Binders
The Avoidance of Strong Ties
Mario Small, Kristina Brant & Maleah Fekete
American Sociological Review, August 2024, Pages 615-649
Abstract:
Theorists have proposed that a value of close friends and family -- strong ties -- is the ability to confide in them when facing difficult issues. But close relationships are complicated, and recent studies report that people sometimes avoid strong ties when facing personal issues. How common is such avoidance? The question speaks to theoretical debates over the nature of "closeness" and practical concerns over social isolation. We develop an approach and test it on new, nationally representative data. We find that, when facing personal difficulties, adult Americans are as likely to avoid as to talk to close friends and family. Most avoidance is not actively reflected on but passively enacted, and, contrary to common belief, is not limited to either specific network members or particular topics, depending instead on the conjunction of member and topic. Building on Simmel, we propose that a theory of the fundamental need to conceal and reveal helps account for the findings. We suggest that there is no more empirical justification for labeling strong ties as those who are trusted than for labeling them as those who are avoided. In turn, isolation might be less a matter of having no intimates than of having repeatedly to avoid them.
Probing connections between social connectedness, mortality risk, and brain age: A preregistered study
Isabella Kahhale et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many lifestyle and psychosocial factors are associated with a longer lifespan; central among these is social connectedness, or the feeling of belongingness, identification, and bond as part of meaningful human relationships. Decades of research have established that social connectedness is related not only to better mental health (e.g., less loneliness and depression) but also to improved physical health (e.g., decreased inflammatory markers, reduced cortisol activity). Recent methodological advances allow for the investigation of a novel marker of biological health by deriving a predicted "age of the brain" from a structural neuroimaging scan. Discrepancies between a person's algorithm-predicted brain-age and chronological age (i.e., the brain-age gap) have been found to predict mortality and psychopathology risk with accuracy rivaling other known measures of aging. This preregistered investigation uses the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study to examine connections between the quality of social connections, the brain-age gap, and markers of mortality risk to understand the longevity-promoting associations of social connectedness from a novel biological vantage point. While social connectedness was associated with markers of mortality risk (number of chronic conditions and ability to perform activities of daily living), our models did not find significant links between social connectedness and the brain-age gap, or the brain-age gap and mortality risk. Supplemental and sensitivity analyses suggest alternate approaches to investigating these associations and overcoming limitations. While plentiful evidence underscores that being socially connected is good for the mind, future research should continue to consider whether it impacts neural markers of aging and longevity.
Face masks facilitate discrimination of genuine and fake smiles - But people believe the opposite
Haotian Zhou et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2024
Abstract:
It seems a foregone conclusion that face mask-wearing hinders the interpretation of facial expressions, increasing the risk of interpersonal miscommunication. This research identifies a notable counter-case to this apparent truism. In multiple experiments, perceivers were more accurate distinguishing between genuine and fake smiles when the mouth region was concealed under a mask versus exposed. Masks improved accuracy by shielding perceivers from the undue influence of non-diagnostic cues hidden behind masks. However, perceivers were unaware of the advantage bestowed by masks, holding, instead, the misbelief that masks severely obscure the distinction between genuine and fake smiles. Furthermore, these patterns proved to be culturally invariant rather than culturally contingent, holding true for both Westerners and Easterners.
Seeing others yawn enhances the detection of spiders and cockroaches
Andrew Gallup & Sabina Wozny
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Yawning may serve as a cue that an individual is undergoing a downregulation of arousal and vigilance. Accordingly, the group vigilance theory posits that witnessing someone yawn should enhance the vigilance of the observer as a means of compensating for the reduced arousal and vigilance experienced by the yawner. This theory has gained empirical support from two recent studies, whereby exposure to yawning stimuli enhanced the detection of recurrent survival threats (e.g., snakes and lions) but did not alter the detection of comparable, nonthreatening stimuli (e.g., frogs and impala). The current study extends upon this line of research by examining how seeing other people yawn affects the detection of spiders and cockroaches. In a repeated-measures design, 30 participants completed a series of visual search tasks with spiders and cockroaches both following exposure to yawning and control videos. As expected, spiders were detected faster and elicited a greater number of fixations when presented as distractors. Moreover, following the observation of yawning videos, participants were faster at detecting both spiders and cockroaches and were less likely to fixate on distractor stimuli. These findings provide further evidence that seeing others yawn enhances the detection of fearful animals.
Are social supports always protective? A seven-city study on heavy drinking among sexual and gender minority young adults experiencing homelessness
Brandi Armstrong et al.
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, September 2024
Methods: A purposive sample of SGM-YAEH (N=425) recruited in homeless service agencies from seven major cities in the U.S. completed a self-administered computer-assisted anonymous survey. This survey covered heavy drinking behaviors and social network properties. Logistic regression models were conducted to identify social support sources associated with SGM-YAEH's heavy drinking.
Results: Over 40% of SGM-YAEH were involved in heavy drinking in the past 30 days. Receiving support from street-based peers (OR=1.9; 95% CI=1.1, 3.2) and homebased peers (OR=1.7; 95% CI=1.0, 2.8) were each positively associated with SGMYAEH heavy drinking risks.
Face recognition's practical relevance: Social bonds, not social butterflies
Laura Engfors et al.
Cognition, September 2024
Abstract:
Research on individual differences in face recognition has provided important foundational insights: their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, and resilience to change. Elusive, however, has been the key issue of practical relevance: do these individual differences correlate with aspects of life that go beyond the recognition of faces, per se? Though often assumed, especially in social realms, such correlates remain largely theoretical, without empirical support. Here, we investigate an array of potential social correlates of face recognition. We establish social relationship quality as a reproducible correlate. This link generalises across face recognition tasks and across independent samples. In contrast, we detect no robust association with the sheer quantity of social connections, whether measured directly via number of social contacts or indirectly via extraversion-related personality indices. These findings document the existence of a key social correlate of face recognition and provide some of the first evidence to support its practical relevance. At the same time, they challenge the naive assumption that face recognition relates equally to all social outcomes. In contrast, they suggest a focused link of face recognition to the quality, not quantity, of one's social connections.