In an investigation of the nature of judgements of assertiveness, 20 university undergraduates, three clinical psychology graduate students, and two Ph.D. clinical psychologists observed a series of videotapes of actors engaging in assertive scenarios. Seven variables were rated; eye contact, facial expression, duration of reply, loudness of speech, compliance, requests for new behavior, and overall assertiveness. The ratings of overall assertiveness were designated criterion measures and the ratings of the remainder of the variables were designated predictor variables in a multiple regression analysis. This permitted the generation of individual models, for each judge, composed of those specific variables which accounted for the greatest percent of variance in overall assertiveness. This was felt to reflect the particular strategies or composition of each judge's observation of assertiveness. No two judges' models incorporated the same component variables in the same way. However, two and three variable models for most judges accounted for much of the variance in overall assertiveness (R² from .44 to .99). Thus, while quite idiosyncratic across judges, the limited models thus generated did seem to represent judgement strategies for each judge.
Cluster analysis of models similar in ratings of overall assertiveness indicated variability in composition. Even those judges who rated overall assertiveness most similarly evidenced dissimilar models or strategies.
With regard to model composition, Male judges' models employed eye contact significantly more frequently than did female judges' models, but accounted for no greater percent of the variance in overall assertiveness. Naive judges'and clinicians' models did not differ in composition, but the clinicians' models did account for significantly greater variance in overall assertiveness.
The model generating approach to the investigation of judgements of assertiveness had several advantages over methodologies used previously in the literature. While only a limited number of specific components were presented, judges were still relatively unconstrained in that they essentially specified the compositions of their models. The influence of the investigator was limited in that judges were not trained to rate specific variables in specific ways. For each individual judge a behavioral definition of assertiveness emerged from the data, and was not determined a priori. This was felt to be more analogous to in vivo judgements of assertiveness than other methodologies in the literature. In addition, this approach suggested a potentially valuable clinical application in assertive training. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/104733 |
| Date | January 1977 |
| Creators | Aronov, Neil Edward |
| Contributors | Psychology |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 73 pages, 2 unnumbered leaves, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 40244484 |
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