The concepts of credibility, attraction, power, and "homophily" (degree to which source and receiver are similar in certain attributes) have been investigated as independent and unrelated variables in the communication process. The authors seek to establish the relationship of these variables as subdivisions of the overriding concept…

These seven original essays by noted behavioral scientists were prepared for a symposium held at Eridale College (University of Toronto), and concern the causes, functions, and dysfunctions of human affective communication. The empirical findings and theoretical statements in the essays provide a framework for development of a psychological…

Human communication research has identified and tested numerous aspects of interpersonal transactions, but at present there exists no empirically verifiable data as to how people end these transactions. This study is concerned with the rhetoric of goodbye--determining and assessing the peculiar behaviors, both verbal and non-verbal, with which…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of modeling on sex-role development in first-grade children. It was hypothesized that when male-female pairs of children observed a male-female pair of models each child would probably shift his sex-role behavior toward that of the like-sex model. Sixty children served as subjects. The…

The effects of induced status differences on (1) seating position and (2) interpersonal distance from a confederate of a given status level were investigated. Using behavioral measures, induced status differences were found to influence both the amount of interpersonal distance and the quality of space. The results suggest simulation techniques…

This study was conducted to determine whether efficiency in concept attainment can be increased as a function of the interaction of the use of good negative instances and increased attention as defined in terms of risk conditions. Subjects were 36 ninth-grade students of average problem solving ability as determined by IQ. Six treatment groups…

Female subjects in this study were induced to harm another person in an alleged "learning" study by administering aversive noise to a confederate-victim as she performed a problem-solving task. The subjects consisted of forty-six female undergraduates enrolled in Introductory Psychology at the University of Toronto. They were randomly assigned to…

A survey of assessment procedures of the newborn and of the infant during the first month of life was conducted; the survey indicated that there were instruments for evaluating the newborn and for evaluating the four-week-old infant, but there was no single procedure which included an evaluation of both the newborn and the four-week-old infant.…

The ability of naive listener-judges to recognize the affective state of a speaker on the basis of nonlinguistic auditory cues independent of the verbal content of an utterance has been well established by a large number of studies. This study used artificial stimuli produced by a Moog synthesizer to vary pitch level and variation, amplitude level…

In the study reported here, 133 subjects (Ss) were selected randomly from one elementary school. Ss were showed photographs of Bushmen performing daily activities and asked to predict whether a Bushman would prefer specific indigenous customs or their American equivalents, and then to justify the prediction. Scores for three types of predictions…

A monograph exploring issues in behavior and behavioral objectives is presented. Following the introduction, there are six sections in this book. In the opening section, George Henry uses a philosophical point of view to look for goals underlying the behaviorist's approach to English teaching. Section two is a sympathetic examination of the ends…

A 2 X 3 (with repeated measures) design explored the nature of nonverbal communication (NVC), associated with judging one to be a leader or a follower. This study explored several aspects of the folk maxim "It is not what you say, but how you say it." The relationship investigated was between on one hand (1) communicator's NVC, (2) mode of…

The question whether individual study of risk problems (familiarization) leads to greater risk taking was investigated. Several explanations of the risk taking shifts are explicit in their requirement for group or social interaction. Investigations of whether risk shifts can be produced in the absence of group interaction have produced conflicting…

This study attempts to investigate the effects of increased maternal visual regard on neonatal social visual behavior and upon patterns of mother-neonate interaction within the context of a learning theory paradigm. Subjects were 3-day-old neonates and their mothers; with 10 of the 15 mother-neonate pairs as the experimental group, and 5 as the…

Recently, behavioral researchers have extended the application of operant conditioning techniques from the behavior management of individual students to the behavior management of entire classes of students. This extension has been facilitated through the utilization of such contingencies as the interdependent group-oriented contingency. The…