Rowland S. Miller

Development of the emotional self-disclosure scale

The Emotional Self-Disclosure Scale (ESDS) was developed to assess how willing people are to discuss specific emotions with different disclosure recipients. Internal reliabilities (Cronbachs alpha) and test-retest were consistently high for each of the subscales on the ESDS for three specific disclosure recipients: female friends, male friends, and spouses/lovers. A final set of results indicated that womens and mens emotional disclosures varied as a function of their gender and the personal characteristics of the disclosure recipient. Although men and women reported a similar pattern of willingness to discuss their emotions with their male friends, additional results revealed that women were more willing than men to disclose information about their feelings of depression, anxiety, anger, and fear to their female friends and spouses/lovers. The implications of these findings for mens and womens emotional expressivity are discussed.

Behavioral and Characterological Attributional Styles as Predictors of Depression and Loneliness: Review, Refinement, and Test

The literature on self-blame and depression reveals two interrelated problems. First, although R. Janoff-Bulmans (1979) conceptualizations of self-blame are clear, empirical operationalization is difficult and has resulted in approaches that do not capture the richness of the constructs. Second, past research has produced inconsistent findings. A comprehensive literature review revealed that the inconsistencies are related to the method of assessing attributions. A correlational study designed to more accurately represent the self-blame conceptualization revealed that both behavioral and characterological self-blame contribute uniquely to depression and loneliness. Supplementary results regarding circumstantial attributions and regarding attributional styles for success were presented. Empirical issues regarding possible methodological refinements and effect size, as well as the value of categorical approaches to the study of attributional style were discussed.

Men's and Women's Emotional Disclosures: The Impact of Disclosure Recipient, Culture, and the Masculine Role.

People vary in how willingly and how often they discuss their emotional experiences with others. A new Emotional Self-Disclosure Scale was used in three separate investigations to examine (Study I) mens and womens willingness to discuss their emotions with parents and therapists, (Study II) the impact of gender and culture on emotional disclosures to male and female friends and therapists, and (Study III) the impact of gender and the masculine role on willingness to emotionally disclose to parents and therapists. The results indicated that (a) female disclosers and female disclosure recipients, particularly mothers, were associated with greater willingness to emotionally disclose; (b) females from Mexico reported the most extensive disclosure of their emotions; and (c) the restrictive emotionality and inhibited affection aspects of the masculine role were negatively related to mens and womens willingness to be open and revealing about their emotional experiences, whereas the success dedication aspect of the masculine role was positively related to womens willingness to be emotionally open. The discussion focuses on the implications of the current findings and the relationship context of peoples emotional disclosures.

Sex Differences in Judgments of Physical Attractiveness: A Social Relations Analysis:

Men and women rated the physical attractiveness of other men and women who were sitting nearby and were rated by them in return. They also provided meta-perceptions of how they thought those others rated them. Attractiveness ratings were partly a function of both the target being rated and the perceiver providing the ratings regardless of the sex of the perceiver or target, but the highest levels of consensus occurred when men judged the attractiveness of women and the highest levels of idiosyncrasy occurred when men rated other men. Meta-perceptions were also idiosyncratic; some believed that they were consistently considered attractive, whereas others thought they were seen as unattractive. People were aware of what others thought of them and, in particular, women’s meta-perceptions were highly related to men’s judgments of them. People agree about others’ attractiveness, and those who are attractive to others know they are pretty or handsome.

The Training of Law Enforcement Officers in Detecting Deception: A Survey of Current Practices and Suggestions for Improving Accuracy

The current study surveyed a random sample of Texas law enforcement officers (N = 109) about their training in detecting deception. Texas officers reported that their training entailed the equivalent of a 2-day, lecture-style workshop in the kinesic interview technique or Reid technique, two popular police training modules, with subsequent training more often the exception than the rule. The authors examine these results in light of previous social science research regarding officers’ accuracy in detecting deception and make suggestions for future training programs for police officers in this area.

We Always Hurt the Ones We Love

Some marriages work. Now and then, two people somehow manage to fulfill the many psychological and practical duties of marital partners with contentment and delight, remaining intimate, interdependent, and happy with each other for several straight decades. Most marriages do not work, however, especially by a criterion of unbroken bliss. The chance that a new marriage will ultimately end in divorce continues to exceed 50% in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995), but that datum unquestionably underestimates the actual base rate of distress: If one also accepts as broken those marriages in which the spouses (a) are separated but not divorced or (b) are simply miserable, the real rate of failure probably exceeds 70% (Martin & Bumpass, 1989; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995).

US police officers’ knowledge regarding behaviors indicative of deception: Implications for eradicating erroneous beliefs through training

Abstract The current study surveyed a random sample of Texas law enforcement officers (n = 109) about their knowledge regarding behaviors indicative of deception. The officers were not highly knowledgeable about this topic, overall performing at a chance level in assessing how various behavioral cues relate to deception. Confidence in ones skill was unrelated to accuracy, and officers who reported receiving the most training and utilizing these skills more often were more confident but no more accurate in their knowledge of the behaviors that typically betray deception. The authors compare these results to previous studies that have examined officers’ beliefs in other countries and discuss the implication of these results in terms of developing future training programs that may debunk the common misconceptions that officers possess.

Are Perceptions of Emotion in the Eye of the Beholder? A Social Relations Analysis of Judgments of Embarrassment

College women watched each other perform an embarrassing or innocuous task in a study of emotion recognition using the social relations model. In groups of 5, 120 women judged the embarrassment and inferred the embarrassability of each of the other group members. The participants also reported the empathic embarrassment they felt while watching each of the other group members. There was considerable consensus among observers of strong embarrassment, but perception of weaker embarrassment was more idiosyncratic. The level of a performers trait embarrassability was apparent to observers of the innocuous task, and, across both conditions, embarrassable observers assumed that others were embarrassable. Empathic embarrassment for others was clearly subjective, depending more on who was watching than on who was being watched.

Anxiety-related behavior of orphan chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Gombe National Park, Tanzania.

This study examined the anxiety levels and social interactions of two orphan and four mother-reared adolescent chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Kasekela community at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. We used focal sampling in the field at Gombe to observe these adolescent individuals. Their social interactions and anxious behavior, measured as rough scratching, were recorded. The two orphans differed from others of a similar age by exhibiting higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of play. These results suggest that a mother’s absence, even in naturalistic conditions in which other members of the community are available to the orphan, may have long-lasting impact on an adolescent’s anxiety and its ability to engage in complex social interactions, such as play.

Are Embarrassment and Social Anxiety Disorder Merely Distant Cousins, or Are They Closer Kin?

Publisher Summary Despite its unpleasantness, embarrassment is a useful social emotion that serves valuable interactive functions: It alerts one to unbecoming behavior; forestalls further transgressions; mollifies ones critics; and motivates desirable remedial responses. Embarrassment typically provides an efficient, efficacious way to overcome the minor mishaps that inevitably occur in ones dealings with others. People who cannot be embarrassed may predictably be less proper and trustworthy than people who can, and they may seem implacable and remorseless; they are certainly less well-liked when they misbehave. In short, embarrassment may be a beneficial component of social life. In contrast, social anxiety disorder (SAD) impairs social life. Those with phobic fears of social situations experience excessive, irrational tension and distress that may interfere with—or entirely preclude—many typical public behaviors. Unlike embarrassment, SAD does not seem to serve any useful purpose. At best it is inconvenient and at worst it is debilitating. To add insult to injury (and, again, unlike embarrassment), SAD often occurs in combination with other maladies such as depression, substance abuse, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Embarrassment and SAD are notably different but they share a common ancestor—a grandparent—that places them on the same family tree without making them immediate kin. They are clearly related, but each has defining features that are not shared by the other. It is not wrong calling them first cousins. This chapter addresses that assertion. It first considers embarrassment, surveying its nature, possible origins, and interactive effects. It then turns to social anxiety and SAD, delineating the differences between them and embarrassment.