The present study was designed to bridge the gap in the existing research literature on the early stages in the development of depressive interpersonal relationships. Forty-eight same-sex pairs of subjects were studied as they formed acquaintances with their partners during three 1-hour laboratory sessions within a 2-week period. In one-third of the pairs, one partner was depressed; in another third, one partner was not depressed but had other psychological problems (NDO); and in the final third of the pairs both subjects were considered normal. Depressed and NDO subjects were paired with normal partners. Within each group equal numbers of same-sex male and female pairs were used. In each pair one subject was considered a target subject (depressed, NDO, or randomly selected normal) and the other subject was a normal partner. Subject partners participated in three laboratory acquaintanceship sessions which involved engaging in free conversation, interspersed with the completion of questionnaires assessing various aspects of the interpersonal situation. Written measures included pre- and postsession measures of affect, communications to partner, perceptions of partner's personality, and liking of partner. Two 8-minute segments of free conversation per session were tape recorded and later content analyzed. Subjects were contacted several weeks after the end of the experiment to see if they maintained contact with their partner. Data from this study were analyzed using a repeated measures, multivariate analysis of variance model: 3 Groups x 2 Sexes x 3 Sessions. Though many of the terms of interest involving groups did not reach statistical significance, an interesting pattern of mutual perceptions was found in the depressive-normal pairs. Depressives tended to view their partners as abasive, inhibited, and deferent. The perceptions by the normal partner / revealed sex-specific patterns. Female depressives were viewed by their normal partners as agreeable, nurturant, and abasive, while male depressives were viewed as detached. On follow-up the male depressive group was different from the other groups in that they reported no further contact with their partners. These results were discussed as lending some support to findings in other studies of an idiosyncratic pattern of perceptions that characterize depressive-other relationships. Results were also discussed in terms of the situational factors on interpersonal behavior and some consistency across personality characteristics in the getting-acquainted process. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-09, Section: B, page: 2901. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75183 |
| Contributors | MEYER, BARBARA BIANUCCI., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 167 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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