THE RELATIONSHIP OF CHANGES IN ASSIMILATIVE PROJECTION TO ACCEPTING AND REJECTING INTERPERSONAL GROUPS AND TO THE ORDER OF THE GROUPS.

Forty-one college students in an adolescent psychology class completed the Allport-Vernon Scale of Values, Part 2. Three weeks later they met singly with one, and then another, student and discussed a topic for five minutes with each of them. Before and after each discussion they filled in the A-V Scale as they thought their partners had filled theirs in. During one of the interactions the Ss believed that their partner had selected them as a person with whom they would like to talk, during the other interaction they believed that they had been selected as a person with whom their partner would rather not talk. Results indicated that increase in assimilative projection was associated with the order of the situations-increase occurred during the second inter- action-but was not associated with the stability (acceptance or rejection) of the group nor with the interaction of order and stability. Discussion of the results attempted to point out the need for further investigation of the construct change during such verbal interaction to account for the demonstrated effect of order on assimilative projection change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]