Communication

First-year college students are challenged to develop and maintain new friendship networks. This study, informed by an exchange perspective, tests a conceptual model that specifies how relational maintenance, friendship quality, and perceived availability of network resources are associated in newly formed friendship networks. Results from structural equation modeling suggest that, for casual friendships, the association between maintenance and the perceived availability of resources is mediated by the quality of one's casual friendship network. For close friendship networks, reported maintenance behavior was both directly and indirectly associated with the perceived availability of resources. There were also differences between close and casual friendship networks, with students reporting more maintenance behavior in close friendships, and with different behaviors associated with maintenance in close friendship networks than casual friendship networks.

Affection exchange theory and previous research suggest that affectionate behavior has stress-ameliorating effects. On this basis, we hypothesized that increasing affectionate behavior would effect improvements in physical and psychological conditions known to be exacerbated by stress. This study tested this proposition by examining the effects of increased romantic kissing on blood lipids, perceived stress, depression, and relationship satisfaction.

Relational maintenance is connected to high quality friendships. Friendship maintenance behaviors may occur online via social networking sites. This study utilized an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to examine how Facebook maintenance and surveillance affect friendship quality. Bryant and Marmo's (2012) Facebook maintenance scale was evaluated, revealing two factors: sharing and caring. Facebook surveillance was also measured. For friendship satisfaction and liking, significant positive actor and partner effects emerged for caring; significant negative actor, partner, and interaction effects emerged for sharing; and significant positive actor effects emerged for surveillance. For friendship closeness, significant positive actor effects emerged for caring and surveillance.

This manuscript details the construction of a measure of Facebook relational maintenance behaviors. The first study generated an item pool by drawing from previous qualitative investigations and adapting an established relational maintenance scale. Participants were then invited to evaluate these items in order to establish face validity. During study two, participants were asked how often they used the behaviors represented in these items to maintain a specific friendship. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying structure of these items; three latent factors emerged, social contact, response-seeking, and relational assurances. This factor structure was then assessed using confirmatory factor analysis during phase three. Study three participants were also asked to complete measures of friendship quality, Facebook intensity, and online social communication. The relationship of the three factors of Facebook relational maintenance to friendship quality, Facebook intensity, and online social communication suggests convergent and discriminant validity for the Facebook relational maintenance measure.

Identity in Networked Locations - Chapter 3 of Navigating New Media Networks. This chapter outlines a performative view of online identity expression and introduces the concept of fixed and flexible networks spaces to organize different constructions, expectations, and perceptions of identity. Chapter reviews concepts such as performances given and given off, crystallized self, and warranting theory.

This study is aimed at understanding how people edit their own arguments prior to uttering them (Hample, 1984; Hample & Dallinger, 1985a, 1985b). The main categories of editorial criteria are effectiveness, principled objection to type of argument, person-centered issues, and discourse competence standards. Our main purpose here is to begin an account of what sort of person prefers which criteria. Argumentativeness (Infante & Rancer, 1982), verbal aggression (Infante & Wigley, 1986), interpersonal orientation (Swap & Rubin, 1983), and respondent gender are associated with use of editorial criteria. Results point to two different approaches to editing one's own arguments. The task orientation focuses on effectiveness, and is taken by males, and by people high in verbal aggressiveness and low in interpersonal orientation. The relational orientation is taken by females, and by people low in verbal aggressiveness and high in argument avoidance and interpersonal orientation. Justification for using multiple arguments to instantiate each type of argument, and for using multiple situations was also found.

Taking conflict personally (TCP) has been defined as a negative emotional reaction to participating in a conflict. This paper locates the notions of affective climate in general, and TCP in particular, within a Lewinian frame. The theoretical connections among field theory, defensiveness, attributions, and TCP are described. Earlier work has generated a multidimensional scale for measurement of TCP, and has shown the subscales’ associations with argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, communication apprehension, own conflict style, superior's conflict style, arguing behaviors, communication competence, and organizational climate. The present investigation responds to some psychometric and conceptual difficulties with the original version of the TCP scales by revising the measurement instrument. This paper proposes items for the measurement of six TCP subscales: direct personalization, persecution feelings, stress reaction, positive relational effects, negative relational effects, and like/dislike valence. The revised scales replicate the leading results from the original validating study, and extend our understanding of TCP's relationship to a conflict's perceived climate.

People use editorial criteria to decide whether to say or to suppress potential arguments. These criteria constitute people's standards as to what effective and appropriate arguments are like, and reflect general interaction goals. A series of empirical investigations has indicated that the standards fall into three classes: those having to do with argument effectiveness, those concerned with personal issues for arguer and target, and those centered on discourse quality. The essay also sketches the affinities certain types of people have for the different criteria.

Dyadic and normative accessibility are hypothesized to correlate positively with three task dimensions: variety, autonomy and identity. The presumed independence of the dyadic and normative accessibility scales is also investigated. Data were collected from 40 middle level managers in a variety of organizations. Results show significant relationships between dyadic accessibility and the characteristics of variety and autonomy. Tasks with high identity plausibly do not require much supervision. Follert's scale for normative accessibility seems to have some serious validity problems, and probably ought to be replaced or newly validated.

Taking conflict personally (TCP) is conceptualized as a negative emotional
personalization of conflict episodes. Here, individuals' TCP levels
were examined in relationship to both their own conflict management
styles and their perceptions of supervisors' conflict management styles.
Results indicate that one's TCP levels are associated with one's own
preferred conflict management style, with supervisor's perceived conflict
style, and with satisfaction with supervisor.

The rebuff phenomenon is a robust empirical regularity that emerges from many compliance gaining studies, using widely varying methodologies. The effect is this: when a persuader is confronted with a rebuff, his/her next message will tend to be be ruder and more aggressive than the initial appeal. This could be due to repertoire exhaustion, or to a change in the persuader's standards for acceptable messages. The second possibility is hypothesized here, and results support that explanation. Lewin's field theory accounts for this outcome. Connecting the rebuff phenomenon to appraisal theory also would advance our understanding of sequential compliance gaining.

This study reports a secondary data analysis of eight separate studies of cognitive editing, with a combined sample size of 1471. These data had revealed inconsistent results with regard to the question of whether males and females edit their persuasive messages differently. This investigation reveals that gender has modest direct effects on endorse‐or‐suppress decisions. These results are consistent with those obtained in several recent meta‐analyses of related research traditions. It is possible that gender's interactions with other variables may be promising for future research.

This report improves upon the authors’ previous investigations of naive actors’ argument standards in two ways: (a) by using a checklist to obtain subjects’ rationales for not using various arguments and (b) by using multiple operationalizations of each compliance gaining strategy. Overall results correspond generally to those of the earlier studies: effectiveness concerns account for 23.5% of rejections, principled objections to specific strategies for 15.7%, person‐centered issues for 26.1%, and discourse competence rules for 34.6%. The self‐monitoring scale has serious psychometric problems and does not strongly predict use of rejection criteria.