Undistancing
Examining emotional tool use in daily life
Aaron Weidman & Ethan Kross
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions such as anger, gratitude, envy, and pride can be thought of as tools: They tend to serve context-specific functions in daily life. Prior work has shown that people can use emotions as tools in laboratory contexts, yet it is unclear whether people do use emotions as tools in daily life by intentionally trying to feel or express emotions that could yield context-specific beneficial outcomes. We examined this issue in 6 studies (total N = 1,409) in which participants (a) identified scenarios where specific emotions typically function as tools, (b) recalled episodes of emotional tool use, and (c) reported on emotional tool use in daily life via experience-sampling under experimental instructions. We found that people regularly used emotions as tools in daily life, but that people used positive emotions as tools much more frequently than negative emotions. Yet, when people used positive emotions as tools, this led to less beneficial outcomes than when participants felt positive emotions reactively — in part because using positive emotions as tools felt inauthentic — whereas using negative emotions as tools led to more beneficial outcomes than feeling negative emotions reactively. These findings point to a fascinating paradox: Although people are more willing to use positive (vs. negative) emotions as tools, these choices may not lead people to garner maximal possible benefits of positive emotions, while preventing people from capitalizing on the benefits of using negative emotions as tools. We discuss implications of this work for incorporating emotional tool use into theories of emotion regulation.
Gratitude Increases the Motivation to Fulfill a Partner’s Sexual Needs
Ashlyn Brady et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Maintaining sexual satisfaction is a critical, yet challenging, aspect of most romantic relationships. Although prior research has established that sexual communal strength (SCS) — i.e., the extent to which people are motivated to be responsive to their partner’s sexual needs — benefits romantic relationships, research has yet to identify factors that promote SCS. We predicted that gratitude would increase SCS because gratitude motivates partners to maintain close relationships. These predictions were supported in three studies with cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental methods. Specifically, experiencing and receiving expressions of gratitude were associated with greater SCS. These studies are the first to investigate the benefits of gratitude in the sexual domain and identify factors that promote SCS. Together, these results have important implications for relationship and sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships.
Same-Sex Couples and the Marital Surplus: The Importance of the Legal Environment
Daniel Hamermesh & Scott Delhommer
NBER Working Paper, March 2020
Abstract:
Same-sex couples’ marital surplus, their excess total income over that predicted by their work times and predicted wages, increases little as the duration of their relationship lengthens. When/where same-sex marriage is legal, it rises sharply as duration increases. The availability of legal domestic partnership or civil union has no effect on the surplus. The likelihood of home ownership conditional on demographic characteristics also increases with partnerships’ duration only when/where same-sex marriage is legal. These results, based on data from the American Community Survey 2013-17, support the notion that greater legal protection enhances partners’ incentives to invest in their relationship.
Missed connections and embarrassing confessions: Using big data to examine sex differences in sexual omission and commission regret
Gregory Webster et al.
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Error management theory (EMT; Haselton & Buss, 2000) draws on parental investment theory (Trivers, 1972) and signal detection to make novel predictions about human cognitive biases and their adaptive implications. EMT predicts that heterosexual men overperceive sexual interest from women, whereas women underperceive honest signals of relationship commitment from men. In turn, sexual strategies theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993) predicts that men may experience more regret over romantic or sexual omission (missed opportunities), whereas women may experience more regret over romantic or sexual commission (regretting past decisions). We tested these predictions using craigslist’s missed connections (personal ads posted by people on craigslist.org seeking to contact someone they saw briefly in public) and FMyLife.com’s (FML) love and intimacy sections (embarrassing incidents that people experience and choose to share online anonymously). We recorded missed connections for men seeking women and women seeking men in all 50 U.S. states at 3 time points (N > 61,000). We also recorded FMLs posted by men and women over a 3-year span (N > 3,500). Consistent with EMT, parental investment theory, and sexual strategies theory, men were more likely to post missed connections (sexual or romantic omission regret), whereas women were more likely to post in FML’s love and intimacy sections (sexual or romantic commission regret). We discuss EMT’s broad theoretical implications for psychology.
Interacting With Multiple Partners Improves Communication Skills
Shiri Lev‐Ari & Natalie Sebanz
Cognitive Science, April 2020
Abstract:
Successful communication is important for both society and people’s personal life. Here we show that people can improve their communication skills by interacting with multiple others, and that this improvement seems to come about by a greater tendency to take the addressee’s perspective when there are multiple partners. In Experiment 1, during a training phase, participants described figures to a new partner in each round or to the same partner in all rounds. Then all participants interacted with a new partner and their recordings from that round were presented to naïve listeners. Participants who had interacted with multiple partners during training were better understood. This occurred despite the fact that the partners had not provided the participants with any input other than feedback on comprehension during the interaction. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to provide descriptions to a different future participant in each round or to the same future participant in all rounds. Next they performed a surprise memory test designed to tap memory for global details, in line with the addressee’s perspective. Those who had provided descriptions for multiple future participants performed better. These results indicate that people can improve their communication skills by interacting with multiple people, and that this advantage might be due to a greater tendency to take the addressee’s perspective in such cases. Our findings thus show how the social environment can influence our communication skills by shaping our own behavior during interaction in a manner that promotes the development of our communication skills.