Acquainted
Avoiding Extraverts: Pathogen Concern Downregulates Preferences for Extraverted Faces
Mitch Brown & Donald Sacco
Evolutionary Psychological Science, December 2016, Pages 278-286
Abstract:
Past research indicates that salient concerns with infectious disease reduce individuals' self-reporting of extraverted personality trait characteristics, an adaptive response to mitigate exposure to pathogenically threatening conspecifics. Additionally, individuals are capable of accurately inferring another person's level of extraversion from facial cues alone. Extending these findings, we hypothesized that disease concerns should result in a reduced preference for extraverts, as indexed by facial cues, given that such persons may comprise a greater disease threat due to increased contact with a greater number of conspecifics. To test this hypothesis, participants were randomly assigned to either disease or control prime conditions, reported face preferences among face pairs containing target faces manipulated to communicate extraversion or introversion, and indicated dispositional pathogen concerns. Contrary to hypotheses, acute disease activation did not influence face preferences. However, men with dispositionally higher perceived infectability (PI) demonstrated reduced preferences for extraverted female faces, whereas higher PI in women predicted a reduced preference for extraverted male faces. This relationship between higher PI and reduced preferences for extraverted faces provides partial support for the hypothesis that pathogen concerns facilitate stronger preferences for reticent individuals, an adaptive response to mitigate contact with disease vectors.
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Jennifer Bartz, Kristina Tchalova & Can Fenerci
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is a fundamental human need to secure and sustain a sense of social belonging. Previous research has shown that individuals who are lonely are more likely than people who are not lonely to attribute humanlike traits (e.g., free will) to nonhuman agents (e.g., an alarm clock that makes people get up by moving away from the sleeper), presumably in an attempt to fulfill unmet needs for belongingness. We directly replicated the association between loneliness and anthropomorphism in a larger sample (N = 178); furthermore, we showed that reminding people of a close, supportive relationship reduces their tendency to anthropomorphize. This finding provides support for the idea that the need for belonging has causal effects on anthropomorphism. Last, we showed that attachment anxiety - characterized by intense desire for and preoccupation with closeness, fear of abandonment, and hypervigilance to social cues - was a stronger predictor of anthropomorphism than loneliness was. This finding helps clarify the mechanisms underlying anthropomorphism and supports the idea that anthropomorphism is a motivated process reflecting the active search for potential sources of connection.
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Instantaneous Conventions: The Emergence of Flexible Communicative Signals
Jennifer Misyak, Takao Noguchi & Nick Chater
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Humans can communicate even with few existing conventions in common (e.g., when they lack a shared language). We explored what makes this phenomenon possible with a nonlinguistic experimental task requiring participants to coordinate toward a common goal. We observed participants creating new communicative conventions using the most minimal possible signals. These conventions, furthermore, changed on a trial-by-trial basis in response to shared environmental and task constraints. Strikingly, as a result, signals of the same form successfully conveyed contradictory messages from trial to trial. Such behavior is evidence for the involvement of what we term joint inference, in which social interactants spontaneously infer the most sensible communicative convention in light of the common ground between them. Joint inference may help to elucidate how communicative conventions emerge instantaneously and how they are modified and reshaped into the elaborate systems of conventions involved in human communication, including natural languages.
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The roles of testosterone and cortisol in friendship formation
Sarah Ketay, Keith Welker & Richard Slatcher
Psychoneuroendocrinology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although research has investigated the neuroendocrine correlates of romantic relationships, the neuroendocrine correlates of friendship formation are largely unexplored. In two conditions, participants' salivary testosterone and cortisol were measured before and after a high versus low closeness activity with another same-sex participant. In the high closeness task, participants took turns answering questions that fostered increases in self-disclosure. The low closeness task fostered low levels of self-disclosure. Dyadic multilevel models indicated that lower basal testosterone and decreases in testosterone were associated with increased closeness between recently acquainted strangers. Our results suggest that people high in testosterone felt less close to others and desired less closeness. Further, lower basal cortisol and dynamic cortisol decreases were associated with greater closeness and desired closeness in the high closeness-induction task. Finally, we found that the partners of those who had lower cortisol desired more closeness. These findings suggest that lower testosterone and cortisol are linked to the facilitation of initial social bonds and that these social bonds may, in turn, are associated with changes in these hormones.