Thinking too much: How young people experience rumination in the context of loneliness

The recent rise in the prevalence of loneliness, particularly among young adults, coupled with its deleterious effects on wellbeing, makes understanding the issue of pressing concern. As most research on loneliness has focused on older adults, this study explored how 48 young adults aged 18–24 subjectively experienced loneliness through free association-based interviews. Participants were sampled from the four most deprived boroughs in London, as area deprivation has been associated with a higher prevalence of loneliness. This facilitates understanding of contributors and consequences of loneliness within this demographic group. In particular, the focus is on rumination arising from loneliness; while the link between the two is well-established quantitively, research into rumination and the context of ruminative thoughts in the context of loneliness remains sparse. Thus, this study aimed to understand the subjective experience of rumination in young adults whilst they experienced loneliness. Thematic analysis of interviews using ATLAS.ti 9 revealed five themes capturing these experiences: ‘temporal experience of rumination’, ‘ruminating life and death’, ‘rumination related to others’, ‘outcomes of rumination’ and ‘coping with loneliness-related rumination’. Based upon knowledge of the nature and content of rumination, further research could devise models of rumination and interventions targeted at rumination such as mindfulness meditation, journaling and engaging in prosocial behaviour, to mitigate the adverse effects loneliness can have on wellbeing.     

The illusion of nonmediation in telecommunication: Voice intensity biases distance judgments to a communication partner

The illusion of nonmediation is an experience in mediated communication where individuals respond as if the medium is not there. It is frequently associated with advanced media technology, such as virtual environments and teleconference systems. In this paper, we investigate whether people experience an illusion of nonmediation during interactions as simple as making a phone call. In three experiments, participants were asked to listen to someone's voice on a mobile phone (Experiment 1) or through VoIP software (Experiment 2 and 3) before guessing the location of the person and indicating this location on a map. Results consistently demonstrated that louder voices were judged to be closer, as if the technical mediation was ignored. Combining the three experiments, a small-scale meta-analysis yielded an effect size estimate of d = 0.37 for the ‘louder-as-closer’ effect. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

I need you closer to me: Effects of affiliation goals on perceptions of interpersonal distance

People's perceptions are often distorted in a way that aligns with their desires and goals. We argue that having a goal to affiliate changes the perception of interpersonal distance in a way that may help to fulfil this affiliation goal. As other people are goal‐relevant when having an affiliation goal, we expected that people with affiliation goals would estimate the distance between themselves and another person as smaller than people with no affiliation goals. In two studies, we manipulated affiliation goals by priming participants with affiliation or control words. Our main dependent variable was the estimated interpersonal distance between themselves and the experimenter. Results showed that participants primed with affiliation estimated the interpersonal distance as smaller compared with participants primed with control words. We did not obtain reliable differences between the affiliation and control conditions on other distance and height estimations. Our results suggest that having or not having affiliation goals influences people's perception of the distance between them and other people.     

When majority members exclude ethnic minorities: The impact of shame on the desire to object to immoral acts

In recent years, ethnic minorities have experienced an increase in acts of exclusion. In two studies, we demonstrated how ingroup members' felt shame about such immoral behavior explained their desire to pro‐socially object to this immorality by distancing from the perpetrating ingroup and by wanting to support the affected minorities. We showed how the desire to pro‐socially object varies as a function of national identification. As expected, nationally attached identifiers' felt shame for the immoral behavior was linked with greater willingness to pro‐socially object to it. The opposite pattern was found for nationally glorifying identifiers. In the second study, we found that anger directed at the ingroup partially explained the relationship between group‐based shame and the pro‐social desire to object. The results contribute to the literature on shame and pro‐social motivations by showing that distancing from the perpetrating ingroup can be considered as a pro‐social strategy rather than a defensive one.