Mood
Sharing the load: Contagion and tolerance of mood in social networks
Per Block & Stephanie Burnett Heyes
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The relations between self and others are fluid and constantly changing but exert a profound influence on our identity and emotional experiences. Indeed, human emotions are frequently and intensely social, and the people with whom we interact can alter our momentary mood. But does emotional "contagion" extend over prolonged periods of hours to days, and, if so, how does it propagate through interconnected groups? Answering this question is empirically challenging, because mood similarity in connected individuals can arise through multiple mechanisms (social influence, social selection, and shared external causation), making causal inferences hard to draw. We address this challenge using temporally high-resolution, longitudinal data from 2 independent, bounded social networks during periods of high communal activity and low external contact. Adolescent study participants (N = 79) completed daily mood (n = 4,724) and social interaction (n = 1,775) ratings during residential performance tours of classical music lasting 5 to 7 days. Analyses using statistical network models show that in both networks, adolescent musicians became reciprocally more similar in mood to their interaction partners. The observed contagion effect was greater for negative than for positive mood. That is, although one may catch a friend's bad mood, the friend may feel less negative in the process. These results suggest a mechanism for emotional buffering and the cost of social support. We found no evidence for social selection based on mood. Indeed, participants were remarkably tolerant of their peers' mood fluctuations and showed no evidence of altering their patterns of social interaction accordingly.
The Lure of Counterfactual Curiosity: People Incur a Cost to Experience Regret
Lily FitzGibbon, Asuka Komiya & Kou Murayama
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
After you make a decision, it is sometimes possible to seek information about how things would be if you had acted otherwise. We investigated the lure of this counterfactual information, namely, counterfactual curiosity. In a set of five experiments (total N = 150 adults), we used an adapted Balloon Analogue Risk Task with varying costs of information. At a cost, people were willing to seek information about how much they could have won, even though it had little utility and a negative emotional impact (i.e., it led to regret). We explored the downstream effects of seeking information on emotion, behavior adjustment, and ongoing performance, showing that it has little or even negative performance benefit. We also replicated the findings with a large-sample (N = 361 adults) preregistered experiment that excluded possible alternative explanations. This suggests that information about counterfactual alternatives has a strong motivational lure - people simply cannot help seeking it.
Similarity in functional brain connectivity at rest predicts interpersonal closeness in the social network of an entire village
Ryan Hyon et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 29 December 2020, Pages 33149-33160
Abstract:
People often have the intuition that they are similar to their friends, yet evidence for homophily (being friends with similar others) based on self-reported personality is inconsistent. Functional connectomes - patterns of spontaneous synchronization across the brain - are stable within individuals and predict how people tend to think and behave. Thus, they may capture interindividual variability in latent traits that are particularly similar among friends but that might elude self-report. Here, we examined interpersonal similarity in functional connectivity at rest - that is, in the absence of external stimuli - and tested if functional connectome similarity is associated with proximity in a real-world social network. The social network of a remote village was reconstructed; a subset of residents underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Similarity in functional connectomes was positively related to social network proximity, particularly in the default mode network. Controlling for similarities in demographic and personality data (the Big Five personality traits) yielded similar results. Thus, functional connectomes may capture latent interpersonal similarities between friends that are not fully captured by commonly used demographic or personality measures. The localization of these results suggests how friends may be particularly similar to one another. Additionally, geographic proximity moderated the relationship between neural similarity and social network proximity, suggesting that such associations are particularly strong among people who live particularly close to one another. These findings suggest that social connectivity is reflected in signatures of brain functional connectivity, consistent with the common intuition that friends share similarities that go beyond, for example, demographic similarities.
Infant temperament prospectively predicts general psychopathology in childhood
Santiago Morales et al.
Development and Psychopathology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent models of psychopathology suggest the presence of a general factor capturing the shared variance among all symptoms along with specific psychopathology factors (e.g., internalizing and externalizing). However, few studies have examined predictors that may serve as transdiagnostic risk factors for general psychopathology from early development. In the current study we examine, for the first time, whether observed and parent-reported infant temperament dimensions prospectively predict general psychopathology as well as specific psychopathology dimensions (e.g., internalizing and externalizing) across childhood. In a longitudinal cohort (N = 291), temperament dimensions were assessed at 4 months of age. Psychopathology symptoms were assessed at 7, 9, and 12 years of age. A bifactor model was used to estimate general, internalizing, and externalizing psychopathology factors. Across behavioral observations and parent-reports, higher motor activity in infancy significantly predicted greater general psychopathology in mid to late childhood. Moreover, low positive affect was predictive of the internalizing-specific factor. Other temperament dimensions were not related with any of the psychopathology factors after accounting for the general psychopathology factor. The results of this study suggest that infant motor activity may act as an early indicator of transdiagnostic risk. Our findings inform the etiology of general psychopathology and have implications for the early identification for children at risk for psychopathology.