Robert Rosenthal’s research while affiliated with University of California, Riverside and other places

Detecting anxiety is essential both in help-giving settings such as psychotherapy and in everyday social relationships. This two-study experiment involved groups of observers who viewed and rated selected scenes from previously videotaped subjects’(expressers) descriptions of past emotional experiences. One group rated combined visual and auditory stimuli for low and high state anxiety scenes, and the other group judged visual-only stimuli for low and high state anxiety scenes. Each scene was 30 seconds in length. Both groups were significantly accurate in differentiating expressers' high and low state anxiety. There were significant effects for expresser trait level, but in both studies these effects were opposite to those predicted: High trait anxious were viewed as less anxious than moderate trait anxious who were judged as less anxious than low trait anxious expressers. This unusual finding was discussed with respect to differences in frequency of feeling and coping with anxiety by high and low trait anxious individuals. High trait anxiety subjects were rated as more unlikable on high state anxiety scenes, while low trait anxious individuals were judged as more unlikable on low state anxiety scenes. Differences were observed for trait anxiety groups with regard to state anxiety depending on whether subjects received auditory-visual or visual-only stimuli. Discussion is focused on implications of recognizing subtle affect cues and distinctions among people differing in trait anxiety.

Twenty teachers each taught a male and a female student two different lessons. One of these lessons was in a stereotypically masculine domain (mechanics), the other in a stereotypically feminine domain (vocabulary). Judges viewed clips from the videotaped lessons and rated teachers' nonverbal behaviors. The students also rated their teachers on a variety of behavioral dimensions. The results showed that teachers exhibited more positive behavior toward the students for whose gender the material being taught was stereotypically appropriate. Similarly, teachers exhibited more negative behavior toward those students for whose gender the material being taught was considered stereotypically inappropriate. Additionally, teacher gender was shown to interact with the above-mentioned biased teaching behavior. Generally speaking, women teachers behaved in a less gender-biased way than did men teachers. It is suggested that these kinds of differential teaching behaviors may contribute to the differential performance of male and female students in traditionally gender-stereotyped academic domains.

High school students participated in a field experiment that tested the effects of exposure to early election returns in a nonpartisan referendum. On a pretest of attitudes, students stated their preferences on the issue of the school's grading policy. One week later, just before voting, subjects in the experimental condition received information announcing the probable outcome of the election. There was a significant relationship between class achievement level and (a) likelihood of changing vote, and (b) the direction of change. Students in the brighter classes changed their votes less frequently, but when they changed their preferences they showed a greater bandwagon effect. Students in the classes of lower academic achievement changed their votes more frequently, but when they changed their preferences they showed a greater underdog effect. Differences between the more typical political election in which bandwagon and underdog effects are seldom reported and the experimental election were discussed.

The present studies investigated the effects of target context on judge sensitivity to target felt rapport. The results suggest that judge sensitivity may be increased by: (a) positioning the target to the judge's left so that the judgment task may benefit from the specialization of the right hemisphere for processing nonverbal behavior, and (b) assigning targets to a task unconstrained by social norms that allows for more spontaneous and revealing target behavior. These results have major implications for the way that interpersonal sensitivity and rapport research is conducted and for understanding interpersonal perception in everyday life.

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Imagine that as you read reviews of a celebrity's TV appearances , you are struck by how the reviews differ. On The Tonight Show the celebrity is seen as a leader, steering the interview. However, on Larry King Live she is seen as passive and as if bullied by Larry King. Your first inclination is to attribute the effect to the respective hosts, however, might the differences be accounted for by the position of the celebrity-on the Tonight Show the celebrity appears to the left of Jay Leno and on Larry King Live to the right? The present research sought to investigate this question.

Smith's article "On Construct Validity: Issues of Method and Measurement" is a fine tribute to L. J. Cronbach and P. E. Meehl (1955) that clarifies the current state and future directions in the understanding of construct validity. Construct validity is a dynamic process, and fit indices need to be used at the service of understanding, not in place of it. The failure of a study or set of studies to support a construct, a measure, or the theory underlying it admits of many explanations, and the ways scientists interpret such failures are prone to cognitive biases and motivated reasoning. This suggests why metrics designed to index the extent to which observations match expectations can be useful prostheses to scientific judgments. As P. E. Meehl (1954) showed decades ago, quantitative, statistical formulas and indices tend to outperform informal, qualitative judgments, and this applies as much to the way researchers evaluate constructs and measures as to judgments in the consulting room.

For many years the Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (Scherer & Ekman, 1982) has been an invaluable text for researchers looking for methods to study nonverbal behavior and the expression of affect. A successor to this essential text, The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research is a substantially updated volume with 90% new material. It includes chapters on coding and methodological issues for a variety of areas in nonverbal behavior: facial actions, vocal behavior, and body movement. Issues relevant to judgment studies, methodology, reliability, analyses, etc. have also been updated. The topics are broad and include specific information about methodology and coding strategies in education, psychotherapy, deception, nonverbal sensitivity, and marital and group behavior. There is also a chapter detailing specific information on the technical aspects of recording the voice and face, and specifically in relation to deception studies. This volume will be valuable for both new researchers and those already working in the fields of nonverbal behavior, affect expression, and related topics. It will play a central role in further refining research methods and coding strategies, allowing a comparison of results from various laboratories where research on nonverbal behavior is being conducted. This will advance research in the field and help to coordinate results so that a more comprehensive understanding of affect expression can be developed.

This study examined the power of judges' ratings of professors' nonverbal (NV) classroom behavior in content-free brief instances (nine seconds) to predict actual end-of-course students' ratings of teaching (SRT). Professors in 67 courses were videotaped in 4 instructional situations: First class session; Lecturing; Interacting with students; and Talking about the course. The overall finding was that thin slices of professors' content-free NV behavior could indeed predict SRT, but different patterns were found for defined instructional situations. Positive judgments of brief instances of NV lecturing behavior predicted positive post-course SRT components pertaining to the instructor. Positive judgments of NV behavior while interacting with students were negatively related to favorable SRTs. This counter-intuitive finding was tentatively explained by the fact that SRTs were negatively related to course difficulty, and professors presumably might have made greater efforts in their interaction with students in difficult courses, but these courses received lower ratings anyway. Micro-analyses of 44 molecular variables illuminated the NV profile of effective lecturing, and showed distinctions between NV profiles of effective professors and effective TV interviewers from a previous study. Social-educational implications of the findings for the SRT literature and for the NV literature were discussed.