Schmooze
Taylor Wondergem & Mihaela Friedlmeier
Sex Roles, October 2012, Pages 403-411
Abstract:
Previous research has demonstrated that women smile more frequently and more broadly than men (Abel 2002; LaFrance et al. 2003). However, little research has focused specifically on the age at which this gender difference first emerges, and even less on the ethnic differences in smiling. This study attempts to identify the age when gender differences in smiling emerge among European American and African American children and teenagers. Additionally, we looked at the level of diversity within each school and its relation to smiling behavior. In total, 18,201 yearbook photographs ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade from 17 schools in the state of Michigan were evaluated for smile type: full smile, partial smile or no smile. Results suggest that a significant gender difference in smiling emerges around age 11. In contrast to other studies (e.g., LaFrance et al. 2003) and our own expectations, differences in smiling were found to be larger between African American boys and girls than between European American boys and girls. In addition, we found that African American girls' smiling behavior did not differ as a function of school diversity while African American boys from predominantly African American schools displayed less smiling compared to those from mixed or predominantly European-American schools. This study provides insight into the emergence and progression of gender differences in smiling and indicates that gender as well as ethnicity and ethnic diversity are influential factors in smiling behavior.
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Julia Buckner, Anthony Ecker & Christine Vinci
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Abstract:
Socially anxious individuals appear especially vulnerable to cannabis-related problems. However, the nature of the social anxiety-cannabis relation remains unclear. The present study examined the timing and specificity of cannabis craving in response to a social anxiety induction task among 82 (71% female) cannabis users randomly assigned to either a social interaction or reading task. Participants completed ratings of substance (cannabis, alcohol, cigarette) craving at baseline (prior to being informed of task assignment), before, during, and after task. The Time × Condition interaction was significant such that cannabis craving increased from before to during the task among participants in the social interaction condition, but not among those in the reading condition. This effect was specific to cannabis craving and was not observed for craving for alcohol or cigarettes. Data suggest that increases in state social anxiety may play a role in cannabis use behaviors.
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Deborah Son Holoien & Susan Fiske
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The compensation effect demonstrates a negative relationship between the dimensions of warmth and competence in impression formation in comparative contexts. However, does compensation between warmth and competence extend to impression management? Two studies examined whether people actively downplay their warmth in order to appear competent and downplay their competence in order to appear warm. In Studies 1a and 1b, participants selected words pretested to be high or low in warmth and competence to include in an e-mail message to people they wanted to impress. As predicted, participants downplayed their competence when they wanted to appear warm (Study 1a) and downplayed their warmth when they wanted to appear competent (Study 1b). In Studies 2a and 2b, compensation also occurred when participants introduced themselves to another person, as evidenced by the questions they selected to answer about themselves, their self-reported goals, and their open-ended introductions. Compensation occurred uniquely between warmth and competence and not for other dimensions, such as healthiness (Study 2a) and political interest (Study 2b), which suggests that the compensation effect extends beyond a mere zero-sum exchange between dimensions.
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Inga Carboni & Rich Gilman
Group Dynamics, September 2012, Pages 218-230
Abstract:
Within social networks, many benefits tend to accrue to brokers (i.e., individuals who connect with otherwise unconnected individuals). However, few studies have examined the potentially negative psychological consequences to individuals occupying this network position. Drawing upon role theory, we hypothesize that brokers, especially female brokers, may be particularly vulnerable to higher levels of social stress and lower levels of life satisfaction. Data on social relationships were collected from 733 senior high school students at two different high schools. Results supported our hypotheses, revealing that brokerage was positively associated with social stress and negatively associated with life satisfaction, but only for adolescent women. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings conclude the paper.
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Mingfeng Lin, Nagpurnanand Prabhala & Siva Viswanathan
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the online market for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, in which individuals bid on unsecured microloans sought by other individual borrowers. Using a large sample of consummated and failed listings from the largest online P2P lending marketplace, Prosper.com, we find that the online friendships of borrowers act as signals of credit quality. Friendships increase the probability of successful funding, lower interest rates on funded loans, and are associated with lower ex post default rates. The economic effects of friendships show a striking gradation based on the roles and identities of the friends. We discuss the implications of our findings for the disintermediation of financial markets and the design of decentralized electronic markets.
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Facebook, Stress, and Incidence of Upper Respiratory Infection in Undergraduate College Students
Jay Campisi et al.
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming
Abstract:
Having a large social network is generally beneficial to health. However, it is unclear how Internet-based social networks might influence health. Chronic stress can have negative health consequences, and some data suggest that Facebook could be a new source of psychological stress. Thus, we examined undergraduate college student perceptions of Facebook use and incidence of upper respiratory infections (URIs). We hypothesized that subjects with more diverse networks (i.e., more friends on Facebook) would have fewer URIs than their less diverse counterparts; that subjects reporting Facebook-induced stress would be more susceptible to URIs; and that subjects with more diverse networks who report Facebook-induced stress would be less susceptible to URIs than subjects with less diverse social networks who reported Facebook-induced stress. In this prospective study, healthy college students completed online questionnaires that assessed use and perceptions of Facebook and technology, and then were interviewed weekly for 10 weeks to track incidence of URI. URI episodes were defined by a symptom-based criterion. The social network size was significantly related to the rate of URI, such that, the larger the social network, the greater the incidence rate of URI. Most (85.7 percent) respondents experienced some degree of Facebook-induced stress. The effects of Facebook-induced stress on incidence of URI varied across the social network size, such that, the impact of stress on the URI incidence rate increased with the size of the social network. These results are largely in contrast to our hypotheses, but clearly suggest an association between Facebook use, psychological stress, and health.
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Adolescents' use of Instant Messaging as a means of emotional relief
Michal Dolev-Cohen & Azy Barak
Computers in Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Instant Messaging (IM) plays a major role in online communication, whether through dedicated software or through chat integrated in a social network's platform. IM-based online conversation enables private, synchronous, interpersonal communication while being invisible and possibly anonymous; facilitates self-disclosure and intimacy; and possesses advantageous features of expressive writing and social support. For adolescents, the use of IM is a legitimate, available, and free alternative vehicle for communicating with peers to ventilate negative emotions and to receive social support and advice. The present study examined effects of IMing friends on the emotional state of distressed adolescents through both pre-post (n = 100) analyses and comparison with an un-distressed group (n = 50). Dependent measures included self-report questionnaires, textual analysis, and expert judges' evaluations of the conversations. Findings revealed that IM conversation significantly contributed to the well-being of distressed adolescents. In addition, participants' level of introversion-extroversion moderated the degree of their perceived emotional relief, so that introverted participants profited from IMing more than did extraverts. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of online communication theory, as well as the practical implementations for troubled adolescents.
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Social Capital, Gender, and the Student Athlete
Aaron Clopton
Group Dynamics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite battling perceptions of isolation from the overall college campus, student athletes often report higher social outcomes, such as a greater sense of community, than nonathletes. However, research has also begun to show an intricate networking within these worlds as female student athletes interact more with their peers on campus than do male student athletes, and White student athletes are reporting higher levels of social capital than their African American counterparts. The current study, then, sought to contribute a descriptive analysis of this notion by exploring the role of gender in outcomes of social capital for National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division-I student athletes. Data were collected from 570 student athletes across 23 NCAA Division-I institutions, all of which were also affiliated with the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Results revealed a significant interaction between gender of the student athletes and sport type (team sport or individual sport), that is, female student athletes in team sports reported higher social capital than those in individual sports, and male student athletes reported higher social capital in individual-sport settings than in team sports. The findings here suggest significant implications for coaches, work-team supervisors, and future research.
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The Emotional Origins of a Social Learning Bias: Does the Pride Expression Cue Copying?
Jason Martens & Jessica Tracy
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Humans learn, in large part, by copying knowledgeable others. However, because others can be deceitful or lack competence, indiscriminate copying would be maladaptive. How then do individuals determine which social group members have knowledge that should be copied? We argue that the pride nonverbal expression may signal expertise, and thus bias learning such that proud others are more likely to be copied. In two studies, financially motivated participants answered a difficult trivia question after viewing a photograph (Study 1A) or a video (Study 2) of an emotion-displaying confederate answering the same question. Pride-displaying confederates were copied significantly more frequently than those displaying other expressions, suggesting that pride expressions bias social learning. Study 1B demonstrated that this effect was restricted to participants who were financially motivated to acquire knowledge. These findings indicate that pride displays are functional for observers and may play a critical role in social learning.
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Fumihiro Kano, Josep Call & Masaki Tomonaga
Journal of Comparative Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Because the faces and eyes of primates convey a rich array of social information, the way in which primates view faces and eyes reflects species-specific strategies for facial communication. How are humans and closely related species such as great apes similar and different in their viewing patterns for faces and eyes? Following previous studies comparing chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with humans (Homo sapiens), this study used the eye-tracking method to directly compare the patterns of face and eye scanning by humans, gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Human and ape participants freely viewed pictures of whole bodies and full faces of conspecifics and allospecifics under the same experimental conditions. All species were strikingly similar in that they viewed predominantly faces and eyes. No particular difference was identified between gorillas and orangutans, and they also did not differ from the chimpanzees tested in previous studies. However, humans were somewhat different from apes, especially with respect to prolonged eye viewing. We also examined how species-specific facial morphologies, such as the male flange of orangutans and the black-white contrast of human eyes, affected viewing patterns. Whereas the male flange of orangutans affected viewing patterns, the color contrast of human eyes did not. Humans showed prolonged eye viewing independently of the eye color of presented faces, indicating that this pattern is internally driven rather than stimulus dependent. Overall, the results show general similarities among the species and also identify unique eye-viewing patterns in humans.
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Boys affiliate more than girls with a familiar same-sex peer
Joyce Benenson, Amanda Quinn & Sandra Stella
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evidence from ethnographic, observational, and experimental studies with humans converges to suggest that males affiliate more than females with unrelated, familiar same-sex peers, but this has never been examined directly. With this aim, we compared frequency of affiliation with a single, randomly chosen, familiar same-sex peer for the two sexes during early childhood. A focal child was brought to a room with three play areas - one containing a same-sex peer, one containing an adult, and one empty - and time spent with the peer was tabulated. Results demonstrated that boys visited the play area with the same-sex peer more frequently than girls did, and more boys than girls spent significant amounts of time with the peer. Human males' greater willingness to affiliate with randomly chosen familiar peers likely contributes to sex differences in a number of characteristics of humans' social interactions.
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Effects of oxytocin on human social approach measured using intimacy equilibriums
Jean Liu, Adam Guastella & Mark Dadds
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research in animals and humans suggest a role of oxytocin in social approach to strangers. We tested this by introducing undergraduate students to opposite-gendered strangers, with each member of the pair having taken either oxytocin or placebo. One hundred and four undergraduate students were paired up and engaged in a face-to-face conversation structured with a series of intimate topics for discussion. We found that oxytocin increased conversational intimacy in female but not male participants, but that this was matched with compensatory decreases in eye-contact (relative to placebo). Argyle and Dean (1965) conceptualise intimacy as a function of physical distance, eye-contact, and conversational intimacy, such that equilibrium is maintained when increases in one domain are matched by compensatory decreases in another domain. Based on this notion, our results suggest that oxytocin does not facilitate social approach by increasing the intimacy equilibrium between two strangers.
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Andrew Kemp et al.
PLoS ONE, August 2012
Context: Oxytocin (OT) plays a key regulatory role in human social behaviour. While prior studies have examined the effects of OT on observable social behaviours, studies have seldom examined the effects of OT on psychophysiological markers such as heart rate variability (HRV), which provides an index of individual's motivation for social behaviour. Furthermore, no studies have examined the impact of OT on HRV under resting conditions, which provides an index of maximal capacity for social engagement.
Objective: To examine the effects of OT on HRV measures in healthy male participants while at rest. OT was hypothesised to increase HRV, compared to placebo, and that the effects would be greatest for a non-linear measure of HRV (the detrended fluctuation scaling exponent).
Methods: Twenty-one male participants were recruited for this study. Participants were non-smokers, not on any medications and reported no history of psychiatric illness, neurological disorder, or any other serious medical condition (e.g. diabetes, cardiovascular disease). The study employed a randomised, placebo-controlled, within-subject, crossover, experimental design.
Main Outcome Measures: HRV was calculated from electrocardiography under a standardized, 10-minute, resting state condition.
Results: As hypothesised, OT increased HRV and these effects were largest using the detrended fluctuation scaling exponent, a non-linear measure. These changes were observed in the absence of any change in state mood, as measured by the profile of mood states. Importantly, participants were unable to correctly guess which treatment they had been assigned at either of the two assessments.
Conclusions: Together with the broader literature on OT and HRV, findings suggest that acute administration of OT may facilitate a fundamental psychophysiological feature of social behaviour, increasing capacity for social engagement. Findings also suggest that HRV changes may provide a novel biomarker of response to OT nasal spray that can be incorporated into research on response to treatment.
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Who does what on Facebook? Age, sex, and relationship status as predictors of Facebook use
Francis McAndrew & Hye Sun Jeong
Computers in Human Behavior, November 2012, Pages 2359-2365
Abstract:
Previous studies have focused on why people use Facebook and on the effects of "Facebooking" on well being. This study focused more on how people use Facebook. An international sample of 1,026 Facebook users (284 males, 735 females; mean age = 30.24) completed an online survey about their Facebook activity. Females, younger people, and those not currently in a committed relationship were the most active Facebook users, and there were many age-, sex-, and relationship-related main effects. Females spent more time on Facebook, had more Facebook friends, and were more likely to use profile pictures for impression management; women and older people engaged in more online family activity. Relationship status had an impact on the Facebook activity of males, but little effect on the activity of females. The results are interpreted within a framework generated by an evolutionary perspective and previous research on the psychology of gossip.
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The optimal calibration hypothesis: How life history modulates the brain's social pain network
David Chester et al.
Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, July 2012
Abstract:
A growing body of work demonstrates that the brain responds similarly to physical and social injury. Both experiences are associated with activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula. This dual functionality of the dACC and anterior insula underscores the evolutionary importance of maintaining interpersonal bonds. Despite the weight that evolution has placed on social injury, the pain response to social rejection varies substantially across individuals. For example, work from our lab demonstrated that the brain's social pain response is moderated by attachment style: anxious-attachment was associated with greater intensity and avoidant-attachment was associated with less intensity in dACC and insula activation. In an attempt to explain these divergent responses in the social pain network, we propose the optimal calibration hypothesis, which posits variation in social rejection in early life history stages shifts the threshold of an individual's social pain network such that the resulting pain sensitivity will be increased by volatile social rejection and reduced by chronic social rejection. Furthermore, the social pain response may be exacerbated when individuals are rejected by others of particular importance to a given life history stage (e.g., potential mates during young adulthood, parents during infancy and childhood).
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What Are You Really Saying? Associations between Shyness and Verbal Irony Comprehension
Tracy Anne Mewhort-Buist & Elizabeth Nilsen
Infant and Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Verbal irony exploits the ambiguity inherent in language by using the discrepancy between a speaker's intended meaning and the literal meaning of his or her words to achieve social goals. Irony provides a window into children's developing pragmatic competence. Yet, little research exists on individual differences that may disrupt this understanding. For example, verbal irony may challenge shy children, who tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as being threatening and who have difficulty mentalizing in social contexts. We examined whether shyness is related to the interpretation of ironic statements. Ninety-nine children (8-12 year olds) listened to stories wherein one character made either a literal or ironic criticism or a literal or ironic compliment. Children appraised the speaker's belief and communicative intention. Shyness was assessed using self-report measures of social anxiety symptoms and shy negative affect. Shyness was not related to children's comprehension of the counterfactual nature of ironic statements. However, shyness was related to children's ratings of speaker meanness for ironic statements. Thus, although not related to the understanding that speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shyness was related to children's construal of the social meaning of irony. Such subtle differences in language interpretation may underlie some of the social difficulties facing shy children.
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Cognitive Egocentrism Differentiates Warm and Cold People
Ryan Boyd et al.
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cold individuals are relatively egocentric in their social relations, whereas warm individuals are not. Developmental and clinical literatures have suggested that cognitive egocentrism underlies social egocentrism, ideas that guided our hypotheses. Cognitive egocentrism can be assessed in very basic terms in tasks in which the question is whether priming a lateralized self-state (left versus right) biases subsequent visual perceptions in an assimilation-related manner. Biasing effects of this type reflect a tendency to assume that the self's activated state is a meaningful source of information about the external world when it is not. As hypothesized, cognitive egocentrism was evident at high, but not low, levels of interpersonal coldness, results that can be extended in understanding variability in relationship functioning.
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Determinants of Technology Adoption: Peer Effects in Menstrual Cup Take-Up
Emily Oster & Rebecca Thornton
Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming
Abstract:
We estimate the role of peer effects in technology adoption using data from a randomized distribution of menstrual cups in Nepal. Using individual randomization, we estimate causal effects of peer exposure on adoption. We find strong evidence of peer effects: two months after distribution, one additional friend with access to the menstrual cup increases usage by 18.6 percentage points. Using the fact that we observe both trial and usage of the product over time, we examine the mechanisms that drive peer effects. We show evidence that peers impact learning how to use the technology, but find less evidence that peers impact an individual desire to use the menstrual cup.
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Political Violence and Social Networks: Experimental Evidence from a Nigerian Election
Marcel Fafchamps & Pedro Vicente
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Voter education campaigns often aim to increase political participation and accountability. We followed a randomized campaign against electoral violence sponsored by an international NGO during the 2007 Nigerian elections. This paper investigates whether the effects of the campaign were transmitted indirectly through kinship, chatting, and geographical proximity. For individuals personally targeted by campaigners, we estimate the reinforcement effect of proximity to other targeted individuals. For individuals who self-report to be untargeted by campaigners, we estimate the diffusion of the campaign depending on proximity to targeted individuals. We find evidence for both effects, particularly on perceptions of violence. Effects are large in magnitude - often similar to the average effect of the campaign. Kinship is the strongest channel of reinforcement and diffusion. We also find that geographical proximity transmits simple effects on perceptions, and that chatting conveys more complex effects on behavior.
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Adult learners in a novel environment use prestige-biased social learning
Curtis Atkisson, Michael O'Brien & Alex Mesoudi
Evolutionary Psychology, August 2012, Pages 519-537
Abstract:
Social learning (learning from others) is evolutionarily adaptive under a wide range of conditions and is a long-standing area of interest across the social and biological sciences. One social-learning mechanism derived from cultural evolutionary theory is prestige bias, which allows a learner in a novel environment to quickly and inexpensively gather information as to the potentially best teachers, thus maximizing his or her chances of acquiring adaptive behavior. Learners provide deference to high-status individuals in order to ingratiate themselves with, and gain extended exposure to, that individual. We examined prestige-biased social transmission in a laboratory experiment in which participants designed arrowheads and attempted to maximize hunting success, measured in caloric return. Our main findings are that (1) participants preferentially learned from prestigious models (defined as those models at whom others spent longer times looking), and (2) prestige information and success-related information were used to the same degree, even though the former was less useful in this experiment than the latter. We also found that (3) participants were most likely to use social learning over individual (asocial) learning when they were performing poorly, in line with previous experiments, and (4) prestige information was not used more often following environmental shifts, contrary to predictions. These results support previous discussions of the key role that prestige-biased transmission plays in social learning.
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Autonomy, positive relationships, and IL-6: Evidence for gender-specific effects
Tory Eisenlohr-Moul & Suzanne Segerstrom
British Journal of Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objectives: A body of evidence indicates that women value relationship-centred aspects of well-being more than men do, while men value autonomy-centred aspects of well-being more than women do. The current study examined whether gender moderates relations between autonomy and positive relationships and interleukin-6 (IL-6), a cytokine associated with inflammatory processes. Aspects of well-being consistent with gender-linked values were expected to be most health protective such that positive relationships would predict lower IL-6 only or more strongly in women, and autonomy would predict lower IL-6 only or more strongly in men.
Methods: In the first study, a sample of 119 older adults (55% female) living in Kentucky were visited in their homes for interviews and blood draws. In the second study, a sample of 1,028 adults (45% female) living across the United States underwent a telephone interview followed by a visit to a research centre for blood draws.
Results: In the Kentucky sample, autonomy was quadratically related to IL-6 such that moderate autonomy predicted higher IL-6; this effect was stronger in men. In the US national sample, more positive relationships were associated with lower IL-6 in women only. When the national sample was restricted to match the Kentucky sample, moderate autonomy was again associated with higher IL-6 in men only.
Conclusions: Results provide preliminary evidence for gender-specific effects of positive relationships and autonomy on IL-6. Further work is needed to establish the generalizability of these effects to different ages, cultures, and health statuses.