Relatability
Do Narcissists Think They Make a Better Impression Than They Really Do? Re-Evaluating Enhancement as a Dominant Feature of Narcissism
Victoria Pringle et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Imagining a narcissist likely calls to mind someone who thinks that they are well-liked and admired -- perhaps unrealistically so. But are narcissists' beliefs about how others see them systematically too positive? Across four samples (total N = 1,537) that included different contexts (group vs. dyadic) and levels of acquaintanceship (new acquaintances vs. close friends), we used condition-based regression analysis to test whether narcissism is associated with overly positive metaperceptions. Results suggested that although people higher in narcissistic admiration expected positive evaluations across several attributes, their beliefs about their reputation were not overly positive, a pattern that held when controlling for self-perceptions at low levels of acquaintanceship. Conversely, people higher in narcissistic rivalry assumed others saw them negatively. These findings add to a growing literature suggesting that grandiose narcissism is not defined by enhancement per se but is related to positive self-views, including positive metaperceptions.
Does Physiological Arousal Increase Social Transmission of Information? Two Replications of Berger (2011)
Skyler Prowten et al.
Psychological Science, September 2024, Pages 1025-1034
Abstract:
People share information for many reasons. For example, Berger (2011, N = 40) found that undergraduate participants manipulated to have higher physiological arousal were more likely to share a news article with others via email than people who had low arousal. Berger's research is widely cited as evidence of the causal role of arousal in sharing information and has been used to explain why information that induces high-arousal emotions is shared more than information that induces low-arousal emotions. We conducted two replications (N = 111, N = 160) of Berger's study, using the same arousal manipulation but updating the sharing measure to reflect the rise of information sharing through social media. Both studies failed to find an impact of incidental physiological arousal on undergraduate participants' willingness to share news articles on social media. Our studies cast doubt on the idea that incidental physiological arousal -- in the absence of other factors -- impacts people's decisions to share information on social networking sites.
The Declining Mental Health of the Young in the UK
David Blanchflower, Alex Bryson & David Bell
NBER Working Paper, August 2024
Abstract:
We show the incidence of mental ill-health has been rising especially among the young in the UK and especially so in Scotland. The incidence of mental ill-health among young men in particular, started rising in 2008 with the onset of the Great Recession and for young women around 2012. The age profile of mental ill-health shifts to the left, over time, such that the peak of depression shifts from mid-life, when people are in their late 40s and early 50s, around the time of the Great Recession, to one's early to mid-20s in 2023. These trends are much more pronounced if one drops the large number of proxy respondents in the UK Labour Force Surveys, indicating fellow family members understate the poor mental health of respondents, especially if those respondents are young. We report consistent evidence from the Scottish Health Surveys and UK samples from Eurobarometer surveys. Our findings are consistent with those for the United States and suggest that, although smartphone technologies may be closely correlated with a decline in young people's mental health, increases in mental ill-health in the UK from the late 1990s suggest other factors must also be at play.
The Double-Edged Sword of Social Sharing: Social Sharing Predicts Increased Emotion Differentiation When Rumination Is Low but Decreased Emotion Differentiation When Rumination Is High
Laura Sels et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Laypeople believe that sharing their emotional experiences with others will improve their understanding of those experiences, but no clear empirical evidence supports this belief. To address this gap, we used data from four daily life studies (N = 659; student and community samples) to explore the association between social sharing and subsequent emotion differentiation, which involves labeling emotions with a high degree of complexity. Contrary to our expectations, we found that social sharing of emotional experiences was linked to greater subsequent emotion differentiation on occasions when people ruminated less than usual about these experiences. In contrast, on occasions when people ruminated more than usual about their experiences, social sharing of these experiences was linked to lower emotion differentiation. These effects held when we controlled for levels of negative emotion. Our findings suggest that putting feelings into words through sharing may only enable emotional precision when that sharing occurs without dwelling or perseverating.
How Listening versus Reading Alters Consumers' Interpretations of News
Shiri Melumad & Robert Meyer
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research investigates how listening to versus reading news alters its interpretation. A proposed theory argues that because listeners (vs. readers) are less able to regulate the rate of incoming information, they selectively attend to the more emotionally arousing elements in a story, such as those that are more negative. This selective attention leads listeners to form different interpretations of news than readers, the nature of which depend on the valence of the story. Six main experiments and three supplemental ones (N = 14,744) support the predicted effects on impression formation as well as the proposed mechanism. For example, participants who listened to (vs. read) a mixed-valence news story on the risks and benefits of a product processed its negative details more selectively, and in turn formed more pessimistic impressions of its safety. Moderators are also explored, showing that negativity biases similar to those observed for listeners arose among readers when their control over information flow was restricted, and that a positivity bias arose among listeners when the positive (vs. negative) information in a story was more surprising. Theoretical contributions to previous research on reading versus listening comprehension are discussed, as are the substantive implications for media firms and consumers.
Epigenetic Regulation of the Oxytocin System as an Indicator of Adaptation to Over-controlling Parenting and Psychosocial Functioning in Adulthood
Amanda Hellwig et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, October 2024
Abstract:
The oxytocin system plays a role in social stress adaptation, and this role is likely to be particularly important in adolescence. One method of regulating the oxytocin system is through DNA methylation in the promoter of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTRm), which reduces the gene's expression. This multi-method, longitudinal study, using a diverse community sample of 184 adolescents followed from age 13 to 28, examined the links between OXTRm and exposure to over-controlling parenting in adolescence and conflict with romantic partners and internalizing symptoms in adulthood. Female, but not male, adolescents who were exposed to psychologically controlling parenting at age 13 had lower levels of OXTRm at site -924 at age 28. Reduced OXTRm at site -924 was associated with greater romantic partner-reported relationship conflict at age 27, and reduced OXTRm at site -934 was marginally associated with greater participant-reported conflict for males. Reduced OXTRm at site -924 was also associated with fewer internalizing symptoms at ages 24-25. These results in adulthood are consistent with an upregulated oxytocin system reducing the salience of negative socioemotional stimuli. Overall, findings are consistent with oxytocin playing a role in the stress response system, and more specifically, by helping us to adapt to social environments like parenting and romantic relationships, reducing the salience of negativity, and reducing risk for common emotional problems.