individual differences - social and interpersonal relationships

Question 1

social anxiety disorder- when does it become a disorder

Answer 1

-social anxiety disorder has helped psychologists understand the impact of shyness and embarrassment on every day functioning

social anxiety disorder : when symptoms interfere with ones tasks or ambitions
-eg fear of social interactions-lead to missing lectures (disengagement
-attempts at social interactions may lead to physical symptoms (shortness of breath, dizziness, worst case a panic attack)

Question 2

social anxiety disorder vs social anxiety, shyness,embarassment

Answer 2

-to distinguish
-social anxiety, shyness and embarrassment may share symptoms with social anxiety disorder but to a lesser degree
-symptoms typically do not interfere with ones functioning

Question 3

___ of the population will suffer with a social anxiety disorder at some point in their life

Answer 3

16%

Question 4

the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) defines social anxiety as impacting 3 domains, what are they?

Answer 4

• Cognitive: Significant and persistent fear of social situations in which embarrassment or rejection may occur
• Physical: Immediate anxiety-driven, physical reactions to feared social situations
• Behavioural: Individuals realise that their fears are greatly exaggerated, but feel powerless to do anything about them. Avoid the dreaded social situations at any cost

Question 5

different types of social anxiety disorders

Answer 5

-generalised social anxiety disorder(not specific to any situation)
-non generalised (performance with a specific activity) social anxiety disorder (person is okay with some activities and not okay with others)
-avoidant personality disorder (the very extreme, complete social withdrawl)

Question 6

shyness
-definition

Answer 6

discomfort and/or inhibition in interpersonal situations

Question 7

what can shyness lead to/what is it associated with (inter individual variability between people)

Answer 7

• self-consciousness
• Seeing oneself as awkward, unfriendly, incompetent
• Feeling less physically attractive
• Negative memory bias (tend to remember the negative or themselves in a negative view)
• Low effectiveness dealing with stress; pessimism
• Loneliness and social isolation
• Alcohol abuse to relax (more extreme situations)

Question 8

two types of shyness

Answer 8

dispositional vs situational (trait vs state)

Question 9

dispositional vs situational shyness (trait vs state)

Answer 9

• Trait shyness
  -persistent tendency to experience shyness, or lower threshold for experiencing state shyness
• Personality trait
• Level of state shyness may differ across situations
• State shyness
• immediate emotional and cognitive experience
• Anyone can experience state shyness in various situations

Question 10

trait shyness relation to personality
are shyness and introversion same?
-are all introverts shy?
-are all shy people introverts?
-are there shy extraverts

Answer 10

to two first questions ,the answer is no
-introverts may not be shy, they may just prefer to not socialise, and then a shy person also may only by shy in certain situations but still love socialising
-last question yes, could be highly sociable but still be shy

Question 11

-for introversion: motivation for solitary activities differ
explain
-for extraversion , individuals may be privately shy and publicly outgoing-explain

Answer 11

-introverts motivation for activities is stemmed by preference (not by fear)

-shy extraverts likely use social skills to participate in familiar situations while not disclosing their true self out of shyness
-individuals at a surface level can engage in social interactions but don’t disclose themselves because of shyness
-

Question 12

sociability- just because someone is shy…

Answer 12

-just because someone is shy doesn’t mean they are not sociable
-sociability does not help with dealing with social situations , however someone may have a high desire to participate in social situations, however they cannot because of their high trait shyness

Question 13

what is behavioural inhibition

Answer 13

-detectable at early age
-a characteristic that is not shyness as such, but inhibition in social situations: being among unfamiliar adults, hesitancy to make conversation, hovering at the edge of social gatherings (indicators of shyness) this term is used for children (so instead of shy kids we say behavioural inhibition)

Question 14

behavioural inhibition is linked with the ____ or _____ response

Answer 14

flight or fight response
-greater sensitivity to stressors (flight response)

Question 15

is there a link between behavioural inhibition in early age and then shyness in adolescence or adulthood?

Answer 15

-links between behavioural inhibition in early age and shyness in adolescence and adulthood are weak, suggesting that social environment and experiences likely to play a role

Question 16

different types of shyness

Answer 16

fearful shyness
self conscious shyness

Question 17

fearful shyness
when does it occur?

Answer 17

-early in life, may be linked with behavioural inhibition
-may not lead to shyness in adulthood

Question 18

self conscious shyness

Answer 18

-assumed to be dependent on ‘theory of mind’ (ability to reflect on ones own behaviour)

-both types of shyness require more research

Question 19

state shyness

Answer 19

when an individual finds themselves in an uncertain situation under the attention of others + individual predisposition to feel shy (trait shyness)

Question 20

relationship between shyness and culture
zimbardo findings
-Japan vs israel

Answer 20

• Stanford Shyness Inventory (Henderson & Zimbardo, 1998;Zimbardo, 1997)
• Shyness between 31% (Israel) and 57% (Japan) of samples
• Cultural differences may be explained by how each culture attributes success and failure
• Japan: credit for success attributed externally/failure attributed internally (maybe why Japanese culture has more shyness)
• Israel: credit for success attributed to self/failure attributed externally

Question 21

Is the internet (social media) enhancing shyness or empowering shy people in gaining social competence and confidence?

Answer 21

Perhaps it is not about individual differences at the level of individuals but differences in the use of social media?

• ## Clark et al. (2018): the impact of social media use on well-being depends on whether the use promotes social connection

Question 22

embarrassment
define

Answer 22

-self concious feeling when one realises they have made something below their standards (silly,dishounarable)
-what will people think of me?
-particularly when we care about others opinions/try to impress

Question 23

sources of embrassement

Answer 23

-what we do
-what other people do (may be embarrassed about them too)

Question 24

physiological reactions of embarrassment are similar to…

Answer 24

shyness
-embarassment was long considered as part of shyness/social anxiety

Question 25

conceptualisations of embarrassment (diff models)
-which model out if the 4 mentioned is the most accepted?

Answer 25

-dramaturgic model: suggests that embarrassment is a reaction to poor public performance

-social evaluation model: as a reaction to poor public performance but only if we care about others who saw it (others opinion)

-situational self esteem: as a reaction to a loss of self esteem- value ourselves less as we have failed

-personal standards model: does not depend on others-as a reaction to failure to meet ones own standards

social evaluation model is most accepted out of these

Question 26

what is the embarrassiability scale

Answer 26

-scale which gives you situations in which you rate how embarrassed you would be be
(modigliani,1968)
-eg gives you situations how embarrassed would you feel in this situation?

Question 27

what is the susceptibility to embarrassment scale (kelly and jones 1997)

Answer 27

-measures how susceptible you are to feeling embarrassed
-7 point scale
-asked to answer things like ‘i feel clumsy in social situations’ and rate it from not at all like me to like me

Question 28

big five personality studies
-those high on embarrassment tend to score higher on….

Answer 28

-higher on neuroticism
- lower on the extraversion scale

Question 29

how much can social media behaviour be explained by personality?

Answer 29

-Liu and Campbell (2017)
-status updates tend to be associated with openness and neuroticism
-posting photos (+openess,+extraversion,+agreeableness)
-gaming, (+openess , -agreeableness -conscientiousness)
-interaction +extraversion
-information seeking
-total number of friends

correlational studies that collect info about social behaviour of their participants and they would also measure participants personality characteristics

-the five factor model of personality explained 10-15% of behaviour online
-mainly extraversion and openness to experience

Question 30

what does digital media footprint reveal

Answer 30

-interests (from shopping, searches)
-social networks
-location and movement
-personal details

based on this we may be able to tell about someones personality

Question 31

Hinds and Joinson (2019) experiment

Answer 31

1)collected individuals complete personality assessment
2)independent viewers rate personality based on DM footprint
3)researchers correlate the two measures

so based on someones footprint participants can be asked who do you think this person is, what are they like etc. and correlated the outcomes

Question 32

assessment of personality based on digital media footprint can be completed by humans or trained computers programs - who is more accurate?

Answer 32

overall AI is more accurate
(bar graph shows in slides)
-humans only have a lived experience whereas ai has been trained on thousands and thousands of associations so can make more inferences

Question 33

relationship between time spent on social media and well being

Answer 33

-not linear

-line graph shows total screen use per day against participants with lifetime diagnoses of anxiety and depression.

-no time spent , 10 % people depression, 12% anxiety
-when it gets to average 1-3 hours spent anxiety reduces to around 8% and below 6% depression
-then as it goes up anxiety and depression diagnoses goes up

Question 35

time spent on digital media and well being

Answer 35

-time itself explains very little variance in outcomes
-levels of face to face social interaction and other activities need to be considered

Question 36

how can more digital media use cause low well being

Answer 36

-abstaining from social media for one week may lead to increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms (tromholt 2016)
-limiting social media to 30 minutes may leas to feeling less lonely and less depressed after one week(hunt et al.,2018)
-interference with sleep duration and quality
-digital media use may displace time for other activities
-increasing social comparison may be detrimental for well being

Question 37

clark et al 2018-social media and well being
-the impact of social media use on well being depends on whether the use promotes social connection
explain

Answer 37

behaviours that promote social connection
-online social connection with others, self disclosure, relational closeness, active use
-help fulfil needs for acceptance and belonging, increase intimacy, increase felt connection and perceived social support and social capital

behaviours non promoting social connection
-online social connection s a compensation for insufficient social networks, isolation, passive views of profiles, social comparison
-do not fulfil needs for acceptance and belonging