Expansive and contractive communication scope: A construal level perspective on the relationship between interpersonal distance and communicative abstraction

People adopt an expansive relational scope when communicating with psychologically distant audiences and a contractive relational scope when communicating with psychologically near audiences. We review recent research that has adopted a Construal Level Theory perspective to examine the impact of psychological distance of an audience on interpersonal communication. People communicate more abstractly when communicating with a distant audience and more concretely when communicating with an audience that is more proximal; correspondingly, communicating abstractly orients people toward more distant others and communicating concretely toward more proximal others. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the relationship between distance and communicative abstraction is dynamic and is influenced by communication goals and situational contexts. Moreover, a communicator's level of abstraction is consequential, influencing both how the communicator is perceived by observers and the potential effectiveness of the communication. We close by pointing to additional open questions and areas for future research.     

A developmental study of reactions to frustration among Scheduled Caste Indians

Administered the Indian adaptation of the Rosenzweig P-F Study to 144 Scheduled Caste (SC) adolescent and 158 young adult male Indians. The results show that SC adolescents scored significantly higher on ego-defensive (ED) and extragressive (EA) and lower on need-persistive (NP), introgressive (IA) and imgressive (MA) reactions as compared to the Non-Scheduled caste (Non-SC) adolescents while there was no significant difference on any reaction among SC and Non-SC young adults. SC adolescents scored higher on NP and lower on obstacle-dominance (OD) reaction as compared to the SC young adults. Non-SC young adults were higher on EA, ED, and OD and lower on IA and NP as compared to those of adolescents. The pattern of reactions was ED-EA-NP-IA-MA-OD among adolescents and ED-EA-IA-NP-MA-OD among young adults of both the castes.