The impact of confederate responsivity on social skills assessment

The current investigation examined the degree to which judges' ratings of skill, anxiety, and attractiveness are influenced by the responsivity of the confederate. High-, medium-, and low-skilled subject-pool groupings, as well as self-referred clinical groups, were exposed to either a moderately or a minimally responsive confederate. Results indicated that subjects were rated as more skillful when interacting with a moderately responsive confederate than when interacting with a minimally responsive confederate. Further, there was a groups × condition interaction for anxiety ratings such that both the high- and the medium-skilled groups appeared more anxious under the minimal condition, whereas the low-skilled and self-referred groups did not. Self-referred subjects received significantly lower attractiveness ratings than did the high- or medium-skilled groups. Implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.This research is based on a M.S. thesis carried out by the first author under direction of the second author.     

Social anxiety in children: social skills deficit, or cognitive distortion?

BACKGROUND: Treatments for childhood social anxiety have traditionally employed social skills training, based on the assumption that effected children have social skills deficits. Recent conceptualisations of social anxiety in adults have questioned this assumption, and have suggested that socially anxious individuals merely believe that they have skill deficits. A recent study using children provided preliminary confirmation of this for younger populations, and also suggested that beliefs about appearing nervous are of particular importance. METHODS: Two groups of children, aged 10-11 years (analogue high social anxiety/low social anxiety), participated in a conversation with an unfamiliar adult. They then rated their performance in a number of domains, after which independent observers also rated their performances. RESULTS: Independent observers were unable to distinguish between the low and high social anxiety groups. However, high socially anxious children rated themselves as appearing significantly less skilled than their low socially anxious counterparts. Notably, high socially anxious children rated themselves particularly poorly in terms of how nervous they looked. CONCLUSIONS: Socially anxious children may not necessarily display social skill deficits. However, they may believe that they appear nervous during social encounters. Clinicians should consider using CBT techniques to address these concerns, rather than relying on social skill remediation.     

Subordinates' perceptions of leaders in task-performing dyads: Effects of sex of leader and subordinate,method of leader selection,and performance feedback

Two hundred twenty-four subjects worked as subordinates in dyads with unseen, bogus leaders, attempting to solve a simulated business problem in personnel decision making. Members of each dyad communicated and reached a decision by exchanging written notes. Sex of subject, sex of leader, method of selection of the leader (on the basis of skill or on a random basis), and feedback about the dyad's performance (success or failure) were manipulated in a factorial design. Results revealed sex-related effects in subjects' attributions of responsibility for task performance, and in both their direct and indirect evaluations of the leader's and their own relative performances. Willingness to continue working with the leader, however, did not differ as a function of the sex of either the subjects or the leader. Instead, subjects showed a preference for continuing to work with a successful leader rather than an unsuccessful one.     

Social skills deficits among the socially anxious: Rejection from others and loneliness

Based on evidence linking social anxiety with social skills deficits, it was hypothesized that socially anxious individuals would exhibit diminished social skills in a naturalistic interaction, relative to socially nonanxious persons, and that they would also elicit rejection from their conversational partners and experience loneliness. Socially anxious and nonanxious persons were surreptitiously videotaped while they waited with partners for an experiment to begin. Analyses of subjects' social skills indicated that, behaviorally, the socially anxious appear very similar to their nonanxious peers. At the same time, however, they exhibited a tendency to negatively misperceive their own social skills. Although socially anxious persons did not elicit significantly more rejection from their conversational partners, they did report being more lonely than nonanxious persons. Socially anxious subjects were also rated by their conversational partners as lower in social skill than were nonanxious subjects. Implications for further study of social skills among the socially anxious are discussed.We would like to thank Richard Davidson for his assistance in recruiting subjects: Dean Geller, Lynn Jorgenson, Joey Kaupie, and Karen Toft for their assistance with data collection; and Andrea Attebery, Monica Bannon, Noreen Checci, Heather Collier, Michelle Givertz, Perry Loeder, Lisa Meyer, Nancy Nell, Beth O'Keefe, Bruce Rist, Becky Sapinski, and Shaunda Wenberg for their assistance as coders.     

ANONYMITY,STRENGTH OF ATTITUDE,AND THE INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION POLLS

Subjects were given questionnaires asking their responses to six statements on public issues. On some of the issues subjects were highly committed to their own views, while other issues were selected for the subjects' lack of knowledge and commitment. Some subjects were asked to respond anonymously, and others were led to believe that their responses would be made public. Each questionnaire contained a bogus distribution of responses from students at the subjects’ university. Each statement of interest was supported by the bogus majority in one questionnaire form and rejected by it in the other form. Several types of conformity were considered. For the low-commitment issues, subjects were influenced in the direction of the bogus consensus. For the high-commitment issues, the bogus consensus had no significant effect. Implications for understanding the effect of polls on public opinion are discussed.     

Reasons for Living Following Success and Failure in Suicidal and Nonsuicidal College Students1

To see if suicide ideators responded differently than nonideators after success or failure experiences, 61 college students who were relatively high or low ideators participated in a computer task on which half got bogus success feedback, the other half got bogus failure feedback. Both groups then completed the Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL). Two (High versus Low Suicide) X 2 (Success or Failure) analyses indicated main effects for suicide on overall RFL and four of the six RFL subscales. Although there were no main effects for success versus failure, an interaction indicated that, in the failure condition, low suicidal subjects were significantly higher than high suicidal subjects in overall reasons for living. Results suggest that suicidal individuals may be vulnerable to failure, and may need interventions to help them avoid potential failure or to bolster their coping mechanisms.     

When is ignorance bliss? The effects of inaccurate self-assessments of knowledge on learning and attrition

Two studies were conducted to examine the implications of inaccurate self-appraisals in online training. Self-assessment of knowledge moderated the effects of trainees’ performance on subsequent performance and attrition. Performance was highest after uniformly positive ratings (i.e., high self-assessment and high performance), followed by underestimation, overestimation, and uniformly negative ratings, respectively. Attrition was lowest after uniformly positive ratings, followed by underestimation, uniformly negative ratings, and overestimation, respectively. Effort had a more positive effect on performance following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent performance. Commitment had a more negative effect on subsequent attrition following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent attrition. Finally, trainee conscientiousness affected their behavior when their performance and self-assessments were inconsistent—overestimating and underestimating performance increased attrition more for trainees low in conscientiousness and impaired performance more for trainees high in conscientiousness.     

Effects of Self-Appraisal Information, Appraisal Purpose, and Feedback Target on Performance Appraisal Ratings

This experiment investigated the effects of three factors on performance appraisal ratings: self-appraisal information, appraisal purpose, and feedback target. Two hundred and three subjects rated a subordinate's performance on a clerical task subsequent to receiving either a high or low self-assessment. They were told they would provide performance feedback either to the experimenter (organizational agent) or their subordinate, and their ratings would be used either for an administrative decision or developmental feedback. Performance ratings were significantly higher when subjects received a favorable subordinate self-assessment than when self-assessments were unfavorable. A significant interaction was found between feedback target and the appraisal purpose. Implications for the use of self-appraisals in organizations were discussed.     

The effects of trait label and order of presentation on observers' ratings of performance anxiety

In two experiments, the effects of different stimulus presentation orders and trait labels on observers' ratings of performance anxiety were examined. In Experiment 1, 60 college students viewed, in one session, ten 3-min videotapes of a man speaking while displaying a variety of the behavioral manifestations of anxiety. The tapes varied linearly in the percentage of time during which anxious behaviors were emitted. Anxiety ratings were made along either a “calm” or an “anxious” dimension. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three orders of presentation conditions (with the frequencies of anxious behaviors ascending, descending, or randomized across tapes) and one of two trait-label conditions, calm or anxious. In Experiment 2, 60 additional subjects viewed these same tapes and a contrasting series designed to display a consistent rate of anxiety behaviors. These tapes were viewed in 10 sessions over a 2- to 5-week period. Results replicated prior studies showing that the order of presentation can significantly affect observers' ratings. Additionally, the results suggested that, under certain conditions, subjects may not perceive a conceptually dichotomous variable (e.g., calm vs. anxious) in the same way. These results are discussed in terms of the complexity of observer behavior and potential problems in comparing outcome studies that use dichotomous traits.     

The Influence of a Manager's Own Performance Appraisal on the Evaluation of Others

This study examined the possibility that the performance appraisal process is affected by a pervasive and inherent effect that has heretofore been unidentified. This effect derives from the results of the performance appraisal most recently performed on the manager who subsequently conducts appraisals of others. The nature of this effect was examined in four studies. In a case study, the ratings received by two area coordinators in a university academic department affected their subsequent ratings of faculty. In a simulation, 30 managers received hypothetical feedback regarding their own job performance. The managers subsequently evaluated an employee on videotape. Managers who received positive feedback about their performance subsequently rated the employee significantly higher than managers who received negative feedback regarding their own performance. This occurred despite the fact that the managers knew the evaluation of them was bogus. The results of two follow‐up field studies involving 74 manager–employee dyads in a manufacturing company in Canada and 39 manager–subordinate dyads in a retail organization in Turkey are consistent with the view that one's own performance appraisal is related to the subsequent appraisal of one's subordinates. Both anchoring with insufficient adjustment and a mood induction may explain this effect, but the results are more consistent with the former explanation than the latter.     

Race of ratee and anonymity of rater: a study comparing students with practitioners as performance appraisers

123 students and 123 nonstudent supervisors viewed videotapes which displayed four supposed subordinate supervisors, two African Americans and two Caucasians, who individually described their respective performances during the past year. After being told either that the supposed subordinates would or that they would not have access to the performance rating, the subjects rated the performance of those subordinate supervisors. While anonymity of rater and race of rater had no evaluative effect on the performance ratings given by the nonstudent subjects, the student subjects gave higher ratings when they believed that their ratings would be made public. Also, the nonstudent subjects' ratings differed as a function of whether they worked closely with others of another race and as a function of the frequency with which they actually discussed performance evaluations with their own subordinates.     

Decoding deficits and social competency: A continuous rating approach

Males who self-reported heterosocial difficulties and whose performance in a role-played interaction was judged to be of low social competence were compared to high-competent males on a continuous rating task. The rating task required that subjects make continual, ongoing social competency ratings of their own and six other males' performance in a role-play situation. The continuous measurement of performance provided a profile of ratings that was compared on frequency, latency-to-first ratings, profile elevation or level, scatter, and patterning. Low-competent males had longer latencies-to-first ratings than high-competent males and less scatter in their continuous ratings than did the high-competent group. The reduced scatter effect for continuous ratings replicates previous work done with global ratings and suggests that the low-competent group may not be able to discriminate among social stimuli as well as the high-competent group. The research also suggests that the continuous rating methodology may hold promise as a tool to investigate social perception processes.     

The relationship of post-event processing to self-evaluation of performance in social anxiety

Socially anxious and control participants engaged in a social interaction with a confederate and then wrote about themselves or the other person (i.e., self-focused post-event processing [SF-PEP] vs. other-focused post-event processing [OF-PEP]) and completed several questionnaires. One week later, participants completed measures concerning their evaluation of their performance in the social interaction and the degree to which they engaged in post-event processing (PEP) during the week. Socially anxious individuals evaluated their performance in the social interaction more poorly than control participants, both immediately after and 1 week later. Socially anxious individuals assigned to the SF-PEP condition displayed fewer positive feelings about their performance compared to the socially anxious individuals in the OF-PEP condition as well as controls in either condition. Also, the trait tendency to engage in PEP moderated the effect of social anxiety on participants' evaluation of their performance in the interaction, such that high socially anxious individuals with high trait PEP scores evaluated themselves in the interaction more negatively at the later assessment. These results suggest that PEP and other self-evaluative processes may perpetuate the cycle of social anxiety.     

Predicting and accepting personality test scores

Three studies are reported concerned with people's perception of their own personality, their acceptance of bogus ‘personality’ feedback, and the relationship between their ‘actual’ personality scores and their willingness to accept bogus feedback. In the first study subjects attempted to predict their own and a well-known other person's personality scores. They were fairly good at predicting some of their own scores (extraversion, neuroticism) but less so others, suggesting that people can recognize their own ‘correct’ personality feedback. In the second study subjects were given either positive (Barnum Statements) or negative (reverse Barnum Statements) ‘bogus’ feedback after a personality test. They tended to accept the positive feedback as more accurate than the negative feedback though this was not related to their actual scores. In the third study subjects were given four types of feedback statements after a personality test: general positive, general negative, specific positive and specific negative. As predicted, people tend to accept general rather than specific, and positive rather than negative feedback as true. Furthermore, acceptance was closely related to neuroticism and extraversion in a predicted direction. These results are discussed in terms of the uses and abuses of validation of personality feedback.     

The Effects of Audience Size on High and Low Speech-Anxious Subjects During an Actual Speaking Task

The present study assessed the impact of audience size (0, 2, or 6) and expertness level (expert present/absent) on 30 high and low speech-anxious subjects while they were giving a speech. Anxiety level was measured via self-reported nervousness, physiological change (heart rate and skin conductance), and overt motor behavior. It was found that while high speech-anxious subjects were relatively more anxious and depressed after speaking before a larger audience, low speech-anxious subjects were relatively less anxious and depressed before a larger audience. In addition, when given a choice, high anxious subjects reported a general preference for speaking alone while the low anxious subjects preferred having three or more people present. However, both groups showed similar physiological increases during preparation for speaking and during the actual speaking episode. These data are interpreted as evidence for a possible "exhibitionistic" effect in low anxious subjects, and are further interpreted in light of the two-factor model of emotion proposed by Schacter and Singer (1962).     

Physical aggression as a function of objective self-awareness and attitudes toward punishment

Based on a theory of self-awareness, it was hypothesized that subjects would use their attitudes to determine their behaviors when (a) that attitude was salient and (b) their attention was directed toward themselves. Subjects, who on questionnaires had indicated that they opposed or condoned the use of punishment, were given the opportunity to shock a male confederate in two (bogus) learning experiments. Each subject was instructed to use his own attitude in choosing shocks to punish incorrect responses. Self-awareness was increased among half the subjects by the presence of a mirror. In each experiment a Punitiveness by self-awareness interaction resulted: High Punitive-Mirror subjects shocked higher than Low Punitive-Mirror subjects, but their respective No Mirror controls did not differ from each other.     

Black Women's Self-Perceptions of Attractiveness Following Exposure to White Versus Black Beauty Standards: The Moderating Role of Racial Identity and Self-Esteem

This study examined racial identity, self-esteem, and Black versus White beauty standards as moderators of body image perceptions among 60 Black women. In two experimental conditions, subjects evaluated photographs of either three Black models or three White models, all previously determined to be attractive. Control group subjects did not evaluate photographs. All subjects then completed measures of their own body esteem and attractiveness. Results indicated that body esteem was positively related to self-esteem for subjects in the photograph conditions but not for subjects in the control condition. The relative attractiveness ratings of self versus models were dependent on race of the models and subjects' self-esteem, and on race of the models and subjects' racial identity. The first interaction indicated more favorable comparative ratings for subjects with high self-esteem, but only following exposure to White models. The second interaction indicated more favorable comparative ratings for subjects with high African self-consciousness, but only following exposure to White models. Taken together, the results suggest that explicit beauty standards engage a comparison process and, in the case of Black respondents with high self-esteem or with high African self-consciousness, result in self-evaluations that are significantly higher than the attractiveness attributed to White standards of beauty.     

Individual differences in anxiety level and eyewitness memory.

The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in anxiety and eyewitness performance. Instructions designed to produce evaluative threat were given to anxious and nonanxious subjects at encoding and/or at retrieval. The performance of those subjects who were given anxiety-arousing instructions at encoding and retrieval and who scored high on the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS; Sarason, 1972) was less accurate on an eyewitness task than was that of the subjects who scored low on the scale. This difference in performance was attributable to improvement in the performance of nonanxious subjects, rather than debilitation in the performance of anxious subjects. Faced with the threat of failure, low-anxious subjects appeared to have the potential for increased effort. High-anxious subjects seemed to perform at or near capacity under all the experimental conditions because of their predisposition for task-irrelevant worry, which limited the possibility of an increase in working memory capacity.     

Some personality correlates of self-rated academic success.

Using subjects' own ratings of their academic performance, a group of american university students were divided into academically successful (n = 312) and unsuccessful (n = 170) subgroups. A comparison of mean scores of the two groups on nine personality variables convered by Eysenck's PEN Inventory and Lanyon's Psychological Screening Inventory showed that academic success, as rated by subjects themselves, is associated with low psychoticism, neuroticism, and discomfort but high extraversion and defensiveness.     

The effect of performer gender,performer skill level,and opponent gender on self-confidence in a competitive situation

An equal number of male and female subjects (N=48), ranging in age from 17 to 26, were randomly assigned to compete in three competitive video games against a male or female opponent. All subjects were given bogus feedback that they had lost two out of three video games by a standard margin. Initial performance expectancies, as well as postcompetition expectancies, of all subjects were recorded. Initial performance expectancy scores recorded prior to competition were analyzed in a 2 (subject gender)×2 (opponent gender) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) design with initial skill level on a preliminary game as the covariate. No significant gender differences in initial expectancy scores were found. A 2 (subject gender)×2 (opponent gender) ANCOVA design was utilized to analyze the postcompetition expectancy scores with initial performance expectancy as the covariate. The analysis revealed no significant differences. These findings did not support Corbin's (1981) data suggesting that females express significantly less self-confidence than males for future performance after competing against and losing to a superior opponent on a video task. Initial performance expectancies in the present study were significantly correlated (p.05) to skill level, indicating that performance expectancies may be more related to skill level than to gender. Thus, a realistic perception about one's initial skill level on a particular task may be the most salient determinant of performance expectancies.