William Ickes
Biographic Data
| ID | 648952 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Ickes |
| GIVEN NAMES | William |
| FAMILY NAME | Ickes |
| SIGNATURE | ICKES W |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Arlington |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 74 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 457 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
The link between need frustration and empathic accuracy in romantic relationships
The frustration of relational needs is a common source of conflict in romantic relationships. Empathic accuracy (EA) defined as the ability to accurately perceive and understand a partner's thoughts and feelings plays a key role in resolving these conflicts. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that need frustration and EA are associated both within individuals and between romantic partners during actual conflict interactions. Data were analyz…
Couple similarity in empathic accuracy and relationship well-being
Are intimate partners similar in how accurately they infer each other's feelings and thoughts, and if so, does this similarity predict their relationship well-being? To answer this question, we analyzed data from two laboratory-based studies ( n = 155 and n = 172 couples) in which couples participated in a conflict interaction task and afterwards reported on their own feelings and thoughts and inferred those of their partner. Relationship well-be…
“Instant enemies” and “Instant allies” in the U.S. and Taiwan
An online survey was used to collect participants' retrospective accounts of an encounter with an “instant enemy” and an encounter with an “instant ally” in samples of 262 American and 250 Taiwanese respondents. Using software that measured the relative use of various word categories, we examined ingroup/outgroup differences and cultural differences in the experience and perception of an “instant enemy” and an “instant ally.” With regard to ingro…
Associations between affect and empathic accuracy during conflict interactions in couples
The current research examined how intimate partners' affect is related, on a moment-to-moment basis, to their level of empathic accuracy during conflict interactions. To this end, we analyzed data from two laboratory-based studies ( n = 155 and n = 172 couples) in which couples participated in a conflict interaction task, followed immediately by a video-review task during which they reported on their own feelings and thoughts and inferred those o…
The Dark Triad trait of psychopathy and message framing predict risky decision‐making during the Covid ‐19 pandemic
The effects of framing on risky decision‐making have been studied extensively in research using Kahneman and Tversky's (1981) hypothetical scenario about a contagious Asian disease. The COVID‐19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to test how message framing affects risky decision‐making when millions of real lives are at stake worldwide. In a sample of US adults ( N = 294), we investigated the effects of message framing and personality (Dark Tr…
Empathic accuracy and cognitions during conflict
Empathic accuracy research indicates that partners achieve only moderate success at reading each other's thoughts. The current study identifies specific patterns of online thought that contribute to empathic inaccuracy during conflict interactions. Married/cohabiting partners completed a conflict interaction and reported their own thoughts during video‐assisted recall of the interaction, also inferring the thoughts of the other partner. Content a…
Measuring Egocentrism as a Trait-Like Personality Attribute
Associations between language style matching and relationship commitment and satisfaction
Language style matching (LSM) refers to similarity in function word use between two people during a conversation. Previous research has shown that LSM predicts romantic relationship stability, but it remains unknown why LSM is associated with stability. Across five studies from five different labs, we aimed to identify links between LSM and two relationship perceptions strongly associated with stability: commitment and satisfaction. Based on prio…
Self-concept clarity as a predictor of self-disclosure in romantic relationships
Several studies have examined the role of self-esteem in self-disclosure while overlooking a potentially important confounding variable: self-concept clarity. Across three studies, we found an association between self-concept clarity and self-disclosure to one's romantic partner. This incremental effect held even when the variance attributable to self-esteem was statistically controlled in a multiple regression analysis. Moreover, in two of the t…
New Directions in Attribution Research
Why (and When) Straight Women Trust Gay Men
Developing Latent Semantic Similarity in Initial, Unstructured Interactions
We investigated how same-sex strangers develop latent semantic similarity (LSS)-that is, how they come to use words in the same way-in their initial interactions. In a previous study, Babcock, Ta, and Ickes found evidence suggesting that dyad members' talking, looking, and acknowledging are important behaviors for the development of dyad-level LSS. Using a different sample of initial interactions, we replicated the major findings of Babcock et al…
Behavioral validation of the rudeness scale
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to behaviorally validate the Rudeness Scale (RS), a self-report measure of the propensity to verbally abuse strangers, using both a retrospective design (Study 1) and a prospective design (Study 2). Design/methodology/approach – In Study 1, participants (n=280) completed an online survey that contained the RS and a retrospective checklist measure that assessed how often they had engaged in specific confronta…
Latent Semantic Similarity and Language Style Matching in Initial Dyadic Interactions
In the present study, we examined two indices of semantic similarity (i.e., latent semantic similarity [LSS], language style matching [LSM]) to determine their respective roles in initial, unstructured dyadic interactions. Transcripts of the dyad members' conversations were used to compute the LSS and LSM indices, which were then correlated with various dyad-level behaviors and perceptions. The results suggest that LSS develops out of a highly in…
More f#!%ing rudeness
Purpose – The purpose of this research is to (1) to identify personality variables that reliably predict verbal rudeness ( i.e by replicating previous findings) and (2) to investigate what personality variables predict more general ugly confrontational behaviors. Design/methodology/approach – In Study 1, the authors used an online survey to collect information regarding individual differences in social desirability, self-esteem, narcissism, blirt…
Predicting Final Course Performance From Students' Written Self-Introductions
Using a sample of 363 participants, we tested whether differences in the use of linguistic categories in written self-introductions at the start of the semester predicted final course performance at the end of the semester. The results supported this possibility: Course performance could indeed be predicted by relative word usage in particular linguistic categories-predominantly by the use of punctuation (commas and quotes), word simplicity, firs…
Compatible and Incompatible Relationships
Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior
On the Malleability of Self-image in Individuals with a Weak Sense of Self
For over four decades, clinical psychologists have claimed that individuals with a weak sense of self have highly malleable self-images, even temporarily taking on aspects of the personalities of interaction partners who have a stronger sense of self. The present Study 1 provided the first empirical test of this claim. In same-sex stranger dyads that paired a weak-sense-of-self member with a strong-sense-of-self member, the “weak” dyad members ch…
Linking Identity Status to Strength of Sense of Self
This study used scores on the Sense of Self Scale (SOSS) to test Marcia's (1966) claim that the achieved identity status is associated with a stronger sense of self than are the three “less mature” identity statuses (diffused, foreclosed, and moratorium). The respondents were 290 undergraduates (74 males, 214 females) who participated in an online survey containing the Sense of Self Scale (SOSS), the Self-Concept Clarity Scale (SCCS), the Self-Mo…
F#!%ing Rudeness
In an online survey study ( n = 275), several demographic and personality variables were used to predict scores on the Rudeness Scale, a new measure of the propensity to verbally abuse strangers. The results of multiple regression analyses revealed a number of significant main effects. These effects revealed that the people in the authors' sample who reported the greatest propensity to verbally abuse strangers were Hispanic/Latino or Black indivi…
Maritally Aggressive Men
This research explored the relationships between the language that 86 married men used to describe their marriages, other personal characteristics of the men, and the men's wife-directed aggression. Methods included linguistic inquiry word count analysis, temperament measures, an empathic accuracy-type paradigm, and signal detection analysis. Husbands' use of anger words and egocentric words in describing their marriages, along with husbands' imp…
The Social Neuroscience of Empathy
Cross-disciplinary, cutting-edge work on human empathy from the perspectives of social, cognitive, developmental and clinical psychology and cognitive/affective neuroscience. In recent decades, empathy research has blossomed into a vibrant and multidisciplinary field of study. The social neuroscience approach to the subject is premised on the idea that studying empathy at multiple levels (biological, cognitive, and social) will lead to a more com…
Big Five predictors of behavior and perceptions in initial dyadic interactions
The authors used the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm to examine the effects of gender and the Big Five personality traits on dyad members' behaviors and perceptions in 87 initial, unstructured interactions. Most of the significant Big Five effects (84%) were associated with the traits of Extraversion and Agreeableness. There were several significant actor and partner effects for both of these traits. However, the most interesting and nov…
Evidence that a simpático self-schema accounts for differences in the self-concepts and social behavior of Latinos versus Whites (and Blacks)
On the basis of the assumption that Latino Americans use a simpático self-schema more than White Americans do, the authors predicted that the effects of this difference would be evident in the participants' self-concepts and social behavior. As predicted, Studies 1 and 2 revealed that Latino participants reported significantly more simpático-related terms in their spontaneous self-concepts than did White participants. Complementing these findings…
Naturalistic social cognition
The research paradigm that Ickes and his colleagues developed for study of naturalistic social cognition was used to explore phenomenon of empathic accuracy in initial, unstructured interactions of 38 mixed-sex (male-female) dyads. The results indicated that an important aspect of empathic accuracy—content accuracy—could be measured reliably (a = .94) with procedure used. The results further indicated that content accuracy was, to a large extent,…
When the head protects the heart
This study investigated circumstances in which romantic partners may be motivated to inaccurately infer each other's thoughts and feelings. Dating couples rated and discussed pictures of opposite-sex people with whom they might later interact in a dating context. Couples evaluated either highly attractive persons or less attractive persons. As predicted, dating partners who were close, who were insecure about their relationship, and who evaluated…
Objective self awareness and self esteem
Empathic accuracy in the interactions of male friends versus male strangers
In unstructured interactions, male friends were found to be more accurate than male strangers in inferring each other's thoughts and feelings. Plausible reasons for this difference were that friends (a) interacted more and exchanged more information, (b) had more similar personalities and therefore more rapport with each other, and (c) had more detailed knowledge of each other's lives. Data confirmed that the friends did indeed interact more and …
When Accuracy Hurts, and When It Helps
This study tested predictions from W. Ickes and J. A. Simpson's (1997, 2001) empathic accuracy model. Married couples were videotaped as they tried to resolve a problem in their marriage. Both spouses then viewed a videotape of the interaction, recorded the thoughts and feelings they had at specific time points, and tried to infer their partner's thoughts and feelings. Consistent with the model, when the partner's thoughts and feelings were relat…
When accuracy hurts
Why are individuals who are anxious and uncertain about their partner’s love and commitment especially likely to have turbulent and unstable relationships? Guided by three theoretical perspectives—Ickes and Simpson’s (1997) model of empathic accuracy in relationships, Bowlby’s (1969, 1973) attachment theory, and Holmes and Rempel’s (1989) appraisal model of trust, we examined how one psychological process—heightened empathic accuracy in relations…
Naturalistic social cognition
The role of sex and self-monitoring in unstructured dyadic interactions
This study was conducted to determine how individual differences in sex and in level of self-monitori ng were related to subjects' behavior during an initial interaction in same-sex dyads. Subjects who had been previously tested with Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale were covertly videotaped during an unstructured 5-minute interaction with a same-sex stranger. They were then asked to give impressions of their own and the other person's behavior duri…
Compositions in Black and White
The initial, unstructured interactions of 40 interracial (black-white) dyads were studied in a design in which three factors were systematically varied. These factors were (a) disposition of white dyad members to either seek out or shun (i.e., approach vs. avoid) interaction with blacks, (b) race (black vs. white) of experimenter, and (c) gender composition (male-male vs. female-female) of dyads. The results revealed that within dyads, white dyad…
Empathic accuracy in a clinically relevant setting
This study addressed 3 questions regarding empathic accuracy in a clinically relevant setting. First, does the empathic accuracy of a perceiver improve with increased exposure to a target individual? Second, can empathic accuracy be enhanced by providing the perceiver with feedback about the target's actual thoughts and feelings? Third, are there stable individual differences in empathic accuracy that generalize across different targets? The resu…
Traditional Gender Roles
Despite societal pressure for change in traditional gender roles, the coevolution of genes and culture may still lead us to be attracted to potential mates whose appearance and behavior is stereotypically masculine or feminine. This attraction is ironic in light of a growing body of research evidence indicating that the relationships of men and women with traditional gender roles are far from optimal—and are generally worse than those of androgyn…
Social Support in Couples
Shyness and physical attractiveness in mixed-sex dyads
Male and female strangers' shyness and physical attractiveness strongly affected their own and their partners' behavior during initial, unstructured interactions. First, dyad-level measures of behavioral involvement and perceived interaction quality were independently predicted by the men's shyness and the women's physical attractiveness. Second, shy men exerted avoidant control over mutual gazing by denying their female partners (but not themsel…
Evidence that a simpático self-schema accounts for differences in the self-concepts and social behavior of Latinos versus Whites (and Blacks)
On the basis of the assumption that Latino Americans use a simpático self-schema more than White Americans do, the authors predicted that the effects of this difference would be evident in the participants' self-concepts and social behavior. As predicted, Studies 1 and 2 revealed that Latino participants reported significantly more simpático-related terms in their spontaneous self-concepts than did White participants. Complementing these findings…
Boys and girls together—and alienated
This study was conducted to determine how individual differences in sex role orientation—as assessed by the Bern Sex Role Inventory—were related to subjects' behavior during an initial, unstructured interaction in mixed-sex dyads. The design contrasted four different dyad types, characterized as follows: (a) Both the male and the female were stereotypically sex typed correspondent to their gender (male ST-female ST); (b) the male was stereotypica…
Big Five predictors of behavior and perceptions in initial dyadic interactions
The authors used the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm to examine the effects of gender and the Big Five personality traits on dyad members' behaviors and perceptions in 87 initial, unstructured interactions. Most of the significant Big Five effects (84%) were associated with the traits of Extraversion and Agreeableness. There were several significant actor and partner effects for both of these traits. However, the most interesting and nov…
Predicting Final Course Performance From Students' Written Self-Introductions
Using a sample of 363 participants, we tested whether differences in the use of linguistic categories in written self-introductions at the start of the semester predicted final course performance at the end of the semester. The results supported this possibility: Course performance could indeed be predicted by relative word usage in particular linguistic categories-predominantly by the use of punctuation (commas and quotes), word simplicity, firs…
The effect of objective self-awareness on predecisional exposure to information
Empathic Accuracy
This study sought to determine whether a friend-observer who eavesdrops on a friend-interactant's initial conversation with a stranger will be more accurate in inferring the friend-interactant's thoughts and feelings than will either the stranger-interaction partner or a stranger-observer. The empirical answer in this case was `no', suggesting that the meaning context established in the interactants' initial conversation was generic rather than e…
The development of meaning contexts for empathic accuracy
This study examined the effects of both immediate and cumulative contextual knowledge on empathic accuracy. Participants viewed excerpts from videotapes of 3 simulated psychotherapy sessions and attempted to infer each client's actual thoughts and feelings. Immediate contextual knowledge was varied by controlling the informational channels available. Cumulative contextual knowledge was varied by presenting the excerpts from each tape in either th…
Latent Semantic Similarity and Language Style Matching in Initial Dyadic Interactions
In the present study, we examined two indices of semantic similarity (i.e., latent semantic similarity [LSS], language style matching [LSM]) to determine their respective roles in initial, unstructured dyadic interactions. Transcripts of the dyad members' conversations were used to compute the LSS and LSM indices, which were then correlated with various dyad-level behaviors and perceptions. The results suggest that LSS develops out of a highly in…
Communication patterns in laboratory discussions of safer sex between dating versus nondating partners
Interactions about safer sex between partners in close relationships were compared with those between opposite sex strangers in order to explore the hypothesis that cognitive representations of close relationships can discourage effective safer‐sex negotiations. The type of discussion topic (safer sex vs. a control topic) was crossed with the type of discussion partner (dating partner vs. an opposite‐sex stranger) to create four groups of dyads. …
On the social advantages of having an older, opposite-sex sibling
This study examined the influences of birth order on behavior occurring in the initial, unstructured interactions of 40 mixed-sex dyads composed of a man and a woman who each had a sibling of the opposite sex. The design contrasted four different dyad types: (a) a firstborn man paired with a firstborn woman, (b) a firstborn man paired with a last born woman, (c) a last born man paired with a firstborn woman and (d) a last born man paired with a l…
Associations between language style matching and relationship commitment and satisfaction
Language style matching (LSM) refers to similarity in function word use between two people during a conversation. Previous research has shown that LSM predicts romantic relationship stability, but it remains unknown why LSM is associated with stability. Across five studies from five different labs, we aimed to identify links between LSM and two relationship perceptions strongly associated with stability: commitment and satisfaction. Based on prio…
Self-concept clarity as a predictor of self-disclosure in romantic relationships
Several studies have examined the role of self-esteem in self-disclosure while overlooking a potentially important confounding variable: self-concept clarity. Across three studies, we found an association between self-concept clarity and self-disclosure to one's romantic partner. This incremental effect held even when the variance attributable to self-esteem was statistically controlled in a multiple regression analysis. Moreover, in two of the t…
The effect of objective self-awareness on predecisional exposure to information
Objective self awareness and self esteem
The power of the glance
Attributional determinants of monetary help-giving1
The role of sex and self-monitoring in unstructured dyadic interactions
This study was conducted to determine how individual differences in sex and in level of self-monitori ng were related to subjects' behavior during an initial interaction in same-sex dyads. Subjects who had been previously tested with Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale were covertly videotaped during an unstructured 5-minute interaction with a same-sex stranger. They were then asked to give impressions of their own and the other person's behavior duri…
Objective self-awareness and individuation
An experiment was conducted to determine whether the phenomenal experiences associated with the states of objective and subjective self-awareness are those which typically are associated with the states of individuation and deindividuation. In order to test this hypothesis, 20 male and 20 female matched pairs of subjects completed 15 self-descriptive statements on a Who Am I questionnaire under conditions of experimentally manipulated self-awaren…
The Effect of Objective Self Awareness on Compliance in a Reactance Situation
Objective self awareness was varied to determine its effect on compliance and reactance. The experimental procedure was similar to that used in an early study of reactance (Brehm and Sensenig, 1966). The principal. result was that objective self awareness increased compliance, a result that is consistent with those of a number of other studies (e.g., Wicklund and Duval, 1971, Exp. II; Duval, 1976). In addition, males and females were found to dif…
Boys and girls together--and alienated
Boys and girls together—and alienated
This study was conducted to determine how individual differences in sex role orientation—as assessed by the Bern Sex Role Inventory—were related to subjects' behavior during an initial, unstructured interaction in mixed-sex dyads. The design contrasted four different dyad types, characterized as follows: (a) Both the male and the female were stereotypically sex typed correspondent to their gender (male ST-female ST); (b) the male was stereotypica…
Sex and Sex-Role Influences in Same-Sex Dyads
Theorizing by Bakan (1966), Bales (1955; 1958), Block (1973), and others suggests that interactional involvement may require the application and synthesis of both traditionally masculine (i. e., instrumental) and traditionally feminine (i. e., expressive) capacities. This view is supported not only by a previous study of sex role influences in mixed-sex dyads (Ickes and Barnes, 1978) but also by the present study of sex-role influences in same-se…
New Directions in Attribution Research, Vol. 2
New Directions in Attribution Research, Vol. 1
On the social advantages of having an older, opposite-sex sibling
This study examined the influences of birth order on behavior occurring in the initial, unstructured interactions of 40 mixed-sex dyads composed of a man and a woman who each had a sibling of the opposite sex. The design contrasted four different dyad types: (a) a firstborn man paired with a firstborn woman, (b) a firstborn man paired with a last born woman, (c) a last born man paired with a firstborn woman and (d) a last born man paired with a l…
Personality, Roles, and Social Behavior
Compositions in Black and White
The initial, unstructured interactions of 40 interracial (black-white) dyads were studied in a design in which three factors were systematically varied. These factors were (a) disposition of white dyad members to either seek out or shun (i.e., approach vs. avoid) interaction with blacks, (b) race (black vs. white) of experimenter, and (c) gender composition (male-male vs. female-female) of dyads. The results revealed that within dyads, white dyad…
Naturalistic social cognition
Refinement and validation of Brickman's measure of internal-external correspondence
Loneliness
The literature on loneliness is selectively reviewed with respect to three major theoretical approaches that have guided research in this area. The authors survey the theory and research associated with the social needs approach, the behavioral/personalityapproach and the cognitive processes approach to loneliness. Specific theoretical perspectives subsumable within each approach (e.g. social developmental, social support) are discussed. The seco…
Personality Moderating Variables
Personality moderating variables act to qualify the relationship between a personality trait measure and a relevant behavioral criterion. Two data analytic techniques that can be used to test for significant moderating effects are the “median split” (MS) approach and the “moderated multiple regression” (MMR) approach. The goals of the present research were ( a ) to apply the MS approach to computer‐simulated data in which the moderator and trait …
Item Variances and Median Splits
In his response to our article, Baumeister argued that in real data, the confound between interitem variance and trait extremity is small (typically in the range of 0 and –.2), and that the danger of artifact associated with the application of median splits to interitem variance is not as serious as our first simulation study would lead one to believe. When we examined a large body of actual personality data, employing personality scales of avera…
Naturalistic social cognition
The research paradigm that Ickes and his colleagues developed for study of naturalistic social cognition was used to explore phenomenon of empathic accuracy in initial, unstructured interactions of 38 mixed-sex (male-female) dyads. The results indicated that an important aspect of empathic accuracy—content accuracy—could be measured reliably (a = .94) with procedure used. The results further indicated that content accuracy was, to a large extent,…
Shyness and physical attractiveness in mixed-sex dyads
Male and female strangers' shyness and physical attractiveness strongly affected their own and their partners' behavior during initial, unstructured interactions. First, dyad-level measures of behavioral involvement and perceived interaction quality were independently predicted by the men's shyness and the women's physical attractiveness. Second, shy men exerted avoidant control over mutual gazing by denying their female partners (but not themsel…
Empathic accuracy in the interactions of male friends versus male strangers
In unstructured interactions, male friends were found to be more accurate than male strangers in inferring each other's thoughts and feelings. Plausible reasons for this difference were that friends (a) interacted more and exchanged more information, (b) had more similar personalities and therefore more rapport with each other, and (c) had more detailed knowledge of each other's lives. Data confirmed that the friends did indeed interact more and …
Empathic Accuracy
People are motivated to understand each other's psychological states as well as each other's personality traits. As a consequence, the more traditional study of accuracy in trait inference can be complemented by, and potentially benefit from, the insights provided by the more recent study of empathic accuracy. Findings in this area suggest that future research should devote more attention to (a) the history of the perceiver‐target relationship; (…
Traditional Gender Roles
Despite societal pressure for change in traditional gender roles, the coevolution of genes and culture may still lead us to be attracted to potential mates whose appearance and behavior is stereotypically masculine or feminine. This attraction is ironic in light of a growing body of research evidence indicating that the relationships of men and women with traditional gender roles are far from optimal—and are generally worse than those of androgyn…
Psychology (74 works) · Social Psychology (70 works) · Developmental psychology (41 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (21 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (20 works) · Cognitive psychology (18 works) · Feeling (16 works) · Empathy (15 works) · Personality (15 works)