How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Consider My Options Cognition,Verbal Strategies,and the Escalation of Intimacy

Previous research has revealed that individuals have expectations for the development of romance based on personal experience and cultural images. A series of research questions and hypotheses was generated and a sequence of hierarchical log-linear analysis models axis developed to test (a) the effect of gender and knowledge of relational stage and relationship type on prediction of next-occurring actions in the development of a romance, (b) the use of compliance-gaining strategies intended to advance a relationship to the next stage, and (c) justification of secondary goals in which participants reported why they chose the strategies they did as opposed to other alternatives. The data revealed effects for relational stage progression on prediction of ensuing actions. Ingratiation, explanation, and direct requests were popular strategies for developing intimacy. Gender differences in terms of secondary goals were reported. Results are discussed in terms of relational memory structures for the development of intimacy.     

Bias in the Counseling Process: How to Recognize and Avoid It

Counselors' vulnerability to inferential bias during the counseling process may result in misdiagnosis and improper interventions. This article provides readers with information regarding inferential bias. The inferential biases discussed include (a) availability and representativeness heuristics; (b) fundamental attribution error; (c) anchoring, prior knowledge, and labeling; (d) confirmatory hypothesis testing; and (e) reconstructive memory. Each bias is described and illustrated through fictitious case vignettes, and suggestions concerning what precautions counselors may do to avoid each type of bias are presented.     

Counselor Responsiveness to Client Religiousness

An understanding of the degree and Quality of client religiousness and the connections between client issues and religion can enhance counselor resposiveness to the potentially religious dimension of client issues.     

The Persistence of Status Differentials in Computer Conferencing

One feature of electronic communication media is its potential to remove the effects of occupational role identity. For better or for worse, electronic communication technologies may reduce occupational status differentials and allow individuals to communicate as equals. This article reports results from a study of health-care professionals engaged in an educational program using computer conferences over a five-month period. Results show that the content and network of communication among health-care professionals using the computer conference were significantly related to occupational roles. Specifically, physicians and hospital administrators were afforded higher status in computer conferences than nurses. The effects of occupational status differentials were manifest and became more established with greater use of the computer conferencing system. Status characteristics derived from the educational task also appeared to affect communication patterns. The importance of considering multiple social contexts when implementing information technology is discussed.     

Same‐sex infidelity in heterosexual romantic relationships: Investigating emotional,relational, and communicative responses

The present study explores emotional, relational, and communicative responses to different‐sex and same‐sex infidelity in heterosexual romantic relationships. Two‐hundred and eighty‐five men and women completed an online survey. Individuals were asked to read a scenario in which an imagined heterosexual partner engages in infidelity with a different‐sex or same‐sex person. Individuals were randomly assigned to one of these two conditions and then asked to complete several measures assessing their imagined emotions, communicative responses, and relational outcomes. Results revealed that both men and women experienced more negative emotional responses to different‐sex infidelity versus same‐sex infidelity. Additionally, men reported more sexual arousal in response to a woman's same‐sex infidelity versus different‐sex infidelity, while women's sexual arousal did not vary across conditions. Lastly, men's communicative responses to jealousy (CRJs) for same‐sex and different‐sex infidelity did not vary, though women reported that they were more likely to respond to same‐sex infidelity than different‐sex infidelity with denial, and more likely to respond to different‐sex than same‐sex infidelity with signs of possession. Several emotional responses to same‐sex infidelity were also found to predict various CRJs. These findings and the implications of the study are discussed.     

Relational coping during deployment: Managing communication and connection in relationships

Wartime deployment involves prolonged separation and creates uncertainty, fear, and disorganization in families (M. J. Peebles‐Kleiger & J. H. Kleiger, 1994). This study examined how military wives/fiancées reported coping with the demands they associated with spousal deployment. Twenty‐six in‐depth interviews were conducted with wives and fiancées whose partners were currently deployed. Through qualitative analysis, 2 main coping themes emerged: (a) maintaining a mediated interpersonal connection and (b) choosing open versus restricted communication. Further analyses revealed that the former theme promoted 2 relationship functions (e.g., intimacy and positivity, confronting realities and fears) and the latter 4 functions (e.g., closeness, smooth reunion, outlet, and protection). On the basis of these coping strategies and functions, a conceptual framework for understanding relational coping communication patterns is proposed. Themes, practical applications, and theoretical implications are discussed.     

LANGUAGE INTENSITY AND RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION: A RESEARCH NOTE

Three hypotheses concerning the specific role of language intensity differentiation in both pretreatment and counterattitudinal messages were examined in two studies. The results indicate that low intensity pretreatments are more effective than either moderate or high intensity inoculations in conferring resistance to persuasion. The findings for refutational pretreatments were, therefore, not consistent with previous research. Future research in this area should be characterized by a greater degree of specificity concerning the possible effects of receiver expectations on subsequent attitude change.     

Creating a Culture

This research provides an examination of management and employee values as influential for organizational rule formation, that is, cultural theme formation. Specifically, the research demonstrates that management and employee values and management and employee perceptions of organizational rules are related over time and that the direction of that relationship can be specified. The findings indicate that management values are directly related to employee values but indirectly influence the evolution of organizational rules. Additionally, the findings support the interactional nature of management/employee relationships. Finally, this research provides evidence of rule emergence based on management and employee values and underscores the importance of communication-receiving activities for knowledge of rule emergence and a variety of organizational and work satisfactions.     

Of lust and love: Beliefs about the role of sexual desire in romantic relationships

Little is known about the beliefs that men and women have about the role of sexual desire in romantic relationships, despite the interpersonal and individual significance of those beliefs. Three experiments conducted with students from a university in the midwestern United States examined both the perceived consequences of sexual desire for romantic relationships and beliefs about the association between sexual desire and romantic love. Men and women believed that dating partners who desire each other sexually are more likely to experience romantic love and other “positive” interpersonal events and less likely to experience “negative” events than partners who do not desire each other sexually, regardless of their level of sexual activity (Experiment 1). Similarly, partners who are romantically in love were viewed as more likely to desire each other than were partners who love or who like one another, and desire was perceived as equally likely to occur in loving and liking relationships; that is, sexual desire did not differentiate these two affective syndromes (Experiment 2). In couples with a mismatched sexual desire pattern, the high-desire partner was perceived as more likely than the sexually uninterested partner to be in love, satisfied, committed, happy, and jealous, whereas the low-desire partner was viewed as more likely to terminate the relationship and to be unfaithful (Experiment 3). These results suggest that sexual desire is viewed as an important feature of romantic love, and that its presence or absence in a dating relationship is believed to have implications for the emotional tenor and interpersonal dynamics of that relationship.     

The adult attachment interview and self‐reports of romantic attachment: Associations across domains and methods

Two lines of research on adult attachment have emerged; both are based on Bowlby and Ainsworth's attachment theory, which in turn relies on evolutionary theory. Investigators in one tradition use the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to assess “state of mind with respect to attachment.” The AAI has been validated primarily by its ability to predict the attachment classification of an interviewee's child in Ainsworth's “strange situation.” Investigators in the second tradition use self‐report measures to assess romantic “attachment style.” The self‐report measures have been validated by their ability to predict features of romantic/marital relationships. Although the two constructs. state of mind and romantic attachment, are importantly different and so would not be expected to relate highly, some of their components, especially ability to depend on attachment figures, should be related if both stem from a person's attachment history. We report associations between components, or aspects, of the two measures. Overlap occurs mainly in the areas of comfort depending on attachment figures and comfort serving as an attachment figure for others. Implications of the findings for attachment theory and research, as well as for evolutionary psychology, are discussed.