One hundred, thirty-four undergraduate students participated in a field experiment designed to examine the effects of extended, prosocial communication with homeless persons, upon attitudes toward the homeless problem, of behavioral intentions towards the homeless, and of causal attributions about homelessness. It was expected that prosocial interaction with the homeless would produce shifts in attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the homeless and homelessness and result in greater attributions of external causes to explain homelessness. Nineteen experimental participants worked 15 hours at a local homeless shelter. Their responses to a posttest questionnaire that measured a range of attitudinal and behavioral orientations toward the homeless were compared with control participants who did not work at the shelter. Subsequent analyses furnished strong evidence of positive changes in attitudes and intentions toward homelessness among the shelter workers. These participants evaluated homeless people as less blameworthy and more socially attractive than did control participants; moreover, shelter workers indicated more personal responsibility and behavioral commitment to helping the homeless than control participants. They also perceived the homeless problem to be more serious and were more likely to attribute homelessness to bad luck than control participants. However, the two groups were equally likely to attribute homelessness to various external causes such as the economy, housing costs, and governmental policies. The results are interpreted as having policy implications for volunteer service.
A successful conversation requires participants to have knowledge of both the topic under discussion and the nature of conversation. This study asks whether people who are more sophisticated in their representation of conversation behave differently than their less sophisticated counterparts. This issue was probed by devising two operationalizations of what we call Conversational complexity. The two measures assessed peoples' constructs about conversation (operationalized by a measure of construct differentiation) and the manner in which people psychologicully structure conversations (via a sorting task tapping the degree to which they focus on the surface features, or deeper structures, of conversations). Individuals who completed the two measures of complexity also participated in conversations and completed a number of personality indices. Eoch operationalization of conversational complexity was positively correlated with a variety of conversational involvement behaviors, measures of conversational enjoyment and person complexity. and memory for the interactions. Generally speaking, eflective interactants who enjoyed conversaiions and recalled them well tended to have more constructs about conversations and psychologically represented conversations at a deeper level than their counterparts.An understanding of how conversations work demands the recognition that conversing is a complex cognitive task. Individuals bring to conversations a wealth of information and experience, and the ability to utilize and integrate effectively that knowledge is critical for successful social intercourse. The effective conversationalist needs to know something about both the topic being discussed and the process John A. D a b (Ph.D., Purdue University, 1977) is an associate professor of speech communication at the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, where Phillip J. 0 1985 International Communication Assn. 30
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