Your heart makes my heart move: Cues of social connectedness cause shared emotions and physiological states among strangers

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that cues of social connectedness could lead even new interaction partners to experience shared emotional and physiological states. In Experiment 1, a confederate prepared for a stress-inducing task. Participants who had been led to feel socially connected to the confederate reported feeling greater stress than participants who had not. In Experiment 2, a confederate ran vigorously in place. Socially-connected participants had greater cardiovascular reactivity (heart rate and blood pressure) than controls. Each study held constant exposure to the confederate. The results suggest that the sharing of psychological and physiological states does not occur only between long-standing relationship partners, but can also result from even subtle experiences of social connectedness. These findings illustrate the dynamic and fluid ways in which important aspects of self can change in response to cues of social relatedness.     

At face value: Categorization goals modulate vigilance for angry faces

The present research demonstrates that the attention bias to angry faces is modulated by how people categorize these faces. Since facial expressions contain psychologically meaningful information for social categorizations (i.e., gender, personality) but not for non-social categorizations (i.e., eye-color), angry facial expression should especially capture attention during social categorization tasks. Indeed, in three studies, participants were slower to name the gender of angry compared to happy or neutral faces, but not their color (blue or green; Study 1) or eye-color (blue or brown; Study 2). Furthermore, when different eye-colors were linked to a personality trait (introversion, extraversion) versus sensitivity to light frequencies (high, low), angry faces only slowed down categorizations when eye-color was indicative of a social characteristic (Study 3). Thus, vigilance for angry facial expressions is contingent on people's categorization goals, supporting the perspective that even basic attentional processes are moderated by social influences.     

How we Became the Schmams: Conceptualizations of Fairness in the Decision-Making Process for Latina/O Children

The current study examines 16 Latina/o fifth grade children's desires for a decision-making structure within a youth participatory action research (yPAR) program. When given the choices of consensus, majority rule, authoritarian rule, delegation, and random choice models, children chose random choice. Procedural, distributive and emotional justice were heavily weighted in their reasoning around fairness and decision making. Many thought random choice offered the best alternative because it flattened power hierarchies so that each child would, at some point, have the power to make a decision. Additionally, children argued that the neutrality of random choice allowed them to sidestep interpersonal tensions. Implications include how social identities inform definitions of fairness and how yPAR programs should work with youth around how they will make decisions.     

Contrasting Social Climates of Small Peer-Run Versus a Larger Staff-Run Substance Abuse Recovery Setting

This study compared the social climate of peer‐run homes for recovering substance abusers called Oxford House (OH) to that of a staffed residential therapeutic community (TC). Residents of OHs (N = 70) and the TC (N = 62) completed the Community Oriented Programs Environment Scales. OHs structurally differ on two primary dimensions from TCs in that they tend to be smaller and are self‐run rather than professionally run. Findings indicated significantly higher Involvement, Support, Practical Orientation, Spontaneity, Autonomy, Order and Organization, and Program Clarity scores among the OH compared to TC residents. Additional analyses found the OH condition was higher Support, Personal Problem Orientation, and Order and Organization scores among women compared to men residents. These results suggested that these smaller OH self‐run environments created a more involving and supportive social milieu than a larger staff‐run TC. These findings are interpreted within Moos' ( 2007 ) four theoretical ingredients (i.e., social control, social learning, behavioral economics, and stress and coping), which help account for effective substance abuse treatment environments.     

Assessing interpersonal functioning: Views from within and without

In order to better integrate research on personality pathology, interpersonal problems, and social skills, we applied the traditional methods of these three research strands (questionnaires, interviews, and interpersonal role-plays) to the same sample. Participants who attributed higher levels of interpersonal problems to themselves in general were also more critical of their own role-play performances, but these impressions were not mirrored by observer-ratings. Self-observer agreement in judging overall role-play performance was essentially zero. Interviewer-ratings of personality pathology had incremental validity over self-ratings in predicting observer-rated role-play performance. Self-reports of interpersonal functioning leave relevant behavioral variance untapped and thus should be complemented by other sources of information.     

Gender Role Traits Among Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder

The present study investigated differences between individuals with and without social anxiety disorder (SAD) in instrumentality and expressiveness, personality traits traditionally linked to the male and female gender roles, respectively. Based on evolutionary and self-discrepancy theories, it was hypothesized that individuals with SAD would score lower on instrumentality and report a discrepancy between their perceived and ideal level of instrumentality compared to control participants. Sixty-four patients with SAD and 31 non-anxious control participants completed a battery of questionnaires, including ratings of their perceived and ideal gender role attributes and current psychosocial distress. Results supported the hypotheses, and provided initial evidence that a discrepancy between perceived and ideal instrumentality may be linked to social anxiety severity, depression and lower quality of life. No differences were detected between groups in expressiveness. The present findings suggest that individuals with SAD perceive themselves to be deficient in instrumentality. They also suggest that increasing instrumentality among individuals with SAD may be beneficial for treatment.     

Personality accounts for stable preferences and expectations across a range of simple games

Behaviour on even simple experimental games shows considerable individual differences, but previous attempts to link these preferences to stable personality traits have had mixed results. Here we address three limitations of earlier studies, namely: (1) uncertainties concerning the reliability of preferences; (2) use of personality instruments with limited cross-study comparability; and (3) confounds where more than one psychological motive can lead to a particular choice. Sixty-seven participants completed 12 distinct real-money games twice over a two-week interval along with 6 measures concerning their expectations about other players’ choices. Personality was measured using the full NEO-PI-R. Choices were highly stable across time (r = .84). Moreover, choices on the 12 games and 6 expectations reflected a single underlying dimension of “prosocial orientation”, measuring concern for the payoffs received by other players. Scores on the prosocial orientation dimension were related to personality, with openness, (low) neuroticism, and (low) extraversion retained as significant predictors.     

An fMRI study of the social competition in healthy subjects

Social interaction requires the ability to infer another person’s mental state (Theory of Mind, ToM) and also executive functions. This fMRI study aimed to identify the cerebral correlates activated by ToM during a specific social interaction, the human-human competition. In this framework, we tested a conflict resolution task (Stroop) adapted to a virtual situation of competition. The participants were instructed to play in order to win either against a human-like competitor (human-human competition) or against a non-human competitor (human-machine competition). Only the human-human competition requires ToM as this type of competition is performed under social interaction. We identified first the classical network of executive regions activated by Stroop. Secondly, we identified the social (human-human) competition regions, represented by the bilateral superior and inferior frontal gyri, the anterior cingulate, the insula, the superior and anterior temporal, the hippocampus, the fusiform gyrus, the cuneus and the precuneus. Finally, we identified the executive regions that were modulated by the human-human competition, i.e., the executive control regions additionally activated when mentalizing in the context of social competition. They constituted a network predominant to the right and composed of the superior and middle frontal, anterior cingulate, insula and fusiform gyrus. We suggest that our experimental paradigm may be useful in exploration of the cerebral correlates of social adjustments in several situations such as psychiatric disorders presenting executive and social dysfunctions.     

Anhedonia in prolonged schizophrenia spectrum patients with relatively lower vs. higher levels of depression disorders: Associations with deficits in social cognition and metacognition

This study has sought to explore whether there are at least two subtypes of anhedonia in schizophrenia: one closely linked with depression and another that occurs in the absence of depression which is related to a general paucity of internal experience. Participants were 163 adults with schizophrenia who completed assessments of depression, anhedonia, executive functioning, positive and negative symptoms, social cognition and metacognition. A cluster analysis based on participants’ depression and anhedonia symptom scores produced three groups: High Depression/High Anhedonia (n = 52), Low Depression/Low Anhedonia (n = 52), and Low Depression/High Anhedonia (n = 59). An ANCOVA and post hoc comparisons controlling for positive and negative symptoms found that the Low Depression/High Anhedonia group had poorer metacognition and social cognition than other groups. These findings point to the possibility of a subtype of anhedonia in schizophrenia, one occurring in the relative lesser levels of depression, and tied to deficits in the ability to think about oneself and others.