Social Interaction Flashcards
Social affiliation and attraction; communication and perception
Definition, evolutionary perspective
The need to belong
Baumeister and Leary (1995) - The fundamental need to form and maintain lasting positive relationships (for social connection)
Hare (2017) - Evolutionary explanation; early humans lived in small groups in a challenging environment; being social and caring was adaptive, as it made them more likely to survive, mature and reproduce. Thus, species evolved to become caring/seek closeness and acceptance; SPECULATIVE
Research on the fundamentality of the need to belong
Social bonds easy to form and difficult to break
* babies’ attachment formation is instant (Bowlby, 1969)
* difficulty ending relationships
We suffer without relationships
* Rejection is painful, reduces wellbeing + intellectual functioning (DeWall & Bushman, 2011)
* Lacking a social network is strong predictor of illness and mortality (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010)
The Need to Belong can be satiated
* we make a limited number of friends (~6 friends in college; Wheeler & Nezlek, 1977)
* spend less time with friends when in romantic relationship
The Need to Belong is universal
* People everywhere need close relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1994)
* universality suggests it is a basic need
Quality of Social Relationships
Pleasant daily social interactions associated with greater life satisfaction (Sun et al., 2020)
Top 10% happiest people are highly social and have strongest, most satisying and fulfilling relationships (Diener & Seligman, 2002)
Weak Ties
Sandstrom and Dunn (2014) - participants who were instructed to engage with the barista felt happier than those who were instructed to have an efficinet interaction, because they felt a greater sense of belonging
Suggests strangers can also contribute to wellbeing!
Gunaydin et al. (2021) replicated this finding with greeting bus drivers
Because positive interactions help recognise value of others and feel connected; when we initiate positive interaction, othres usually feel happy and respond positively in return
People underestimate
* how happy target will feel
* how much they will be liked after a conversation
* positive effects of kind acts
Barriers to interacting with weak ties, despite their powerful benefits.
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Forces of Attraction
Attraction is positively evaluating another person
Reciprocity
* like people who like us
* Birnbaum et al. (2018) - we like people more when we know they like us
Similarity
* Hampton et al. (2019) - we like people who are like us; especially when similar backgrounds, interests, attitudes and values
* because trust them more and feel reassured they will like us
* however! personality similarity does not matter; actual traits matter more than similarity (e.g. agreeableness) because more enjoyable to interact with
* perception of similarity matters more than actual similarity
Familiarity
* people we see and interact with most are most likely to become partners/friends
* MIT housing study (Festinger et al., 1950) - 65% residents had at least one friend in own building, despite their building making up only 5% of all residents
* because increased opportunity to meet those who live closer, and ‘mere exposure effect’ (like things more after repeated exposure)
* however if initially dislike, repeated exposure can breed contempt
Non-verbal communication
Different ways of transmitting information:
* eyes and gazing
* body movements
* paralanguage
* interpersonal distance
e.g. facial expressions
* convey mood/emotion
* can be controlled
* but difficult to control; microexpressions reveal authentic emotions
Verbal communication
extensively involved in developing closeness
e.g. self-disclosure - Aron et al.’s (1997) 36 questions to generate closeness
* participants randomly paired up
* answer fixed set of 36 questions
* revealing personal information generates closeness
* tendency to like those who disclose personal information to us
* tendency to like people more after we disclose to them
Sprecher (2021) found 36 questions generated more closeness than small-talk regardless of mode of communication
but! importance of patience and turn-taking
Key to closeness:
* meaningful disclosure
* other responding with interest and empathy
* other perceived as responsive
Interpersonal Gap
we are moderately accurate at reading other people’s behaviours/intentions (Nater & Zell, 2015)
Social Cognitive Processes
Attributions
* explanations used to understand others’ behaviour
* internal (due to person) vs external
* influenced by satisfaction (if higher, more internal for good behaviour, external for bad behaviour)
* influence satisfaction; relationship enhancing vs distress maintaining
Positive illusions
* emphasising partners’ positive qualities, minimising faults; judging as more favourable than they judge themselves
* advantages; higher relationship satisfaction and stability, minimises conflict, partner feels more secure; partner-fulfilling prophecy (living up to our idealised image)
* benefits depend on how unrealistic they are; minor illusions smooth interaction, major illusions mask problems; partners may feel pressure to live up to ideals
* more beneficial when new relationship
* self-verification more beneficial for long-term relationships
Individual differences in relationship beliefs
* destiny vs growth beliefs
* destiny outcomes: initially happer but satisfaction declines when conflict happens, hypersensitive to signs relationship is not meant to be, disengage when problem emerges
* growth outcomes; constructive, optimistic, committed despite conflicts, longer relationships, try to maintain relationship when problem emerges
How to narrow interpersonal gap?
Epley (2008) - we use egocentric simulations to interpret others’ behaviour
need to
* put in time, effort and engage in perspective taking
* actively encode information
* construe self at higher level of abstraction (see ourselves as we see others)
