Browsing by Author "Leary, Mark R"

This describes four studies that broadly explore the personality characteristics, physiological consequences, and neural mechanisms underlying the behavioral mimicry that occurs when people try to affiliate with others in social interactions. I address three research questions: (1) which individuals are more likely to mimic in the presence of an affiliation goal, (2) what are the physiological consequences of mimicking to build affiliation, and (3) what is the neural mechanism underlying top-down control of mimicry? Chapter 1 gives background on the causes and consequences of mimicry in social interactions. Chapter 2 asks whether extraverts mimic more than introverts as a way to build rapport. In two studies, participants were either given an affiliation goal or not before interacting with a confederate. Study 1 tested whether extraverts mimicked more than introverts in the presence of an affiliation goal. Study 2 replicated and expanded on the design of study 1 by assessing whether mimicry mediated the relationship between extraversion and rapport (as measured by an independent observer). Study 1 found that extraversion predicts increased mimicry when an affiliation goal is present but not when an affiliation goal is absent. Study 2 showed that mimicry mediates the relationship between extraversion and rapport but only when an affiliation goal is present. These studies show that the rapport-building ability of extraverts emerges only when they are motivated to affiliate, providing evidence for the reward-sensitivity-as-core model of extraversion over the sociability-as-core model of extraversion. Chapter 3 explored the link between psychological, behavioral, and physiological mechanisms involved in affiliation. In study 3, participants were randomly assigned to experience social rejection or social acceptance before they were given either an opportunity to mimic a confederate (face-to-face interaction) or not (interaction behind barrier). Rejected participants (1) mimicked a confederate significantly more than accepted participants and (2) mimicry significantly mediated the effect of social feedback (rejection vs. acceptance) on progesterone change, such that mimicking was associated with increases in progesterone. The results suggest that mimicry facilitates progesterone release, which provides preliminary evidence of a physiological mechanism by which mimicry exerts its psychological effects of increasing affiliation and decreasing psychosocial distress. In Chapter 4, study 4 directly tested two competing hypotheses on the role of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in top-down control of mimicry. Participants were randomized to receive either active or sham intermittent theta-burst stimulation (a type of stimulation that increases activation) to the rTPJ in a between-subjects design. After receiving either active or sham iTBS, I measured how much participants mimicked another person in a social interaction. The results show that, for participants in the active stimulation condition, hair and face touching was significantly lower during the social interaction compared to baseline. This finding suggests that higher activation in the rTPJ increases the distinction between representations of self and other, specifically biasing representations of self over other, leading to less mimicry. These results do not support the hypothesis that higher activation in the rTPJ leads to flexible control of self-other representations in line with goals. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the main findings of these studies, discusses how these studies inform one another, and points the field toward open questions for future research.

Although many perspectives suggest that authenticity is important for well-being, people do not always have direct access to the psychological processes that produce their behaviors and, thus, are not able to judge whether they are behaving consistently with their personality, attitudes, values, motives, and goals. Even so, people experience subjective feelings of authenticity and inauthenticity, raising the question of factors that influence people’s judgments of whether they are being authentic. The present studies used descriptive, correlational, experimental, and experience sampling designs to examine possible influences on self-judgments of authenticity, including the congruence between people’s behavior and inner dispositions, the positivity of the behavior, their personal beliefs about authenticity, features of the interaction, and trait authenticity. Studies 1A and 1B examined the role of people’s beliefs about authenticity in self-judgments of authenticity. Studies 2A and 2B investigated the criteria that people use to judge their behavior as authentic versus inauthentic and challenged those criteria to see whether self-perceived authenticity was affected. And, Study 3 used an experience sampling design to study people’s experiences of state authenticity in daily life. Together the studies offer insights into the determinants of self-perceived authenticity and show that many factors that influence people’s feelings of authenticity are peripheral, if not irrelevant, to actual authenticity.

For thousands of years, people from a variety of philosophical, religious, spiritual, and scientific perspectives have believed in the fundamental unity of all that exists, and this belief appears to be increasingly prevalent in Western cultures. The present research was the first investigation of the psychological and interpersonal implications of believing in oneness. Self-report measures were developed to assess three distinct variants of the belief in oneness – belief in the fundamental oneness of everything, of all living things, and of humanity – and studies examined how believing in oneness is associated with people’s self-views, attitudes, personality, emotions, and behavior. Using both correlational and experimental approaches, the findings supported the hypothesis that believing in oneness is associated with feeling greater connection and concern for people, nonhuman animals, and the environment, and in being particularly concerned for people and things beyond one’s immediate circle of friends and family. The belief is also associated with experiences in which everything is perceived to be one, and with certain spiritual and esoteric beliefs. Although the three variations of belief in oneness were highly correlated and related to other constructs similarly, they showed evidence of explaining unique variance in conceptually relevant variables. Belief in the oneness of humanity, but not belief in the oneness of living things, uniquely explained variance in prosociality, empathic concern, and compassion for others. In contrast, belief in the oneness of living things, but not belief in oneness of humanity, uniquely explained variance in beliefs and concerns regarding the well-being of nonhuman animals and the environment. The belief in oneness is a meaningful existential belief that is endorsed to varying degrees by a nontrivial portion of the population and that has numerous implications for people’s personal well-being and interactions with people, animals, and the natural world.

People regularly monitor and control the impressions others form of them but differ in the degree to which they both convey impressions that are consistent with their private self-views (self-presentational congruence) and present different images of themselves to different targets (self-presentational variability). Based on three models described in the literature, variability and incongruence were hypothesized to be either negatively, positively, or curvilinearly related to psychological and social well-being. Three studies examined the self-reported psychosocial implications of self-presentational congruence and variability—assessed by the impressions participants desired to make on nine targets in their lives (Study 1a), a behavioral measure of video-recorded self-presentations to bogus targets (Study 1b), and self-reported self-presentational variability and congruence in people’s daily interactions with targets in their lives (Study 2). Overall, the results supported the first two hypotheses—showing both positive and negative relationships between congruence/variability and well-being—but not the third hypothesis. Participants who desired or actually conveyed more congruent self-presentations reported greater psychosocial well-being. Participants who tried to be perceived differently across their everyday interactions—particularly with distant targets—reported lower psychosocial well-being and less positive social interactions as well; such variability also showed accelerating or decelerating effects at particularly low and high levels for some outcomes. In addition, some support was obtained for the psychosocial benefits of variability with reasonably congruent self-presentations, and even benefits for incongruence at times. Thus, both self-presentational congruence and self-presentational variability are associated with immediate and general positive psychosocial outcomes.

Two studies examined whether stereotypes can be created using different learning paradigms and whether the resulting stereotypes will have different properties that affect their activation, suppression, and explicit knowledge. In the Pilot Study, participants were able to learn to use clothing cues to predict membership using both an explicit paradigm that made declarative statements of group membership and an implicit paradigm based on feedback learning. In Study 1, implicit learners performed worse after a depletion task and better following a control task. Explicit learners did not change based on the depletion task. High trait self-control as measured by the Brief Self-Control Scale was shown to predict better performance in depleted implicit learners and worse performance in depleted explicit learners. In Study 2, participants in both the implicit and explicit learning conditions saw decreases in performance when trying to inhibit a previously learned cue. Trait self-control did not predict the ability to suppress the use of a specific cue. In both studies implicit learners made more accurate estimations of the cue probabilities, suggesting a stronger explicit knowledge of the relationship between the cues and group membership. These results provide initial evidence that the method of stereotype learning can have an impact on later stereotype usage although the mechanisms that lead to these differences require additional research.

The Romantic Construal Model proposes that people interpret actions as romantic to the extent that they perceive that those actions take the receiver’s idiosyncratic likes and dislikes into account (personalization), are out of the ordinary in terms of either frequency or the manner with which they are enacted (specialness), and convey that the person values the receiver and the relationship (conveyed value). This model was tested in two studies.

In Study 1, 132 participants (67 men and 65 women) were instructed to modify generic behaviors to make them either more or less romantic. These modifications were then coded for personalization, specialness, and conveyed value. The results showed that higher mean levels of personalization, specialness, and value were found when participants were asked to make a behavior more rather than less romantic. Furthermore, regression analyses predicting participant ratings of romance for the modified actions were significantly predicted by the levels of specialness and conveyed value, but personalization was not related to romantic ratings.

In Study 2, 132 participants (67 men and 65 women) read 8 vignettes describing potentially romantic behaviors that experimentally manipulated all combinations of high or low personalization, high or low specialness and high or low conveyed value. Participants rated each vignette for how romantic they thought the behavior was; the degree to which the behavior was personalized, special, and conveyed value; and how good, committed, and loved would they feel if their partner enacted that behavior in their relationship. The results of Study 2 showed that although personalization and specialness were successfully manipulated in the vignettes, value was not. Furthermore, significant effects of personalization and specialness, but not value, were obtained on romantic ratings for half of the vignettes. In contrast, participants’ subjective ratings of the romanticness of the behaviors were predicted by their ratings of value but not personalization or specialness. The implications of this study for the Romantic Construal Model are discussed and evaluated within the context of previous findings on the communication of affection

Previous research into accounts--the statements that people make to explain undesirable behavior--has looked at either the target's reactions to accounts or the transgressors' account strategies, but has not looked at these together. In four studies, participants were assigned to the role of a transgressor (the person providing a post-transgression account) or a target. Transgressors' use of accounts--excuses, justifications, and exceptions--and their post account expectations for how they and the target would react was measured. These transgressor ratings were then compared to the account preferences and reactions (evaluative and punitive) of the targets who actually read the accounts. Targets whose account preferences were matched were expected to react more positively and to inflict lesser penalties on transgressors than those whose preferences were not matched. Results showed that transgressors were fairly inaccurate in their estimations of target reactions, and did not tend to match the account preferences of their targets. However, some evidence emerged to suggest that targets did generally react positively when their account preferences were matched. Furthermore, the domain of the transgression (whether it was a moral, environmental, religious, or interpersonal transgression) affected the strength and direction of these effects.

Self-compassion has been shown to predict well-being, possibly by buffering people against the unpleasant emotional and cognitive reactions that accompany negative life events. Although most previous research has been conducted with young adults, preliminary studies show that self-compassion may be beneficial for older adults. Three studies tested self-compassion's impact on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors associated with aging using samples of individuals between the ages of 62 and 104. Study 1 examined self-compassion as it relates to health promotion behaviors, specifically use of assistance and trying new activities. Although some findings supported the hypotheses, results showed that high and low self-compassionate individuals did not differ in their use of assistance or willingness to try new activities. Study 2 implemented a brief self-compassion manipulation to test its effects on thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, random assignment failed to equate the experimental conditions, rendering the results difficult to interpret. After controlling for baseline self-compassion, the manipulation did not have the predicted effects on well-being. In fact, participants seemed to benefit more when merely writing about negative events than when writing about them in a self-compassionate fashion. Finally, Study 3 examined self-compassionate cognitions, specifically whether or not self-compassionate thoughts mediate the relationship between trait self-compassion and emotional well-being. Self-compassionate participants did think differently than their low self-compassion counterparts, and these cognitions mediated the relationship between self-compassion and positivity of their responses. However, cognitions did not mediate the relationship between trait self-compassion and emotion outcomes. Two possible explanations for the unexpected results of the three studies include the relatively healthy nature of the sample and the strength of the self-compassion manipulation. Suggestions for future research include examining how self-compassion relates to the motivations behind engaging in health promotion, allowing participants to write more freely in the self-compassion manipulations, and bringing self-compassion research with older adults into controlled laboratory settings.