Browsing by Author "Carson, Robert C"
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access A comparison of reported experiences associated with different styles of hypnosis(1981) Brown, Charles, 1953-Reported experiences were compared for subjects undergoing a traditional style of hypnosis, a cognitive behavioral style of hypnosis, and a "waking imagination" procedure similar to hypnosis but explicitly labeled "non- hypnotic." Experiences of subjects within these three treatment conditions were also compared with the experiences subjects believed prior to treatment they would be most likely to have during a hypnotic session. No significant experiential differences appeared with regard to spatial, temporal, and personal disorientation; a sense of dissimilarity to ordinary experience; or obliviousness to extraneous thoughts or stimuli. Compared to subjects in the non-hypnotic procedure, subjects in the two hypnotic conditions reported more strong and positive feelings regarding the experience and a greater perceived inability to resist the experience. The only significant difference between cognitive behavioral and traditional subjects was the stronger belief of cognitive behavioral subjects that they were consciously directing and causing their hypnotic experience. Even though reported experiences differed somewhat for the different procedures, correlations of reported experiences with responsiveness (or ''hypnotic susceptibility") were similar for the three procedures, with no apparent interaction effects for procedure with responsiveness on experience. In the two hypnotic conditions the experience of hypnosis was seen as more difficult to resist than subjects expected prior to treatment, but also less mysterious than expected. These findings overall indicate that experiential self-report is a useful method of gauging similarities and differences between different styles of hypnosis, quasi- hypnotic procedures, and expectations regarding hypnotic experience. Other theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.Item Open Access Eye contact and intimacy(1974) Webbink, Patricia Glixon, 1943-The meeting of the eyes is a potent form of communication. The eyes are able to convey many subtle nuances of feeling by their complex capacity for expression. Their stimulus configuration has made them highly noticeable; they serve as an innate releaser for the responses of animals and infants. The fact that they are critical in the maternal - infant relationship later gives them special meaning to the adult person. This is conveyed in the many references to the eyes found in literature, language, art, and mythology. Psychologists have begun to recognize, both in research and practice, the importance of eye contact in interpersonal interaction. Eyes intensify expressions of warmth and empathy, as well as hostility and aggression (Ellsworth & Carlsmith, 1968). Recognizing this, psycho- therapists have begun to emphasize the intimacy value of eye contact. Group therapists and sensitivity trainers often ask strangers to engage in eye contact as a way of transcending interpersonal barriers in a group. Many of the relationships between eye contact and variables such as sex, age, race, and culture have been investigated. It is assumed in most of these studies that eye contact leads to intimacy. The present study will attempt to document this assumption. For this purpose, it was hypothesized that 3 minutes of silent eye contact between a female subject and a confederate would facilitate inti- macy more so than the two selected silent control conditions which were also of 3 -minute duration. One of these involved looking at another part of the body, the hand, and the other was an interaction in which no instructions were given other than to maintain silence. For this study, intimacy was postulated to be composed of the Rogerian attitudes which facilitate therapeutic change - empathy, positive regard, and congruence. In addition to the main effect of condition, a secondary prediction involved a main effect of personality. That is, the way a subject responded to the confederate was partly related to the subject's style of relating to people, regardless of experimental condition. A three-way interaction effect was predicted for the dependent variable of state anxiety such that high AFFE would lead to an increase in anxiety going from high interpersonal contact- -the eye contact condition- -to low interpersonal contact- -the hand and non-directed conditions. The reverse was predicted for low AFFE. In addition, the magnitude of the interaction would differ for high vs. low anxious subjects on the trait anxiety. That is, the amount of anxiety experienced by high and low AFFE subjects in both the high and low contact conditions was hypothesized to be less. As predicted, in all cases women who made eye contact expressed more intimacy than the those with no eye contact. By their own report, they felt more empathy, positive feeling, and willingness to tell intimate details about their lives to the women they had visually contacted than did the women in the other situations. Furthermore, the hypothesis was partially confirmed that subjects who usually express affection to other people (high AFFE) feel greater empathy than do low AFFE subjects. Only in the case of empathy was the difference between high and low AFFE significant; however, the trend was in the predicted direction for self-disclosure and positive feeling variables. The final hypothesis was not supported. That is, trait anxiety did not interact significantly with condition and personality for state anxiety. Problems in the measurement of this variable may have accounted for the nonsignificant results. Implications for further research are discussed.Item Open Access Interpersonal style and complementary response evocation(1975) Kronberg, Charles Louis, 1945-Leary (1957) presented a circumplex system to classify the entire domain of interpersonal behavior around two major axes - -dominance - submission and hostility-affection. The four quadrants of the Leary Circle have also been used to characterize four basic styles of relating. In addition to a classification system, Leary has also provided notions about the types of interpersonal behavior which are naturally elicited by, or complementary to, every type of behavior on the circumplex. Carson(1969) has summarized Leary's notions about interpersonal complementarity into one general hypothesis, which states that complementarity occurs on the basis of reciprocity in respect to dominance -submission and on the basis of correspondence in respect to hostility -affection. There has been some empirical validation of this hypothesis, and further empirical investigation was attempted in the present study. With regard to psychopathology, both Leary and Carson maintain that "normal" individuals are flexible in terms of the interpersonal styles they choose to adopt in relating to others, while disturbed individuals are much less flexible,, Because disordered individuals continually respond in the same style, they force others to respond to them in a self-image confirming, pathology-reinforcing fashion. The chief aim of the present study was to investigate the above conceptualization empirically. The general experimental procedure entailed presenting groups of undergraduate female subjects with sets of statements prepared to simulate "fixated" (stylistically limited) and "flexible" interactants. There were 8 content-controlled stimulus tapes, consisting of 36 statements each; and 10 subjects were randomly assigned to listen to each tape. The same actress performed the statements on each tape. Subjects were told to respond to each recorded statement they heard as if they were interacting with a real person, and their responses were recorded. After the subjects finished responding to the tapes, their responses to the first three, middle three, and last three statements were rated on 7 -point Dominance -Submission and Hostility-Affection scales by three independent raters. The rating system used by the raters was prepared for the experiment in order to overcome a number of shortcomings evidenced in previously employed methods to code interactions according to the Leary system. It was predicted that: (a) Complementarity, as hypothesized by Carson, would be evident in response to any given statements made in the same style. This should be true whether the interactant making the statement was fixated or flexible, (b) As the interaction proceeds from beginning to end, however, fixated interactants should elicit complementary responses more regularly and successfully than flexible interactants. (c) By the end of the interaction, when comparing the responses of subjects to identical statements made by fixated versus flexible interactants, differences should be evident; i.e. subjects responding to fixated interactants should be responding in a less variable and more complementary fashion than subjects responding to flexible interactants. The results provided confirmation only for that part of Carson's complementarity hypothesis stating that complementarity occurs on the basis of correspondence with respect to hostility-affection. All of the other predictions were not confirmed. The inter-rater reliability of the rating system was at a high level, and the experimental manipulation was shown to be effective; i.e. fixated and flexible interactants were simulated. Careful inspection of the pattern of the results pertaining to dominance - submission complementarity, and a re-examination of relevant empirical studies previously undertaken, suggested a reformulation of Carson's complementarity hypothesis when it pertains to dominance and submission. Explanations were offered which could account for the failure of all of the other predictions to be confirmed. Possible difficulties with both the conceptual foundations of the hypotheses and with the methodology employed in testing the hypotheses were considered in these explanations o The methodological attainments of the study--the rating system and the stimulus' tapes employed--were also discussed in some detail. Implications and suggestions for future research were presented throughout the Discussion section.Item Open Access Predicting behavior : an examination of the utilities of trait and interaction approaches to locus of control(1975) Kravitz, Frederick MarkINTRODUCTION: Speculations about the nature of personality can be found throughout recorded time. There have been numerous and often contradictory attempts to describe man's personality, character, and temperament. The scientific study of personality has only slowly emerged from these purely speculative roots.. Part of this lag can be attributed to the extreme subjectivity inherent in man's analysis of self. William James noted that "the history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments" (James, 1907, p.6). This observation seems especially relevant to personology in light of the multitude of personality theories expounded. The term 'personality' comes from the Latin word “persona”. The Romans used persona to refer to the masks worn in the theatre. Later the term came to include the wearers of the mask as well. The wearers of a given mask were expected to exhibit a consistent pattern of behaviors and attitudes. Beginning in Roman times, the term has taken on diverse meanings, both denotative and connotative (Burnham, 1968). The scientific study of man was last to emerge in the history of science. "The heavenly bodies, the objects remotest from man, were the first objects of scientific interest. Speculation advanced slowly through the realm of the inorganic until in the 9th century detailed observations about animals paved the way for detailed and systematic observations of men" (Peters, 1962, p.38). The scientific study of personality is thus a young science, still struggling to extricate itself from its speculative roots. The trend in personological works has been towards greater complexity, a gradual movement away from varying common sense notions and sophistic speculations to more parsimonious, observationally-related hypotheses. The modern study of personality clearly reflects Peter's view of scientific progress in general. "We tend to think of science as a ' body of knowledge ' which began to be accumulated when man hit upon 'scientific method. ' This is a superstition. It is more in keeping with the history of thought to describe science as the myths about the world which have not yet been found to be wrong . . . Science consists in conscious attempts to refute other people ' s stories and in the production of better stories to supplant them. The history of science is the history of stories which have been shown to be false or only partially correct" (Peters, 1962, p. 37). Some of the earlier myths about the nature of personality have endured into the present. Later myths, the myth of the "purity" of the experimental 4 method and the myth of the "purity" of the correlational approach, have led to a paradigm crisis (Cronbach, 1957) which is still unresolved. However, from this crisis, a new perspective, an interactionist one, is emerging which promises to significantly alter our conceptualizations of personality. The present paper is a review of its antecedents, an examination of this new approach, and an experimental analysis of its potential utility.