Procedures used in empathy-helping studies suggest results may be due to demand characteristics. Two studies were run to investigate especially the mood induction process. One reproduced the Aderman-Berkowitz main mood effects. Another showed that after seeing a help-non-help incident, mood effects were demonstrated only when Ss knew the research…

Examines the effect of different amounts of client-therapist interaction data on empathy ratings. Audiotaped therapist-client interactions including client statement, therapist response, and subsequent client response were rated for therapist empathy by high-functioning, experienced raters. Raters made different judgments about levels of therapist…

Smokers (N = 90) were assigned to 10 treatment conditions; another 20 smokers were included in a no-apply control group. The treatment effects of aversive conditioning were negligible, and in some instances they were surpassed by the effects of controls for nonspecific treatment factors and placebo effects. (Author)

Client ratings of the abilities of 33 school counselors to communicate the core facilitative conditions of empathy, regard, congruence, and trust are compared to the counselors' scores on a measure of self-actualization. Results support the contention that there exists a strong relationship between self-actualization and counselor effectiveness as…

Examined verb type and noun case role usages of a counselor and client from the first, 11th, and 25th interviews in one counseling case. Analysis indicated participants were remarkably similar in frequency with which they used specific verb types and case roles of particular noun phrases within each interview. (Author)

Examines the effect on a recipient of another's effort to provide help. Two variables, locus of responsibility for initiating a help attempt and type of outcome resulting from the help attempt, were manipulated in a three x two factorial design. Results indicated that the Requested help condition yielded the strongest obligation to help others.…

This paper explores the role of empathic arousal in mediating helping behavior. Undergraduates listened to a recording of a radio newscast that described the situation of a young woman whose parents had been killed in an automobile accident. Subjects were instructed either to imagine how the woman felt about her situation (imagine condition), or…

An analysis of the helping process suggests two important components of behaving competently. In the present research, snake phobics provided help to confederates whom they believed to be similarly phobic. Modeling produces more subjective improvement than the expectancy manipulation. (Author)

To study the independent and combined impact of a counselor's verbal (i.e., evaluative feedback) and nonverbal (i.e., interpersonal distance) communications on behavioral compliance, 80 female clients were individually interviewed in the context of a weight-reduction clinic. Physical proximity strengthened adherence to a counselor's dieting…

The effects of first-session interviewer self-disclosures that differed in three levels of intimacy--low, medium and high--and three kinds of temporal focus--historical (past tense and external to the interview process), current (present tense and external to the interview process), and existential in which the interviewer disclosed immediate…

Investigated effects of interviewer use of positive or negative self-disclosure and interviewer-subject sex pairing on subjects' perceptions of the interviewer and of their own behavior. Results indicated interviewers disclosing negative information about themselves were perceived as significantly more empathic, warm, and credible than…

Undergraduates (N=91) were shown a videotaped discussion of interracial dating by five heterosexual biological females and one cross-dressed male transsexual. Experimental subjects, who had been previously informed of the presence of the transsexual were all able to identify her, significantly more than control subjects who had not been told this.…

The Allred Interaction Analysis for Counselors (AIAC) is an instrument for systematically analyzing counselors' and clients' verbal behaviors. It was constructed to provide marriage and family counselors-in-training a method for acquiring meaningful, objective feedback on counseling behaviors. Interrater reliability coefficients have been high.…

Retention of verbal helping skills by human service worker trainees who had completed the Danish and Hauer (1973) training program earlier was explored. Trainees (N = 26) engaged in three helping interviews--before training, immediately following training, and seven months later. High skill levels at posttraining were generally not maintained at…

Social exchange theory was employed to predict instigative helping behavior as a function of two types of resources available to the recipient for reciprocation (social and non-social). The possibility of influencing reciprocation of both types of resources produced significant increases in subjects' helping. (Author)