A comparison study of interpersonal construct use between junior high students and college students

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explore the similarities and differences between junior high school students' and college students' use of interpersonal constructs and the relation between those constructs and concrete behavior. It was divided into three stages. The purpose of the first stage was to examine similarities and differences between junior high students and college students in the kinds of traits they ascribe to others. Language samples containing descriptions of peers were obtained from the two groups, and two sets of analyses were conducted to provide a comparison of the number and quality of the constructs as a function of age. Most importantly, results showed consistent production differences between the two groups in the quality of the constructs employed. The second stage was designed to examine whether junior high students make the same kinds of discriminations among prototypic behaviors that college students make, and whether they organize their interpersonal constructs in a manner which is conceptually consistent with the ways college students organize their constructs. Anecdotes describing prototypical patterns of behavior were administered to both groups and a category organizing sheet was developed to record the manner in which they organized their constructs. It was found that junior high students are unable to distinguish and give adult meanings to various types of behaviors. In addition, adult categories were significantly more dimensionally complex than those of the younger subjects. A final analysis was conducted to examine whether junior high students make the same kinds of influences from concrete patterns of behavior to interpersonal constructs as do college students. Both groups were again provided with anecdotes containing prototypical patterns of behavior, and were asked to indicate their first and second choice responses from a checklist containing the intended constructs plus distractors. Although very good consensus was obtained from the college students, results obtained indicate that junior high students can distinguish and give at least a very general meaning to behaviors before they can label them, and that even if junior high students can distinguish behaviors and verbalize the intended construct, they most often prefer to use the conceptually consistent global construct.