Pals
Does implied community size predict likeability of a similar stranger?
Jacques Launay & Robin Dunbar
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Homophily, the tendency for people to cluster with similar others, has primarily been studied in terms of proximal, psychological causes, such as a tendency to have positive associations with people who share traits with us. Here we investigate whether homophily could be correlated with perceived group membership, given that sharing traits with other people might signify membership of a specific community. In order to investigate this, we tested whether the amount of homophily that occurs between strangers is dependent on the number of people they believe share the common trait (i.e. the size of group that the trait identifies). In two experiments, we show that more exclusive (smaller) groups evoke more positive ratings of the likeability of a stranger. When groups appear to be too inclusive (i.e. large) homophily no longer occurs, suggesting that it is not only positive associations with a trait that cause homophily, but a sense of the exclusiveness of a group is also important. These results suggest that group membership based on a variety of traits can encourage cohesion between people from diverse backgrounds, and may be a useful tool in overcoming differences between groups.
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Impact of Money on Emotional Expression
Yuwei Jiang, Zhansheng Chen & Robert Wyer
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2014, Pages 228–233
Abstract:
Activating the concept of money can influence people’s own expressions of emotion as well as their reactions to the emotional expressions of others. Thinking about money increases individuals’ disposition to perceive themselves in a business-like relationship with others in which transactions are based on objective criteria and the expression of emotion is considered inappropriate. Therefore, these individuals express less emotion in public and expect others to do likewise. Six experiments show that subtle reminders of money lead people to have more negative attitudes toward expressing emotions in public and to avoid expressing emotion in their written communications. In addition, money-primed participants judge others’ emotions to be more extreme and are disposed to avoid interacting with persons who display these emotions, especially when participants believe that these emotions are expressed in public.
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Multidimensional homophily in friendship networks
Per Block & Thomas Grund
Network Science, August 2014, Pages 189-212
Abstract:
Homophily — the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others — is one of the most persistent findings in social network analysis. Its importance is established along the lines of a multitude of sociologically relevant dimensions, e.g. sex, ethnicity and social class. Existing research, however, mostly focuses on one dimension at a time. But people are inherently multidimensional, have many attributes and are members of multiple groups. In this article, we explore such multidimensionality further in the context of network dynamics. Are friendship ties increasingly likely to emerge and persist when individuals have an increasing number of attributes in common? We analyze eleven friendship networks of adolescents, draw on stochastic actor-oriented network models and focus on the interaction of established homophily effects. Our results indicate that main effects for homophily on various dimensions are positive. At the same time, the interaction of these homophily effects is negative. There seems to be a diminishing effect for having more than one attribute in common. We conclude that studies of homophily and friendship formation need to address such multidimensionality further.
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What's the Value of Social Capital? A Within-Person Job Offer and Choice Test
Jason Greenberg & Roberto M. Fernandez
MIT Working Paper, July 2014
Abstract:
Whether and how social capital derived through social ties creates value has animated substantial research in sociology, economics, and political science. Amongst the most active lines of research on the matter considers whether social ties improve labor market outcomes. Two primary analytical approaches have been employed to this end. One considers whether social ties help individuals find work. A second approach considers whether social ties lead to jobs with better attributes (e.g., pay), contingent on finding work. Sociologists are generally inclined to believe that social ties have a causal impact on labor market outcomes — that is, it is "who you know that counts" to some degree. However, the evidence informing this belief is circumstantial and often inconsistent. This is particularly true with respect to the second approach concerning whether the use of social ties leads to jobs with more favorable characteristics. In this research we propose and test a model that addresses prior criticisms of the latter approach by leveraging unique data on contemporaneous job search with detailed information about job search channels and offer characteristics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that search through social networks typically results in job offers with lower total compensation (e.g., -18.2% for those derived through family and friends v. formal recruiting). However, net of compensation, job offers derived through alumni contacts (weak ties) as well as through family and friends are more likely to be accepted.
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Steve McDonald
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study makes three critical contributions to the “Do Contacts Matter?” debate. First, the widely reported null relationship between informal job searching and wages is shown to be mostly the artifact of a coding error and sample selection restrictions. Second, previous analyses examined only active informal job searching without fully considering the benefits derived from unsolicited network assistance (the “invisible hand of social capital”) – thereby underestimating the network effect. Third, wage returns to networks are examined across the earnings distribution. Longitudinal data from the NLSY reveal significant wage returns for network-based job finding over formal job searching, especially for individuals who were informally recruited into their jobs (non-searchers). Fixed effects quantile regression analyses show that contacts generate wage premiums among middle and high wage jobs, but not low wage jobs. These findings challenge conventional wisdom on contact effects and advance understanding of how social networks affect wage attainment and inequality.
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Feeling More Together: Group Attention Intensifies Emotion
Garriy Shteynberg et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The idea that group contexts can intensify emotions is centuries old. Yet, evidence that speaks to how, or if, emotions become more intense in groups remains elusive. Here we examine the novel possibility that group attention — the experience of simultaneous coattention with one’s group members — increases emotional intensity relative to attending alone, coattending with strangers, or attending nonsimultaneously with one’s group members. In Study 1, scary advertisements felt scarier under group attention. In Study 2, group attention intensified feelings of sadness to negative images, and feelings of happiness to positive images. In Study 3, group attention during a video depicting homelessness led to greater sadness that prompted larger donations to charities benefiting the homeless. In Studies 4 and 5, group attention increased the amount of cognitive resources allocated toward sad and amusing videos (as indexed by the percentage of thoughts referencing video content), leading to more sadness and happiness, respectively. In all, these effects could not be explained by differences in physiological arousal, emotional contagion, or vicarious emotional experience. Greater fear, gloom, and glee can thus result from group attention to scary, sad, and happy events, respectively.
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Yalda Uhls et al.
Computers in Human Behavior, October 2014, Pages 387–392
Abstract:
A field experiment examined whether increasing opportunities for face-to-face interaction while eliminating the use of screen-based media and communication tools improved nonverbal emotion–cue recognition in preteens. Fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls (n = 54) that retained usual media practices. Both groups took pre- and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed. Change scores for the two groups were compared using gender, ethnicity, media use, and age as covariates. After five days interacting face-to-face without the use of any screen-based media, preteens’ recognition of nonverbal emotion cues improved significantly more than that of the control group for both facial expressions and videotaped scenes. Implications are that the short-term effects of increased opportunities for social interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication tools, improves a preteen’s understanding of nonverbal emotional cues.
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Michael Kraus et al.
PLoS ONE, August 2014
Abstract:
Research examining face-to-face status hierarchies suggests that individuals attain respect and admiration by engaging in behavior that influences others' judgments of their value to the group. Building on this research, we expected that high-status individuals would be less likely to engage in behaviors that violate group norms and expectations, relative to low-status individuals. Adolescent participants took part in an interaction in which they teased an opposite-gender friend (Study 1) or an experiment in which taunting or cheering expectations were manipulated (Study 2). Consistent with the hypothesis, high-status boys and girls engaged in teasing behaviors consistent with their gender roles, relative to their low status counterparts (Study 1). In Study 2, high-status boys engaged in more direct provocation and off-record commentary while taunting, and more affiliative behavior while cheering on their partner, relative to low-status boys. Discussion focused on how expectation-consistent actions help individuals maintain elevated status.
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Are Smiles a Sign of Happiness? Spontaneous Expressions of Judo Winners
Carlos Crivelli, Pilar Carrera & José-aMiguel Fernández-Dols
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Which is the strongest predictor of Duchenne smiles? Is it emotion or sociality? Two field studies on the production of facial behavior by winning judo fighters (N = 174) are presented, testing if judo fighters smiled while being happy or while they were engaged in social interaction with the audience. Our studies simultaneously meet important methodological requirements: intense emotions; precise moment-to-moment coding of facial expressions; behavioral records long enough to allow smiles to unfold; discrimination between records of interactive and non-interactive behavior, and self-reports of emotional experience after winning a medal. We found that Duchenne smiles were not a necessary sign of happiness. Although all the judo fighters won their respective matches, they displayed a very low proportion of Duchenne smiles (.15 in Study 1, and .21 in Study 2). Being engaged in social interaction (communicative gestures with arms and hands while facing the audience) was found to be the strongest predictor for the occurrence of Duchenne smiles. Our studies provide support for the view that facial expressions are tools for social interaction (Behavioral Ecology Theory), rather than read-outs of basic emotions (Facial Expression Program).
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The involuntary excluder effect: Those included by an excluder are seen as exclusive themselves
Clayton Critcher & Vivian Zayas
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, September 2014, Pages 454-474
Abstract:
People are highly vigilant for and alarmed by social exclusion. Previous research has focused largely on the emotional and motivational consequences of being unambiguously excluded by others. The present research instead examines how people make sense of a more ambiguous dynamic, 1-person exclusion — situations in which one person (the excluder) excludes someone (the rejected) while including someone else (the included). Using different methodological paradigms, converging outcome measures, and complementary comparison standards, 5 studies present evidence of an involuntary excluder effect: Social perceivers are quick to see included persons as though they are excluders themselves. Included individuals are seen as belonging to an exclusive alliance with the excluder, as liking the excluder more than the rejected, and as likely to perpetuate future exclusion against the rejected. Behavioral evidence reinforced these findings: The included was approached with caution and suspicion. Notably, such perceptions of the included as an excluder were drawn by the rejected themselves and outside observers alike, did not reflect the attitudes and intentions of included persons or those who simulated 1-person exclusion from the vantage point of the included, applied specifically to the included (but not someone who simply witnessed the rejected’s rejection), and arose as a consequence of intentional acts of exclusion (and thus, not just because 2 individuals shared an exclusive experience). Consistencies with and contributions to literatures on balance theory, minimal groups, group entitativity, and the ostracism detection system literatures are discussed.
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Social Comparison, Social Media, and Self-Esteem
Erin Vogel et al.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, provide abundant social comparison opportunities. Given the widespread use of SNSs, the purpose of the present set of studies was to examine the impact of chronic and temporary exposure to social media-based social comparison information on self-esteem. Using a correlational approach, Study 1 examined whether frequent Facebook use is associated with lower trait self-esteem. Indeed, the results showed that participants who used Facebook most often had poorer trait self-esteem, and this was mediated by greater exposure to upward social comparisons on social media. Using an experimental approach, Study 2 examined the impact of temporary exposure to social media profiles on state self-esteem and relative self-evaluations. The results revealed that participants’ state self-esteem and relative self-evaluations were lower when the target person’s profile contained upward comparison information (e.g., a high activity social network, healthy habits) than when the target person’s profile contained downward comparison information (e.g., a low activity social network, unhealthy habits). Results are discussed in terms of extant research and their implications for the role of social media in well-being.
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Perceived neighbourhood social cohesion and myocardial infarction
Eric Kim, Armani Hawes & Jacqui Smith
Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, forthcoming
Background: The main strategy for alleviating heart disease has been to target individuals and encourage them to change their health behaviours. Although important, emphasis on individuals has diverted focus and responsibility away from neighbourhood characteristics, which also strongly influence people's behaviours. Although a growing body of research has repeatedly demonstrated strong associations between neighbourhood characteristics and cardiovascular health, it has typically focused on negative neighbourhood characteristics. Only a few studies have examined the potential health enhancing effects of positive neighbourhood characteristics, such as perceived neighbourhood social cohesion.
Methods: Using multiple logistic regression models, we tested whether higher perceived neighbourhood social cohesion was associated with lower incidence of myocardial infarction. Prospective data from the Health and Retirement Study — a nationally representative panel study of American adults over the age of 50 — were used to analyse 5276 participants with no history of heart disease. Respondents were tracked for 4 years and analyses adjusted for relevant sociodemographic, behavioural, biological and psychosocial factors.
Results: In a model that adjusted for age, gender, race, marital status, education and total wealth, each SD increase in perceived neighbourhood social cohesion was associated with a 22% reduced odds of myocardial infarction (OR=0.78, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.94. The association between perceived neighbourhood social cohesion and myocardial infarction remained even after adjusting for behavioural, biological and psychosocial covariates.
Conclusions: Higher perceived neighbourhood social cohesion may have a protective effect against myocardial infarction.
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Karen Parker et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 19 August 2014, Pages 12258–12263
Abstract:
The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) and its receptor (OXTR) regulate social functioning in animals and humans. Initial clinical research suggests that dysregulated plasma OXT concentrations and/or OXTR SNPs may be biomarkers of social impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We do not know, however, whether OXT dysregulation is unique to ASD or whether OXT biology influences social functioning more generally, thus contributing to, but not causing, ASD phenotypes. To distinguish between these possibilities, we tested in a child ASD cohort, which included unaffected siblings and unrelated neurotypical controls (ages 3–12 y; n = 193), whether plasma OXT concentrations and OXTR SNPs (i) interact to produce ASD phenotypes, (ii) exert differential phenotypic effects in ASD vs. non-ASD children, or (iii) have similar phenotypic effects independent of disease status. In the largest cohort tested to date, we found no evidence to support the OXT deficit hypothesis of ASD. Rather, OXT concentrations strongly and positively predicted theory of mind and social communication performance in all groups. Furthermore, OXT concentrations showed significant heritability between ASD-discordant siblings (h2 = 85.5%); a heritability estimate on par with that of height in humans. Finally, carriers of the “G” allele of rs53576 showed impaired affect recognition performance and carriers of the “A” allele of rs2254298 exhibited greater global social impairments in all groups. These findings indicate that OXT biology is not uniquely associated with ASD, but instead exerts independent, additive, and highly heritable influences on individual differences in human social functioning, including the severe social impairments which characterize ASD.
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Brett Peters, Nickola Overall & Jeremy Jamieson
International Journal of Psychophysiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Engaging in emotional suppression typically has negative consequences. However, relatively little is known about response-focused emotion regulation processes in dyadic interactions. We hypothesized that interacting with suppressive partners would be more threatening than interacting with expressive partners. To test predictions, two participants independently watched a negatively-valenced video and then discussed their emotional responses. One participant (the regulator) was assigned to express/suppress affective signals during the interaction. Their partner was given no special instructions prior to the interaction. Engaging in suppression versus expression elicited physiological responses consistent with threat — sympathetic arousal and increased vasoconstriction — in anticipation of and during dyadic interactions. Partners of emotional suppressors also exhibited more threat responses during the interaction, but not before, compared to partners of emotional expressors. Partner and interaction appraisals mirrored physiological findings. Emotional suppressors found the task more uncomfortable and intense while their partners reported them as being poor communicators. This work broadens our understanding of connections between emotion regulation, physiological responses, and cognitive processes in dyads.
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Close adult friendships, gender, and the life cycle
Brian Joseph Gillespie et al.
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on 25,185 responses collected via an online news website, our findings extend and update Fischer and Oliker’s (1983) classic study on gender and life cycle differences in friendship. We found no substantial gender differences in number of friends people can count on to celebrate birthdays, discuss intimate matters like one’s sex life, or depend upon when experiencing trouble late at night (ds = .04–.20); however, number of friendships varied substantially according to marital status, age, and parental status. Residential population size was not associated with number of friendships. We also found that virtually all respondents reported having at least one close friend. Satisfaction with friends was a better predictor of life satisfaction than was number of friends.
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Michaela Pfundmair et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2014, Pages 246–251
Abstract:
Surprisingly, oxytocin, a socially potent neuropeptide, has not been found to affect responses to ostracism. However, these effects may depend on individual differences, specifically the propensity for cooperation and social connectedness. We thus predicted that oxytocin is more likely to attenuate negative responses to ostracism in people with collectivistic (vs. individualistic) orientation, particularly horizontal collectivism, which is oriented toward cooperation among equals. After intranasal administration of oxytocin or a placebo, participants were ostracized or included during the computer-based ball-tossing game Cyberball and indicated their sense of social comfort regarding the Cyberball game. Under oxytocin, responses to ostracism were less negative in participants with a horizontal collectivistic (vs. individualistic) orientation. The results could not be explained by affect, including anxiety. The results suggest that collectivistic beliefs facilitate oxytocin’s shielding effect against negative consequences of ostracism. We discuss underlying mechanisms and factors other than collectivistic orientation that could explain the findings.