Connected
Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions
Ryan Dwyer, Kostadin Kushlev & Elizabeth Dunn
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a field experiment and experience sampling, we found the first evidence that phone use may undermine the enjoyment people derive from real world social interactions. In Study 1, we recruited over 300 community members and students to share a meal at a restaurant with friends or family. Participants were randomly assigned to keep their phones on the table or to put their phones away during the meal. When phones were present (vs. absent), participants felt more distracted, which reduced how much they enjoyed spending time with their friends/family. We found consistent results using experience sampling in Study 2; during in-person interactions, participants felt more distracted and reported lower enjoyment if they used their phones than if they did not. This research suggests that despite their ability to connect us to others across the globe, phones may undermine the benefits we derive from interacting with those across the table.
How the Intention to Share Can Undermine Enjoyment: Photo-Taking Goals and Evaluation of Experiences
Alixandra Barasch, Gal Zauberman & Kristin Diehl
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often share their experiences with others who were not originally present, which provides them with both personal and interpersonal benefits. However, most of the work on this form of sharing has examined situations where the decision to share one’s experience occurs after the experience is over. We are interested in a distinct, unexplored aspect of the sharing process: when the decision to share is already salient during the experience and hence can impact the experience itself. We examine this research question within the context of photo-taking, which has become a ubiquitous and integral part of people’s consumption experiences. Across two field and three laboratory studies, we find that relative to taking pictures for oneself (e.g., to preserve one’s memories), taking pictures with the intention to share them with others (e.g., to post on social media) reduces enjoyment of experiences. This effect occurs because taking photos with the intention to share increases self-presentational concern during the experience, which can reduce enjoyment directly, as well as indirectly by lowering engagement with the experience. We identify several factors that moderate the effect of photo-taking goals on enjoyment, such as individual differences in the extent to which individuals care about how they are perceived by others and the closeness of the intended audience.
Temporary sharing prompts unrestrained disclosures that leave lasting negative impressions
Reto Hofstetter, Roland Rüppell & Leslie John
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 7 November 2017, Pages 11902–11907
Abstract:
With the advent of social media, the impressions people make on others are based increasingly on their digital disclosures. However, digital disclosures can come back to haunt, making it challenging for people to manage the impressions they make. In field and online experiments in which participants take, share, and evaluate self-photographs (“selfies”), we show that, paradoxically, these challenges can be exacerbated by temporary-sharing media — technologies that prevent content from being stored permanently. Relative to permanent sharing, temporary sharing affects both whether and what people reveal. Specifically, temporary sharing increases compliance with the request to take a selfie (study 1) and induces greater disclosure risks (i.e., people exhibit greater disinhibition in their selfies, studies 1 and 2). This increased disclosure is driven by reduced privacy concerns (study 2). However, observers’ impressions of sharers are insensitive to permanence (i.e., whether the selfie was shared temporarily versus permanently) and are instead driven by the disinhibition exhibited in the selfie (studies 4–7). As a result, induced by the promise of temporary sharing, sharers of uninhibited selfies come across as having worse judgment than those who share relatively discreet selfies (studies 1, 2, and 4–7) — an attributional pattern that is unanticipated by sharers (study 3), that persists days after the selfie has disappeared (study 5), is robust to personal experience with temporary sharing (studies 6A and 6B), and holds even among friends (studies 7A and 7B). Temporary sharing may bring back forgetting, but not without introducing new (self-presentational) challenges.
Punctuation in text messages may convey abruptness. Period
Kenneth Houghton, Sri Siddhi Upadhyay & Celia Klin
Computers in Human Behavior, March 2018, Pages 112-121
Abstract:
In contrast with face-to-face conversations, text messages lack extra-linguistic cues such as tone of voice and gestures. We explore the hypothesis that textisms, such as irregular punctuation, are used to fill this role. We extend the work of Gunraj, Drumm-Hewitt, Dashow, Upadhyay, and Klin (2016) who found that the inclusion of a period after a positive one-word response (e.g., yeah.) led readers to perceive the response as less sincere. In Experiment 1, we used longer text exchanges that were more naturalistic and replicated this finding. In Experiments 2 and 3, negative responses (e.g., nope) and ambiguous responses (e.g., maybe) were also perceived as more negative, or less enthusiastic, with a period. The period can serve a rhetorical, rather than a grammatical, function in text messages. More generally, textisms such as punctuation can convey the types of social and pragmatic information that are communicated with extra-linguistic cues in face-to-face conversations.
Evidence that self-affirmation reduces relational aggression: A proof of concept trial
Christopher Armitage & Richard Rowe
Psychology of Violence, October 2017, Pages 489-497
Objective: Acts of relational aggression cause significant social and personal costs, and interventions are needed to reduce relational aggression in community as well as clinical settings. The present study used a persuasive message coupled with a self-affirmation manipulation to reduce relational aggression among a group of adolescents recruited from the community.
Method: Participants (N = 503) all received a persuasive message designed to reduce relational aggression and were randomly allocated to participate in a self-affirming or nonaffirming task.
Results: Findings demonstrated a significant reduction in relational aggression over 1-month among participants who were randomized to the self-affirmation condition (d = −0.50) in contrast with a small increase in relational aggression in the control condition (d = +0.20). Contrary to expectations, these effects were not mediated by message processing or changes in interpersonal affect.
Disputatiousness and the Offender–Victim Overlap
Richard Felson et al.
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, forthcoming
Objectives: We examine whether offenders are at greater risk of violent victimization than non-offenders because of their disputatiousness; that is, their tendency to become involved in verbal conflicts. We also examine whether offenders are more disputatious because of their low self-control, alcohol use, and honor-based attitudes and whether disputatiousness can explain the effects of these individual differences on violent victimization.
Method: A series of regression models examine self-reported data from 503 male inmates and 220 men (N = 723) they know from the community who have never been arrested.
Results: Disputatiousness accounts for a substantial portion of the relationship between victimization and offending (i.e., inmate status). Disputatiousness also mediates the relationships between victimization and frequent intoxication, low self-control, and honor-based attitudes. Low self-control and heavy alcohol use account for a substantial portion of the relationship between offending and disputatiousness. Disputatiousness and victimization are associated with a history of assaultive offenses but not a history of robbery.
Does change in perceptions of peer teen dating violence predict change in teen dating violence perpetration over time?
Ryan Shorey et al.
Aggressive Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research has previously demonstrated that perceptions of peer's teen dating violence (TDV) is associated with one's own perpetration of TDV, although little research has examined whether this relationship is consistent across developmental time periods (i.e., mid-to-late adolescence). The present study examined whether changes in perceptions of peer's TDV predicted change in one's own perpetration of TDV in a sample of ethnically diverse adolescents from ages 15 to 18 (N = 1,042). Parallel process modeling demonstrated that decreases in perceptions of peer's TDV predicted decreases in TDV perpetration over time, and this relationship was more pronounced for males than females. These findings lend further support to the need for TDV prevention and intervention programs to include peer influence in their programs.
Development of self-protective biases in response to social evaluative feedback
Alexandra Rodman, Katherine Powers & Leah Somerville
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Adolescence is a developmental period marked by heightened attunement to social evaluation. While adults have been shown to enact self-protective processes to buffer their self-views from evaluative threats like peer rejection, it is unclear whether adolescents avail themselves of the same defenses. The present study examines how social evaluation shapes views of the self and others differently across development. N = 107 participants ages 10–23 completed a reciprocal social evaluation task that involved predicting and receiving peer acceptance and rejection feedback, along with assessments of self-views and likability ratings of peers. Here, we show that, despite equivalent experiences of social evaluation, adolescents internalized peer rejection, experiencing a feedback-induced drop in self-views, whereas adults externalized peer rejection, reporting a task-induced boost in self-views and deprecating the peers who rejected them. The results identify codeveloping processes underlying why peer rejection may lead to more dramatic alterations in self-views during adolescence than other phases of the lifespan.