Accurately guessing the thoughts and feelings of another person, known as empathic accuracy, is thought to be a useful skill across many domains. However, the evidence supporting the value of empathic accuracy has been mixed, perhaps because the domains previously examined did not require accuracy for functionality. Negotiation may be one domain in which being accurate really matters for positive outcomes for the perceiver. Additionally, men and women may have different motivations to be accurate, including the presence of a competitive or cooperative situation. The primary research questions of this study are: 1) Is empathic accuracy related to outcomes in the negotiation?; 2) Is accuracy dependent on how the negotiation is framed?; and 3) Does how the negotiation is framed affect men’s and women’s empathic accuracy differently? Individual differences in personal power and Machiavellianism are also examined in relation to accuracy in this context. In this study, 336 participants interacted in same-sex dyads to negotiate over small items in either a competitive or cooperative context, resulting in a 2 (gender) x 2 (context) design. Accuracy was measured both as empathic accuracy for partner’s thoughts during the negotiation as well as accuracy for guessing their partner’s idiosyncratic item preferences (provided prior to the negotiation). Actor-Partner Interdependence models were used to estimate the contributions of each person in the dyad to the outcome of interest. Neither empathic accuracy nor accuracy for guessing item values led to any increases in personal gain in the negotiation. However, empathic accuracy was predictive of satisfaction with the outcome of the negotiation, such that more accurate actors and having more accurate partners both led to significantly increased satisfaction with the outcome. Contrary to the hypotheses, accuracy was not affected by gender or the framing of the negotiation or any interactions between the two variables. Individual differences in power and Machiavellianism did not lead to increases in perceiver empathic accuracy, but rather led to decreases in partner’s accuracy: actors that had partners who were high in power or high in Machiavellianism were less empathically accurate. The implications for negotiation research and future empathic accuracy research are discussed.

Sleep deprivation has been studied for over a century, providing knowledge about the benefits of sleep for many physiological, cognitive, and behavioural functions. However, there have only been anecdotal indications about what a tired or sleep-deprived person looks like, despite the fact that appearance influences not only how other people perceive a person but also how they evaluate them and behave towards them. How someone with sleep loss is perceived and evaluated by others is the focus of this thesis. Facial photographs of 48 participants were taken after normal sleep and after either one night of total sleep deprivation or two nights of partial sleep deprivation. The photographs were then evaluated in four different studies by a total of 288 raters recruited from universities and the general public in Stockholm, Sweden. The faces were rated on attractiveness, health, tiredness, sleepiness, sociability, trustworthiness, employability, and leadership ability. These factors were all adversely affected by sleep loss. Furthermore, looking tired was strongly related to being less attractive, looking less healthy and less trustworthy, and being perceived as a poorer employee and leader. One of the studies assessed facial features commonly associated with looking tired, showing that sleep deprivation results in eyes which appear more swollen and red, with dark circles and hanging eyelids, as well as paler skin with more fine lines and wrinkles. When sleep deprived, people were also perceived as more sad. In conclusion, the four studies show that sleep loss and a tired appearance affect how one is perceived by other people. These perceptions may lead to negative evaluations in interpersonal situations, both personal and professional. This thesis thus demonstrates social benefits of prioritizing sleep, adding to the physiological, cognitive, and behavioural research on sleep loss. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

A central goal of group-based psychotherapy is for participants to gain insight into how they perceive others and how others perceive them. However, such interpersonal perceptions are challenging to study because any given perception could be a function of the perceiver (some people see everyone as friendly), the target (some people are seen as friendly by everyone), or both. The present article provides an introduction and brief tutorial for how the social relations model (SRM) can be applied to studying such interpersonal perceptions within psychotherapy groups. The SRM is a theoretical and statistical model for understanding the possible sources of dyadic perceptions and behaviors. Specifically, any interpersonal perception within a group can be partitioned into variance due to the person making the rating (perceiver effect), the target of the rating (target effect), the relationship between perceiver and target (relationship effect), and the group as a whole. Research on group psychotherapy is especially amenable to a SRM analysis because the interpersonal context allows multiple perceivers to rate multiple targets, which is a requirement of any SRM analysis. A fictitious study of wilderness therapy is used to highlight the conceptual, methodological, and statistical issues that are addressed with the SRM. Supplementary data and output files are provided to elucidate the analytic process using the WinSoReMo software. Although there are multiple ways that SRM studies and analyses can be conducted, the Win- SoReMo program is specifically designed for round-robin data in which group members rate, and are rated by, other group members.

South African schools are learning environments that are defined by heterogenity, which means the relating and interaction of teachers and learners from different cultural, language and religious backgrounds. Viewed in terms of a social constructivist theoretical framework, teachers’ perceptions of their interaction with their learners are defined by their personal experiences, as well as their observations of concrete learner behaviour in class which are mostly shaped by the learners’ perceptions. ,. Broad cultural influences, including the unique school culture and climate where the teachers are operating, also contribute to teachers’ perception of the teacher-learnerinteraction. The nature and quality of teacher-learner interactions must be viewed as a contextual feature of school culture and climate as these relations shape the classroom experience. This study sought to generate broad themes on how teachers perceive teacher-learner interactions within diverse school cultures and climates. The research was conducted within a social constructivist, interpretive paradigm and it utilised Kenny’s PERSON Model of Interpersonal Perception. The PERSON Model of Interpersonal Perception is a model used to explore the formation of perceptions during interpersonal interaction and it is in line with the social constructivist position as it takes into account the dynamic and socially embedded nature of the interaction process. A research study of this nature was needed because teachers’ perceptions of their regular contact and connecting with learners influence teacher-learner relations. This in turn serves to shape learners’ perceptions of the learning environment as well as mediate the learners’ behaviour and relationship with scholastic learning (Luckner & Pianta, 2011:257). Qualitative research was used as this method lends itself to revealing the authenticity of human experience (Silverman, 2013:6) and it is particularly useful in the study of social relations (Flick, 2009:12). The participants consisted of twenty teachers from four high schools in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Three teachers from each of the four schools participated in semistructured interviews, while two other teachers from each of the four schools participated in a single focus group activity that included a collage-making exercise. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes that articulate the teachers’ perceptions of the teacher-learner interaction. Key themes that were identified through the research study included teaching to be a vocation; teachers’ interactions with their learners as character building that serve to shape the personalities of their learners; the influence of the length of time that teachers are active in the teaching profession and teacher-learner interactions; how classroom management strategies influences teachers perceptions of teacher-learner interactions. It was found that several factors influence the teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with their learners. Teachers who considered teaching to be a “vocation” tended to report that they experience enjoyable teacher-learner interactions. The teachers whose narratives did not include references to teaching as a vocation were inclined to report more conflictual and less enjoyable interaction experiences with their learners. The findings further reveal that the teachers perceive a decrease in negative teacher-learner interactions the longer they teach. Both groups of teachers viewed the interactions with their learners as character-building exercises that served to shape the personalities of their learners. Classroom climate factors and management strategies were found to influence teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with their learners. The teachers’ narratives did not emphasise race or culture as factors (qualitative research) that moderated their interactions with the learners in a significant manner. Overall, the findings indicated that the participants showed an awareness that firstly, personal factors, secondly, the external social factors or environmental events, and, lastly that individual behaviour contributed much to the quality of the interactions. An in-depth study investigating rural teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with their learners is recommended. A wider study that compares and contrasts the perceptions of teachers from the various provinces of South Africa would provide valuable insight into whether or not teachers’ perceptions of teacher-learner interaction vary from province to province. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

South African schools are learning environments that are defined by heterogenity, which means the relating and interaction of teachers and learners from different cultural, language and religious backgrounds. Viewed in terms of a social constructivist theoretical framework, teachers’ perceptions of their interaction with their learners are defined by their personal experiences, as well as their observations of concrete learner behaviour in class which are mostly shaped by the learners’ perceptions. ,. Broad cultural influences, including the unique school culture and climate where the teachers are operating, also contribute to teachers’ perception of the teacher-learnerinteraction. The nature and quality of teacher-learner interactions must be viewed as a contextual feature of school culture and climate as these relations shape the classroom experience. This study sought to generate broad themes on how teachers perceive teacher-learner interactions within diverse school cultures and climates. The research was conducted within a social constructivist, interpretive paradigm and it utilised Kenny’s PERSON Model of Interpersonal Perception. The PERSON Model of Interpersonal Perception is a model used to explore the formation of perceptions during interpersonal interaction and it is in line with the social constructivist position as it takes into account the dynamic and socially embedded nature of the interaction process. A research study of this nature was needed because teachers’ perceptions of their regular contact and connecting with learners influence teacher-learner relations. This in turn serves to shape learners’ perceptions of the learning environment as well as mediate the learners’ behaviour and relationship with scholastic learning (Luckner & Pianta, 2011:257). Qualitative research was used as this method lends itself to revealing the authenticity of human experience (Silverman, 2013:6) and it is particularly useful in the study of social relations (Flick, 2009:12). The participants consisted of twenty teachers from four high schools in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Three teachers from each of the four schools participated in semistructured interviews, while two other teachers from each of the four schools participated in a single focus group activity that included a collage-making exercise. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes that articulate the teachers’ perceptions of the teacher-learner interaction. Key themes that were identified through the research study included teaching to be a vocation; teachers’ interactions with their learners as character building that serve to shape the personalities of their learners; the influence of the length of time that teachers are active in the teaching profession and teacher-learner interactions; how classroom management strategies influences teachers perceptions of teacher-learner interactions. It was found that several factors influence the teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with their learners. Teachers who considered teaching to be a “vocation” tended to report that they experience enjoyable teacher-learner interactions. The teachers whose narratives did not include references to teaching as a vocation were inclined to report more conflictual and less enjoyable interaction experiences with their learners. The findings further reveal that the teachers perceive a decrease in negative teacher-learner interactions the longer they teach. Both groups of teachers viewed the interactions with their learners as character-building exercises that served to shape the personalities of their learners. Classroom climate factors and management strategies were found to influence teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with their learners. The teachers’ narratives did not emphasise race or culture as factors (qualitative research) that moderated their interactions with the learners in a significant manner. Overall, the findings indicated that the participants showed an awareness that firstly, personal factors, secondly, the external social factors or environmental events, and, lastly that individual behaviour contributed much to the quality of the interactions. An in-depth study investigating rural teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with their learners is recommended. A wider study that compares and contrasts the perceptions of teachers from the various provinces of South Africa would provide valuable insight into whether or not teachers’ perceptions of teacher-learner interaction vary from province to province. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This master thesis is dealing with the term "energy" in relation to interpersonal perception in the context of natural language. The main research question is, how we perceive the level of energy in humans and if there is a general agreement about that. The theoretical part starts with an etymological explanation of the word energy, which follows an overview of scientific disciplines and their explanation of energy. The emphasis in this chapter is put on energy in psychology, in which the concept is first grasped in terms of psychometry and personality psychology. Psychological theories, which work with the concept of energy in the clinical field, are then described. The last chapter of the theoretical part is about non-verbal communication and social cognition. The research part is divided into a quantitative and a qualitative part. The quantitative part, using a correlation study, verifies to what degree the word energy in relation to humans is reliable and valid. The participants saw 8 short videos, where they observed interviews with different person. After that they rated the level of energy of the observed person on the Likert scale from 1 to 10. The judgers' agreement calculated with Kendall's W is 0,3. This value is not high enough to conclude, that the word energy is a valid and reliable...

The present study examined the relationships among similarity, interpersonal perception and communicative behaviors in marriage. It was hypothesized that greater understanding, feelings of being understood, and realization of understanding would be associated with greater self-disclosure, use of more direct person control strategies, and use of less attention control strategies. It was further hypothesized that measuring feelings of being understood and realization of understanding, in addition to measuring understanding, would improve prediction of behavior. Finally, it was hypothesized that the contextual measure of understanding would better predict self-disclosure and interpersonal control than would global measures of understanding.

Children with speech sound disorders (SSD) often have difficulties with speech perception. Speech perception is the ability to intake speech sounds and interpret them for meaning. Understanding children’s speech perception abilities is pertinent because children use perceptual skills to hone accurate production during SSD treatment. Different types of stimuli have been used in speech perception research. At present, it is unclear how different types of speech stimuli differentially impact speech perception in typical listeners or children with SSD. In this study, we investigated perceptual skills for different speech types in neurotypical adults to better understand how stimulus type impacts perception in individuals without SSD. Thus, we asked the following two research questions: 1) Is there a difference between synthetic speech (generated through a computer) and natural speech perception for adult listeners? 2) Is there a difference in interpersonal (listening to speech from another person) versus intrapersonal (listening to your own speech) natural speech perception for adult listeners? Twenty-five neurotypical adults participated in this study. Participants completed the Wide Range Acoustic Accuracy Scale (WRAAS) discrimination task for syllable pairs beginning with the phonemes /b/-/w/, /d/-/g/ and /r/-/w/ for synthetic speech, and rhyming words beginning with the same phonemes (‘bot’-‘watt’, ‘dot’-‘got’, ‘rot’-‘wot’) interpersonal synthetically altered natural speech (a standard speaker), and intrapersonal synthetically altered natural speech (each participant’s own voice recordings) for nine tasks total. Results show there was no statistical difference in discrimination ability between stimulus types for most phoneme contrasts, except for /d/-/g/ between synthetic and intrapersonal synthetically altered natural speech. There was no difference between interpersonal and intrapersonal perception of synthetically altered natural speech for any phoneme pair. Findings from this study will provide information for future similar studies conducted on children with and without SSD to determine how children perceive different types of speech. This future work will be used to help inform speech therapy decisions for children with SSD who may have speech perception difficulties.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:31:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CAPA_F~2.PDF: 48419 bytes, checksum: 4c0b5a1c13d09d96d422caf01137865b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-04-08 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research results from the work of investigation about the exercise of right to information in the interpersonal comunication between doctors and patients in the ward of the Universitary Hospital of Federal University of Maranhão. To the objective of link the theory of interpersonal perception with the comunication process and the use of the information about health, it show that the exercise of the citizenship of the patients is influenced from the characteristics of the relationship of them. For this, it used the method appropriate to the exploratory research, that broach the qualitative method. This choice determined the adoption of the semi-structured interviews and the direct observation, as instruments of data colection. The interviews comprised 70 patients and 30 doctors from 13 especialities. They registered the perceptions expressed by the testimonies, that gives important informations for the understanding of the building the comunication between the doctor and the patient, and how it determine the realization of one between the more fundamental rights, socialy instituted: the right to information.(AU) / A pesquisa resulta do esforço de investigação sobre o exercício do direito à informação na comunicação interpessoal entre médicos e pacientes na enfermaria do Hospital Universitário da Universidade Federal do Maranhão. Com o objetivo de associar o princípio da percepção interpessoal ao processo da comunicação e do uso da informação sobre saúde, demonstrou-se que o exercício da cidadania dos pacientes internados é profundamente influenciado pelas características da interação entre os sujeitos. Empregouse, para tanto, o método compatível com a pesquisa do tipo exploratória, com abordagem de natureza qualitativa, que determinou a adoção da entrevista semi-estruturada e da observação direta, como instrumentos de coleta. Entrevistou-se 70 pacientes internados e 30 médicos atuantes em 13 especialidades no referido hospital, dos quais foram registradas as percepções expressadas por meio de depoimentos, que fornecem relevantes subsídios para a compreensão da configuração da relação entre o médico e o paciente, e de como ela influencia a realização de um dos mais elementares direitos socialmente instituídos: o direito à informação.(AU)

Abstract This diploma thesis named "Perception of the Elderly by the Students of the University of South Bohemia" provides a detailed insight into the senior population viewed by the university students. The aim of this work is to register the students' attitudes and the opinions to this issue. The work consists of two parts a theoretical and the practical. The theoretical part deals with issue of ageing process, namely with the changes which are carried by this life period. Further, this part looks at personalities of university students and their needs in general. Next, it covers a general knowledge about interpersonal perception among humans. This part also describes problems of prejudices and stereotypes connected with a very actual issue ageism. The practical part of this diploma thesis contains an own qualitative research which includes a description of used methodology, examined sample, outcomes and further discussion. These data were collected during a field research in February 2014. It was used a technology of semantic differential. The research was undertaken within the University of South Bohemia. Students of Faculty of Theology, Faculty of Health and Social Studies, Faculty of Economy and Faculty of Agriculture were asked to take a part in this study. They expressed their opinions via a web portal www.mojeanketa.cz. These faculties were chosen deliberately for their different fileds of studies. Thus, I compared the opinions of the students whose fields of studies are specialized either on the market and the business sector, or whose fields of studies are specialized on the help professions and, therefore, their further practice will be orientated to the non-profit sphere. Within this study there were distributed 400 record sheets in total (100 for each faculty) where the responders expressed their opinions. The opinions on the perception of the elderly were expressed within the scale from 1 to 5. The values of this scale has been of a contradictory character. For instance, there were these characteristics: beautiful/ugly, noisy/calm, self-sufficient/un-self-sufficient etc. There was also stated a hypothesis which has been predicted that the students of the University of South Bohemia perceive the elderly positively. The research proved this expectation. The outcomes also show that there is no big difference between the individual opinions of the students of different faculties. This result is actually very positive and, therefore, we can say that the students of the University of South Bohemia do not display any prejudices and stereotypes towards the senior population. The outcomes of this work might be very beneficial as sources for educational work beyond ageism. Further, there can be reached conclusions which will lead to reflection. This work can be used for further scientific investigations and publication activity.