Doctoral Dissertation Research: Nonverbal Behaviors in Social Interaction

在社会心理学领域，情感控制理论（ACT）被用来理解人们通常感知事件的方式（即，从事件中产生的认知、情绪和行为）。ACT将情境概念化为由行动者-行为-他人组成，并在三个维度上量化行动者和行为的定义：评估、效力和活动，这三个维度已被证明是人类对刺激反应的普遍特征。然而，非语言行为对人们如何感知他们每天所处的环境有影响。这篇博士论文的改进建议将ACT扩展到包括修改行为的非语言行为，非语言行为被定义为“一个人的举止中传达有关正在执行的行为的额外信息的那些方面”。例如，非语言行为告诉别人一个人是热情地（带着微笑）还是勉强地（翻白眼）在做一个动作。将采用四阶段研究设计。第一阶段需要收集独立于事件背景的非语言行为信息。第二阶段将把非语言行为与其他行为配对，看看它们是如何在人们的感知中结合起来的。第三和第四阶段包括进行两个实验（一个在纸上，一个通过录像带），以观察包含非语言行为对人们对事件形成的印象有什么影响。数据将从美国一所主要大学的本科生中收集。这项研究有可能增加我们对非语言行为和印象之间关系的理解。此外，它将增加情感控制理论在预测事件感知方面的效用，并将允许更准确地理解人们互动的复杂情况。* * * *

9701587 Smith-Lovin Within the field of Social Psychology, Affect Control Theory (ACT) has been used to understand the ways in which people perceive events generally (i.e., cognitions, emotions, and behaviors emerging from an event). ACT conceptualizes situations as consisting of actor-behavior-other and quantifies the definitions of actors and behaviors on three dimensions: Evaluation, Potency and Activity which have been shown to be human universals for responding to stimuli. However, nonverbal behaviors have an impact on how people perceive the situations in which they find themselves everyday. This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement proposes to extend ACT to include nonverbal behavioral that modify actions, with nonverbal behaviors being defined as "those aspects of a person's demeanor which communicate additional information about the behavior being performed. For example, nonverbal behaviors tell others whether a subject is performing an action enthusiastically (with a smile) or reluctantly (with a roll of the eyes). A four-phase research design will be used. The first phase entails collecting information on nonverbal behaviors independent of an event context. Phase two will pair nonverbal behaviors with other behaviors to see how they combine in people's perceptions. The third and four phases involves performing two experiments (one on paper and one via videotape) to see what effects the inclusion of nonverbal behaviors has on impressions people form of events. Data will be collected from undergraduate students at a major U.S. university. This research has the potential to increase our understanding of the relationship between nonverbal behaviors and impressions. In addition, it will increase the utility of Affect Control Theory in predicting event perception and will allow for more accurate understanding of the complex situations in which people interact. ****