This study is a 2 X 4 factorial design investigating the effects of (1) four levels of symbolic environmental manipulation (artwork) and (2) two conditions of therapist demand characteristic (claiming or disclaiming of the artwork as reflective of personal taste) on the self disclosing behavior of 80 female college freshmen in an intake interview-analogue. The artwork manipulation consists of (1) an erotic art condition with four prints, (2) a mixed-content condition with one thematic print in each of the areas of sexuality, aggression, family concerns, and achievement, (3) an abstract art control condition with four prints, and (4) a no-art control condition. Dependent measures include: (1) the scaled intimacy value of the questions selected by the subjects, (2) the duration of actual self-disclosure, and (3) an intimacy/breadth rating of transcripts of taped actual disclosure. A main effect of artwork on self-disclosure was predicted specifically for sexual disclosure in the erotic artwork condition and generally for disclosure on all topics in the mixed-content condition, as a result of the cueing effect of the artwork stimuli. An interaction of artwork and therapist demand characteristic was predicted also as an interactive result of cueing and reciprocity of non-verbal disclosure by the interviewer, through the claimed personal symbolic artwork. In addition, in conditions in which artwork cues are present, subjects were predicted to be more comfortable disclosing and more likely to attribute their disclosure externally, a main effect of artwork on attribution and comfort. An interaction of artwork and therapist demand was also predicted such that subjects with relevant artwork claimed by the interviewer would report ·maximum comfort and external attribution. The hypotheses were not confirmed, and no significant results were found. Subjects apparently found the interviewer herself more salient than environmental cues. Subject comfort was correlated with perceived comfort of the interviewer and external attribution of self-disclosing behavior to interviewer traits. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/74185 |
| Date | January 1981 |
| Creators | Brake, Martha Jane |
| Contributors | Psychology |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | viii, 167, [2] leaves, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 8022556 |
Page generated in 0.0018 seconds