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THE DOUBLE BIND: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF RESPONSES TO INCONSISTENT COMMUNICATIONS *
Author(s) -
Roy Leena,
Sawyers Janet K.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of marital and family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.868
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1752-0606
pISSN - 0194-472X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0606.1986.tb00672.x
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , psychology , consistency (knowledge bases) , empirical research , cognition , developmental psychology , empirical evidence , clinical psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , computer science , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence , biology
An empirical study of communications in a mother‐child context was conducted. Cognitive, emotional, and metacommunicational responses to “subtle inconsistencies” and consistencies in communication in this context were studied. Subtle inconsistency was found to be more stressful, complex, and evocative of responses showing a lack of metacommunication than consistency, by both clinical and non‐clinical adolescents. Finer differences were also found between clinical and non‐clinical adolescents' emotional and metacommunicational responses to subtle inconsistency. The findings provide empirical support for the double bind hypothesis.