Understanding how relationships between instructors and students develop is important for understanding the undergraduate student experience. We expect the development of positive relationships is related to the social practices (e.g., greetings, using names, sympathizing, or empathizing with students) that instructors use in the course of normal…

The authors review several case studies of children engaged in rule-governed play and conclude that the process of learning rules--and of breaking them and making new ones--promotes what they call gamesmanship. They link the development of gamesmanship to the theory of Machiavellian intelligence, which considers social interaction primary in the…

This paper contains an examination of equity theory, which is based on the assumption that when a state of equity exists in an exchange situation, there is a perceived balance between the effort and reward ratios of the individuals involved in the exchange. The paper offers a rationale for examining equity theory in a communication context,…

Tested the hypothesis that distressed spouses are more reactive to immediate events than nondistressed couples. Couples recorded positive, negative and neutral events and satisfaction levels. Distressed couples reported lower rates of positive behavior and that marital satisfaction depended more on frequency of recent positive or negative events.…

Examined couples' punctuation of their own interactions. Punctuation was defined as a way of grouping sequences of interactions. Results suggested that the nature of relatedness, as defined by degree of distress, was associated with the punctuation of interactions by the communicators. (Author)

Among major results were that nonhandicapped preschoolers tend to select nonhandicapped friends of their same sex and age, and the same nonhandicapped preschoolers tend to select handicapped children who are older than themselves, who are more advanced cognitively than other handicapped children, and who are of the same sex. (Author/CL)

Studied interaction styles of premarital couples (N=148) and developed a typology of couple interaction at two points in time before marriage. Results showed only 7 percent of the couples had the same type of interaction at the two testings, supporting the hypothesis that premarital relationships are fluid. (WAS)

It has been a well-accepted axiom that the behavior of an individual is related closely to his perception. This research with children demonstrates the value of objective assessment of an individual's perception of social interactions in order to be able to predict more precisely some aspects of his interpersonal behavior. (Author)

The author contends that the capacity to be seductive can be utilized in constructive ways to enhance a loving relationship, or in neurotic ways to oversome doubts about one's capabilities. (Author)

Subjects (N=82) were given either veridical or false feedback concerning their level of intimacy one week after a short structured interaction with another. Results indicated that feedback had a greater effect on the reported degree of liking for the other and the disclosure level. (Author/RC)

Analyzes some of the most frequent deceptive interactions as rendered through case histories of male con artists and their victims taken from police records. Discusses the recurrent elements in both the con-games strategies and victims' way of interpreting those strategies. (JMF)

Examines two factors of dyadic relationships on the basis of communicative behaviors: domineeringness, an individual measure based on one-up messages, and dominance, a joint measure based on the dyad's transactional patterns. These variables are associated with differential levels of dyadic satisfaction, degree of interspousal understanding, and…

Self-disclosure may be viewed through the framework of the role-taking processes by which we come to know ourselves and to be known to others. Because individuals ground utterances contextually, in anticipation of another's responses and according to the prescriptions of the situation itself, self-disclosure is more likely to be flexibly scripted…

Reprints from: George Parker, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712.

Explores the relationship between intimacy, conflict and disputing styles in familial and nonfamilial relationships. Results supported the hypothesis that disputing styles tend to be more extreme in more intimate relationships. Intimacy differences do not account for a great deal of the variation in disputing styles. (JAC)