Three experiments were conducted to extend the Jones and Nisbett (172) hypothesis, concerning the divergent perspectives of observers and actors, to counselors observing clients. Following the notion developed by Storms (1973) and others that point of view is a salient fact-or in creating one's perceptual bias of observers, the present research presented subjects with a point of view similar to that of a counselor observing a client in a counseling interview. Subjects were shown three videotaped segments of two actors engaged in brief simulations of counseling interviews. One actor -was designated the "client." The second actor was designated, the "counselor." Subjects rated the "clients'" behaviors on an attributional questionnaire adapted from Storms' (1973) model. The key items required subjects to rate the degree to which "client" behavior was caused by "personal characteristics" of the client "characteristics of the situation". In the first experiment (Pilot of Study), forty-eight undergraduate students viewed only the "client" or the "counselor" in a series of three taped interviews. The experimental expectation that subjects viewing "clients" from the "counselors view" would rate their behavior as relatively more dispositionally than situationally caused was not confirmed. To test the hypothesis that these results were representative of the sample of naive subjects rather than artifacts of the experimental procedure, this group was compared to a group of doctoral level counselors. The counselors' ratings were significantly more dispositional than were the ratings of the naive subjects. It was suggested that the situational responses of naive subjects to the counselor-view tapes might be typical of naive persons observing a counseling interview. It was suggested that naive subjects identified with the more familiar role of the "client" thus adopting the client's perspective of the situation. Consequently, the tapes were judged effective for further experimental use.A second experiment, utilizing the counselor-view tapes, tested the hypothesis that attributional bias among student counselors may be reduced by special training. Two groups of student counselors were compared using a pretest-posttest design. One group received a treatment between testings labelled "Attending to Situational Cues". The second group served as a control, receiving no special treatment. No differences in degree of attributional bias were found between the two groups before or after treatment. It was concluded that the attributional bias of student counselors was resistant to the experimental treatment.In the third experiment a group of twenty experienced counselors rated the same counselor-view video tapes used in the previous experiments. It was expected that bias created by perceptual focus would be exhibited by subjects regardless of level of counselor training and experience. As expected, experienced counselors rated "client" behavior as caused relatively more by personal characteristics of the "client" than by characteristics of the situation. The attributional ratings of the experienced counselors, the student counselors and the naive subjects were then compared. There were significant differences between all groups. Experienced counselors exhibited significantly more dispositional bias than either student counselors or naive subjects. Student counselors exhibited significantly less dispositional bias than experienced counselors and significantly more than naive subjects. It was suggested that the attributional bias common to other observers increases among counselors with increased training and experience. Implications for the training of counselors were discussed.

The purpose of this study was to determine what the immediate effects of a relaxation treatment had upon the subject's perception of facial expression of emotion with state anxiety held constant. Specifically, this study attempted to compare subjects who received a 25-minute taped recorded relaxation treatment with subjects who did not receive the relaxation treatment and subsequent perception of facial expression of emotion. The research hypothesis was stated in the null form.A review of the relevant literature available on facial expression of emotion, relaxation treatment, and training programs designed for therapists supported the need for the study. In addition, the research indicated that techniques for reliably evaluating facial expression of emotion were not extant.All subjects for the study were graduate level students enrolled in at least one Guidance and Counseling course offered. spring quarter, 1978, at a midwestern university. The university's Research Computing Unit randomly selected 80 subjects from the total population of 167 potential. subjects. Randomly selected subjects were then randomly assigned to either the experimental group or study two the control group. The sex of the subject was controlled for in the random assignment of subjects to each group. Each group, experimental and control, consisted of 20 males and 20 females. Experimental group subjects ranged in age from 22 to 40, with a mean age of 29.8. Control group subjects ranged in age from 22 to 57, with a mean age of 30.7. The total of 80 randomly selected subjects who participated in this study were scheduled to participate in the at one time.The Multiple Affect Adjective Check List, Today Form (MAACL) was used to obtain the subject's state anxiety score (the covariate measure). Following the administration of the MAACL, experimental group subjects received a 25-minute tape recorded relaxation treatment. The Pictures of Facial Affect (PFA) was administered to both groups to measure the subject's perception of facial expression of emotion. The PFA consists of 110 high quality slides which depict 7 facial expressions of emotion. The 7 subtests of, the PFA include: happy, sad, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, and neutral. The PFA was administered to the experimental group following the relaxation treatment. The control group, which received no treatment, was given the PFA following the administration of the MAACL.Preliminary to the analysis of data, a KR-20 subtest analysis conducted on the PFA resulted in discarding subtests happy, fear, and surprise. These subtests lacked internal reliability. Further, the null hypothesis of no relation between the covariate (state anxiety as measured by the MAACL) and the set of selected dependent of the PFA was not rejected. The revised null hypothesis was tested through a multivariate analysis of variance. An F test significant at the .05 level was set. The results of the analysis indicated the revised null hypothesis was not rejected. Under the constraints of the study, the following conclusion was made. No significant differences were found between subjects who received relaxation treatment and subjects who did not receive relaxation treatment and subsequent perception of facial expression of emotion as measured by the PFA. However, an additional finding of the study was significant difference between men and women end their perception of facial expression of emotion. Suggestions for future research were offered based upon the analysis of data.

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 K63 / Master of Science

This study investigated whether age differences in deceit detection are related to impairments in emotion recognition. Key cues to deceit are facial expressions of emotion (Frank and Ekman, 1997). The aging literature has shown an age-related decline in decoding emotions (e.g., Malatesta, Izard, Culver, and Nicolich, 1987). In the present study, 354 participants were presented with 20 interviews and asked to decide whether each man was lying or telling the truth. Ten interviews involved a crime and ten a social opinion. Each participant was in one of three presentation conditions: 1) visual only, 2) audio only, or 3) audio-visual. For crime interviews, age-related impairments in emotion recognition hindered older adults in the visual only condition. In the opinion topic interviews, older adults exhibited a truth bias which rendered them worse at detecting deceit than young adults. Cognitive and dispositional variables did not help to explain the age differences in the ability to detect deceit.