DISCREPANCY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTITUDINAL FREEDOM

The present research varied threats to attitudinal freedom and initial receiver attitude at four discrepancy intervals from the position advocated in a persuasive communication: extreme agreement; moderate agreement; moderate disagreement; and extreme disagreement. Results indicated that receivers in moderate disagreement and extreme agreement shifted toward the recommended position, with no difference as a function of message threat level. In contrast, significant attitude change away from the position advocated in a threatening message occurred among receivers in moderate agreement and extreme disagreement. The significance of these results for the importance of the freedom to agree or disagree with a persuasive communication is discussed.     

Is the gray mare only a workhorse?

A study by the Women's Commission at the University of Wisconsin pointed out that only 3 percent of the tenured faculty of the college of education were female.“     

DIMENSIONS OF COMPLIANCE-GAINING SITUATIONS

A seven-factor model of situation perception, including “personal benefits,”“intimacy,”“rights,”“resistance,”“dominance,”“situation apprehension,” and “relational consequences” was proposed. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test the fit of the model to the data. One sample (N=450) was employed to test a six-factor sub model (excluding relational consequences) and a separate sample (N= 270), employing a different situation, was utilized to test the seven-factor model. The proposed model proved to fit the data well (x²/df ratios of 3.14 and 2.97, respectively) and was superior to alternative models. Future research recommendations were provided.     

CODING NATURALISTIC NEGOTIATION INTERACTION

While much recent work has attempted to code negotiation interaction to identify how individuals use communication tactics in negotiation settings, many coding schemes have been developed to analyze simulated activities and may not be appropriate for the analysis of formal, professional negotiation events. Moreover, most coding research has failed to focus on the relationships between individual tactics and larger communication strategies. This article proposes a coding mechanism sensitive to formal, naturally occurring communication in negotiation settings and capable of identifying strategic use of individual tactics. The coding scheme is then applied to simulated and naturalistic negotiation interaction and the resulting data are assessed, using lag sequential analysis. Significant differences are reflected between the naturalistic and simulated interactions and strong patterns of communication strategy are identified.