Empathic Blushing in Friends and Strangers

Three volunteers watched a previously recorded video of one of them singing, as cheek sensors monitored their blushing. When performers watched videotapes of their performance, they blushed significantly more than strangers, but not more than their own friends, watching with them. Friends and strangers did not differ significantly in blushing, however. Skin conductance arousal responses of performers and friends, but not performers and strangers, or friends of performers and strangers, were correlated. In a second experiment, strangers who sang before watching another person sing blushed more than strangers who did not sing first, or who sang and then watched a neutral video. This suggests that performing the embarrassing act may have predisposed people to blush, perhaps empathically, later. No gender differences were seen in blushing. Embarrassability questionnaire scores did not correlate with blushing. Empathic accuracy, and associative learning, are proposed to account for the results.     

Keeping calm when riding the rapids: Optimism and perceived partner withdrawal

Partners often encounter situations in which their needs and preferences diverge. Partners sometimes prefer to be on their own and withdraw from interactions, and these situations can cause distress. We hypothesized that optimists may navigate such situations more adaptively. Using momentary assessment and questionnaire data from 103 couples, we examined how spouses responded to perceived partner withdrawal and whether optimism moderated these responses. When spouses perceived the partner to withdraw, they reported less positive and more negative behaviors. Optimism moderated this effect beyond the effects of positive expectations, suggesting that optimists are less reactive to withdrawal. Partners with more positive expectations reported more benevolent behaviors, although they reported less benevolent behaviors on days of partner withdrawal than on other days.     

Multiple audience problem: a strategic communication perspective on social perception

Examined how communicators send mixed messages containing an explicit surface content and a covert hidden content. In Study 1, Ss wrote constrained essays presenting either an introverted or extraverted personality. Although authors reported manipulating essay credibility and readers reported relying on credibility to make their judgments, readers succumbed to correspondence bias. In Studies 2 and 3, Ss again prepared either constrained essays (Study 2) or constrained videotapes (Study 3) and included in them a hidden message that would be understood by only their friends but not by strangers. Observers then read these essays or watched these videotapes. Friends detected and decoded the hidden messages, whereas strangers did not. We discuss these findings in terms of social perception and strategic communication.     

Remembering Friends as Not So Friendly in Competitive and Bargaining Social Interactions

From children's schoolyard play to executives' boardroom negotiations, competitive and bargaining interactions are common to everyday life. Sometimes, the interacting parties are socially close and sometimes not. In this research, we examine how friendship influences memory for actions in such interactions. Dyads consisting of either friends or strangers played a competitive card game (Study 1) or the ultimatum game (Studies 2 and 4) and then recalled the interaction. We find that participants remembered friends' play as more competitive (Study 1) and less generous (Studies 2 and 4) than strangers' play, even when friends' actual play was more generous than that of strangers (Studies 2 and 4). Friendship did not affect recall for one's own play. In a workplace setting, Study 3 reveals people expect more of work colleagues who are friends than of work colleagues who are acquaintances. Study 4 tests our complete model and shows that people expect more of friends than of strangers and that this difference in expectations explains the less favorable memory for friend's actions. Our findings are consistent with a negative disconfirmation account whereby people expect their friends to be less competitive and more generous, and when these expectations are violated, people remember friends' actions more negatively than they actually were. Much research shows positive effects of friendship norms on actual behavior. We demonstrate a negative effect on people's memory of friends' behavior in competitive and bargaining social interactions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Helping New Acquaintances Make the Right Impression: Balancing Image Concerns of Others and Self

People strategically regulate information about the identities of friends to help those friends create desired impressions on audiences. Are people willing to help acquaintances manage their impressions, and if so, are such efforts moderated by the helper's own self-presentational concerns? Participants were 234 same-sex strangers who went through a structured self-disclosure procedure designed to induce psychological closeness. They later described this partner to an opposite-sex third party who supposedly preferred either extraverts or introverts as ideal dates, and who their partner regarded as attractive and wanted to impress or as unattractive and did not care to impress. As predicted, participants described their partners consistently with the preferences of the attractive other, but only when their own self-presentational concerns about accuracy were low. If the third party was unattractive, participants whose accuracy concerns were low tended to describe their partners opposite the preferences of the other, suggesting they were “not your type.” The results indicated that beneficial impression management occurs even among acquaintances, but is held in check by self-presentational concerns about accuracy.     

Sex Differences in Response to Marijuana in a Social Setting

Due to the failure to include women in the subject samples of most experimental investigations of the effects of cannabis, the possibility exists that the data obtained on this social intoxicant are applicable to only 49% of the population. Those few studies that have compared males and females have focused on performance variables and have demonstrated very few differences. It was hypothesized that the most likely area for male/female marijuana differences would be that of social interactions and behaviors related to these interactions.
In a relaxed, informal atmosphere, Es videotaped the social interactions of groups of female friends, female strangers, male friends, or male strangers as they smoked coltsfoot, placebo, and marijuana. In addition to social-condition and drug-condition differences, we obtained statistically significant effects indicating that the women responded both to the social situations and to the drug differently from the men. In general, the women interacted with each other more positively than did the men. These effects were paralleled by sex differences in mood, person perception, and even in how pleasurable or annoying the experimental tasks were.
These data are of import not only in the area of cannabis research but in the field of social interactions and the study of female/male differences as well.     

A negativity bias in interpersonal evaluation

Two studies were conducted to demonstrate a bias toward negativity in evaluations of persons or their work in particular social circumstances. In Study 1, subjects evaluated materials written by peers. Those working under conditions that placed them in low status relative to the audience for their evaluations, or conditions that made their intellectual position within a group insecure, showed a clear bias toward negativity in those evaluations. Only individuals who believed their audience to be of relatively low status and at the same time believed their intellectual position to be secure did not show this bias. In Study 2, subjects viewed a videotape of a stimulus person and rated him on several intellectual and social dimensions. Again, subjects believed their audience to be of either relatively high or relatively low status. As a cross dimension, they were given instructions to focus on either the intellectual or the social abilities of the stimulus person while viewing the videotape. A strong main effect of audience status was demonstrated, but only in ratings of intellectual traits; subjects who believed their audience to be of relatively high status rated the stimulus person's intellectual qualities significantly more negatively. Moreover, this effect was independent of the instructional focus subjects had been given. The negativity bias is discussed in the context of previous demonstrations of biases toward weighting negative information more heavily than positive information, as well as previous demonstrations of seemingly pervasive positivity biases in memory and judgment.     

When Audience Presence Is Enjoyable: The Influence of Audience Awareness of Prior Success on Performance and Task Interest

Subjects received positive feedback on a practice anagram task and then performed a similar task in front of either an audience that was aware of their prior success or an audience that was unaware of their prior success. Two control conditions were included in which subjects performed alone after receiving positive feedback or performed alone without feedback. Results indicated subjects' task interest and performance increased under conditions in which they performed in front of unaware audiences. In addition, subjects' task interest and performance levels decreased in the presence of audiences that were aware of their prior success. These results point to an important role of audience awareness in setting performance standards and expectations. These findings are interpreted from a resource-investment analysis of task value and performance. Implications for surveillance in public settings and in the workplace (e.g., automated computer monitoring) are discussed.     

Emotional signals in nonverbal interaction: dyadic facilitation and convergence in expressions, appraisals, and feelings

We examined social facilitation and emotional convergence in amusement, sadness, and fear in dynamic interactions. Dyads of friends or strangers jointly watched emotion-eliciting films while they either could or could not communicate nonverbally. We assessed three components of each emotion (expressions, appraisals, and feelings), as well as attention to and social motives toward the co-participant. In Study 1, participants interacted through a mute videoconference. In Study 2, they sat next to each other and either were or were not separated by a partition. Results revealed that facilitation and convergence are not uniform across different emotions and emotion components. Particularly strong supporting patterns emerged for the facilitation of and convergence in smiling. When direct interaction was possible (Study 2), friends showed a general tendency for strong convergence, with the exception of fear-related appraisals. This suggests that underlying processes of emotional contagion and social appraisal are differentially relevant for different emotions.     

Claimed self-handicaps and the self-handicapper: The relation of reduction in intended effort to performance

Two studies were conducted to examine the hypothesis that individuals who claim lack of effort as a handicap in anticipation of an unsuccessful performance will perform poorly to be consistent with the claim. Subjects who scored high or low on the Self-Handicapping Scale (Jones & Rhodewalt, 1982) were led to believe that they were about to take a test that was either important or trivial (high or low ego-relevance) and that they would either perform well or poorly (high or low expected difficulty). They then indicated in private how hard they intended to try and subsequently took the test. In both studies, high self-handicapping subjects who anticipated a difficult test indicated that they would withhold effort on the test and displayed poorer performance than subjects in all other conditions. These findings were obtained regardless of the level of importance of the test. Study 2 demonstrated additionally that the effects of self-handicapping were independent of the subject's level of self-esteem. Study 2 also found that high self-handicapping subjects who expected a difficult test reported experiencing more distracting cognitions while taking the test than did other subjects. The results are discussed with regard to the effects of anticipatory self-protective behavior on performance outcomes.     

"With a little help from my friends...": the role of co-witness relationship in susceptibility to misinformation

Inaccuracies in eyewitness accounts can occur when witnesses are exposed to post-event misinformation via discussion with a co-witness. The current study examined the role of co-witness relationship by comparing the memory performance of pairs of romantic couples, friends and previously unacquainted strangers with that of individuals. Ninety-six participants viewed an event and then discussed the witnessed event with a stranger, a romantic partner or a friend. One member of each pair saw a theft take place during the witnessed event. Individual group participants did not discuss the witnessed event with anyone. Results indicate that all co-witness dyads produced less accurate recall accounts than participants who did not interact with another witness. However, witnesses who were previously acquainted with their co-witness (either in a friendship or romantic relationship) were significantly more likely to report information obtained from their co-witness that they had not seen themselves. Prior acquaintance also led to an increased number of incorrect attributions of both guilt and innocence.     

Re-conceptualizing Museum Audiences: Power,Activity, Responsibility

ABSTRACT

This article offers a theoretical overview of how diverse disciplines, such as cultural studies, sociology, philosophy of art, education, and marketing, have contributed to the evolving conceptualization of museum audiences over the past 50 years. Audience research has moved through different paradigms. Every shift in the way audiences are viewed unavoidably influences the way museum professionals view themselves, their role, and the way they interact with their audiences. The most recent audience conceptualization envisions visitors as active interpreters who selectively construct meaning based on their personal experiences, associations, biases, and sense of identity, whereas the museum is envisioned as an open work that is only completed by the visitor. However, certain challenges loom over this new audience conceptualization. It is argued that such visualization underestimates power issues while romanticizing the power of audience activity, thereby ignoring issues of responsibility.     

Reasoning about the disclosure of success and failure to friends among children in the United States and China

Children's reasoning about individuals' willingness to disclose their successes and failures was investigated among 194 6- to 11-year-olds in the United States and China. In Study 1, participants showed a valence-matching effect, in which they predicted that individuals would be more likely to disclose their performance to an audience of friends if the friends' level of achievement was similar rather than dissimilar. This effect was weaker among children from China, who were more likely to justify their responses with reference to the implications for learning together or improving future performance. Results of Study 2 suggest that for children from the United States, the disclosure of successful performance to a friend who has performed poorly is seen as implicitly conveying the message "I'm better than you," whereas for children from China the message is "I can help you to do better." Results are interpreted with reference to cultural values and expectations about helping others to learn.     

Negotiation Teamwork: The Impact of Information Distribution and Accountability on Performance Depends on the Relationship among Team Members

We examined how the distribution of information among team members and accountability pressures affected the quality of negotiated settlements reached among teams of friends negotiating against teams of strangers. The main conclusions of the experiment may be summarized by the following findings: (1) Teams of strangers reaped a greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates were accountable to a supervisor as opposed to negotiating strictly on their own behalf. (2) Teams of strangers also reaped a marginally greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates possessed unique, as opposed to common, information about their own team's preferences. (3) Not surprisingly, teams of friends were more cohesive than were teams of strangers; however, teams of friends were also more concerned about maintaining their relationship than were teams of strangers. (4) Teams of friends felt least cohesive when they were accountable to a supervisor, whereas teams of strangers felt most cohesive when they were accountable. Similarly, friends indicated greater relationship concerns when having to deal with distributed information, whereas information distribution had no effect on the relationship concerns of strangers. (5) For teams of strangers, greater team cohesiveness was positively correlated with better performance. (6) Moreover, when teams of strangers felt more cohesive than their opponents, they earned more than teams of strangers who felt less cohesive.     

Children's understanding of modesty in front of peer and adult audiences

Previous research has suggested that the understanding of modesty—downplaying one's achievements to evoke a positive social evaluation—develops in the primary school years. However, very little is known about how children's understanding of modesty is associated with social contextual factors, such as audience type. A sample of 92 children aged 8–11 years responded to hypothetical vignettes where the protagonist responded either modestly or immodestly to praise. The findings supported earlier indications of an increase with age in the understanding of modesty, and further found that modesty was judged as more appropriate for peer audiences than for adult audiences. No interactions between age group and audience type were observed. Children's increasing approval of modesty was associated with a tendency to justify their judgements by referring to concerns about social evaluation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Some effects of task relevance and friendship on helping: You don't always help the one you like

It was hypothesized that being outperformed on a task that is relevant to one's self-definition is threatening to self-esteem, and that this threat is greater when one is outperformed by a friend rather than by a stranger. When another's performance threatens self-esteem, persons will be less likely to help the other by making the task easy. To test these hypotheses, 52 friendship pairs participated with strangers in a word identification task described either as a measure of important skills (high relevance) or as a game (low relevance). Participants chose clues for both a friend and a stranger to use in identifying target words. As predicted, they gave harder clues under high-relevance than under low-relevance conditions. Moreover, they gave harder clues to strangers than to friends under low-relevance conditions, but gave harder clues to friends than to strangers under high-relevance conditions.     

声誉关注与社会距离对伤害困境中道德决策的影响：来自行为与ERPs的证据

在社会交往中, 声誉关注是人类合作行为和道德判断的重要决定因素之一。以往研究只是单独考察声誉关注或社会距离会如何影响道德决策行为, 但两者如何交互影响道德决策尚不清楚, 尤其是禁止性道德范畴领域(如, 伤害他人行为)下道德决策的认知神经机制。本研究要求被试在匿名或公开情境下决策是否愿意对不同社会距离他人(朋友、熟人、陌生人)实施疼痛电击以增加自己的金钱收益, 同时记录其决策时的行为和神经反应。结果发现, 匿名情境下被试对朋友的电击伤害要显著低于对熟人和陌生人的, 表现出一种明显的“利己的利他主义”决策倾向; 与朋友和陌生人相比, 被试在涉及熟人的两难决策中花费了更长的时间, 体验到了更强烈的厌恶情绪, 并诱发了更大波幅的与情绪反应有关的P260成分, 以及与认知推理有关的晚期正成分(LPP: 300~450 ms), 表现出一种典型的“熟人效应”。然而, 行为与ERP指标上的这些差异在公开情境下均显著减弱了。这表明个体在禁止性道德范畴领域下的道德决策遵循着一种“利己的利他主义”的道德原则, 熟人关系的不确定性会在道德决策中诱发强烈的负性情绪和认知负荷, 而声誉关注削弱了利己倾向和人际关系的不确定性所带来的厌恶情绪和认知冲突。     

Cognitive Factors Affecting the Use of Social Decision Heuristics in Resource-Sharing Tasks

Two experiments investigated the use of equal division as a social decision heuristic in a group resource-sharing task. We proposed that group members use equality as a decision heuristic to the extent that environmental cues making the rule salient are present and to the extent that competing cues are absent. In Study 1, subjects were provided with justification for being the first group member to withdraw resources from a common pool. The results showed that subjects for whom the justification was prototypical of resource-sharing situations were more likely to violate equality than were subjects with nonprototypical justifications. Study 2 investigated the extent to which arbitrary role assignments within a group affect choice behavior. As predicted, subjects assigned the role of "supervisor" made resource requests that exceeded an equal share, whereas subjects assigned the roles of either "leader" or "guide" made choices that corresponded almost precisely with equal division. Our results underscore the importance of examining implicit knowledge structures about resource-sharing situations and their implications for choice.     

Self-Consciousness,Self-presentation,and Performance Under Pressure: Who Chokes,and When?

Choking under pressure by persons low and high in self-consciousness was examined as a function of two sources of performance pressure: audience and performance feedback. Subjects competed with an alleged opponent on a psychomotor task while alone, before a supportive (same team) audience, or a nonsupportive (opposing team) audience. Before the critical trial, subjects learned that their team was either somewhat ahead of or somewhat behind the opposing team. Self-consciousness, audience, and feedback interacted to affect performance during the critical trial. When disappointing the audience was likely, subjects low in self-consciousness choked. Subjects high in self-consciousness tended to choke when they were told that their team had fallen behind. It is suggested that persons who are low and high in self-consciousness experience different types of performance pressure due to disparate self-presentational motives.