Friended
Hurt feelings and four letter words: Swearing alleviates the pain of social distress
Michael Philipp & Laura Lombardo
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Methods for alleviating physical pain are increasingly found to attenuate social pain. Recent evidence suggests that swearing may attenuate sensitivity to physical pain. This study examined whether swearing similarly attenuates two consequences of social distress: social pain and exclusion-induced hyperalgesia. Sixty-two people wrote about an autobiographical experience of exclusion or inclusion. Then they repeated a swear or neutral word for 2 minutes followed by measures of social and physical pain. Excluded non-swearers reported feeling more social pain and greater sensitivity to physical pain compared with included non-swearers. Excluded swearers reported less social pain than excluded non-swearers and no heightened sensitivity to physical pain. The findings suggest that social and physical pain are functionally similar and that swearing attenuates social pain.
It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking
Karen Huang et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conversation is a fundamental human experience that is necessary to pursue intrapersonal and interpersonal goals across myriad contexts, relationships, and modes of communication. In the current research, we isolate the role of an understudied conversational behavior: question-asking. Across 3 studies of live dyadic conversations, we identify a robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking: people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners. When people are instructed to ask more questions, they are perceived as higher in responsiveness, an interpersonal construct that captures listening, understanding, validation, and care. We measure responsiveness with an attitudinal measure from previous research as well as a novel behavioral measure: the number of follow-up questions one asks. In both cases, responsiveness explains the effect of question-asking on liking. In addition to analyzing live get-to-know-you conversations online, we also studied face-to-face speed-dating conversations. We trained a natural language processing algorithm as a "follow-up question detector" that we applied to our speed-dating data (and can be applied to any text data to more deeply understand question-asking dynamics). The follow-up question rate established by the algorithm showed that speed daters who ask more follow-up questions during their dates are more likely to elicit agreement for second dates from their partners, a behavioral indicator of liking. We also find that, despite the persistent and beneficial effects of asking questions, people do not anticipate that question-asking increases interpersonal liking.
Remembering Friends as Not So Friendly in Competitive and Bargaining Social Interactions
Shai Danziger, David Disatnik & Yaniv Shani
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
From children's schoolyard play to executives' boardroom negotiations, competitive and bargaining interactions are common to everyday life. Sometimes, the interacting parties are socially close and sometimes not. In this research, we examine how friendship influences memory for actions in such interactions. Dyads consisting of either friends or strangers played a competitive card game (Study 1) or the ultimatum game (Studies 2 and 4) and then recalled the interaction. We find that participants remembered friends' play as more competitive (Study 1) and less generous (Studies 2 and 4) than strangers' play, even when friends' actual play was more generous than that of strangers (Studies 2 and 4). Friendship did not affect recall for one's own play. In a workplace setting, Study 3 reveals people expect more of work colleagues who are friends than of work colleagues who are acquaintances. Study 4 tests our complete model and shows that people expect more of friends than of strangers and that this difference in expectations explains the less favorable memory for friend's actions. Our findings are consistent with a negative disconfirmation account whereby people expect their friends to be less competitive and more generous, and when these expectations are violated, people remember friends' actions more negatively than they actually were. Much research shows positive effects of friendship norms on actual behavior. We demonstrate a negative effect on people's memory of friends' behavior in competitive and bargaining social interactions.
Whoever is not with me is against me: The costs of neutrality among friends
Alex Shaw et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2017, Pages 96-104
Abstract:
Although friends provide valuable help and support, they can also entangle us in costly conflicts. In three studies, we investigate how people react when they are in a dispute with another person and their friend opposes them, supports them, or remains neutral. As expected, participants felt negative toward a friend who sided against them and positive toward a friend who sided with them. However, we were most interested in how people react to a friend's neutrality. People might view neutrality as a fair and positive way to avoid escalating conflict, but they could also see it as shirking one's duties to support a friend. In line with a recent alliance model of friendship, we predicted and found support for the latter: participants reacted negatively toward a friend who remained neutral, in fact just as negatively as toward a friend who actively opposed them. That is, participants' felt similar to the Biblical aphorism, "whoever is not with me is against me." We further found that participants' negative response to neutrality was particularly strong when a close friend remained neutral during a dispute with a distant friend, compared to a dispute with an equally close friend. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding multilateral conflicts among multiple friends.
Unpacking the buffering effect of social support figures: Social support attenuates fear acquisition
Erica Hornstein & Naomi Eisenberger
PLoS ONE, May 2017
Abstract:
Social support is associated with positive health outcomes, and research has demonstrated that the presence, or even just a reminder, of a social-support figure can reduce psychological and physiological responses to threats. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect are unclear, and no previous work has examined the impact of social support on basic fear learning processes, which have implications for threat responding. This study examined whether social support inhibits the formation of fear associations. After conducting a fear-conditioning procedure in which social-support stimuli were paired with conditional stimuli during fear acquisition, we found that the threat of shock was not associated with conditional stimuli paired with images of social-support figures, but was associated with stimuli paired with images of strangers. These findings indicate that social support prevents the formation of fear associations, reducing the amount of learned fears people acquire as they navigate the world, consequently reducing threat-related stress.
Functional intimacy: Needing - but not wanting - the touch of a stranger
Juliana Schroeder et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Intimacy is often motivated by love, but sometimes it is merely functional. For example, disrobing and being touched at an airport security check serves the goal of catching a flight, not building a relationship. We propose that this functional intimacy induces discomfort, making people prefer greater social distance from their interaction partner. Supporting this prediction, participants who considered (Experiments 1 and 2) or experienced (Experiment 3) more physically intimate medical procedures preferred a health-provider who is less social. Increased psychological intimacy also led people to prefer social distance from cleaning- and health-providers (Experiments 4-5), a preference revealed by nonverbal behavior (e.g., turning away and looking away, Experiments 6-7). These patterns of distancing are unique to functional (vs. romantic) intimacy (Experiment 7). Although creating social distance may be an effective strategy for coping with functional intimacy, it may have costs for service providers.
Present but Invisible: Physical Obscurity Fosters Social Disconnection
Megan Knowles & Kristy Dean
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that we feel invisible and disconnected when others avoid our gaze. In three studies, we examine whether similar feelings may arise when others are unable to meet our gaze - when they are unaware of our presence altogether. We posit that feelings of loneliness and disconnection can arise when others are unable to sense one's physical presence. To test whether invisibility engenders loneliness, we primed participants with the invisibility construct (Studies 1-2) and manipulated actual visibility (Study 3) prior to assessing feelings of loneliness and isolation. Results revealed that being present, but unseen, is sufficient to induce loneliness. Findings are related to the ostracism and intersectional invisibility literatures, and the social costs of physical obscurity are discussed.