Life of the Party
Brian Meier, Michael Robinson, Margaret Carter & Verlin Hinsz
Journal of Research in Personality, April 2010, Pages 293-296
Abstract:
Stereotypes ascribe positive social traits to attractive individuals. Such stereotypes are viewed as erroneous. However, these stereotypes may have a kernel of truth if more sociable individuals present themselves in a manner that increases their attractiveness, a plausible idea given social engagement goals. To examine this idea, two studies involving 217 participants used a zero-acquaintance design in which unacquainted judges rated the attractiveness of participants in impromptu photographs. Participants high in the self-reported traits of agreeableness or extraversion, the two Big 5 traits most relevant to interpersonal behavior, were rated more attractive. Further results indicated that personality-attraction relationships were mediated by a well-groomed appearance. The results suggest a kernel of truth to the idea that sociable individuals are also attractive.
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The Rhythm of Joint Action: Synchrony Promotes Cooperative Ability
Piercarlo Valdesolo, Jennifer Ouyang & David DeSteno
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although evidence has suggested that coordinated action enhances rapport and fosters cooperation, the possibility that it might also influence the ability to pursue joint goals has yet to be demonstrated. We show that rocking in synchrony enhanced individuals' perceptual sensitivity to the motion of other entities and thereby increased their success in a subsequent joint action task that required the ability to dynamically detect and respond appropriately to a partner's movements. These findings support the view that in addition to fostering social cohesion, synchrony hones the abilities that allow individuals to functionally direct their cooperative motives.
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Edward Lemay, Margaret Clark & Aaron Greenberg
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 2010, Pages 339-353
Abstract:
The authors posit that the attribution of desirable interpersonal qualities to physically attractive targets is a projection of interpersonal goals; people desire to form and maintain close social bonds with attractive targets and then project these motivations onto those targets. Three studies support this model. Tendencies to see attractive novel targets depicted in photographs (Study 1), attractive romantic partners (Study 2), and attractive friends (Study 3) as especially interpersonally receptive and responsive were explained by perceivers' heightened desires to bond with attractive individuals. Additional findings regarding response latencies (Study 1) also supported this model. Many instances of the "beautiful is good" effect may not reflect stereotyping as it is typically construed. Rather, they may reflect projection of heightened desires to bond with beautiful people.
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Marina Kouzakova, Johan Karremans, Rick van Baaren & Ad van Knippenberg
Social Psychological and Personality Science, January 2010, Pages 87-93
Abstract:
Lack of mimicry in interpersonal interactions may thwart an individual's sense of belonging. Nonmimicked individuals are hypothesized to compensate for this by upgrading their personal relationships. In line with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed that nonmimicked participants enhanced their evaluation of their current romantic relationship, compared to both mimicked participants and those who had no prior interaction. Experiment 2 showed the impact of nonmimicry on a variety of close relationship evaluations using a pre- versus postmeasure design. Mediation analyses further revealed that the link between mimicry and relationship evaluations is mediated by increased belongingness needs, specifically for the nonmimicked participants. These studies show that after an interaction even with a perfect stranger, nonmimicry may frustrate one's belongingness needs and therefore lead to strengthened bonds with one's close others. Implications for (non)mimicry as a behavioral indicator of social exclusion and the presumed buffer function of close relationships are discussed.
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Nurit Tal-Or
Human Communication Research, April 2010, Pages 163-189
Abstract:
Most of the literature on impression management considers direct tactics such as self-promoting by mentioning personal achievements and ingratiating by complimenting others. These direct tactics can backfire if the target recognizes the hidden motive behind them. Therefore, people often use indirect impression management tactics. Previous research has shown that people promote themselves indirectly by associating themselves with successful others or by magnifying the characteristics of others to whom they are connected. The current research suggests that when the motive is ingratiation, the impression manager highlights the success of a person who is close to the target of ingratiation. The four experiments of the current research documented this tactic and examined its consequences for the impression manager and for the target.
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The Endocrinology of Exclusion: Rejection Elicits Motivationally Tuned Changes in Progesterone
Jon Maner, Saul Miller, Norman Schmidt & Lisa Eckel
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social exclusion can have profound effects on a vast array of motivated psychological processes, from social withdrawal and aggression to prosocial behavior and social affiliation. The current studies examined motivationally tuned endocrinological consequences of exclusion by measuring the release of progesterone, a hormone that reflects an individual's level of social-affiliative motivation. Results from two experiments indicate that release of progesterone following social exclusion depends on people's levels of social anxiety and rejection sensitivity. Individuals high in social anxiety displayed a drop in progesterone in response to exclusion, a pattern consistent with a lack of affiliative motivation. In contrast, individuals high in rejection sensitivity displayed an increase in progesterone when given an opportunity to reaffiliate, a change consistent with a desire for compensatory social contact. These findings provide new insight into the immediate biological changes precipitated by social exclusion-changes that could initiate a range of motivated social responses.
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I'd Like to Thank the Academy, Team Spillovers, and Network Centrality
Gabriel Rossman, Nicole Esparza & Phillip Bonacich
American Sociological Review, February 2010, Pages 31-51
Abstract:
This article uses Academy Award nominations for acting to explore how artistic achievement is situated within a collaborative context. Assessment of individual effort is particularly difficult in film because quality is not transparent, but the project-based nature of the field allows us to observe individuals in multiple collaborative contexts. We address these issues with analyses of the top-10 credited roles from films released in theaters between 1936 and 2005. Controlling for an actor's personal history and the basic traits of a film, we explore two predictions. First, we find that status, as measured by asymmetric centrality in the network of screen credits, is an efficient measure of star power and mediates the relationship between experience and formal artistic consecration. Second, we find that actors are most likely to be consecrated when working with elite collaborators. We conclude by arguing that selection into privileged work teams provides cumulative advantage.
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Listeners influence speakers' perceived communication effectiveness
Nicolas Fay, Andrew Page & Crystal Serfaty
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People have an exaggerated sense of self-efficacy. This paper investigates the mechanism behind speakers' tendency to overestimate their communication efficacy. Two competing mechanisms were tested: intrapersonal and interpersonal. Speakers communicated a series of ambiguous statements to a co-present or absent listener and then estimated their success. Speakers overestimated their ability to communicate their intended message (relative to listeners' actual comprehension of their message) when a listener was co-present, but not when a listener was absent. Our findings support an interpersonal explanation of speakers' perceived communication efficacy.
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Rellie Derfler-Rozin, Madan Pillutla & Stefan Thau
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
We hypothesize that people at risk of exclusion from groups will engage in actions that can socially reconnect them with others and test the hypothesis in four studies. We show that participants at risk of exclusion reciprocated the behavior of an unknown person (Study 1a) and a potential excluder (Study 1b) more compared to two control groups (people who received a non-social negative feedback and people who were actually excluded). Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1a with trust as the dependent variable. Study 3 showed that people who were at risk of exclusion took less general risk compared with both control groups. These results demonstrate socially adaptive responses of people who are at risk of social exclusion.
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John Seiter & Harry Weger
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, January 2010, Pages 1-12
Abstract:
This study examined the effects of food servers' sex, the use of generalized compliments, and the size of the dining party on tipping behavior in restaurants. Four food servers (2 males, 2 females) waited on 360 parties eating dinner, and either complimented or did not compliment the parties on their dinner selections. Results indicated that food servers received significantly higher tips when complimenting their parties than when not complimenting them, although as the size of the party increased, the effectiveness of compliments decreased. These results and their implications are discussed.
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Movement Synchrony and Perceived Entitativity
Daniël Lakens
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Movement synchrony has been theoretically linked to the emergence of a social unit. To empirically investigate whether similar movement rhythms are an antecedent of perceived entitativity, movement rhythms were experimentally manipulated in four studies. Using this novel approach, stick figures waving in synchrony were found to be rated higher on entitativity than stick figures waving in different rhythms (Study 1), and this effect was extended to interactional synchrony, where different movements are performed in the same rhythm (Study 2). Objective differences in movement rhythms are linearly related to ratings of perceived entitativity, and this relationship is partially mediated by the subjectively perceived similarity of movement rhythms (Study 3). These results also held for entitativity judgments for videotaped individuals waving rhythmically (Study 4). These results support the hypothesis that movement rhythms are an important source of information which observers use to infer the extent to which individuals are a social unit.
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The schema-driven chameleon: How mimicry affects executive and self-regulatory resources
Amy Dalton, Tanya Chartrand & Eli Finkel
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2010, Pages 605-617
Abstract:
The authors propose that behavioral mimicry is guided by schemas that enable efficient social coordination. If mimicry is schema driven, then the operation of these schemas should be disrupted if partners behave in counternormative ways, such as mimicking people they generally would not or vice versa, rendering social interaction inefficient and demanding more executive and self-regulatory resources. To test this hypothesis, Experiments 1-3 used a resource-depletion paradigm in which participants performed a resource-demanding task after interacting with a confederate who mimicked them or did not mimic them. Experiment 1 demonstrated impaired task performance among participants who were not mimicked by a peer. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect and also demonstrated a significant reversal in social contexts where mimicry is counternormative, suggesting that inefficiency emerges from schema inconsistency, not from the absence of mimicry per se. Experiment 4 used a divided attention paradigm and found that resources are taxed throughout schema-inconsistent interactions. These findings suggest that much-needed resources are preserved when the amount of mimicry displayed by interacting individuals adheres to norms, whereas resources are depleted when mimicry norms are violated.
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Texting as a life phase medium
Rich Ling
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, January 2010, Pages 277-292
Abstract:
SMS has grown to be a common form of interaction in Norwegian society. Its adoption started among teens but has since been taken into use by other age groups. However, the use patterns for teens seem to be different from those of older users. This paper examines the assertion that SMS is a life phase and not a cohort phenomenon. That is, its use is more intense among teens and more moderate among older age groups. Data for the analysis comes from a series of six nation-wide surveys of Norwegians over the age of 13. Questions on the reported use of SMS were included in all these surveys. This information was adjusted in order to remove the effects of generally increased use over time. The analysis shows that the proportion of text messages sent by different age groups stays rather stable over time. Indeed there seems to be a type of "standing wave" of use associated with older teens and those in their early 20s. While there are cohort effects visible in the data, the analysis indicates that texting is largely a life phase phenomenon. If the curve had flattened out with time it would have indicated that the teens are carrying texting with them as they grow older. This, it seems is not the case. The overall use of SMS has increased in Norwegian society but the relative distribution of the text messages has remained centered around those in their late teens. This seems to indicate that the intense use of SMS is a life-phase phenomenon.
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Relations between humor styles and the Dark Triad traits of personality
Livia Veselka, Julie Aitken Schermer, Rod Martin & Philip Vernon
Personality and Individual Differences, April 2010, Pages 772-774
Abstract:
The present study investigated correlations between four humor styles and the Dark Triad traits of personality. Participants were 114 pairs of adult twins from North America who completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, and the MACH-IV. Results revealed that participants who scored higher on sub-clinical psychopathy and Machiavellianism exhibited a greater tendency to employ negative humor styles (aggressive, self-defeating), whereas individuals who obtained higher scores on narcissism were more prone to employing a positive affiliative humor style. These results help to clarify the nature of the Dark Triad traits and shed light on the interpersonal styles employed by individuals who exhibit these traits.
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An Internet-Based Self-Help Treatment for Fear of Public Speaking: A Controlled Trial
C. Botella, M.J. Gallego, A. Garcia-Palacios, V. Guillen, R.M. Baños, S. Quero & M. Alcañiz
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study offers data about the efficacy of "Talk to Me," an Internet-based telepsychology program for the treatment of fear of public speaking that includes the most active components in cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for social phobia (exposure and cognitive therapies). One hundred twenty-seven participants with social phobia were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: (a) an Internet-based self-administered program; (b) the same program applied by a therapist; (c) a waiting-list control group. Results showed that both treatment conditions were equally efficacious. In addition, Talk to Me and the same treatment applied by a therapist were more efficacious than the waiting-list condition. Treatment gains were maintained at 1-year follow-up. The results from this study support the utility of Internet-delivered CBT programs in order to reach a higher number of people who could benefit from CBT. Internet-delivered CBT programs could also play a valuable role in the dissemination of CBT.
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What Do We Expect from Our Friends?
Stephen Leider, Markus Mobius, Tanya Rosenblat & Quoc-Anh Do
Journal of the European Economic Association, March 2010, Pages 120-138
Abstract:
We conduct a field experiment in a large real-world social network to examine how subjects expect to be treated by their friends and by strangers who make allocation decisions in modified dictator games. While recipients' beliefs accurately account for the extent to which friends will choose more generous allocations than strangers (i.e. directed altruism), recipients are not able to anticipate individual differences in the baseline altruism of allocators (measured by giving to an unnamed recipient, which is predictive of generosity towards named recipients). Recipients who are direct friends with the allocator, or even recipients with many common friends, are no more accurate in recognizing intrinsically altruistic allocators. Recipient beliefs are significantly less accurate than the predictions of an econometrician who knows the allocator's demographic characteristics and social distance, suggesting recipients do not have information on unobservable characteristics of the allocator.