Ability to Identify Emotion and Infer Motive in Evaluative Interactions: a Function of Expertise?

Date of Graduation

Spring 2003

Degree

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Robert Jones

Abstract

Interpersonal evaluation is a component of many formal and informal organizational interactions. The ability to accurately idenitfy emotions and deduce motives from those emotions may have important implications, both for the observers required to evaluate or serve others, and for the targets of evaluations. In this paper, the ability to infer motive from emotive responses in a weak situation would infer motives better than those with short-term training, who in turn would infer motives better than those with no expertise or training. Results found that experts and trained participants were not significantly better than non-experts and non-trained participants at identifying emotive responses in the weak situation. Hypotheses were not supported and limitations and implications of the study are discussed.

Subject Categories

Psychology

Copyright

© Michelle A Bauman

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Dissertation/Thesis

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