Besties
Not so lonely at the top: The relationship between power and loneliness
Adam Waytz et al.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, September 2015, Pages 69–78
Abstract:
Eight studies found a robust negative relationship between the experience of power and the experience of loneliness. Dispositional power and loneliness were negatively correlated (Study 1). Experimental inductions established causality: we manipulated high versus low power through autobiographical essays, assignment to positions, or control over resources, and found that each manipulation showed that high versus low power decreased loneliness (Studies 2a–2c). We also demonstrated both that low power can increase loneliness and that high power can decrease loneliness by comparing these conditions to a baseline condition (Studies 3–4, 6). Furthermore, we establish a key mechanism that explains this effect, demonstrating that the need to belong mediates the effect of power on loneliness (Studies 5–6). These findings help explain some effects of power on social cognition, offer insights into organizational well-being and motivation, and speak to the fundamental question of whether it is “lonely at the top” or lonelier at the bottom.
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Differences in Expressivity Based on Attractiveness: Target or Perceiver Effects?
Jennifer Rennels & Andrea Kayl
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2015, Pages 163–172
Abstract:
A significant association exists between adults’ expressivity and facial attractiveness, but it is unclear whether the association is linear or significant only at the extremes of attractiveness. It is also unclear whether attractive persons actually display more positive expressivity than unattractive persons (target effects) or whether high and low attractiveness influences expressivity valence judgments (perceiver effects). Experiment 1 demonstrated adult ratings of attractiveness were predictive of expressivity valence only for high and low attractive females and medium attractive males. Experiment 2 showed that low attractive females actually display more negative expressivity than medium and high attractive females, but there were no target effects for males. Also, attractiveness influenced expressivity valence judgments (perceiver effects) for both females and males. Our findings demonstrate that low attractive females are at a particular disadvantage during social interactions due to their low attractiveness, actual displays of negative expressivity, and perceptions of their negative expressivity.
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Contagious yawning and psychopathy
Brian Rundle, Vanessa Vaughn & Matthew Stanford
Personality and Individual Differences, November 2015, Pages 33–37
Abstract:
Psychopathy is characterized by a general antisocial lifestyle with behaviors including being selfish, manipulative, impulsive, fearless, callous, possibly domineering, and particularly lacking in empathy. Contagious yawning in our species has been strongly linked to empathy. We exposed 135 students, male and female, who completed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), to a yawning paradigm intended to induce a reactionary yawn. Further, we exposed males to an emotion-related startle paradigm meant to assess peripheral amygdalar reactivity. We found that scores on the PPI-R subscale Coldheartedness significantly predicted a reduced chance of yawning. Further, we found that emotion-related startle amplitudes were predictive of frequency of contagious yawning. These data suggest that psychopathic traits may be related to the empathic nature of contagious yawning in our species.
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Tsachi Ein-Dor et al.
Frontiers in Psychology, April 2015
Objective: The human brain adjusts its level of effort in coping with various life stressors as a partial function of perceived access to social resources. We examined whether people who avoid social ties maintain a higher fasting basal level of glucose in their bloodstream and consume more sugar-rich food, reflecting strategies to draw more on personal resources when threatened.
Methods: In Study 1 (N = 60), we obtained fasting blood glucose and adult attachment orientations data. In Study 2 (N = 285), we collected measures of fasting blood glucose and adult attachment orientations from older adults of mixed gender, using a measure of attachment style different from Study 1. In Study 3 (N = 108), we examined the link between trait-like attachment avoidance, manipulation of an asocial state, and consumption of sugar-rich food. In Study 4 (N = 115), we examined whether manipulating the social network will moderate the effect of attachment avoidance on consumption of sugar-rich food.
Results: In Study 1, fasting blood glucose levels corresponded with higher attachment avoidance scores after statistically adjusting for time of assessment and interpersonal anxiety. For Study 2, fasting blood glucose continued to correspond with higher adult attachment avoidance even after statistically adjusting for interpersonal anxiety, stress indices, age, gender, social support and body mass. In Study 3, people high in attachment avoidance consume more sugar-rich food, especially when reminded of asocial tendencies. Study 4 indicated that after facing a stressful task in the presence of others, avoidant people gather more sugar-rich food than more socially oriented people.
Conclusion: Results are consistent with the suggestion that socially avoidant individuals upwardly adjust their basal glucose levels and consume more glucose-rich food with the expectation of increased personal effort because of limited access to social resources. Further investigation of this link is warranted.
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Face-trait inferences show robust child-adult agreement: Evidence from three types of faces
E.J. Cogsdill & M.R. Banaji
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2015, Pages 150–156
Abstract:
Humans rapidly and automatically use facial appearance to attribute personality traits (“trustworthy,” “competent”). To what extent is this face-to-trait attribution learned gradually across development versus early in childhood? Here, we demonstrate that child-adult concordance occurs even when faces should minimize agreement: natural (not computer-generated) adult faces; less developed children’s faces; and perceptually unfamiliar monkey faces. In Study 1, 3- to 12-year-olds and adults selected “nice/mean” faces among pairs with a priori “nice-mean” ratings. Significant cross-age consensus emerged for all three face types. Study 2 replicated this result using an improved procedure in which 44–48 faces appeared in randomized pairs. This converging evidence supports the idea that complex forms of social cognition – allowing perceivers to believe they can derive personality from faces – emerge early in childhood, a finding that calls for new procedures to detect this central facet of cognition earlier in life.
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Feeling High but Playing Low: Power, Need to Belong, and Submissive Behavior
Kimberly Rios, Nathanael Fast & Deborah Gruenfeld
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research has demonstrated a causal relationship between power and dominant behavior, motivated in part by the desire to maintain the social distinctiveness created by one’s position of power. In this article, we test the novel idea that some individuals respond to high-power roles by displaying not dominance but instead submissiveness. We theorize that high-power individuals who are also high in the need to belong experience the social distinctiveness associated with power as threatening, rather than as an arrangement to protect and maintain. We predict that such individuals will counter their feelings of threat with submissive behaviors to downplay their power and thereby reduce their distinctiveness. We found support for this hypothesis across three studies using different operationalizations of power, need to belong, and submissiveness. Furthermore, Study 3 illustrated the mediating role of fear of (positive) attention in the relationship between power, need to belong, and submissive behavior.
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Erin Vogel et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, November 2015, Pages 249–256
Abstract:
People vary in their tendencies to compare themselves to others, an individual difference variable called social comparison orientation (SCO). Social networking sites provide information about others that can be used for social comparison. The goal of the present set of studies was to explore the relationship between SCO, Facebook use, and negative psychological outcomes. Studies 1a and 1b used correlational approaches and showed that participants high (vs. low) in SCO exhibited heavier Facebook use. Study 2 used an experimental approach and revealed that participants high in SCO had poorer self-perceptions, lower self-esteem, and more negative affect balance than their low-SCO counterparts after engaging in brief social comparisons on Facebook. SCO did not have as strong or consistent effects for participants engaging in control tasks. Results are discussed in the context of extant literature and the impact of social media use on well-being.
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Ashwin Rambaran et al.
Social Networks, October 2015, Pages 162–176
Abstract:
We examined the interplay between friendship (best friend) and antipathy (dislike) relationships among adolescents (N = 480; 11–14 years) in two US middle schools over three years (grades 6, 7, and 8). Using longitudinal multivariate network analysis (RSiena), the effects of friendships on antipathies and vice versa were tested, while structural network effects (e.g., density, reciprocity, and transitivity) and individual (age, gender, and ethnicity) and behavioral (prosocial and antisocial behavior) dispositions were controlled for. Based on (structural) balance theory, it was expected that friendships would be formed or maintained when two adolescents disliked the same person (shared enemy hypothesis), that friends would tend to agree on whom they disliked (friends’ agreement hypothesis), that adolescents would tend to dislike the friends of those they disliked (reinforced animosity hypothesis), and, finally, that they would become or stay friends with dislikes of dislikes (enemy's enemy hypothesis). Support was found for the first three hypotheses, and partially for the fourth hypothesis. Results are discussed in light of adolescents’ peer relationships.
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I need you closer to me: Effects of affiliation goals on perceptions of interpersonal distance
Mariëlle Stel & Guido van Koningsbruggen
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People's perceptions are often distorted in a way that aligns with their desires and goals. We argue that having a goal to affiliate changes the perception of interpersonal distance in a way that may help to fulfil this affiliation goal. As other people are goal-relevant when having an affiliation goal, we expected that people with affiliation goals would estimate the distance between themselves and another person as smaller than people with no affiliation goals. In two studies, we manipulated affiliation goals by priming participants with affiliation or control words. Our main dependent variable was the estimated interpersonal distance between themselves and the experimenter. Results showed that participants primed with affiliation estimated the interpersonal distance as smaller compared with participants primed with control words. We did not obtain reliable differences between the affiliation and control conditions on other distance and height estimations. Our results suggest that having or not having affiliation goals influences people's perception of the distance between them and other people.
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Jennifer Bartz et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Oxytocin promotes prosocial behavior, especially in those individuals who are low in affiliation (e.g., avoidantly attached individuals), but can exacerbate interpersonal insecurities in those preoccupied with closeness (e.g., anxiously attached individuals). One explanation for these opposing observations is that oxytocin induces a communal, other-orientation. Becoming more other oriented should help those people who focus on the self to the exclusion of others, but could be detrimental to those who are other focused but have little sense of an agentic self. Using a within-subjects design, we administered intranasal oxytocin and placebo to 40 males and measured their agency (self-orientation) and communion (other-orientation). Oxytocin produced a slight increase in communion for the average participant; however, as predicted, avoidantly attached individuals were especially likely to perceive themselves as more communal (“kind,” “warm,” “gentle,” etc.) after receiving oxytocin than after receiving the placebo. There was no main effect of oxytocin on agency for the average participant; however, anxiously attached individuals showed a selective decrease in agency (“independent,” “self-confident,” etc.) following administration of oxytocin. These data help explain the complex social effects of oxytocin.