Publication Date

1969

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Tucker, Charles O.||Gray, Philip A.||Larson, Charles U.

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Speech

LCSH

Communication; Adjustment (Psychology)

Abstract

This study is concerned with the effects of social orientation and communication opportunities on the number of successes achieved in a simple conflict setting. Two social orientations (cooperative and competitive), and three levels of opportunities to communicate (unrestricted, moderate restriction which was defined as three opportunities to speak per player per game, and high restriction which was defined as one opportunity to speak per player per game) were the independent variables in this study. The dependent variable was the number of successes each pair of players achieved in a mixed motive game matrix which provided the conflict setting. Eighty-four volunteers from speech fundamentals classes at Northern Illinois University were assigned to pairs to play a series of seven games. The same matrix was used in all seven games. Seven pairs of cooperatively oriented players and seven pairs of competitively oriented players played the game with unrestricted communication; seven pairs of cooperatively oriented players and seven pairs of competitively oriented players played the game with a moderate communication restriction; and seven pairs of cooperatively oriented players and seven pairs of competitively oriented players played the game with a high communication restriction. A two-way analysis of variance under the fixed effects model was used to test the following hypotheses: 1) the restriction of communication opportunities has no effect on the number of successes obtained in a simple conflict setting: 2) cooperative orientation and competitive orientation do not have different effects on the number of successes obtained in a simple conflict setting. Both hypotheses were rejected. Analysis of the data revealed the following. 1) players with unrestricted communication tended to perform better in this study than players with a moderate or a high restriction on the opportunities to communicate although a significant difference was obtained only between competitive players with unrestricted communication and competitive players with a high restriction. Data for cooperative players with unrestricted communication and cooperative players with a high communication restriction approached but did not reach significance at the .05 level. 2) Cooperatively oriented players tended to perform better in this study than competitively oriented players although a significant difference was obtained only for players with unrestricted communication. The players with a high communication restriction approached but did not reach significance at the .05 level.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

vi, 63 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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