The link between use of violent imagery (VI) in imaginative stories about social situations and perceivers' attachment styles (secure, avoidant, anxious) was examined. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and an attachment style questionnaire were administered. The TAT stories of anxiously attached men contained more VI than stories written by other subjects. Content analyses further revealed that more anxiously attached men wrote violent affiliation stories with male perpetrators and female victims. Findings suggest that V7 may be an expression of frustration toward romantic partners and an inability to modulate negative affect in intimate relationships for a specific group of men.

Two studies investigated the relationship of implicit and explicit motives to most-memorable experiences (MMEs). Participants completed implicit and explicit measures of task and social motives and recorded their MMEs for 60 days. In Study 1, implicit motives were expected to be related to affective MMEs about the implicit motive, whereas explicit motives were expected to be related to routine MMEs corresponding to self-descriptions. When the MMEs were analyzed for affective and routine content, the predictions were supported in both areas. In Study 2, implicit and explicit motives were primed in either domain. Participants then recalled 12 MMEs that immediately came to mind. These MMEs were scored as routine or affective experiences related to each domain. Participants recalled more prime-relevant MMEs in each priming condition.

This study investigated the hypothesis that the breadth of responsiveness to a social event rests on adaptive capacities that permit an individual to experience those subjective states evoked by the interaction. Individuals with high or low ego adaptability were placed in same- or mixed-sex dyads with another person of the same level of adaptability and asked to complete a series of stimulating social interaction tasks. Analysis of videotapes made of these interactions, scored for verbal and nonverbal behaviors that reflect emotional and interpersonal engagement, strongly confirmed the hypothesis. In addition, post hoc explorations suggested that ego adaptability supported emotional expressiveness across social contexts, whereas its effect may have been attenuated by gender-related display rules for the more interpersonal forms of social engagement

Two studies investigated the prediction that differentiation would be used by individuals concerned with separateness, personal agency, and power, whereas integration would be used by individuals concerned with relatedness, interpersonal communion, and intimacy. In Experiment 1, women who reexperienced a personal event linked to communal issues used more integration (relative to differentiation) when evaluating target persons than did men who reexperienced a personal event linked to agency. Experiment 2 demonstrated that in situations that were congruent with their motives, intimacy-motivated women and men used more integration (relative to differentiation) when evaluating target persons than did power-motivated men and women

This study investigated the relationship between mechanisms that regulate intrapsychic conflict and parallel techniques that may regulate interpersonal conflict. Possible connections between these two forms of defense were examined in a study of dyadic interaction. A coding scheme was developed to measure two types of interpersonal defenses. It was predicted that individuals low in intrapsychic defensive maturity (LDMs) would show a greater tendency to use affect-externalizing interpersonal defenses (i.e., hostility and blaming) whereas those high in intrapsychic defensive maturity (HDMs) would tend to use more affect-containing interpersonal defenses (i.e., rationalization and minimizing). Dyadic interactions of HDMs and LDMs were examined and results showed that as predicted, LDMs, as compared to HDMs, used more affect-externalizing than affect-containing defenses. This effect was qualified by the sex composition of the dyad such that LDMs used more externalizing defenses than HDMs in same-sex, but not in mixed-sex, dyads.

This investigation examined the effect of an incongruent self-concept on interest in acquiring self-knowledge. Congruent (high global self-esteem/positive specific self-worth and low global self-esteem/negative specific self-worth) and incongruent (low global/positive specific and high global/negative specific) participants who varied in how certain they were of their self-worth were given the opportunity to express an interest in information about their personalities. Those whose global and specific self-worth were incongruent expressed greater interest in learning more about themselves than those whose self-worths were congruent. This effect was qualified by self-certainty: Interest was especially high among incongruent subjects certain of specific self-worth. Evidently, global-specific incongruency and certainty of it are motivating factors in the search for self-knowledge. The findings suggest specific processes that may allow individuals to cope with such incongruency.

This study examined the hypothesis that individuals process their experiences at higher levels of cognitive complexity when the situational affordances are congruent with their motivational dispositions. Power- and intimacy-motivated Ss viewed a videotape of 2 job candidates involved in a peer interview under conditions that made either power or intimacy a relevant concern. As predicted, the complexity with which Ss evaluated the target persons was greater when perceivers'motives were congruent with the situation

Two studies examined the hypothesis that geometric patterns in the facial expressions of anger and happiness provide information that permits observers to recognize the meaning of threat and warmth. A 1st study sought to isolate the configural properties by examining whether large-scale body movements encode affect-related meanings in similar ways. Results indicated that diagonal and angular body patterns convey threat, whereas round body patterns convey warmth. In a 2nd study, a set of 3 experiments using models of simple geometric patterns revealed that acute angles with downward pointing vertices conveyed the meaning of threat and that roundedness conveyed the meaning of warmth. Human facial features exhibit these same geometric properties in displays of anger and happiness.