Hanging out
A social chemosignaling function for human handshaking
Idan Frumin et al.
eLife, March 2015
Abstract:
Social chemosignaling is a part of human behavior, but how chemosignals transfer from one individual to another is unknown. In turn, humans greet each other with handshakes, but the functional antecedents of this behavior remain unclear. To ask whether handshakes are used to sample conspecific social chemosignals, we covertly filmed 271 subjects within a structured greeting event either with or without a handshake. We found that humans often sniff their own hands, and selectively increase this behavior after handshake. After handshakes within gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own right shaking hand by more than 100%. In contrast, after handshakes across gender, subjects increased sniffing of their own left non-shaking hand by more than 100%. Tainting participants with unnoticed odors significantly altered the effects, thus verifying their olfactory nature. Thus, handshaking may functionally serve active yet subliminal social chemosignaling, which likely plays a large role in ongoing human behavior.
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Tamas David-Barrett et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2015
Abstract:
The ability to create lasting, trust-based friendships makes it possible for humans to form large and coherent groups. The recent literature on the evolution of sociality and on the network dynamics of human societies suggests that large human groups have a layered structure generated by emotionally supported social relationships. There are also gender differences in adult social style which may involve different trade-offs between the quantity and quality of friendships. Although many have suggested that females tend to focus on intimate relations with a few other females, while males build larger, more hierarchical coalitions, the existence of such gender differences is disputed and data from adults is scarce. Here, we present cross-cultural evidence for gender differences in the preference for close friendships. We use a sample of ~112,000 profile pictures from nine world regions posted on a popular social networking site to show that, in self-selected displays of social relationships, women favour dyadic relations, whereas men favour larger, all-male cliques. These apparently different solutions to quality-quantity trade-offs suggest a universal and fundamental difference in the function of close friendships for the two sexes.
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Laughter's Influence on the Intimacy of Self-Disclosure
Alan Gray, Brian Parkinson & Robin Dunbar
Human Nature, forthcoming
Abstract:
If laughter functions to build relationships between individuals, as current theory suggests, laughter should be linked to interpersonal behaviors that have been shown to be critical to relationship development. Given the importance of disclosing behaviors in facilitating the development of intense social bonds, it is possible that the act of laughing may temporarily influence the laugher's willingness to disclose personal information. We tested this hypothesis experimentally by comparing the characteristics of self-disclosing statements produced by those who had previously watched one of three video clips that differed in the extent to which they elicited laughter and positive affect. The results show that disclosure intimacy is significantly higher after laughter than in the control condition, suggesting that this effect may be due, at least in part, to laughter itself and not simply to a change in positive affect. However, the disclosure intimacy effect was only found for observers' ratings of participants' disclosures and was absent in the participants' own ratings. We suggest that laughter increases people's willingness to disclose, but that they may not necessarily be aware that it is doing so.
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Sibling composition, executive function, and children's thinking about mental diversity
Katie Kennedy, Kristin Hansen Lagattuta & Liat Sayfan
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, April 2015, Pages 121-139
Abstract:
Prior investigations of relations between sibling composition and theory of mind have focused almost exclusively on false belief understanding in children 6 years of age and younger. The current work expands previous research by examining whether sibling composition predicts 4- to 11-year-olds' (N = 192) more advanced mental state reasoning on interpretive theory of mind tasks. Even when controlling for age and executive function, children with a greater number of older siblings or with more same-sex siblings demonstrated stronger knowledge in both their predictions and explanations that people with different past experiences can have diverse interpretations of ambiguous stimuli. These data provide some of the first documentation of sibling constellations that predict individual differences in theory of mind during middle childhood.
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Fostering diverse friendships: The role of beliefs about the value of diversity
Angela Bahns, Lauren Springer & Carla The
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Encouraging dialogue between people of differing social backgrounds and beliefs can reduce prejudice and lead to greater appreciation of diversity, which in turn fosters attitudinally diverse friendships. We investigated how beliefs about the value of diversity relate to attitudinal diversity within relationship dyads. In a field study of naturally occurring relationship pairs in two neighborhoods of Boston (N = 89 dyads), participants completed measures of diversity beliefs and sociopolitical attitudes. People placed higher value on diversity in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood compared to people in the North End neighborhood, and relationship pairs were more attitudinally diverse in Jamaica Plain than in the North End. Attitudinal diversity within pairs was predicted by how highly the pair jointly valued diversity. Further, pairs' greater valuing of diversity in Jamaica Plain mediated the effect of neighborhood on attitude diversity. These findings suggest that individual differences in appreciation for diversity are meaningful predictors of diverse relationships.
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Affiliation-seeking among the powerless: Lacking power increases social affiliative motivation
Charleen Case, Kyle Conlon & Jon Maner
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although it is well known that many people possess fundamental desires for both social affiliation and power, research has only begun to investigate the interplay between these two core social motives. The current research tested the hypothesis that an individual's level of power would influence that person's level of social affiliative motivation. We predicted that, compared with participants in a control condition, (1) individuals who possess power would exhibit less social affiliative motivation; and (2) individuals who lack power would display greater social affiliative motivation. Although we found little evidence to support the former prediction, we observed consistent evidence across two experiments that supported the latter. In Experiment 1, priming participants with low power (versus control) led them to display greater interest in joining a campus service aimed at fostering new friendships among students. In Experiment 2, placing participants in a position of low power (versus control) led them to seek greater proximity to a partner. Together, these results suggest that lacking power motivates people to seek social affiliation.
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Desiring to connect to nature: The effect of ostracism on ecological behavior
Kai-Tak Poon et al.
Journal of Environmental Psychology, June 2015, Pages 116-122
Abstract:
Three experiments tested whether ostracism increases ecological behaviors through increased desires to connect to nature. Compared with non-ostracized participants, ostracized participants reported higher desires to connect to nature (Experiments 1 and 3) and were more willing to behave ecologically (Experiments 2 and 3). Furthermore, increased desires to connect to nature mediated the effect of ostracism on ecological inclinations (Experiment 3). Together, these findings suggest that people try to cope with the pain of ostracism by connecting to the natural environment and behaving ecologically. They also highlight the significance of desires for nature connectedness in explaining why ostracism increases ecological behavior. Implications are discussed.
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Cheryl Carmichael, Harry Reis & Paul Duberstein
Psychology and Aging, March 2015, Pages 95-105
Abstract:
Social connection, a leading factor in the promotion of health, well-being, and longevity, requires social knowledge and the capacity to cultivate intimacy. Life span development theorists have speculated that social information-seeking goals, emphasized at the beginning of early adulthood, give way to emotional closeness goals in later stages of early adulthood. Drawing on developmental theory (Baltes & Carstensen, 2003; Baltes, 1997), this 30-year prospective study assessed social activity at age 20 and age 30 with experience sampling methods, and psychosocial outcomes (social integration, friendship quality, loneliness, depression, and psychological well-being) at age 50. Results supported the hypothesis that the quantity (but not the quality) of social interactions at age 20, and the quality (but not the quantity) of social interactions at age 30 predict midlife psychosocial outcomes. Longitudinal structural models revealed that age-20 interaction quantity had a direct, unmediated effect on age-50 social and psychological outcomes. The effects of age-20 interaction quality on midlife outcomes, on the other hand, were mediated by age-30 interaction quality. Our findings are consistent with the idea that selection and optimization serve important functions in early adulthood, and that engaging in developmentally appropriate social activity contributes to psychosocial adjustment in the decades that follow.
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Growing to Trust: Evidence That Trust Increases and Sustains Well-Being Across the Life Span
Michael Poulin & Claudia Haase
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across the globe, populations are aging, which presents an unprecedented challenge to individual and societal well-being. We seek to (a) replicate and extend previous work on age-related differences in interpersonal trust and (b) examine associations between trust and well-being across the adult life span. Study 1, a cross-sectional study of 197,888 individuals (aged 14-99) from 83 countries assessed between 1981 and 2007, showed that (a) older versus younger adults showed higher interpersonal trust and (b) higher trust predicted higher well-being, especially for older adults. Study 2, a nationally representative three-wave cohort-sequential longitudinal study (spanning 4 years) of 1,230 individuals in the United States (aged 18-89), showed that (a) interpersonal trust increased longitudinally across age groups and (b) higher trust predicted increases in well-being longitudinally and vice versa. These findings suggest that interpersonal trust may be an important resource for successful development across the life span.
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Peers and Network Growth: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Sharique Hasan & Surendrakumar Bagde
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Much research suggests that social networks affect individual and organizational success. However, a strong assumption underlying this research is that network structure is not reducible to the individual attributes of social actors. In this article, we test this assumption by examining whether interacting with random peers causes exogenous growth of a person's network. Using three years of network data for students at an Indian college, we evaluate the effect of peers on network growth. We find strong evidence that interacting with random, but well-connected, roommates causes significant growth of a focal student's network. Further, we find that this growth also implies an increase in how close an actor moves to a network's center and whether that actor is likely to serve as a network bridge. Fundamentally, our results demonstrate that exogenous factors beyond individual agency - i.e., random peers - can shape network structure. Our results also provide a useful model for causally identifying the determinants of network structure and dynamics.
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Inflammation impairs social cognitive processing: A randomized controlled trial of endotoxin
Mona Moieni et al.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., autism, schizophrenia) are partially characterized by social cognitive deficits, including impairments in the ability to perceive others' emotional states, which is an aspect of social cognition known as theory of mind (ToM). There is also evidence that inflammation may be implicated in the etiology of these disorders, but experimental data linking inflammation to deficits in social cognition is sparse. Thus, we examined whether exposure to an experimental inflammatory challenge led to changes in ToM. One hundred and fifteen (n=115) healthy participants were randomly assigned to receive either endotoxin, which is an inflammatory challenge, or placebo. Participants completed a social cognition task, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, at baseline and at the peak of inflammatory response for the endotoxin group. The RME test, a validated measure of ToM, evaluates how accurately participants can identify the emotional state of another person by looking only at their eyes. We found that endotoxin (vs. placebo) led to decreases in performance on the RME test from baseline to the peak of inflammatory response, indicating that acute inflammation can lead to decreases in the ability to accurately and reliably comprehend emotional information from others. Given that deficits in ToM are implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders, including those which may have an inflammatory basis, these results may have implications for understanding the links between inflammation, social cognition, and neuropsychiatric disorders.
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The oxytocin receptor gene and social perception
Martin Melchers et al.
Social Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social perception is an important prerequisite for successful social interaction, because it helps to gain information about behaviors, thoughts, and feelings of interaction partners. Previous pharmacological studies have emphasized the relevance of the oxytocin system for social perception abilities, while knowledge on genetic contributions is still scarce. In the endeavor to fill this gap in the literature, the current study searches for associations between participants' social perception abilities as measured by the interpersonal perception task (IPT) and the rs2268498 polymorphism on the OXTR-gene, which has repeatedly been linked to processes relevant to social functioning. N = 105 healthy participants were experimentally tested with the IPT and genotyped for the rs2268498 polymorphism. T-allele carriers (TT and TC genotypes) exhibited significantly better performance in the IPT than carriers of the CC-genotype. This difference was also significant for the subscales measuring the strength of social bonding (kinship and intimacy). As in previous studies, T-allele carriers exhibited better performance in measures of social processing indicating that the rs2268498 polymorphism is an important candidate for understanding the genetic basis of social functioning.
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Feeling Depleted and Powerless: The Construal-Level Mechanism
Junha Kim, Sujin Lee & Tuvana Rua
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, April 2015, Pages 599-609
Abstract:
Individuals exercise self-control daily to achieve desired goals; at the same time, people engage in social interaction daily and influence (feel powerful) or are influenced (feel powerless) by others. Does controlling the self have an unforeseen consequence for people's perception of their capacity to control others? Five studies - one correlational and four experimental - demonstrate that ego depletion from prior self-control determines one's personal sense of power; low-level, concrete mental construals account for this relationship. Our results showed that people with higher trait self-control reported a greater sense of power (Study 1). People who had depleted their self-control-related regulatory resources (vs. those who had not) experienced a lower sense of power (Study 2). The relationship between ego depletion and low sense of power was mediated by construal level (Study 3) and observed only when low-level, concrete construals were present, but not under high-level, abstract construals (Studies 4 and 5).