The willingness of interactants to disclose information about themselves in relationships from which they wish to disengage was compared with their willingness to self-disclose in relationships they wish to maintain. The subjects, 102 college students, were randomly assigned to one of four hypothetical scenarios: one in which the respondent wished…

This study examined the effects of message valence, familiarity, and communicator sex on the perceptual distortion of height. Additionally, the relationships of self-esteem and independence of judgment to perceptual distortion were studied. A group of 139 volunteers from a basic communication course were randomly assigned to one of the eight…

Using data drawn from ten initial physician/patient interviews, an original category system was employed to analyze patterns of physician/patient communication. Static analysis, interaction analysis, and Markov chain analysis were used to discover the underlying communication patterns associated with patient satisfaction. Results revealed that…

Employees of a large data processing corporation participated in a study designed to determine differences on a series of innovation variables between and among employee participants and nonparticipants in a technology inventory program. Three employee groups were distinguished: employees who participated in the technology inventory program, those…

An investigation was undertaken to assess the relationship of the independent variables of perceived homophily to the dependent variables of uncertainty reduction, feeling good, and safety. In addition, the relationship of uncertainty reduction, feeling good, and safety was assessed to the dependent variables of self-disclosure. The sample…

An investigation was undertaken to further the conceptual and operational nature of interpersonal solidarity. Specifically, the investigation considered additional criterial attributes of solidarity to those previously studied by L. R. Wheeless. The sample consisted of 162 adults drawn from elementary and secondary school teachers, college…

Three exploratory studies were aimed at describing the purposes of lies and the consequences of lying. Data were collected through a partly open-ended questionnaire, a content analysis of several tape-recorded interviews, and a large-scale survey. The results showed that two of every three lies were told for selfish reasons, while three of every…

A study was conducted to examine longitudinal and cross-sectional age effects on accuracy of decoding nonverbal cues. A videotaped nonverbal discrepancy test was administered to 78 children aged nine to fifteen years. The test measured (1) decoding accuracy--the extent to which subjects were able to identify affects (positivity and dominance) from…

The results from several studies indicate clearly that students, alumni, and employers of college graduates are far more aware of the importance of a wide range of oral communication skills than are college faculties and administrations. The belief that students develop sufficient oral communication skills before coming to college, or that they…

A study was conducted to determine the degree to which the psychological variable of self-acceptance and the communication variable of self-disclosure served as predictors of the degree of intimacy in a marital relationship. The study involved 72 couples who had been married from 2 to 42 years. The subjects completed four written scales and…

The ways in which people described their own interpersonal relationships were examined along the universally acknowledged relational dimensions control and affiliation. A total of 216 undergraduate communication students wrote about one of three types of relationships they had: best liked friend of the opposite sex, (60), best liked friend of the…

Effects of sex of speaker and sex of dyad partner on selected linguistic variables were examined in four-minute segments of 20 conversations between previously unacquainted college students. Five male dyads, five female dyads, and ten mixed dyads were studied. Three significant interaction effects were found. Males and females produced about the…

Developmental differences in preschool children's abilities to communicate about basic and subordinate level semantic contrasts were examined in a referential communication situation. Twenty-four three, four, and five-year-old children communicated with children of the same age and adults about pictures' referents. Speakers talked about one…

Calling upon attribution theory, a study was conducted to determine whether chronically lonely individuals would manifest significantly more communication apprehension (CA) than would situationally lonely individuals. The UCLA loneliness scale (LS) and the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) were administered to 170 college…

Data collected from 161 married couples were analyzed for communication patterns indicative of "domineeringness" and "transactional redundancy" (the degree of randomness contained within a couple's communicative behavior). From this data came the following observations: There is a negative correlation between domineeringness, particularly by the…