Howard J. Ehrlich

Reciprocal self-disclosure in a dyad☆

Abstract Male subjects randomly assigned to high and low intimacy experimental conditions were asked to talk about themselves with a confederate who used scripts controlling his intimacy level. Hypotheses were examined concerning: the reciprocity of intimacy in self-disclosure; the reciprocity of conversational topics; the effect of interpersonal attraction on self-disclosure; the accuracy with which persons perceived their self-disclosures; and the consistency of self-disclosure behavior across measures and over time. The findings indicated that subjects reciprocated the intimacy level of the confederate, and that their self-disclosing behavior displayed moderate consistency in the laboratory situation. Although subjects did not reciprocate topically, subjects in both conditions manifested the same pattern of topical disclosure. Two hypotheses were not confirmed: the level of disclosure was not related to interpersonal attraction and a scale measure of past self-disclosure was not related to four laboratory indicators of disclosing behavior.

BELIEFS ABOUT SELF AND OTHERS: A TEST OF THE DOGMATISM THEORY

The 7 propositions of Rokeachs theory of open- and closed-mind relating to beliefs about self and others were tested. It was hypothesized that closed-minded persons, in contrast to open-minded persons, would hold negative beliefs about self and about others, hold contradictory self-beliefs, engage in self-proselytization, seek status and power, report a sense of martyrdom, and display moral self-righteousness. In keeping with theoretical expectations, all hypotheses were confirmed although the magnitudes of correlations between dogmatism scale scores and the dependent variable measures were low.

The Relative Influence of Reference Others with Regard to Civil Rights Activism

Although the reference other concept enjoys wide acceptance in sociology, almost no attention has been given to the relative importance of reference others in determining behavior. Why, for instance, do some of the important persons in our lives have more influence over our behavior than do others? The basic assumption underlying this research is that the relative influence of reference others is a function of their relationship with the individual. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to ex plore some of these dimensions of social relationships which determine the scope and extent of reference other influence. Although there seems to be a renewed interest in the nature of social relationships (McCall, et al., 1970), there has been little attention devoted to the effects of these relationships upon social influence processes. The implicit assumption in most of the reference other literature seems to be that there are two classes of others, reference others and non-reference others, and that all of the members of the first category have an equal amount of influence upon the individual. Thus, in the formal reference other literature only three studies could be found which have investigated the differential influence of reference others. Both Warner and DeFleur (1969) and Green (1969) have provided some support for the importance, in understanding social influence, of the visibility of the individuals behavior to the reference other. Erickson (1965) has also demonstrated the importance of visibility and the cen trality (as defined below) of the expectations of the reference other. An examination of the role, laboratory conformity, and related social in fluence literatures, however, was somewhat more fruitful with regard to

Social Distance as Behavioral Intentions: A Replication, a Failure, and a New Proposal.

Dual analyses of two social-distance checklists yielded contradictory results. Direct factor analysis of social distance items replicated the structures reported by Triandis. Inverse factor analysis of Ss failed to reproduce similar structures of behavioral intentions. Examination of the content of the behaviors defined by the different modes of analysis suggested new hypotheses based on the behavioral implications of prescriptive versus proscriptive norms of social distance.

DOGMATISM AND CLASSROOM GRADES: REAPPRAISAL OF THE ROKEACH-NORRELL STUDIES OF ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Summary —Three hypotheses were tested and confirmed concerning the effect of belief centrality on the prediction of classroom grades from a students level of closed-mindedness. Reanalyzing the Rokeach-Norrell data, it was observed that major area, sex, and the two combined were determinative of the predictive efficiency of dogmatism scores.

Sibling Sex Distribution and Psychiatric Status

High psychiatric impairment was found to be differentially distributed among sibship types by sex, with females from opposite sex sibships and males from same sex sibships being most impaired. For both sexes, the mixed sex sibships had the most negative outcome at the conclusion of therapy, although differences were small. Control analyses indicated that sex is not independently related to any given measure of psychiatric impairment or outcome, nor is there any sex bias in the direction of high or low impairment when sibship type is controlled. Thus, the differences in psychiatric status observed in these data appear to be associated with the combination of sex and sibling sex distribution.