Families' Schemata of Social Relationships

Variation in views of the social environment held jointly by members of family units was examined from a theoretical perspective that specifies distinct kinds of variation among families in their beliefs about the fundamental nature of the social world. Associations compatible with theory were found between direct measures of family interaction and families' schemata of social relationships as assessed by using a felt figure technique. Additional evidence indicated that variation among families in the schemata displayed resulted from similar contributions by all individuals in a family studied. Findings support the existence of family social schemata — a family group's set of views about the organization of relationships in the social world — and indicate several dimensions by which these schemata vary from family to family.     

RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF VERBAL, ARTICULATIVE, AND NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION TO EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS IN THE JOB INTERVIEW SETTING

Recruiter ratings of 338 on-campus interviews were used in a discriminant analysis procedure to determine the relative importance of the verbal, articulative, and nonverbal dimensions of communication during the job interview. Correlation of seven variables with the discriminant function indicated that appropriateness of content, fluency of speech, and composure were of greatest importance in contributing to a favorable employment decision. These findings were contrary to the recent literature which has emphasized the importance of nonverbal behavior. Implications for job-interview skills training are discussed, and suggestions for a comprehensive workshop model are presented.     

Training Counsellors to Work with People who Live with Cancer: A Needs-led Approach to Planning

This paper traces the development of a cancer counselling service within a voluntary helping agency. The steps of recognizing the needs of people with cancer, identifying multi-faceted desired outcomes and the implementation of one specific goal, that of provision of a counselling service, are outlined. Significant events, stages and decisions made during this process are described and discussed. The emphasis throughout is on the importance of needs analysis and client group consultation in order that the planned service is best placed to meet such needs.     

Reading Preferences for Counseling and Values: A Sample of the ASERVIC Membership

This article presents the results of an ASERVIC (Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling) membership survey included as an insert (Maples, 1997) in the newsletter Interaction in the spring of 1998, requesting information related to topic preferences for the organization's journal Counseling and Values. The project had 4 goals: (a) to determine what topics a sample of the ASERVIC membership wants to read about in Counseling and Values, (b) to determine what topics Counseling and Values is currently publishing, (c) to determine the extent to which the articles being published are satisfying the preferences of the membership sample, and (d) to determine to what extent the articles being published in Counseling and Values have changed since the organization's name change in 1993.     

Feminist Archeology: Uncovering Women's Philosophical History

A History of Women Philosophers, Volume I: Ancient Women Philoophers, 600 B.C. - 500 A.D., edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, is an important but somewhat frustrating book. It is filled with tantalizing glimpses into the lives and thoughts of some of our earliest philosophical foremothers. Yet it lacks a clear unifying theme, and the abrupt transitions from one philosopher and period to the next are sometimes disconcerting. The overall effect is not unlike that of viewing an expansive landscape, illuminated only by a few tiny spotlights.     

Implications of Concurrent Measures of Viewer Behavior

Carter's “signaled stopping” technique is used here under different instructions to examine two quite different cognitive phenomena during television viewing of marital interactions from feature films: a change to the cognitive state of “thinking” (rather than just watching), and the momentary perception of action “meaningful for the couple's relationship.” A variety of evidence supports the distinction and suggests directions for further applications of the technique.     

Acquiring Resources from Intimates When Obligation Substitutes for Persuasion

The acquisition of needed resources is a necessary part of human activity. Persuasion is a tool that can be used to acquire commodities. However, because of obligations inherent in intimate relationships, the necessity of elaborated persuasive messages is lessened Furthermore, when an intimate's request is rejected, negative responses and counterpersuasion are likely. This article presents the results of a study in which three measures of intimacy are related to the obligation to grant requests for resources, the obligation to offer resources in a time of need, characteristics of requests for resources, and characteristics of responses to rejection. Although not all three measures yielded identical results, increasing intimacy with a potential helper increased obligations to grant requests for resources, and obligation to offer resources in a time of need. Moreover, increasing intimacy was negatively associated with request elaboration, frequency of explanations, and inducements. When responding to rejection, increasing intimacy was negatively related to forgiving statements and positively related to counterpersuasion. Finally, after rejection, intimates composed messages, judged to be less polite than those that contained their initial request. The politeness of postrejection messages created by nonintimates was not perceived to differ from that of their initial requests.