Dane Archer’s research while affiliated with University of California, Santa Cruz and other places

The experiences of 3 social psychologists asked to evaluate (and improve) a series of large-scale programs designed to change energy-related attitudes and behavior are described. The research generated significant change but also substantial conflict involving both the utility companies being evaluated and the state agency that commissioned the evaluation. This experience is reviewed with an eye to maximizing the usefulness of future efforts to apply social psychology in complex and potentially conflicted public policy arenas. The difference between influence and power models of applied research is discussed, and possible remedies are examined for social psychologists undertaking future research similar in scale, policy consequences, or potential controversy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

A method for teaching about verbal and nonverbal communication is described. The Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT) consists of a videotape of 30 brief scenes. Viewers answer interpretive questions by decoding the verbal and nonverbal cues in the scenes. Information is presented in all communication channels; several categories of interaction are represented; and for each scene, there is an objective criterion of accurate judgment. Instructional techniques using the IPT highlight the subtlety and complexity of communication cues, teach about specific cues to accuracy, demonstrate the relative importance of communication channels, and help students understand the process of interpretation.

Person perception tasks involving nonverbal communication have a mystified reputation. It is frequently argued that nonverbal cues are accurately, but only unconsciously, perceived. This may explain the frequent response of judges who, when asked to decode a sample of nonverbal behavior, reply that it was just a hunch—i.e., show little or no awareness of how they arrived at a judgment, even a correct one. Two alternative models, the Unconsciousness hypothesis and the Inarticulation hypothesis are posited to describe the possible relationship between accuracy and awareness. Two studies are reported on the relationship between accuracy and awareness, both using the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT). In the first study, the IPT was given to a sample of 476 undergraduates. Accuracy was measured by how many of the 30 IPT questions these judges answered correctly. Global awareness was indexed by having each judge guess how many of the 30 scenes they had answered correctly. In this coarse analysis, the accuracy-awareness relationship was positive but weak. A second experiment was conducted to produce more fine-grained tests of the accuracy-awareness relationship. Different versions of the IPT were presented to 134 undergraduates. Judges given each version of the IPT were asked to indicate their degree of confidence in each one of their answers. This second experiment found a positive, substantial relationship between accuracy and awareness, and this relationship was particularly strong when analyzed across experimental conditions as a whole. These findings support the Inarticulation hypothesis, and cast doubt on the Unconsciousness hypothesis. Implications for an emerging understanding of how nonverbal communication is processed are discussed.

The encoding and decoding of verbal and nonverbal cues is basic to the process of social interaction. A method of teaching about verbal and nonverbal communication--the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT)--consists of a videotape divided into 30 brief scenes. After each scene viewers answer an interpretive question by decoding the verbal and nonverbal cues present in the scene. Five categories of interaction are represented: deception, kinship, status, competition, and intimacy. Information is presented in all communication channels, and for each scene there is an objective criterion of accurate judgment. Several instructional uses of the IPT are designed to highlight the subtlety and complexity of communication cues, teach about specific cues to accuracy for the five types of interaction depicted, demonstrate the relative importance of communication channels, and help students understand the process of interpretation. (Eighteen references are attached.) (Author/SR)

This paper describes the validation of the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT), a new method for studying the process of social perception. The IPT is a videotape consisting of 30 scenes. Each scene is paired with a multiple-choice question about the interaction depicted in the scene. All scenes contain full-channel sequences of unscripted behavior and employ an objective criterion of accurate judgment. Five common types of social interaction are represented: status, intimacy, kinship, competition, and deception. In the first study the IPT was administered to 438 subjects. Results indicated that subjects performed better than chance for 28 of the 30 scenes and that females performed better than males. A second study investigated the possibility that the people who appear in the IPT display idiosyncratic or unrepresentative behaviors. Three coders performed a scene-by-scene content analysis of the IPT, noting the presence or absence of behaviors which previous researchers have found to be associated with the five areas represented in the IPT. In all but one scene, coders found enough behavioral information to enable correct interpretation. A third study employed a peer nomination procedure to explore the construct validity of the IPT. Subjects obtaining higher scores on the IPT were perceived by their friends as more socially skilled. Finally, in an investigation of the convergent and discriminant validity of the IPT, we found no relationship with a visual acuity task or the Machiavellian scale, a significant positive correlation with the Self-Monitoring Scale, a significant positive correlation with the Social Interpretations Task (SIT), and an even stronger positive correlation with those SIT items which measure the same areas as the IPT. Uses of the IPT to investigate the process and accuracy of interpersonal perception are discussed.