Lecture 13: Communication Part 2

Question 1

top-down influence of touch

Answer 1

Hedonic quality of touch is moderated by contextual variables and expectations

Question 2

examples of the top-down influence of touch

Answer 2

• Touch is rated as more pleasant when paired with a smiling (vs. frowning) face
• The pleasantness of touch decreased when paired with a disgusting odour
• Heterosexual men rate sensual touch as less pleasant when led to believe it’s delivered by another man; women are more likely to perceive touch from opposite-sex strangers as unpleasant
• To be perceived positively, intimacy of touch must not exceed intimacy of relationship (particularly for women)

Question 3

Top-down processing

Answer 3

the combination of cues and broader context both shape perception

Question 4

2 keys components of top-down processing

Answer 4

• signals of involvement
• signals of positive affect

Question 5

signals of involvement

Answer 5

• Proxemics (interpersonal distance)
• Increased gaze
• Body movement & posture
• Facial animation

Question 6

Proxemics & liking

Answer 6

Increases liking for rewarding others, but decreases it for unrewarding others

Question 7

Signals of positive affect & affection

Answer 7

• verbal
• touch
• facial expessions
• paralanguage

Question 8

paralanguage and gender

Answer 8

Women are perceived as more affectionate when speaking in high pitched voice, whereas men—lower pitch

Question 9

how do we gauge the sincerity of verbal communication?

Answer 9

by nonverbal cues

Question 10

multimodal communication

Answer 10

• More than just a combination of individual components
• People are judged more likeable when display consistency among verbal and non-verbal cues, as well as among various kinds of non-verbal cues (behavioural consistency)

Question 11

behavioural mimicry

Answer 11

• People will often synchronize nonverbal behaviour
• Often nonconscious, unintentional & effortless
• Signals affiliative intent
• Fosters liking

Question 12

behavioural mimicry is more likely to occur when:

Answer 12

• We feel a rapport with the other person
• We hold affiliative intent or when our need for affiliation has been thwarted

Question 13

when does behavioural mimicry not lead to liking?

Answer 13

• When made to mimic a disliked person
• When our partner is engaging in inappropriate amounts of behavioural mimicry

Question 14

neural synchronization reserach study

Answer 14

• Phase 1: participants watched ambiguous movie clips in an fMRI scanner
• Phase 2: consensus-building conversation in groups
• Phase 3: re-watch the original clip & new clips from the same movie
• Conversation synchronizes brain activity within groups
• We see this both for the original clip and the new clips

Question 15

Hyperscanning

Answer 15

• collecting fMRI or EEG data from two people simultaneously
• Technique for assessing brain-to-brain synchrony

Question 16

neural synchrony in partners findings

Answer 16

• Neural synchrony is higher in romantic partners compared to strangers
• Neural synchrony among romantic partners is higher during moments of social gaze and independent of speech duration and conversation content
• For strangers, the overall duration of social gaze is positively correlated with neural synchrony

Question 17

Generalized shared reality

Answer 17

shared perceptions of the world at large

Question 18

Generalized shared reality and closeness

Answer 18

Predicts feelings of closeness in the relationship

Question 19

shared reality research study

Answer 19

• Phase 1: a threat to shared reality
• Phase 2: joint decision-making task
• Couples high on the baseline measure of shared reality respond to experimental threats to a sense of shared reality by engaging in motivated behaviour to reaffirm their shared reality

Question 20

brain activity and turn-taking in conversations

Answer 20

• Coordination of brain activity may enable the extremely rapid back-and-forth of conversation
• Modal conversational response time = 200 ms

Question 21

turn-taking in conversations

Answer 21

• Minimizing the time between turns requires a lot of prediction
• Figuring out where the partner is headed, preparing appropriate responses in advance, anticipating when a partner is likely to end their turn, anticipating a partner’s reaction
• Therefore, response times may convey how well one is able to predict another, signalling the extent of social connection

Question 22

turn-taking round robin study

Answer 22

• Rotate through conversational partners
• Later, privately rate overall and moment-by-moment connections during interactions
• Faster response times positively predict enjoyment and social connection
• This is also true of conversations with friends
• Connection is best predicted by partners’ response times
• Outside observers use response times as an index of connection between participants
• The same conversation was perceived as more connected and enjoyable when response times were artificially decreased

Question 23

response time and connection

Answer 23

• There is likely a reciprocal relationship between response times & connection
• Feelings of connection facilitate fast response times
• Faster response times reinforce feelings of connection

Question 24

talking on slow mode

Answer 24

• Faster response times may signal attention and understanding
• But, fast responses are not always desirable (ex. conflict)
• At certain times, slow responses may be desirable

Question 25

when are slow responses desirable?

Answer 25

• Give space for reflection, savouring interaction
• Slow response times in help-seeking situations (ex. Doctor-patient relationships) were associated with feeling heard and understood
• Friends’ conversations have more long gaps than those of strangers
• For friends, associated with heightened connections; for strangers, with awkwardness
• Strangers are more likely to change topics following long gaps, whereas friends are more likely to persist with the same topics

Question 26

virtual communication

Answer 26

Virtual communication poses several challenges

Question 27

challenges with virtual communication

Answer 27

• Lack of nonverbal cues
• Fragmented interactions

Question 28

lack of nonverbal cues in virtual communication

Answer 28

• Makes it harder to interpret messages
• May impede synchronization
• Ex. we see neural synchrony during face-to-face but not face-blocked conversations
• May impose cognitive load
• Fewer cues available for signalling involvement and affection

Question 29

fragmented interactions in virtual communication

Answer 29

• Microdelays can impede synchronization
• Misaligned eye contact

Question 30

month-long experience sampling study during COVID lockdowns

Answer 30

• Mental health was better on days when people spent more time in face-to-face communication can usual
• Face-to-face and digital communication, but not videoconferencing was linked to better mental health

Question 31

who created love languages?

Answer 31

Idea popularized by Baptist pastor Gary Chapman

Question 32

three central assumptions of love languages

Answer 32

• Each person has a preferred love language (preferred way of expressing & receiving love)
• There are 5 love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch
• Couples are more satisfied when partners speak one another’s preferred love language

Question 33

do we have a primary love language?

Answer 33

• People tend to endorse all 5 love languages as meaningful ways of expressing love and feeling love
• Primary love language as identified by forced-choice measure is not reliably associated with scores on continuous measure
• Ex. some studies using continuous measures find that gifts are rated most highly but only 0-4% of participants select this as their primary love language on a forced-choice measure

Question 34

do we need to speak the same love language to be happy?

Answer 34

• There is no evidence that couples who match on primary love languages are happier than those who do not
• All love languages are positively associated with relationship satisfaction regardless of a person’s preference for love language
• May be more accurate to say that maintaining successful relationships requires a balanced diet

Question 35

why are love langauges so popular?

Answer 35

• The quiz is helpful as a diagnostic tool for self-reflection
• The label and intuitive metaphors it provides help us articulate our needs
• But we need to be careful of oversimplifying relationship processes
• Ex. discounting partners who don’t match our primary love language

Question 36

Are some people better at reading nonverbal cues to close the interpersonal gap than others?

Answer 36

• Miscommunication can stem from both failures of encoding and failures of decoding
• We can tease this apart by using behavioural observation
• Women tend to be better encoders and decoders, although they are not better at picking up on deception and tend to be more indirect than men
• Women are particularly better at sending positive messages
• Men don’t realize that they are miscommunicating (overconfidence)
• Men perform particularly poorly in unhappy marriages, although other research has shown that both men and women communicate more poorly with each other when unhappy

Question 37

emotional intelligence

Answer 37

individual variation in the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions

Question 38

emotional intelligence by gender

Answer 38

Tends to be higher in women

Question 39

expressivity

Answer 39

warmth, compassion, sensitivity

Question 40

expressivity by gender

Answer 40

Traditionally considered feminine traits and indeed generally higher in women, but men can be expressive too

Question 41

expressivity and communication

Answer 41

• Facilitate intimate communication– more comfort in expressing feelings
• Women tend to self-disclose more and elicit more self-disclosure (although on structured lab tasks, all-male dyads benefit from disclosure too)

Question 42

is communication a skill or is it about motivation?

Answer 42

• In unhappy marriages, we can still communicate well with strangers
• Recall that motivation is important
• Men’s performance is increased when motivation is higher, although still not quite as good as women