The purpose of the present study was to develop a set of eight nonverbal displays consistent with the eight interpersonal roles specified by Leary in 1957. The development of these displays was also based on the notion of a convergence of theory and fact based on the work of Leary, Osgood, and Schlosberg. Naive subjects' reactions to each of the eight displays were elicited on Leary's Interpersonal Check List and a simplified bipolar adjective instrument. Naive subjects placed the nonverbal displays as predicted. The present study is viewed as a first step in determining if in fact these eight displays represent major categories of nonverbal behavior used in implicit communication.

10 Ss with a history of intransigent hypochondriacal personality disorder were subjected to 2-1/2 hr. of sensory deprivation preceded and followed by planned interviewing procedures. Each interview was designed to prestructure the interpersonal meaning of the experience of sensory deprivation and selectively reinforce social roles antithetical to S's characteristic, maladaptive interpersonal behavior. As predicted, Ss showed a significant (p smaller than .01) shift from passively hostile to an actively warm social role. The changes in social role were also reflected in a significant (p smaller than .01) reduction in number of medical clinic visits. These effects were still operative 30 days following the procedure, whereas an equated baseline group of 10 Ss showed no significant change in behavior over the same period of time.

Responses of 10 men and 10 women viewing eight videotaped segments of nonverbal behavior on Leary's scale and a semantic differential confirmed no sex differences, perception of the behavior as predicted from Leary's theory. Agreement between response measures was .86. Data replicate the earlier study.

This paper is intended to lend support to the 2003 findings of Poloni, Riquier, Zimmermann, and Borgeat. Further, some extensions of these and other findings with respect to perceptual defense are suggested.

The relationship between self-disclosure and Criminal Justice personnel was studied. The subjects were Criminal Justice, Arts and Science, and Business undergraduate students. All subjects were given Jourard's Self-disclosure Scale. Subjects were asked to indicate their disclosure to four target persons: mother, father, male friend, and female friend. When analyzed in three separate repeated measures of analyses of variance data suggested no significant differences between Criminal Justice majors and the other college groups on self-disclosure. However, Criminal Justice majors with no police experience or little police experience disclosed more than Criminal Justice majors with extensive police experience. Older respondents disclose significantly less than do younger respondents.

McGinnies ' (1949) study on perceptual defense was replicated. No significant results were noted for galvanic skin responses. Threshold differences were significant; taboo words had higher thresholds than neutral words. Possibly "emotionality" and "threat" may require separate operational definitions if the effect, "perceptual defense," is to be clearly demonstrated.

Perceptual defense as a phenomenon was proposed by McGinnies in 1949. His findings were, in main, replicated by York, et al. in 1984 and extended by Perroncel, et al. in 1990. The present purpose was to assess whether four independent variables, one related to emotional arousal (GSR) and three, related to connotative word meaning (Evaluative, Potency, and Activity scores from Semantic Differential words used in the Perroncel, et al. study), could predict the perceptual defense phenomenon. The multiple correlation coefficient (R) was .19; however, the percent variance accounted for by the four independent variables was 3%. Clearly, further research is necessary to specify what factors predict the perceptual defense effect.

The purpose of the present study was to test responses of international students and American nationals to a set of eight interpersonal displays. These displays were intended to portray the eight interpersonal roles specified by Leary in 1957 and subjects' responses to these displays were consistent with those of our earlier studies. These findings suggest there is some cross-cultural consistency in responses to larger nonverbal behavioral units as well as in responses to smaller nonverbal behavioral units as documented by Ekman and his associates.