Symbolic providers help people regulate affect relationally: Implications for perceived support

Relational regulation theory (Lakey & Orehek, 2011 ) predicts that the correlation between perceived support and mental health emerges through ordinary conversation and shared activities rather than through conversations about stress and how to cope with it. Observing the conversations and activities of others also helps regulate mental health. Symbolic providers (known only through media) mimic how real providers regulate affect in that recipients observe the conversations and shared activities of symbolic providers. Thus, many perceived support findings obtained for real providers should also be found for symbolic providers. We found the same links between perceived support and affect when recipients rated symbolic providers as when recipients rated real providers. When participants' affect was worsened, viewing symbolic providers helped restore affect.     

Question-Asking in Same- and Opposite-Sex Initial Interactions The Effects of Anticipated Future Interaction

The present analysis examined interlocutors’ question-asking under high, moderate, and low levels of anticipated future interaction. Anticipated future interaction with another is presumed to increase persons'motivation to reduce their uncertainty. Prior to conversation, for example, observers engage in higher levels of information-seeking when they expect to meet the target. However, examination of subjects’ use of question-asking strategies suggested this effect does not extend to ongoing interaction. Instead, highest levels of mutual interrogation occurred at moderate levels of anticipated future interaction, in dyads required to negotiate a second encounter. The extent to which interlocutors control subsequent interaction has not been previously identified as a determinant of either uncertainty or uncertainty reduction. Such increased question-asking may be a function of actors’ desire to avoid negative conversational outcomes, a desire that becomes especially salient when actors are allowed to select their social partners.     

EPR: Lessons for Metaphysics

By now everyone knows that the thought experiment of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (1935) has something to teach us about the structure of quantum mechanics and about the world. The premise of this paper is that it has something to teach metaphysicians about causation.