Ralph V. Exline

Visual Behavior as an Aspect of Power Role Relationships

There is an intriguing paradox inherent in the shared glance. On the one hand, there is the suggestion that willingness to engage in mutual glances is a means of establishing union with another (Simmel, 1969) — a suggestion which is supported by empirical evidence that affiliative motives (Exline, 1963) and loving relationships (Rubin, 1970) are characterized by relatively greater amounts of mutual looks than are their opposites. On the other hand, there is the suggestion, also backed with empirical evidence, that a mutual glance elicits threat displays between subhuman primates (Hinde and Rowell, 1962; Hall and Devore, 1965; Jay, 1965), that the fixed glance of one human is associated with another’s accelerated movement away (Ellsworth, Carlsmith, & Henson, 1972), and that, in specified circumstances, the one who first breaks off a mutual glance is socially subordinate (Edelman, Omark, & Freedman, 1971), while one who looks steadily at another in silence is perceived to be more dominant than one who looks briefly (Thayer, 1969).

Need Affiliation and Initial Communication Behavior in Problem-Solving Groups Characterized by Low Interpersonal Visibility:

This study represents an exploratory investigation into relationships between interpersonal perception and interpersonal communication in face-toface groups. It is thus a departure from earlier studies of the perception of others in which the focus was upon the relationship between perception and action, particularly with reference to action based on accuracy or perceptualcognitive achievement. Instead of dealing with such questions as whether the perceiver can recognize a given emotion in another (Ruckmick, 1921, p. 30-35; Woodworth, 1938), is aided by personal and/or situational factors co achieve a relatively high degree of accuracy in interpersonal perception (Beri, 1955; Exline, 1957), or is by virtue of such accuracy an effective social operative (Gage & Suci, 1950; Chowdry & Newcornb, 1952; Greer, et dl., 1954; Steiner & Dodge, 1956), this study is directed, in the happy phrase of Tagiuri and Petrullo (1958), to the analysis of the process of perceiving or knowing another. The study assumes that communication linkages are Inherent in the concept of interpersonal perception, that a social percept grows out of a sequence of communications, and that communication may occur, simultaneously, ac several levels. It is argued that a person initiating a communication at any level is able to use the recipients reaction or lack of reaction as data which are relevant to beliefs or hypotheses which the original communicant holds about other persons, or about himself in relation to other persons, as well as data which bear on the specific topic under consideration. It is further suggested that personal attributes which affect the hypotheses that A holds with reference to a self-other relationship will affect the information which A ( S ) seeks from B (object) as well as che jnformacion about himself which A (as objecc) consciously or unconsciously makes available to B (as s). Motivational concepts perca~ning to basic ways of reacting to ones environment provide one convenient way of organizing the attributes of the objecc to be perceived and of the object as perceiver. Such concepts are of particular interest in that they lend themselves to bridging the gap between studies of perceptual processes and group products based on such processes. If it can be established that n affiliation, for example, is related to specified communi-

The relative accuracy of U.S. British, and Mexican raters in judging the emotional displays of schizophrenic and normal U.S. women.

Asked U.S., British, and Mexican male students of college age to discriminate among three affective displays presented by 10 schizophrenic and 10 normal U.S. women. Significant main effects for diagnostic category, nationality of judge and for the interaction of nationality and diagnostic category were obtained. Furthermore, U.S. judges did significantly better in judging normals as compared to schizophrenics, British judges tended in the same direction, and Mexican judges did not. Co-nationality and national similarity confer an advantage in judging normals as compared to schizophrenics. The data have relevance for questions about the effects of sending and receiving nonverbal emotional messages on communications or miscommunications between doctor and patient, doctors from different cultures and people including conference negotiators, from different national backgrounds.

Gaze Patterns of Normals and Schizophrenics Retelling Happy, Sad, and Angry Experiences

Exline and his colleagues’ ingenious and pioneering studies of eye contact and gaze patterns in interpersonal interactions constituted a significant force in making nonverbal communication an important domain of research in contemporary psychology. Their work has always had the attraction of focusing on variables and conditions that easily translate into life outside the laboratory. The studies reported in this chapter represent three important innovations: (1) the introduction of a dynamic model that analyzes gaze directions in real-time sequences; (2) the study of relationships among different gaze directions in affectively different interactions; and (3) the application of the new model to a psychiatric (schizophrenic) group.