What two factors affect family communication as described in the Circumplex model of family interaction?

FACES IV and the circumplex model

The Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems was developed to characterize the relational dynamics of couples and families (Olson, 2000). Derived from numerous theories and research studies, the model focuses on three key concepts that are central to adaptive family functioning: cohesion, flexibility, and communication. The model refers to some features of these dimensions as balanced, suggesting that they support optimal family functioning and other features as unbalanced, suggesting that they become problematic for families, especially when the family is experiencing developmental transitions or facing situational stressors.

Cohesion refers to the emotional bonding of family members. The model describes two aspects of balanced cohesion: separated and connected. When cohesion is in balanced state family members are able to feel close to one another and still function independently. Two aspects of cohesion are described as unbalanced: disengaged and enmeshed. The disengaged family members feel little attachment or commitment to the family; the enmeshed family system allows too little independence and too much pressure for consensus of opinions.

Flexibility reflects the “quality and expression of leadership and organization, role relationships, and relationships of rules and negotiations” in the family (Olson & Gorall, 2006, p. 6). A basic underlying theme is a way families adapt to change, how family members contribute to the decision-making process, and the extent to which rules and roles can be changed as the age of family members and situational demands require. Structured and flexible patterns are viewed as balanced; rigid and chaotic systems are viewed as unbalanced.

Communication focuses on many facets of the family’s interactions including their willingness to listen to one another, their tendency to speak for themselves and not for others, self-disclosure and willingness to share their feelings, staying on topic, and showing respect for one another as the family members offer different views and approach problem solving (Olson, 2000).

The FACES-IV is a widely used self-report instrument that can be used to assess functioning in marital dyads as well as family systems. The instrument is comprised of six scales, two balanced scales for cohesion and flexibility and four unbalanced scales for disengaged, enmeshed, rigid, and chaotic. The higher the ratio of balanced to unbalanced scores on each of the two dimensions, the healthier the family system. By plotting the six scales, the measure provides a profile for six family types. As such, the measure can be used to compare an individual couple or family to one of these types. It can also be used in clinical interventions to plan, track, and evaluate the effectiveness of therapy. The measure has been useful in research to link parenting styles and family systems dynamics, offering a strategy for integrating research on parenting practices with family development and family systems theories (Olson & Gorall, 2006).

4.12.6.1 Historical Background

The interpersonal circumplex model had its origins in the writings of Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) who introduced a number of original and radical ideas into the American psychiatry of the 1940s. Although not entirely liberated from Freud' spatial-hydraulic metapsychology, Sullivan was “behavioral” in the sense that his primary emphasis was upon the things that persons do to one another in interpersonal transactions, rather than upon internal processes that persons might “have.” His oft-cited definition of personality as “the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations which characterize a human life” represents an even greater departure from psychoanalytic thought, as well as a unique perspective within personality theory itself.

Sullivan was influenced by Lewin' (1938) field-theoretical conceptualization of contemporaneous, bidirectional influences in “psychological fields,” which led him to define the interpersonal situation as the basic unit of observation in psychiatry. This idea does not connote a separate “person” or “persons” who may be considered independently from the complex field (situation) of bidirectional causalities in which they are embedded; nor does it hold out the hope of capturing such complexities as “interaction” terms in analyses of variance.

The Kaiser Foundation Research Project, in which Timothy Leary (1957) was the most preeminent investigator, attempted to operationalize Sullivanian concepts in terms of concrete measurement procedures. An ordinary language analysis of clinicians' observations of the things that patients did to each other (and to themselves) in group psychotherapy led to a taxonomy of interpersonal behaviors that appeared to be empirically well-captured by a circular arrangement of interpersonal variables organized around the coordinates of “dominance” and “affiliation.” LaForge, Leary, Naboisek, Coffey, and Freedman (1954) derived the basic trigonometry of what would later be called a “circumplex,” without knowledge of Guttman' (1954) related work on that topic.

Notable contributions during the 1960s included the conceptualization of both maternal and child behavior within an interpersonal circumplex framework (Schaefer, 1961), a psychometrically sophisticated replication of the circumplex within a clinical population (Lorr & McNair, 1963), and a highly influential integration of the circumplex with the clinical, social, and experimental psychology of that time (Carson, 1969a). Alternative conceptual formulations of the interpersonal model were presented in the 1970s (e.g., Benjamin, 1974; Kiesler, 1979; Wiggins, 1979), and during the 1980s the model was applied to psychotherapy (Anchin & Kiesler, 1982), complementarity (Kiesler, 1983), and interpersonal problems (Horowitz, Rosenberg, Baer, Ureno, & Villasenor, 1988). Among the contributions of the 1990s have been an updated and psychometrically-sound version of the original interpersonal checklist (Wiggins, 1995), a comprehensive exposition of contemporary interpersonal theory and research (Kiesler, 1996), and a presentation of the impressive variety of contexts in which the interpersonal circumplex model has been applied (Plutchik & Conte, 1997).

The Two-dimensional Approach: Circumplex Model

The dimensional approach differentiates between emotions according to two or more characteristics that are given some value for all emotions. The Circumplex model has two such dimensions: valence and activity (Russell, 1980).

Russell's Circumplex Model of Affect (Figure 4.1) focuses on subjective experiences, and consequently, emotions within these dimensions might not be placed at exactly the same levels for all the people.

Emotions are distributed in a system of coordinates where the x-axis measures the valence of emotions from negative to positive, and the y-axis specifies how actively or passively the emotion is experienced. Therefore, the model, illustrated in a two-dimensional graph, results in a two-valued vector for each emotion, and makes it possible to compare emotions with each other (Figure 4.1). While Russell provides a comprehensive set of emotions, these do not perfectly match in the application of learning, and they are too numerous for self-assessment tests (Shen, Leon, Callaghan, & Shen, 2007).

For example, both happiness and pleasure have a positive valence, but happiness is an active emotion, while pleasure is a passive emotion. Fear and contentment are almost completely opposite emotions, fear being both active and negative, while contentment, on the other hand, being passive and positive.

Current research in the field of personality structure emphasizes two quite different structural representations of personality traits: the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality traits and the Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC) model of interpersonal dispositions. There are two traditions within FFM research: (a) the lexical tradition focuses on the totality of trait-descriptive terms found within unabridged dictionaries in different languages and (b) the multivariate-trait tradition focuses on the number and nature of dimensions that have been found in research with personality questionnaires. Research from both traditions has converged on the common dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Intellect/Openness. The NEO Personality Inventory is the most widely used and well-established questionnaire measure of these five dimensions. The IPC model focuses on dyadic relationships within an ‘interpersonal space’ in which actions and reactions are expressed as combinations of scores within the circle formed by the coordinates of Dominance and Affiliation. Different IPC models share the same circular structure but differ in their domains of application (e.g., interpersonal traits, interpersonal problems, styles of social support). The FFM and IPC models may be viewed as complementary rather than competitive, and as being applicable to different but equally important realms of knowledge.

Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scales

The Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scales-IV (FACES-IV; Olson, Gorall, & Tiesel, 2007) is a self-report measure based on the Circumplex Model (Olson, 2000), which focuses on three domains of family functioning: communication; cohesion; and flexibility (previously known as “adaptability”). Only cohesion and flexibility are assessed with the FACES-IV. According to the model, healthy families balance both connectedness with independence, and stability with flexibility, and this balance is achieved with effective communication. The FACES-IV includes two scales to measure healthy family functioning (balanced cohesion, balanced flexibility), and four scales to measure unhealthy family functioning (disengaged, enmeshed, rigid, and chaotic).

Olson and colleagues (2007) recommend using the FACES-IV as part of a larger assessment packet that includes both the Family Communication Scale (adapted from Barnes & Olson, 1989) and the Family Satisfaction Scale (Olson & Wilson, 1989). They also recommend using the self-report measures in combination with the corresponding observational measure, the Clinical Rating Scale (Thomas & Olson, 1993). One caution we might mention is that the self-report and observational measures frequently provide discrepant results (Olson, 2000), and it is not clear how best to combine results from these two tools. Additionally, how to combine scores across family members is not clear.

Although the Circumplex Model has been applied to a diverse group of families, including single parent households, stepfamilies, and gay and lesbian couples (Olson et al., 2007), the newly developed FACES-IV has not. Moreover, the validation sample for the FACES-IV was homogeneous: approximately two-thirds of the sample was female, 90% was Caucasian, and the average age was 28 (Olson et al., 2007). Finally, some items may not be applicable for use with older families (e.g., “Children have a say in their discipline”). Therefore, in spite of the strong research support for the Circumplex Model with younger families, the utility of the FACES-IV with late-life and diverse families has yet to be determined.

IX. Dimensional accounts of emotion and functional imaging studies

As mentioned in the introduction, in contrast to the basic emotions approach to the nature of emotional processing, there are theories which posit that emotional states are represented as points in emotional space, with two (or more) coordinates. Thus, in the circumplex model of emotion (Russell, 1980), different emotions are plotted along the dimensions of valence and arousal. In vocal emotion processing, it has been suggested that, rather than specific emotions, “speech acoustics provide an external cue to the level of non-specific arousal associated with emotional processes” (Bachorowski, 1999, p. 55). Consistent with this, patients with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disease of the basal ganglia, have been reported to show a general problem with prosody (Lloyd, 1999). Recent work has shown, however, that the Parkinson's patients remain sensitive to the intensity in emotional speech, even though they have deficits in recognizing the emotion conveyed, or in rating the valence of the emotional speech (Dara et al., 2007). This finding suggests that a single dimension in Russell's circumplex model, arousal, might be preserved while another (valence) could be selectively damaged. An alternative interpretation could be that quite simple properties of emotional speech, such as intensity, map onto the perceived emotional intensity – louder sounds are more aroused, across all emotion categories (Banse and Scherer, 1996). This interpretation might mean that it is easier to establish arousal than valence from a simple appraisal of the stimuli, in the presence of brain damage, allowing the patients to make accurate judgments of emotional intensity.

In a recent functional imaging study of nonverbal vocal expressions of emotion, we used fMRI to present people with nonverbal vocal expressions of two negative emotion categories (disgust and fear) and two positive emotion categories (amusement and triumph) (Warren et al., 2006b). These four emotional categories were chosen since they were all highly recognizable and also mapped clearly along the dimension of valence: the amusement and triumph sounds were rated as highly positive, and the fear and disgust sounds as highly negative (Sauter, 2006). We also included a condition in which participants were prompted to make orofacial movements, by instructing them to smile. This permitted an analysis of brain areas involved in both the perception of emotional vocalizations and the brain areas involved in orofacial movement. We also included a control condition of spectrally-rotated versions of the emotional stimuli, which we used to control for the brain response to low-level acoustic properties of the emotional sounds.

Comparing all the emotional categories with the acoustic control condition revealed activity in the left and right STS, the left insula and pSMA (Sauter, 2006). Comparing individual emotion categories with the control condition revealed activation in the bilateral anterior STS for every emotion. In addition to this, amusement showed activation in the inferior frontal gyrus, fear showed extensive activation of the bilateral anterior insula, and triumph showed left insula activation, pSMA and left and right premotor activation.

Further to the simple contrast of all the different emotion categories with the acoustic baseline described above, a contrast of brain areas that varied significantly across emotion conditions (relative to the acoustic control condition) was run, to identify any specific cortical responses to the kinds of emotional information in the sounds. This contrast identified significant patterns in activation across the superior and inferior temporal lobes, the precentral gyrus and prefrontal cortex, limbic and mesial temporal cortex, including the amygdala, hippocampus and basal ganglia. This contrast was used to mask a contrast of the areas which were activated by orofacial movement (smiling to command), revealing activation in the precentral gyrus, pSMA and insula, and in the temporal and occipital lobes, which was affected both by the emotional sounds subjects heard and when they (silently) smiled.

Within these areas co-activated by production and perception of emotional vocalizations, we identified regions that correlated with the valence and arousal ratings for the stimuli (shown in Fig. 3) which had been collected with a different set of subjects in a previous behavioral experiment. In terms of valence, the triumph sounds were rated most positive, followed by amusement, then fear and disgust (Sauter, 2006). The correlation with valence alone was seen in the right inferior frontal gyrus. In terms of arousal, the categories of triumph and fear were rated as the most aroused, followed by amusement and disgust, and this led to activation of the pSMA. This result provides evidence that emotional vocalizations of high arousal therefore engage a region involved in higher-order aspects of complex motor control, which may link to a specific preparation for responsive action.

The left and right precentral gyri were co-activated by increases in both valence and arousal. The precentral gyri are somatotopically organized, and the peaks of activation were greatest in the face motor area (Buccino et al., 2001; Carr et al., 2003; Leslie et al., 2004). The activation also extended into more ventral regions associated with motor control of the articulators (Murphy et al., 1997; Blank et al., 2002; Wilson et al., 2004). This activation extended into primary motor regions bilaterally, even though the subjects did not actually move their faces during the scanning session.

With the proviso that only four different emotional categories were tested, this finding is a striking demonstration that motor regions associated with producing facial expressions are activated by hearing emotional vocalizations, and that different regions within this system correlate with the arousal and valence of the stimuli. The perception of vocal expressions of positive or arousing emotions automatically engages preparation for responsive orofacial gestures. We tend to express emotions like cheering and laughing in groups, and laughter has been shown to be a very contagious behavior (Provine, 2000) – when we hear someone laughing, we are primed to join in, or at very least to smile. The finding of increased premotor cortex activation to the sounds of laughter (and cheering) would provide a mechanism for this link.

The finding that the dimensions of valence and arousal have specific neural bases within frontal areas associated with the perception of emotional vocalizations and the production of orofacial movements may provide evidence in support of the circumplex model of emotion (Russell, 1980). The circumplex model of emotion posits that different emotional states are processed and represented as points in an emotional space, along the dimensions of valence and arousal. The current data do not provide full support for this model, however, since no negative correlations were found. There were no increases in cortical activity with lower ratings of valence, despite the fact that both the fear and disgust stimuli were rated as highly negative in valence. Likewise, there were no increases in cortical activity with lower ratings of arousal. It seems highly unlikely that the unpleasantness of disgust and fear are encoded cortically simply as a lack of activation. Further work with a wider palate of emotional states may be the way to address this point and identify whether convincing correlations with more negative valence or decreased arousal can be determined, as would be predicted by dimensional accounts of emotion representations. Different imaging techniques will also facilitate the development of this work – e.g., Sauter and Eimer (in press) have shown that the timing of electrophysiological responses to nonverbal emotional vocalizations varies with the perceived arousal of the expressions.

15.7 A single-response circumplex-inspired emotion word questionnaire

By now it should be clear that emotion word questionnaires are popular, flexible, and easy to implement. They are also in evolution. The present section is dedicated to a questionnaire that is very different from those discussed until now. It uses emotion words, but rather than presenting these in a list, the arrangement of words is based on a circumplex model of core affect that spans the dimensions of pleasure and arousal (Fig. 15.6). Readers are referred to Jaeger, Roigard, et al. (2020) and Jaeger, Roigard, & Chheang (2021) for additional details, as well as Cardello and Jaeger (2016) who first presented this circumplex-inspired questionnaire.

Jaeger, Roigard, et al. (2020) performed a methodological characterization of the circumplex-inspired emotion questionnaire involving 23 studies (104–270 consumers per study) and a very broad range of F&B products and categories. Herein they demonstrated suitability for use with tasted stimuli, written stimuli and image stimuli. New Zealand and Chinese consumers took part in the studies, pointing to versatility of the questionnaire in multiple cultures. It was further reported that responses appeared to be repeatable, and based on the criterion of the RV coefficient being equal to or greater than 0.95 stability could be achieved with as low as 30 consumers despite only obtaining a single response per consumer per stimulus. Mirroring past research, and intuitively making sense, it was also reported that the degree of differences between stimuli in a study influenced discrimination, which was larger when stimuli were more different.

Overall, at this stage in the questionnaire’s stage of application and development there appears to be no reason to not regard it as a welcome addition to the existing collection of emotion word questionnaires for product emotion research. To support uptake, the questionnaire’s performance relative to existing approaches in emotion measurement needs to be understood, as does potential weaknesses. Lack of specificity and limited ability to in-depth profile stimuli are contenders in this regard. There is a need to determine goodness-of-fit to the underpinning circumplex model and possibly develop variants that improve hereupon if needed.

4 An Example: Organizational Diagnosis of Climate and Culture

As nonstructural coordination mechanisms, organizational culture and organizational climate play a special role in organizational psychology. Both culture and climate are theoretical constructs that possess observable correlatives but are not directly observable. Observable cultural correlates are the use of language (communication culture), work and production means (technological culture), goals and mission statements (progress culture), rituals (traditional culture), safety standards (safety culture), etc. As a fundamental part of the organizational identity, organizational culture forms the character of the organization and its members both by attracting and assimilating members and by excluding or selecting them.

Although knowledge on the cultural and climatic situation of an organization attains strategic importance, culture and climate as constructs are not easily accessible for OD. Additional complications arise because a variety of models and definition of culture and climate in organizations exist and because culture and climate are not unequivocally distinguishable. Culture and climate have in common the fact that they both refer to organizational characteristics that are based on communication and cooperation. However, whereas organizational culture refers to characteristics that are taken for granted, unquestioned, implicit, and customary (e.g., norms, symbols, and rituals), aspects of organizational climate are more consciously perceived, reflected, and judged in their connection with changing conditions.

For the diagnosis of organizational culture, standardized questionnaires assessing traits of organizations and organizational units (group and team) exist. According to Neuberger and Kompa, instruments for the diagnosis of organizational culture can be classified by method (quantitative vs qualitative) and by the relevant aspects of culture (sociocultural configuration vs latent factors). Consequently, four classes of instruments can be distinguished: interviews with key persons using, for example, questionnaires on leadership behavior (quantitative, sociocultural configuration); structured questionnaires assessing norms, values, etc. (quantitative, latent factors); structured questionnaires assessing stories, jokes, slogans, etc. on customs, rituals, and traditions in organizations (qualitative, sociocultural configuration); and spontaneous self-interpretations of meaning and function of cultural practices (qualitative, latent factors). This classification illustrates the different methodological approaches of OD for the example of organizational culture.

In 1990, Rousseau reviewed several quantitative measures for assessing organizational culture, including the Organizational Culture Inventory by Cooke and Lafferty, which is a widely used instrument.

The Organizational Culture Inventory assesses normative beliefs regarding the extent to which specific behaviors help members fit in and meet the expectations of the organization. Twelve cultural styles, each assessed by 10 self-report items using a 5-point Likert scale, are distinguished and arrayed in the underlying circumplex model by their orientation on task vs people and security vs satisfaction:

Cultural styles and sample items

Humanistic–helpful (e.g., helping others to grow and develop)

Affiliative (e.g., sharing feelings and thoughts)

Approval (e.g., “going along” with others)

Conventional (e.g., always following policies and practices)

Dependent (e.g., pleasing those in positions of authority)

Avoidance (e.g., waiting for others to act first)

Oppositional (e.g., pointing out flaws)

Power (e.g., motivating others any way necessary)

Competitive (e.g., turning the job into a contest)

Competence/perfectionistic (e.g., doing things perfectly)

Achievement (e.g., pursuing a standard of excellence)

Self-actualization (e.g., thinking in unique and independent ways)

The instrument has been applied in a variety of settings and cultural contexts. In a study of fund-raising organizations, it was shown that team-oriented cultural styles (achievement, self-expression, humanistic–helpful, and affiliative) were positively related to desirable attitudes (e.g., role clarity, satisfaction, and propensity to stay), whereas security-oriented beliefs (approval, conventional, dependent, avoidance, oppositional, power competitive, and perfectionistic) were negatively related to these attitudes and to organizational fund-raising success.

OD is not an end in itself, and this holds true for the diagnosis of culture and climate. The interest in reliable knowledge on culture and climate is reinforced by the expectation that a positive climate and culture support organizational goals, that their implications can be actively shaped, and that their benefits are significant. Attitudes, motivation, and values of organizational members are affected by culture and climate. For example, the relation of a positive communication culture and a climate of trust with high job satisfaction has been empirically confirmed.

What are the two dimensions of the Circumplex Model?

What is the Circumplex Model of family interaction?

What two features does the Circumplex Model of emotions have?

Which 2 dimensions are included in the Circumplex Model quizlet?