All good
Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction
Amy Orben, Tobias Dienlin & Andrew Przybylski
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this study, we used large-scale representative panel data to disentangle the between-person and within-person relations linking adolescent social media use and well-being. We found that social media use is not, in and of itself, a strong predictor of life satisfaction across the adolescent population. Instead, social media effects are nuanced, small at best, reciprocal over time, gender specific, and contingent on analytic methods.
The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being
Kostadin Kushlev, Ryan Dwyer & Elizabeth Dunn
Current Directions in Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.
Identity Over Time: Perceived Similarity Between Selves Predicts Well-Being 10 Years Later
Joseph Reiff, Hal Hershfield & Jordi Quoidbach
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
When individuals feel similar to their future self, they are more likely to delay present gratification and make plans for the long run. But do these feelings of similarity actually correspond with heightened well-being for the future self? Theoretically, making patient decisions in the present could lead to a future self who is better off and thus more satisfied. Alternatively, perceived overlap with the future self could cause people to continually deny themselves pleasures in the present, diminishing satisfaction over time. To adjudicate between these possibilities, we use a 10-year longitudinal data set (N = 4,963) to estimate how thoughts about one’s future self in an initial survey predict life satisfaction 10 years later. Controlling for initial life satisfaction, greater perceived similarity to the future self is linearly associated with greater life satisfaction 10 years after the original prediction, a finding that is robust to a number of alternative analyses.
Variety in Self-Expression Undermines Self-Continuity
Jacqueline Rifkin & Jordan Etkin
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
From dating profiles and social media accounts to online streaming services, consumers are often asked to express who they are by constructing an assortment. Apple Music, for example, asks new users to indicate “two or more” of their favorite types of music when they create an account. But while consumers might create such self-expressive assortments to communicate who they are, could the composition of these assortments also affect how people see themselves? Seven studies demonstrate that perceiving greater variety in a self-expressive assortment undermines self-continuity. This occurs because variety leads consumers to infer that their preferences are less stable, thereby decreasing the belief that their identity stays the same over time. Variety’s effect generalizes across multiple domains of self-expression (e.g., books, music, television) and has downstream consequences for service evaluation and even unrelated decision-making (e.g., intertemporal tradeoffs). The findings advance understanding of how choice shapes identity, the role of variety in consumers’ lives, and factors that affect self-continuity. The results also have implications for the marketers who encourage (and the consumers who construct) self-expressive assortments.
Changing Current Appraisals of Mothers Leads to Changes in Childhood Memories of Love Toward Mothers
Lawrence Patihis, Cristobal Cruz & Mario Herrera
Clinical Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
False memories in therapy have previously been identified as problematic, but memory-of-emotion distortions have been underdiscussed in this context. Past research has suggested that cognitive reappraisals are associated with changes in memory of emotions. We investigated whether these findings would generalize to an important emotion (love), target (mothers), and time (childhood). In samples of adults, we manipulated current appraisals of mothers to examine the effect on memory of love felt in childhood toward mothers. In Experiment 1, we found significant differences between appraisal conditions on memory of love — effects that persisted for 4 weeks. In Experiment 2, the effect of reappraisal on memory of love replicated with a pretest–posttest experiment. Pretest current feelings of love were biased when recalled after the experiment. Reevaluating parents, in therapy or elsewhere, may result in memory distortion of important aspects of autobiographical memory.
Simulating other people changes the self
Meghan Meyer, Zidong Zhao & Diana Tamir
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
The self is not static. Our identities change considerably over development and across situations. Here, we propose one novel cause of self-change: simulating others. How could simply imagining others change the self? First, when simulating other people’s mental states and traits, individuals access self-knowledge; they do so while concurrently considering information about the other person they are trying to understand. Second, episodic and semantic knowledge is malleable and susceptible to incorporating new, postevent information. If self-knowledge is similarly malleable, then simulation may change self-knowledge such that it incorporates information about the simulated person (i.e., “postevent information”). That is, simulation should render the self more similar to the simulated other. We test this hypothesis in 8 studies. In each study, participants (a) recalled personal information (e.g., traits and episodic memories), (b) simulated other people in similar contexts, and (c) re-recalled personal information. Results consistently demonstrated that simulating others changed self-knowledge, such that the self becomes more similar to the simulated other. This effect occurred for both traits and memories, spanned self-report and linguistic measures, and persisted 24 hr after simulation. The findings suggest that self-knowledge is susceptible to misinformation effects similar to those observed in other forms of semantic and episodic knowledge.
Adolescent Girls’ Biological Sensitivity to Context: Heart Rate Reactivity Moderates the Relationship Between Peer Victimization and Internalizing Problems
Christopher Aults et al.
Evolutionary Psychological Science, June 2019, Pages 178–185
Abstract:
The theory of biological sensitivity to context (BSC) suggests that heightened stress reactivity may reflect the potential for some children to develop negative mental health outcomes under adverse environmental conditions and gain resilience under supportive environments. This study investigated the interactive effects of heart rate (HR) reactivity on an understudied form of adverse environmental conditions in BSC models, peer victimization, on internalizing problems among 82 adolescents (44 girls and 38 boys; M age = 12.08 years). Participants were nominated by peers for internalizing problems and peer victimization. HR reactivity was assessed in response to a laboratory interpersonal stressor. For girls, peer victimization was associated with internalizing problems only if girls showed high HR reactivity; there was no effect for boys. This association was absent when girls showed low HR reactivity. Results suggest that HR reactivity serves as a marker of sensitivity to environmental influence, moderating the relationship of peer victimization to internalizing behaviors for adolescent girls.
What Might Have Been: Near Miss Experiences and Adjustment to a Terrorist Attack
Michael Poulin & Roxane Cohen Silver
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Near miss experiences — narrowly avoiding a traumatic event — are associated with distress, despite signaling good fortune. For some, near miss experiences call to mind those who, unlike oneself, were directly affected by the event, leading to “survivor guilt” or distress over one’s comparative good fortune. Survivor guilt, in turn, may function as upward counterfactual thinking about others’ negative outcomes, leading to intrusive thoughts and post-traumatic stress. We compared individuals who did or did not report a near miss with respect to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — that is, almost being directly affected — in a national longitudinal study (N = 1,433). Near miss experiences predicted higher levels of reexperiencing symptoms and probable post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as maintenance of reexperiencing symptoms over the next 3 years. These associations were partially accounted for by survivor guilt. Near misses may be associated with distress in part because they entail reflection on negative outcomes for others.
Individual-Level Analyses of the Impact of Parasite Stress on Personality: Reduced Openness Only for Older Individuals
Timothy Mullett et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The parasite stress hypothesis predicts that individuals living in regions with higher infectious disease rates will show lower openness, agreeableness, and extraversion, but higher conscientiousness. This article, using data from more than 250,000 U.S. Facebook users, reports tests of these predictions at the level of both U.S. states and individuals and evaluates criticisms of previous findings. State-level results for agreeableness and conscientiousness are consistent with previously reported cross-national findings, but others (a significant positive correlation with extraversion and no correlation with openness) are not. However, effects of parasite stress on conscientiousness and agreeableness are not found when analyses account for the data’s hierarchical structure and include controls. We find that only openness is robustly related to parasite stress in these analyses, and we also find a significant interaction with age: Older, but not younger, inhabitants of areas of high parasite stress show lower openness. Interpretations of the findings are discussed.