Interpersonal Understanding Research Articles

The Effect of Perspective-Taking on Trust and Understanding in Online and Face-to-Face Mediations

This research investigates the perspective taking process in online and face-to-face mediations. In particular, it addresses the question whether a perspective taking technique—being asked circular questions—helps the establishment of mutual understanding and interpersonal trust between negotiators in online and face-to-face mediation settings. This question was studied in an experimental setting in which disputants had to solve a conflict face-to-face or online by the help of a professional mediator. During the interventions, the mediator either posed mainly circular (perspective-taking) or linear questions. It was expected that mediations in which circular questions were used would lead to a higher level of mutual understanding and interpersonal trust between the disputants, and—as a result—to a more satisfying, integrative agreement. Furthermore, this study examined whether the communication mode of the intervention (online, face-to-face) affected the re-establishment of disputants’ interpersonal trust and understanding. The results of the study show that disputants’ feelings of trust in and understanding of their interaction partner improved more in the face-to-face mediations than in the online mediations. These improved feelings of understanding and trust also predicted how satisfying and integrative disputants perceived the agreement to be. Moreover, disputants perceived their mediator to be more trustworthy and more professional in the face-to-face than in the online interventions. No effect was found for mediators’ questioning style on disputants’ improved interpersonal trust and mutual understanding. We discuss the effects of the questioning style of a mediator and conclude with reflections on reasons why these effects did not lead to differences in mutual understanding and interpersonal trust between the disputants.

The Development and Effectiveness of Combining Case-Based Online Lecture and Simulation Programs to Facilitate Interprofessional Function Care Training in Nursing Homes.

The aim of this study was to (1) develop a case-based combination of online lectures and simulations for function-focused care by nursing home interdisciplinary caregivers and (2) evaluate participants' increasing shared team and task knowledge by surrogate measures of team process and team performance. The study comprised the following steps: (1) the design of a learning module using a shared understanding of function-focused care as a shared mental model; (2) the establishment of two computer programs for online lectures and simulations using cases involving older adults with disabilities; and (3) testing the educational programs using a repeated-measures design. Participants were 61 interdisciplinary caregivers from seven nursing homes in four regions. Data from participants' team process and team performance were collected pre test, post online lecture, and post simulation. Repeated-measures analysis of variance showed that the mean scores for scales of "transactive memory system," "knowledge sharing and utilization," "team outcomes," "motivation for learning transfer," "self-efficacy," "interpersonal understanding," "proactivity in problem solving," and "function-focused care knowledge" differed significantly between the time points. The results indicate that a case-based program of a combination of online lectures and simulations elicits significant improvements in participants' team process and team performance.

Pseudo-hyperscanning shows common neural activity during face-to-face communication of affect to be associated with shared affective feelings but not with mere emotion recognition

Current theories in cognitive neuroscience assume that internal simulation, i.e., the reproduction of brain activity underlying another person's inner state and behaviour in the perceiver's brain, plays an important role in understanding others. Here we test the prediction that common neural activity during facial communication of affect leads to interpersonal understanding. Six female senders and 30 male observers (six of which were the senders romantic partners and 24 unknown others) underwent pseudo-hyperscanning fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). Senders were asked to submerge themselves into emotional situations and to facially express their emotional feelings as they arose to the observer. Observers were uninformed about the sender's task and were asked to watch and feel with the sender. Using between-brain spatial correlation analysis we found that mere emotion recognition was not closely related to the degree to which an observer reproduced the sender's spatial pattern of neural activity in his own brain. However, in runs in which the observer had correctly identified the communicated emotion, between-brain similarity of spatial patterns of neural activity predicted the degree to which the observer experienced a similar emotional feeling as the sender. This effect remained significant when differences between romantic partners and unknown others and sender effects were removed. These findings are in line with previous studies that suggest that facial emotion recognition, at least at a coarse level, might be supported by neural processes that do not rely on internal simulation. Shared affective experiences, on the other hand, might arise from common neural activity between the sender's and the observer's brain, leading to a “shared space of affect” which might be critical for the flow of more subtle affective information between brains.

Audience Readings and Meaning Negotiation in the Film Viewing Space: An Ethnographic Study of Nollywood’s Viewing Center Audiences

This research aims to investigate the social experiences of Nigerian film audiences in viewing centers to examine the possibility that social experiences are a potent influencer of the meaning construction process in the film viewing space. This study was conducted among other existing studies of the Nigerian film audience and it took on a performative approach. It involved the use of ethnography and unstructured interviews. The study examined Nollywood viewing center audiences during their shared practice of film viewing. Observing these audiences revealed several ways in which audiences negotiate meanings within the viewing center space from film texts based on their social identity and actual social experiences. It majorly revealed that viewers develop interpersonal understanding of each other’s similar relevant social situations through self-identification and then use this understanding in the interpretive process of meaning production.

The Effect of Team Debriefing-based Emergency Simulation Education

Objectives: This study was conducted to identify the effects of team debriefing-based emergency simulation education for the self-efficacy of group work, team efficacy, and interpersonal understanding. Methods: 120 fourth-year students of the nursing department of C university in A city and a team of five to six nursing professors developed the curriculum as a module. Six scenarios and two theoretical lectures, on emergency simulations, were conducted over 14 weeks and the data collection period was from April 29 to June 14, 2019. Data analysis was conducted using the SPSS 21.0 statistical program. The data analysis was done with descriptive statistics, paired t-test. Results: The self-efficacy of the group differed significantly from 3.78 points before team-based emergency simulation education and 4.0 points (t = 4.08, p= 0.000) after education; similarly the team efficacy also varied significantly different from 3.85 points before education and 4.01 points (t = 2.10, p= 0.038) after education, but there was no significant differences in interpersonal understanding before and after the education. Conclusions: Team debriefing-based emergency simulation education has proven to be an effective method of teaching, enhancing the ability of nursing students in terms of justice by improving their self-efficacy and team efficacy. Key words: Team debriefing, Emergency simulation education, Self-efficacy of group work, Team efficacy

Cultivating the dispositions to connect: an exploration of therapeutic empathy

Empathy is a broad concept that involves the various ways in which we come to know and make connections with one another. As medical practice becomes progressively orientated towards a...

Phonosemantic interpretation of lexical units in the context of Russian and Slovak linguocultures

Phonosemantics is one of the youngest disciplines in the modern linguistics but takes an important part in the intercultural communication. The purpose of the article is to carry out the comparative analysis of lexical units of the Russian and Slovak language systems from the perspective of phonosemantics and philological hermeneutics. There has been made an attempt to study the correlation between the phonetic and semantic motivations of lexemes and paroemias (proverbs and sayings) in the system of the Russian and Slovak languages on the basis of the phonosemantic analysis and hermeneutic method. The mechanism for determining the language connotation on the knowledge based system makes it possible to reveal the linguocultural peculiarities of phraseological units, taking into account national-cultural, territorial, ethnolinguistic factors provided the individual’s cognitive abilities are activated. The problem of decoding of semantics in the situation of cross-cultural cooperation is not researched only from the view of the traditional linguistics, but also by means of cognitive activities: perception, presentation, reflection, interpretation. The adequate interpretation of the linguo-cultural phenomena and lexical units is the reflection in the internal communication aimed at the decoding of cultural and language code. In the external communication the reflection of the individual is expressed in the interpretation. The phonosemantic analysis, based on the description of natural-cultural lexical blocks from the view of philological hermeneutics, was revealed at first differences and similarities in Russian and Slovak languages; secondly, it were determined the so-called linguocultural codes. The analysis of lexical units in the Russian and Slovak languages has revealed common and distinctive peculiarities of the languages regarding their phonology and semantics. Perception and interpretation of linguistic units in foreign culture helps to achieve the most important communicative and pragmatic purpose – the establishment of intercultural and interpersonal parity and mutual understanding in the process of communicative interaction.

Understanding vocational accounting students’ attitudes towards sustainable development

ABSTRACT The goal of this study was twofold: firstly, to investigate vocational accounting students’ attitudes towards sustainable development; secondly, to explore the influence of students’ professional scepticism on their attitudes towards sustainable development. We surveyed 363 accounting students enrolled in a vocational college in China. We found that students had the most favourable attitudes towards the educational dimension of sustainable development and the least favourable attitudes towards the social dimension. Female students had significantly more favourable attitudes towards the environmental and educational dimensions of sustainable development, as compared to male students. Students at higher academic levels had significantly more favourable attitudes towards the educational dimension of sustainable development, as compared to students at lower academic levels. We also found that the questioning mind dimension of professional scepticism played the largest role in fostering the students’ favourable attitudes towards sustainable development, followed by the search for knowledge and interpersonal understanding dimensions, then by the suspension of judgement, self-confidence, and self-determining dimensions. The results of this study provide insights for educators to improve the accounting curriculum in vocational higher education in China.

ВІДМІННОСТІ ПРОФЕСІЙНО ВАЖЛИВИХ ЯКОСТЕЙ ТА ЇХ ВЗАЄМОЗВ’ЯЗКИ У ФАХІВЦІВ ЕКСТРЕНОЇ МЕДИЧНОЇ ДОПОМОГИ З РІЗНИМИ РІВНЯМИ ПРОФЕСІЙНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ


 
 
 Comparison of emergency medical care and disaster medicine workers groups with different levels of professional aptitude and competency has given a possibility to find out the professionally significant features and acceptable levels of their manifestation.Among the professionally significant features on emotional and will level are indices of rigidity, excitability, activity, stress vulnerability, emotional stability, anxiety and depression inclination, tenseness and frustration vulnerability, emotional exhaustion, purposefulness, assertive and aggressive actions and avoidance in hard life situations. Among the professionally significant features on motivation and value level are indices of live value of rest, social braveness, psychological tact, inclination to mutual interpersonal knowledge and understanding, organizational skills and resilience in interpersonal relationship. Among the professionally significant features on reflection and activity level are indices of moral normativity, self-control, modeling, result checking and flexibility as individual self-regulation styles, depersonalization, professional achievements reduction, satisfaction from creativity in professional activity, satisfaction by work conditions, satisfaction by appreciation of personal contribution to collective professional activity.Satisfaction from professional activity is the important criterion of workers’ professional realization and it can be used as subjective criterion of workers’ professional aptitude.Workers with low level of professional aptitude and competency have difficulties with self-regulation, but they can gain resilience in interpersonal relationship by flexible and conscious adjustment. This aim can be realized by command work and compliance with the rules of professional subordination.
 
 

Executive Functions do not Underlie Performance on the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT) in Healthy Younger and Older Adults.

Current measures of social cognition have shown inconsistent findings regarding the effects of executive function (EF) abilities on social cognitive performance in older adults. The psychometric properties of the different social cognition tests may underlie the disproportional overlap with EF abilities. Our aim was to examine the relationship between social cognition and EF abilities using the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT; Baksh, R.A., Abrahams, S., Auyeung, B., & MacPherson, S.E. (2018). The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT): Examining the effects of age on a new measure of theory of mind and social norm understanding. PloS One, 13(4), e0195818.), a test assessing four different aspects of social cognition: cognitive theory of mind (ToM), affective ToM, interpersonal understanding of social norms, and intrapersonal understanding of social norms. We administered the ESCoT, EF measures of inhibition, set shifting, updating, and a measure of processing speed to 30 younger and 31 older adults. We also administered the Visual Perspective Taking task (VPT) as a ToM test thought to be reliant on EF abilities. Better performance on cognitive ToM was significantly associated with younger age and slower processing speed. Better performance on affective ToM and ESCoT total score was associated with being younger and female. Better performance on interpersonal understanding of social norms was associated with being younger. EF abilities did not predict performance on any subtest of the ESCoT. In contrast, on the VPT, the relationship between age group and performance was fully or partially mediated by processing speed and updating. These findings show that the ESCoT is a valuable measure of different aspects of social cognition and, unlike many established tests of social cognition, performance is not predicted by EF abilities.

Global informational society: questions and perspectives (the problem of information systems as ideal models of interpersonal communication)

The modern world is firmly connected with the phenomenon of globalization. In fact, globalization means a new stage in the historical development of society, where the economic, political and cultural interaction of the countries of the modern world is becoming more intense and profound. The method of temporal analysis and the method of personalistic and ideal-typical reconstruction, a tool that is adequate to the author’s interpretation of inter-personal understanding in the era of globalization as a process of constituting the temporal and ethical dominance of individuals and collectivities that formalize the integrity of the cultural epoch, will become the immediate, applied methodological basis. The article deals with the phenomenon of social understanding, as important interaction between individuals in the global modern society through the analysis of information systems and inter-machine communication. The authors are convinced that as a result of all these processes we can speak about principal new level of individual relationship. In our opinion, information communication systems created by people are the ideal communication model for the future society. The article is devoted to for the inter-personal understanding in the future society based on information systems.

The engine hums… occasionally it even sings: A response to Sara MacKian’s keynote ‘The constant hum of the engine…’

In this response to Sarah MacKian’s conference keynote I take a personal experience as point of departure: my almost lifelong engagement with Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug. This leads to a discussion of the relationship between music and spirit, and how we as researchers can approach experiences with this relationship. A theoretical model of four levels of meaning in music opens up a number of ways to understand the affordances and appropriations of ‘deep’, ‘strong’ or ‘spiritual’ music experiences to clinical and non-clinical listeners. Examples from theory and empirical research in the receptive music therapy model Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) are used to illustrate a development from a more static-content-oriented approach to a more dynamic-process and interpersonal understanding of spiritual/transpersonal experiences with music.

Inside Out: A Scoping Review on the Physical Education Teacher's Personality.

The teacher’s personality in general plays an important role in the educational process. It is often examined in relation to outcome factors on the teacher or student side, e.g., teaching effectiveness or student motivation. Physical education (PE) with its peculiarities and allocated educational mandate particularly demands the personality of the PE teacher. Research considering this group of teachers is sparse, diverse and hard to capture due to different personality understandings. Our review therefore aims at identifying and analyzing underlying personality understandings, research questions and results of studies considering the personality of the PE teacher. We conducted a scoping review. After the screening and additional analyses process, 23 studies were included. Included references had to be empirical, published in German or English and explicitly examine the PE teacher’s personality as variable or mention it as outcome factor in school context. All studies are cross-sectional, 22 studies quantitative, one qualitative. Regarding personality understandings, 12 studies follow a trait psychological, six studies a vocational, one study an interpersonal personality understanding. Four studies’ personality understanding is not concretely determinable. Considering research questions, three studies aim at identifying the PE teacher’s personality in general and do, e.g., not find considerable differences between the PE teacher’s and other teacher’s personality. Nine studies examine the relationship between the PE teacher’s personality and different correlates such as burnout, highlighting, e.g., that female PE teachers’ burnout process is less homogeneous than males. Eleven studies examine the PE teacher’s personality from an external view and show, e.g., that students of different age groups perceive the PE teacher’s personality differently. Our review offers possible practical implications. By e.g., knowing their personality structure – their inside –, PE teachers can play to their own strengths and make use of their individual personality configuration in order to teach authentically and successfully, i.e., transferring the inside to the outside. Due to partly questionable and fragmentary methodologies of the included studies, results have to be interpreted with caution. More studies considering the PE teacher’s personality following a broad personality understanding are needed to include potentially relevant factors for teaching and by this receive evident insights.

Fostering group creativity through design thinking projects

The purpose of this study was to develop team projects in design thinking, for promotion and examination with the cultivation of group creativity. Research was conducted during the spring of 2017, with sixteen graduate students. Using artifact-based interviews, we analyzed the development of group creativity during the five stages of design thinking: understanding knowledge, empathizing, sharing perspectives, generating ideas, and prototyping. Results showed that analytical thinking was present throughout the overall project, while factors related to group creativity (such as learner orientation, interpersonal understanding, and flexibility) were observed at different rates as the project progressed. Results suggest that such pedagogical strategies as idea checking and training for applicability are necessary in order to foster group creativity.

The friendly relationship between therapeutic empathy and person-centered care

‘Person-centred care’ and ‘empathy’ are receiving an increasing amount of attention in the healthcare literature. These two concepts are related; however, their relationship has hitherto not been rigorously explored. In this paper we review the differences and commonalities between common definitions of the two concepts. We found that therapeutic empathy requires both interpersonal understanding (achieved via one of several potential means) as well as caring action. We also found that person-centred care could be defined as follows: Person-centred care is therapeutic empathy (interpersonal understanding and caring action) together with continuity, coordination, teamwork, access and empowerment. Conceived this way, therapeutic empathy is included within person-centred care, but not vice-versa . There are three important consequences of our analysis. First, empathy training can provide one of the means by which (part of) person-centred care can be achieved. Second, researchers and practitioners can use our analysis of empathy and person-centred care to collaborate in approaches to both research and training. Third, philosophers, who sometimes take empathy to be a foundational concept in interpersonal understanding, can use our findings to inform their work. Finally, we hope to have provided more clarity not just on the relationship between empathy and person-centred care, but also on the nature of those two individual concepts.

Pre-Truth Life in Post-Truth Times

Clearing philosophical ground for diagnoses of the contemporary ‘post-truth’-problematic, this article discusses the systematic and ineliminable ambivalence of claims to truth in public discourse and collective life generally, where truth cannot ultimately be disentangled from untruth. Truth becomes a problem in the relevant sense only where matters are morally-existentially charged, so that acknowledging truth threatens, e.g., loss of self-respect, and self-deception becomes tempting, individually and collectively. To the extent that our life is marked by injustice and destructiveness, it is necessarily also marked by systematic falsification, a conspiracy to deny the truth about it, about us. Collective life exhibits pervasive hostility to interpersonal (moral) understanding, which is repressed through collectively established fake ‘understandings’ and regimes of respectability. The fact/opinion and fact/value distinctions function as defences against understanding, while meaning and truth are seen as things to be determined rather than understood, and the concept of representatability, how things can be made to appear, becomes central. However, standard philosophical views on truth, meaning and morality render the problematic sketched here invisible, because they effectively move – as Wittgenstein arguably realised – wholly within the collective perspective that needs to be problematised.
 Keywords: moral understanding, self-deception, collective life, representation, conspiracy theories, political corrrectness

The Practice of Phenomenological Empathy Training

Abstract This article provides concrete examples of a phenomenological approach to empathy training, which is a pedagogical method designed for higher education. First, the phenomenology of empathy and empathy training is briefly described. Second, excerpts from training sessions in higher education are provided as examples. The examples are meant as to concretize the purpose of the training in relation to the overall pedagogical process. In addition, some clarifications are made about how a phenomenological approach can facilitate university students’ deeper understanding of how empathy relate to interpersonal understanding in the we-relation.

Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships

Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships

System Sclera – nowe narzędzie w komunikacji alternatywnej oraz sposoby jego wykorzystania w praktyce edukacyjnej i terapeutycznej

The ability of effective intercommunication is one of the basic competences that conditions the functioning of an individual in society. It helps not only with interpersonal understanding or expressing one’s own views or needs, but also in determining a separate identity, so in a more distant perspective, it enables development. Not developing interpersonal communication skills sentences a person to exclusion and solitude, and consequently to frustration or lowered self-esteem. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) allows dialogue and work to be established with persons with impaired speech development. Applying pictograms of the Sclera System is one form of AAC which makes it possible to effectively work with persons with disabilities in diverse ways.

Meta-Bias: A Practical Theory of Motivated Thinking

For a host of reasons, training students and teachers to more accurately discern the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others is more important than ever. One approach to improving social perspective taking entails teaching students to understand when and how bias impedes their efforts to “read” others. To facilitate this educational goal, we propose a theory of meta-biases that unifies and distills those biases that frequently derail perspective taking attempts. Specifically, we argue that, as a default, people strive to accurately read themselves and others. However, two competing motives—meta-biases—often derail this default goal: a desire for cognitive efficiency and a need to protect or enhance one’s sense of self. We hope the proposed theory proves to be practical for educators trying to facilitate interpersonal understanding and relationships, stimulating for researchers interested in testing theory, and generative for anyone developing interventions to mitigate social cognitive biases and improve person perception attempts.