Naydonov M. The report of 28 International Congress of Psychology. August 8-13, 2004. Beijing, China

AN INFORMED CONSENT AS A CONVENTIONAL AND DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURE OF CONCLUSION AN AGREEMENT

Naydonov M.

The Institute of Reflective Investigation & Specialisation IRIS Kiev, Ukraine

CONTEXT

The practice of Informed consents application

Traditionally Informed consents are used in experimental psychology as a way of ethic arguments clinching, i.e. the purpose is to defend experiment participants’ honour and dignity. The given standard is postulated by statutes of many professional psychologists’ organisations.

Representatives of the group-reflection approach in Ukraine (Naydonov Ì., 1992-2004) having the same purpose, practice the Informed consent conclusion in a wider range of psychological tasks, namely, in doing consulting services within organisational and political psychology. The services are realised through projects.

The projects (Forms of work) in organisational psychology: consultations, trainings, recruiting arrangements, assessment-centres, system of complex actions. The most frequent form are different types of the training-practical work:

innovations;
providing a group, organisation or personality development;
the development or correction of group relationships;
contests or organisational competitions arrangement.

The projects (Forms of work) in political psychology are represented by the group-reflective technology of creating the dialogue between a candidate and a voter, as well as a mediated dialogue (mass media, a party). In political technology the Informed consents are the key part of the work.

The Informed consents are a sufficient instrument with the help of which the parts are informed about their rights and obligations within the limits of impending events, as well as about the rules of a forthcoming interaction. The peculiarities of the projects determine slight distinctions in the IC form, which were earlier showed by the group-reflection trend representatives.

The IC has been used for 7 years. During this period 5 thousand of IC have been concluded. There have been discovered additional capabilities of the IC procedure, the presentation of which this report is devoted to. We offer to your attention two investigated aspects: a conventional and a diagnostic ones.

THE PROBLEM

Interdependence and mutual conditionality of cognitive and agreement making aspects of the thinking in interpersonal interaction

Both individuals’ behaviour during the experiment and a practice of the IC application show that conclusion of an agreement is a psychologically difficult process in which two aspects - the cognitive one (comprehension of the interaction situation) and the agreement making (conventional) aspect of the positions correlation and an agreement formation - are interdependent and correlated. Persons not simply form an agreement using different ways of acting, but they also often consciously or unconsciously mask the cognitive and agreement making aspects in one another.

What are the exact psychological mechanisms to provide a behaviour type within the cognitive and conventional vectors during a cooperation process? Is it possible to use the situation of IC conclusion not only as a conventional one, but also as a diagnostic procedure?

THE CONCEPTION

The comparative modelling of the consent conclusion process in terms of a laboratory experiment and of the reflective training-practical work as a basis of the IC diagnostic potential

A phenomenon of the cognitive and agreement making correlation is considered as a part of a creative mechanism in the process of comprehension of tasks solution (i.e. the short creative tasks – SC-tasks similar to those Dunker used) and as a practice of "Informed consents" – in the context of a psychological service.

While solving SC-tasks by a group under consideration the agreement-task is not an independent isolated task or a subtask. Participants and an experimenter are identified into a team rather than into opposite parts of a consent. When the IC is concluded a subject of a consent itself is fixed by parts and accordingly it presupposes the negotiations, even if being carried out in a very condensed form.

The IC as a conventional instrument. In organisational psychology the IC signing - the process of achievement of the agreement between all the participants of an impending event concerning principles, values, roles, rules of interaction – is suggested as a form of the participant-and-executor’s mutual concordance regardless of leader's (top manager's) resolution to consume this executor’s psychological service. A consent conclusion gives an event general value limitations which hold the uncertainty of tasks and participants’ modelling interests. These limitations allow to control the uncertainty in order to have a pre-concerted result. In political psychology the IC signing lays down a voter’s and a candidate’s additional rules and obligations as a privilege of a voter’s political choice.

The IC as a diagnostic instrument. A theoretical potentiality of the group-reflective approach allowed to enlarge the IC conventional capabilities in the diagnostic area. There are two diagnostic levels: a situational one and a perspective one. The requirements for the IC as a diagnostic instrument were formulated basing on the modelling of clients’ practical problems. To finish the instrument a methodology of diagnostics of the reflective creative mechanism was used. It is based on the "categories and norms" analysis of informational and semantic aspects of thinking in a group. The baseline for further modelling was the analogue using: a discovery and a proving of the analogy between psychological (group-reflective) processes involved in solving an objective SC-TASK by a triad searching for a coherent answer, and in solving a practical task by a team (a group of colleagues) in a reflective situation specially arranged by the trainer. The analogies helping to consider the two situations as reciprocal models are the ground of a possibility to transfer the obtained qualitative data.

The next analogies were proved: Having compared the process of the experimenter-and-group under consideration (the solver) interaction and the one of the psychologist (the trainer)-and-participant interaction we discovered the following correspondences:

Experimenter — group under consideration	Trainer (a consultant) — client (a corporate client)
The fact of agreement in the investigation. The oral or written IC	The fact of purchasing the service by a corporate client. A Conclusion of the IC with each participant
Independent variable
A instruction and a SC-TASK text, an impulse for the thought process development	A text of a consent and an application text of rules for it, an order of the participation
Regulated parts’ interaction
The collision of probationers’ opinions and interests with an experimenter’s knowledge of a correct answer is carried out silently. The probationers are not informed of the answer, they are only given a feedback of their own variant	The collision of agreement and disagreement as participants' positions is similar to the purchase and sale process, where a seller’s task is to waive all customer’s objections
The frequency of time distribution in the cases
Solving for 2-3 to 60 minutes	Co-ordination for 2-3 to 60 minutes
Diagnostics
of the creative potential based on the scattering of a speech repertory comparatively with the independent variable, which is the SC-TASK text, under the impact of intellectual, personal and interpersonal stereotypes. The main way of assessment is finding the place of an answer obtained by an individual in the line of standard answer types comparatively with the correct solution.	of consent solutions based on the scattering of a speech repertory comparatively with the independent variable, which is a text of a consent and an application of rules for it. The instrument is a standardised matrix

Method

A general diagnostic outline for both experimental and practical conditions is the revealing of stereotypes and of the reflective potential of participants' speech repertory of a agreement making. The basis for an assessment of the reflective potential of a speech repertory is a categories and norms standard.

A Categories and norms analysis of SC-TASK objective contents

The task (problem) in terms of mathematics is defined as a purpose given in particular terms. This purpose must be achieved through the transformation of these terms in accordance with a certain procedure. There are requirements (the purpose), known (the terms) and unknown. A SC-task contains a potential of intentional provoking for solvers' inaccurate ways and actions in the contents. The basis of forming the criteria for the assessment of SC-task solving is the categories and norms analysis of objective contents and latently possible ways of its operational transformation.

The procedures of the categories and norms analysis allow to extract various answer types for a question contained in creative tasks similar to Dunker’s ones. Only in the case when an individual finds a correct answer, his/her intellectual search is evaluated as successful. All the other answers show that the obtained solution is not successful.

The nomenclature of question types for the comprehension tasks helps to assess probationers’ successful or unsuccessful realisation of solution process according to the standard, as well as to identify an degree of their intellectual advance. The degree of the advance is found through the identification of the place of an answer obtained by an individual in the line of standard answer types comparatively with the correct solution. They are:

superficial, - a reproduction of the most evident stereotype;
trivial, - a reproduction of certain contradiction to the initial stereotype (the stereotype – on the contrary, which is also a stereotype);
remote, - an attempt to avoid the solution by means of an inadequate way out of the situation;
efficient, - an adequate way out of the stereotype, but with an inadequate heuristics;
partial, - an adequate but not a full comprehension of a situation with an ineffective result;
near, – an adequate comprehension of a situation but with an inadequate realisation, mistakes in the realisation lead to incompleteness of an answer;
correct, - adequately comprehended and accurate.

The range of answer variants is correlated with the reproducible stereotypes as inadequate experiences.

The standard of convention-task (agreement making) within a SC-task

When the solution of an SC-TASK in a group under consideration is carried out a conventional task is not an individual, isolated task or a subtask. In this case participants and an experimenter are identified into a team rather than into opposite parts of a consent. At the same time, the behaviour variations are predetermined by the heterogeneity of the cognition and the concordance by means of a predetermined instruction: (we already considered a similar phenomenon when spoke about the co-operation strategies).

The inquiry for a consent as a right for the “try-and-mistake” strategy. The conformation of a consent as a right for this strategy.

The inquiry for a consent as a right for the “try-and-mistake” strategy. The un-confirmation of a consent of the right for try-and-mistake as a social desirability of a precaution and a theoretical nature.

A consent as an incapacity to find another’s logic in a passive mode (the skill of dis-identification of a position, a role, interests).

The un-conformation of a consent of the right for try-and-mistake as an expression of the right for a competitive accurate solution.

The conformation or un-conformation in the form of comprehension – as a spontaneous way of: a concession, a turn, a revenge, a vengeance.

The conformation or un-conformation in the form of comprehension – as an intention: I don’t understand, hence for the ensuring of my understanding the needed time and resources are provided.

A consent as an capacity to find another’s logic in a passive mode (the skill of the dis-identification of a position, a role, interests). A consent as a capacity to imbed one’s own objective logic in another’s interest, language.

The analysis of the project participants’ behaviour stereotypes and strategies at the stage of a consent conclusion, as well as in further situations of observation the rules and values in the training and practical work, allowed to generalise the correlation and the interference of cognitive and agreement making aspects by means of dividing the stereotypes of agreement making into three groups.

The standardised matrix of the behaviour while the convention-task (IC) solving

A CONVENTION-DIRTY TRICK	A CONVENTION-WELLFARE	A CONVENTION-FICTION
You will lose more than you will obtain if you “commonly” enter the game. The common is created by those persons who intend to redistribute their common into their own.	Everyone can always arrange everything, one should only be able to!	Everybody can lose the ground of a temptation! Be the first to be tempted, this is a way out!
Never sign anything, there’ll be a trouble.	Better bad rules than a free-play game.	Conclude quickly, nobody will observe and hence I won’t. There is no need to waist the time on the negotiations.
Never sign anything without a solicitor.	It is better to come to a gradual understanding step-by-step, than to show your weak point entering the negotiations at once.	The later you start observing, the less commitments are fulfil.
If I let slip… If I am not more cunning …	If everyone is honest and correct in the negotiations...	If you won’t resist an intrigue..
Discredit everything louder and stronger, you will have less to do.	Providing the quality of the negotiations with our country is providing the satisfaction with the final treaty.	If we won’t gather together “in one fist” openly

The directions of personal self-determinations in interpersonal interaction determining the mutual conditionality of cognitive and agreement making aspects.

		Advantage
		Intellect as an advantage	C O M P R E H E N T I O N	Showing the stupidity as an advantage
					Openness
Submission – yes. Negotiations – no. Negotiations – yes. Concordance – no.	CONCOR				DANCE	Equivalence of arguments — equal rights Advantage of my arguments – submission to me Advantage of his arguments — submission to him
		Masking a concession by showing off the intelligence		Masking a stupidity through a concession
					Responsibility

		Concession

A general characteristic of a diagnostic instrument

A text of a consent as a functionally justified conventional instrument.
For the congruous profession-grams;

For the attachment through the context.

A controlled level of a text difficulty as a way of differentiation (consistent to the functional one), having a potential of a dialogue.
Standardised directions of observations: the time, types of solutions of consent tasks (the candidates in the status of "rules mover" are especially controlled).
The choice of conventional menu as an additional differentiation and an instrument of a compromise.
Particular conditions as open data.

Conclusion:

Due to the heterogeneity of correlated cognitive and agreement making aspects in the ordinary awareness a wide range of the group or personality capabilities has been discovered by bringing the reflective schema in the awareness.
The use of IC for the complex purposes (a conventional and a diagnostic ones) is efficient:

The conventional – as a reservation of parts’ rights and dignities, as well as “the independent variable";
The diagnostic – on account of the discovered standardised cycle, which is the basis of the comprehension, and hence, it is a sufficient capability of a group, personal intervention of development.

A generalised experience of comparative observations of a consent conclusion and its further validity let us use the IC instrument as a diagnostic procedure in doing psychological services.
It is important to have a supraliminal strategy of a service doing which includes into the negotiations procedure the provoking element of difficult sides of a convention in order to make the realisation of a choice of the service deeper.