Interpersonal Perception Task-15, while Sociability scale scores were positively correlated. These results underscore the association between social anxiety and interpersonal perception.

Artykuł stawia tezę, według której zjawisko perswazji oparte jest na identyfikacji ja nadawcy i odbiorcy, które w procesie negocjowania intersubiektywnych znaczeń przystosowują nie tylko językowe obrazy świata, ale przede wszystkim wartości i postawy interlokutorów. Narzędziem umożliwiającym porozumienie jest retoryka, która ma charakter interdyscyplinarny. Postrzeganie interpersonalne to jeden z podstawowych impulsów dla działań retorycznych. Wykształcona w procesie interakcji jaźń społeczna, kontroluje zachowania i emocje, przez co jednostka buduje własne poczucie skuteczności, objawiające się pozytywną autoprezentacją.

The article advances the thesis that the phenomenon of persuasion is based on the speaker’s and the recipient’s identification of the I, which in the process of negotiation of intersubjective meanings adjust not only the linguistic view of the world, but above all the interlocutors’ values and attitudes. Rhetoric, which is of interdisciplinary nature, is the tool that allows communication. Interpersonal perception is one of the basic stimuli to take rhetorical action. Social awareness, developed in the process of interaction, controls behaviour and emotions, enabling an individual to build a sense of effectiveness, which manifests itself in a positive self presentation.

Facial paralysis (FP) is an understudied condition which results in significant consequences for social interaction. Four studies examined the expressive behavior of people with FP, the way others interpret their behavior, and whether perceivers can be trained to improve their impressions. In Study 1, people with congenital FP were found to display more expressivity in their bodies and voices to compensate for their FP compared to people with acquired FP. This provides some of the first behavioral evidence that people with congenital disabilities use more adaptations than people with acquired conditions. In Studies 2 and 3, we examined perceivers' judgments of the emotions and personality traits of people with FP to test how perceivers integrate a paralyzed face with an expressive body and voice. We tested the extent to which emotion judgments are holistic, based on a combination of face, body, and voice, or based primarily on the paralyzed face. Perceivers observed short videotapes of people with FP and rated their impressions of targets' happiness (Study 2) and personality traits (Study 3). Perceivers were randomly assigned to observe isolated or combined communication channels. People with severe FP were rated as less happy and extraverted than people with mild FP, but use of compensatory expressive behavior improved perceivers' impressions. In Study 2, the difference in perceivers' happiness ratings for severe compared to mild FP was largest when perceivers only saw the face and reduced when additional channels were observed, suggesting that emotions are perceived holistically. However, for several traits in Study 3, perceivers' ratings for severe compared to mild FP did not differ whether they saw only the face or all channels, suggesting that trait judgments are judged holistically to a lesser extent. In Study 4, educating perceivers about FP and instructing them to attend to compensatory expressive channels improved their impressions of people with FP, but not their accuracy, suggesting that social perception is somewhat malleable. In conclusion, people with FP can compensate for their lack of facial expression, and people interacting with them can learn to look beyond the face to some extent.

ABSTRACT Cognitive dissonance has been definitively shown to alter beliefs or perceptions of an individual. The present experiment was designed to test the effects of cognitive dissonance on interpersonal perception and reassertion. Using an induced compliance ...

Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication

(ISBN: 978-1-61897-590-4)

Looking for Better Relationships? Let the Experts Tell You How!

Deepening Your Personal Relationships was written by three experts in the field. Their combined expertise will help you in Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication, which will be beneficial in all types of relationships.

Everyone wants to improve and deepen their relationships. The book explains how to achieve healthy and fulfilling interpersonal relationships by using effective communication, empathy, shared transformational development, and constructive conflict resolution to achieve this aim. Deepening Your Personal Relationships provides original, meaningful, and transformational insights that are especially helpful in understanding how to overcome our subconscious resistance against emotional intimacy and good communication. The goal is to understand how good relationships can produce enhanced levels of spiritual development, psychological healing, self-understanding, creative functioning, inner peace, happiness, and ultimately, fulfillment in life. A section on improving society through enhancing interpersonal relationships is also included.

Thus, readers wanting to enhance their personal relationships, gain insight into transformational self-help, and achieve social transformation will find this book especially helpful. The authors anticipate that this book will also be of keen interest to professional relationship counselors, including marriage counselors, family counselors, and conflict mediators, as well as community organizers and social activists.



About the Authors


The primary author, Dr. Max Hammer, was a distinguished Psychology Professor and supervisor of graduate students and interns in the clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and counseling practice training program of the Psychology Department at the University of Maine, for many years, as well as a respected psychotherapist and clinical psychology consultant and diagnostician. Dr. Max Hammer was one of the original core clinicians who founded and developed the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Maine, beginning in the 1960′s. In his work with graduate and undergraduate students in that program, Dr. Max Hammer provided a refreshing Humanistic and Transpersonal perspective, with an emphasis on flexible, warmly caring, empathic responsiveness to the needs of the individual psychotherapy client. A secondary contributing author is Dr. Alan C. Butler, a distinguished colleague and friend of Dr. Max Hammer’s. Dr. Butler, a Cooperating Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Maine, as well as a psychotherapist, clinical psychology consultant, and diagnostician, was one of the original staff members at the University of Maine counseling center, and served as the Training Director for its internship program for over thirty years, which he was instrumental in developing. Both Dr. Max Hammer and Dr. Alan C. Butler helped gently nurture and encourage thousands of graduate and undergraduate psychology students in their own individual journeys of personal reflection and transformation. The other secondary contributing author, Dr. Barry J. Hammer, also from Maine, has a specialization in the history of world religions, and for many years has studied the process of psychological and spiritual transformation, and its applicability to enhancing human relationships and compassionate social change.

The primary author, the late Dr. Max Hammer, was an editor and a major contributor of two previously published books, The theory and Practice of Psychotherapy with Specific Disorders (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1972); and The Practice of Psychotherapy with Children (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1967). He also published about 30 articles in the fields of psychotherapy and clinical psychology.

The primary author, Dr. Max Hammer, is deceased, therefore, this website will be managed by his eldest son and secondary contributing author Dr. Barry J. Hammer. Another secondary contributing author is Dr. Alan C. Butler.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the peer conflict strategies of preschool children are situated and therefore vary across different conflict situations. Hypothetical conflict interviews were administered through a series of puppet shows. Participants were 178 preschool children. Results indicate that preschool children’s conflict management skills are situated in peer conflict, because their strategies are to a greater or lesser degree influenced by the opponent’s strategies. When the opponent’s conflict strategy is non‐aggressive, aggressive conflict strategies are atypical and low in frequency. When the opponent behaves with physical aggression in the conflict situation, most of the subjects respond to this aggressive conflict strategy with physical aggression. The findings confirm neither a static individual view nor a situated determinism, but a situated action view in which both individuals’ cognitions and distributed cognitions interact.

How satisfied are Filipino college students with their lives and do their respective fathers and mothers accurately gauge this? In an empirical demonstration of self-other agreement in a family context, we investigated self-reports of global life satisfaction vis-à-vis father- and mother-judgments in a sample of N = 68 student-mother-father triads using Diener et al's (1985) Satisfaction With Life Scale validated using Sycip et al's (2000) measure of Filipino well-being. Results showed moderate convergence for self vs mother-reports, with a general overestimation bias for both fathers and mothers. Multiple regression analysis suggested that mother-reports, compared to father-reports, appeared to be better predictors of adolescent children's self-reported levels of life satisfaction. Students with mothers and fathers who made less discrepant judgments also tended to have higher self-reported life satisfaction. Results are discussed using the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM) of personality judgment (Funder, 1995) as well as findings in family psychology.

This essay contends that Sartre's approach to emotions in Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (translated as Emotions: Outline of a Theory) has been misinterpreted using the stereotyped views of Sartre's ontology. Instead, there is a surprising turn in the last pages of Sartre;s work that opens up a non-dualistic view of the emotions as access to the world in a unique way.

Two approaches to understanding roots of social behavior-biological universalism and cultural relativism-have been opposing each other for several decades. Numerous studies in different disciplines have been attempting to understand origins of social behavior, studying also fetal movements. This review explores the origins of social interaction, by studying whether embryos inherit some genetic mechanism of social behavior or their social responses are acquired as a result of social interaction. The articles were included in the review as they studied fetal voice recognition, emotion expression, and twin fetuses co-movement. Analyzing these data, the study found no contradictions that prevent the identification of such fetal actions with the notion of social behavior. The existing data on the genetic determination of brain development were discussed and the hypothesis of an innate mechanism of social behavior was questioned. The study found no evidence of a genetic mechanism for social behavior that could link a particular mental state to a specific situation of social reality. However obviously, fetuses may not exhibit social behavior on their own due to a lack of understanding of social reality, and knowledge of the connection between a particular social situation and corresponding social signs. The disadvantage of their cognitive skills in the period of gestation also cannot help them to behave socially. This article supports the core role of social interaction in shaping of social behavior in fetuses and substantiates the assumption that their social behavior emerges from and is guided by mental collaboration with mother.

Whereas the association between depression and the perception of emotions has been widely studied, only few studies have examined the association between depression and the ability to discriminate genuine (Duchenne) from fake (non-Duchenne) smiles. The present study examined this by comparing currently depressed, previously depressed, and healthy control individuals. Guided by recent theory, the present study also investigated the effect of depression recurrence on smile identification. Participants were 27 healthy controls, 33 with past depression (51% with recurrent depression), and 22 with current depression (77% with recurrent depression). Participants were presented with a series of 20 videos depicting smiling individuals, and were asked to indicate whether each smile was genuine or fake. Having (or having had) a first episode of depression was associated with more mistakes in categorizing smiles as genuine or fake compared to having recurrent depression or to having no history...

Organizational efficiencies and effectiveness significantly depend on the motivation, involvement and efforts of employees across all levels. Employee performance, however, is affected by the quality of interpersonal communications within the organization, which plays a key role in influencing relationships, teamwork, conflict resolution, and motivation. Therefore, we need to study interpersonal communication within organizations in order to augment our understanding of the key issues within the field of Organizational Behavior. This exploratory study of interpersonal communication involved 368 randomly selected employees across three different levels from ten service-sector organizations. The objective of the study was to investigate the role of several key variables that are known to affect interpersonal communication, and to identify possible themes for future research. The data (quantitative and qualitative) was collected with the help of elaborate questionnaires and interviews,...

The Interpersonal Perception Task-15 videotape served as a criterion measure to test hypotheses about individual differences in interpersonal perception. 160 undergraduates completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension Scale, the Shyness and Sociability Scale, and the Interpersonal Perception Task-15. Scores on the Communication Apprehension Scale were negatively correlated with Interpersonal Perception Task-15 scores, as predicted. Scores on the Shyness scale were negatively correlated with scores on the Interpersonal Perception Task-15, while Sociability scale scores were positively correlated. These results underscore the association between social anxiety and interpersonal perception.