A STUDY OF THE GROUP PROCESS OF THE PM-SENSITIVITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Abstract

This study aims at an investigation of the group meeting attractiveness and the relationship between self-rating and rating by others of discussion groups. Subjects in this study were twenty-four participants in a sensitivity development seminar. These participants were divided into two groups, each of which were composed of twelve members. Each of the groups (Group A and Group B) had ten group sessions. Group A's first five sessions were a sensitivity training course (ST) and the other five sessions were a case-study course (PMT), while Group B conducted five PMT sessions first and then five ST sessions. The group meeting attractiveness formed in the ten sessions was examined. The mutual ratings by PM scales of discussion members in the five PMT sessions were also examined.The cognitive discrepancy between self-rating and rating-by-others was examined from three points: (1) the direction of the difference between self-rating and rating-by-others; (2) the correlation between them; (3) the absolute values of difference between them.The results were:(1) As to the directon of the cognitive discrepancy, self-rating was lower than rating-byothers. The tendency was prominent among the subjects of GroupB.(2) The significant correlations between selfrating and rating-by-others appeared more obviously in Group A than in B.(3) In the case of Group A, the absolute values of the cognitive discrepancy decreased rapidly during the five sessions. The differences of the cognitive discrepancy were discussed in relation to the characteristic leadership structure of each group.(4) Through a factor analysis of the correlations among the ten sessions, it was found that the pattern of increase of meeting attractiveness was related to the favorable evaluation of the seminar (p<. 02) and that the subjects in Group A showed this upward pattern more prominently than those in Group B (p<. 10).