When Meeting Someone New, Try Skirting the Small Talk and Digging a Little Deeper

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, there's hope that life will return to some level of normalcy in 2022. This includes more opportunities to meet new people and build friendships, a process that's critical for mental and physical well-being. This does not, however, mean that everyone will take advantage of these new chances to connect.

Even before fears of a virus compelled most people to stay physically distant, our research suggests that people were already keeping too much social distance from one another. In particular, our new research suggests that people tend to be overly pessimistic about how conversations with new acquaintances will play out.

Across a dozen experiments, participants consistently underestimated how much they would enjoy talking with strangers. This was especially true when we asked them to have the kinds of substantive conversations that actually foster friendships. Because of these mistaken beliefs, it seems as though people reach out and connect with others less often and in less meaningful ways than they probably should.

Moving Beyond Water Cooler Talk

People usually only disclose their deepest disappointments, proudest accomplishments, and simmering anxieties to close friends and family. We tested the seemingly radical idea that deep conversations between strangers can end up being surprisingly satisfying.

In several experiments, the participants first reported how they expected to feel after discussing relatively weighty questions like, "what are you most grateful for in your life?" and "when is the last time you cried in front of another person?"

These participants believed they would feel somewhat awkward and only moderately happy discussing these topics with a stranger. But after we prompted them to actually do so, they reported that their conversations were less awkward than they had anticipated. Furthermore, they felt happier and more connected to the other person than they had assumed.

We also asked people to write down questions they would normally discuss when first getting to know someone—"weird weather we’re having these days, isn’t it?"—and then to write down deeper and more intimate questions than they would normally discuss, like asking whether the other person was happy with their life. Again, we found that the participants were especially likely to overestimate how awkward the ensuing conversations about the more meaningful topics would be, while underestimating how happy those conversations would make them. These mistaken beliefs matter, because they can create a barrier to human connection. If you mistakenly think a substantive conversation will feel uncomfortable, you're going to probably avoid it. And then you might never realize that your expectations are off the mark.

Yes, Others Do Care

Misconceptions over the outcomes of deeper conversations may happen, in part, because we also underestimate how interested other people are in what we have to share. This makes us more reluctant to open up.

But as it turns out, more often than not, strangers do want to hear you talk about more than the weather; they really do care about your fears, feelings, opinions, and experiences.

The results were strikingly consistent. In our research, we recruited college students, online samples, strangers in a public park, and even executives at financial services firms, and similar patterns played out within each group. Whether you're an extravert or an introvert, a man or a woman, you're likely to underestimate how good you'll feel after having a deep conversation with a stranger. The same results even occurred in conversations over Zoom.

Aligning Beliefs With Reality

In one telling demonstration, we had some people engage in both a relatively shallow and comparatively deeper conversation. People expected that they would prefer a shallow conversation to the deeper one before they took place. After the interactions occurred, they reported the opposite.

Moreover, the participants consistently told us that they wished they could have deeper conversations more often in their everyday lives. The problem, then, is not a lack of interest in having more meaningful conversations. It's the misguided pessimism about how these interactions will play out. It's possible, though, to learn from these positive experiences. Think of the trepidation kids have of diving into the deep end of a swimming pool. The uneasiness is often unwarranted: once they take the plunge, they end up having a lot more fun than they did in shallower waters.

Our data suggest that something similar can happen when it comes to topics of conversation. You might feel nervous before starting a deeper conversation with someone you barely know; yet once you do, you might actually enjoy digging a little deeper than you typically do.

The broader takeaway of our work is that these miscalibrated expectations can lead many people to be not quite social enough for their own good and the well-being of others. Having deeper conversations joins a growing list of opportunities for social engagement—including expressing gratitude, sharing compliments, and reaching out and talking to an old friend—that end up feeling a lot better than we might think.

Note: A version of this article originally appeared in The Conversation, and this piece was co-developed by Character & Context for the SPSP Blog.


For Further Reading

Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). Overly shallow? Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000281

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2018). Undervaluing gratitude: Expressers misunderstand the consequences of showing appreciation. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1423-1435. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618772506
 

Amit Kumar is an assistant professor of Marketing and Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on happiness, prosociality, and consumer behavior.

Michael Kardas is a postdoctoral fellow in Management and Marketing at Northwestern University. His research focuses on conversation and social judgment and decision making.

Nicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on social cognition: how, and how well, people make inferences about each others' thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and motives.

 

So You Want to Be Persuasive? Start by Sounding Confident

Persuasion is a ubiquitous part of daily life. We’re surrounded by it. Immersed in it. And, in fact, many of us happily peddle our own brand of persuasive tactics for personal profit. Not surprisingly, oftentimes we’re successful in getting what we want from others—after all, practice makes perfect, and we have a lot of experience perfecting the art of persuasion.  

Why Does Our Voice Play Such An Important Role In Persuasion?

Intuitively as well as empirically, we know that the voice can be a powerful source of information because it often provides valuable insight into the emotions and thoughts of the speaker. We can typically very quickly identify and distinguish between different emotions expressed through the voice, even when the speaker is communicating in a language other than our own. Beyond emotions, a person’s voice also gives clues about their traits, social intentions, and even how they are evaluating a particular situation, person, or object. Some of these vocal features include rate of speech (slow or fast), volume (soft or loud), pitch (low or high), and intonation (for example, sentences that end with rising or falling pitch).

If we consider that changes in a person’s voice can affect our inferences about their psychological states, it doesn’t require a herculean stretch of the imagination to realize that how something is said could also influence the success of a persuasive appeal.

Scientists interested in how voice influences persuasion have recently started piecing together a more detailed picture of this relationship. Although many characteristics of voice can influence our willingness to say yes, the position at the top of the persuasive totem pole seems to be occupied by our perceptions of speaker confidence. This probably isn’t all that surprising given the importance we place on confidence when evaluating our own attitudes and thoughts. In fact, it makes a great deal of sense that how confident a person sounds should also be an important basis for deciding whether we heed someone’s advice or seek a second opinion. So what characteristics of voice reflect confidence?

More confident speakers tend to speak faster, louder, use falling intonation at the end of their sentences, and have lower-pitched voices. Furthermore, listeners also perceive these cues as signs of high confidence. In recent years, my colleagues and I have expanded upon this to show that changes in pitch, in particular, can have very profound effects on persuasion. Our initial research found that listeners tend to be more persuaded by a speaker whose voice has a relatively low versus high pitch. Importantly, when a person was carefully thinking about a message, changes in a speaker’s pitch affected the listener’s attitude by biasing their thoughts to be either positive or negative towards the topic. However, when people were distracted and thus not carefully thinking, changes in pitch affected their attitude without influencing their thoughts—illustrating a completing different process of persuasion. Why does it matter how carefully someone thinks about a persuasive message? The attitudes of people who carefully think about a message (versus those who don’t), are longer lasting, more predictive of their future behavior, more resistant to persuasive attempts, and more accessible in memory.

In our most recent studies, conducted at the University Autonoma de Madrid, my colleagues and I demonstrated that changes in one’s own vocal pitch could affect self-persuasion, changing a person’s attitude not only towards things external to themselves (such as a comprehensive exam proposal for university students) but also towards themselves (general academic abilities). What really surprised us was that pitch increased self-persuasion not only when participants were instructed to talk using a lower compared to higher pitched voice, but also when the keyboard on which they typed their thoughts produced a lower versus higher pitched tone with each keystroke, and in response to the same meditation-style music playing in the background in either a lower versus higher pitch. In all three studies, low pitch enhanced the effect of people’s thoughts on their attitudes, whereas high pitch reduced its impact. So for example, in response to low pitch, positive thoughts led to very positive attitudes, and negative thoughts led to very negative attitudes. However, in response to high pitch, positive thoughts produced only mildly positive attitudes, and negative thoughts only mildly negative attitudes. And the explanation behind this? Confidence. Low pitch increased people’s confidence in their thoughts, whereas high pitched decreased confidence.

So, whether you’re interviewing for an important job, trying to convince your friend to go to the movies, or just want to boost your confidence for that upcoming exam, remember that how you deliver your message is often just as important as its content. In the words of the American poet William Carlos Williams, “It is not what you say that matters, but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.”


For Further Reading

Guyer, J. J., Briñol, P., Vaughan-Johnston, T. I., Fabrigar, L. R., Moreno, L., & Petty, R. E. (2021). Paralinguistic features communicated through voice can affect appraisals of confidence and evaluative judgments. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 45, 479-504. 10.1007/s10919-021-00374-2

Guyer, J. J., Fabrigar, L. R., & Vaughan-Johnston, T. I. (2018). Speech rate, intonation, and pitch: Investigating the bias and cue effects of vocal confidence on persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(3), 389-405.             https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218787805

Petty, R. E., & Briñol, P. (2020). A process approach to influencing attitudes and changing behavior: Revisiting classic findings in persuasion and popular interventions. In J. Forgas, W. Crano, & K. Fiedler (Eds.), Applications of social psychology: How social psychology can contribute to real world problems (pp 82-103). Psychology Press.


Joshua Guyer is an assistant professor of psychology at IE University and Saint Louis University (in Madrid). Joshua's research interests include the different roles of vocal qualities (emotions, confidence) in persuasion, and different tactics of social influence.

 

It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It


In the 1970s, the psychologist Albert Mehrabian suggested that only 7% of the information in speech is contained in the words. The real information, he suggested, was contained in the visual signals we use (the grimaces, the hand-waves, the body movements) and the way we say it (the intonations and inflections, how loudly we speak). These, he suggested, explain 55% and 38%, respectively, of the meaning. His suggestion caused a big stir at the time, but later he was widely criticized for various good reasons, and his ideas have been forgotten.

Our interest in this issue was motivated by the observation that, in a valiant attempt to get at the mechanisms involved in processing communication cues, many studies focus on the meaning encoded in how we say a single word or expression, or even just a laugh. They invariably forget that the words we use are just the bricks that create conversations, and it is the conversations, not the words, that create the elegantly beautiful building of our relationships.

To explore this, we asked a group of native English speakers and a group of native Spanish speakers to listen to audio-only clips of two people engaged in a completely natural conversation. Could they identify the quality of the speakers’ relationship with each other from just hearing what they said and how they said it? We used audio clips representing eight different relationship qualities including such contexts as friends in idle chat mode, friendly banter, provocation, gossip, and annoyance. To avoid boredom, the clips were short (30-60 seconds), but always involved two speakers. Participants listened to clips in only one language (either their own or the other less familiar language), but they listened to three separate versions of the clips. One was the full audio clip; the second was a version in which the words had been masked electronically so that they could hear the rise and fall of the voices but not the words themselves—a bit like sitting at the back of a busy restaurant when you can hear the conversations around you, but not really distinguish what is actually being said; and finally, a version in which the conversation had been converted to pure tones, so that much of the richness of the audio signal was lost, but not the rise and fall of the two distinct voices. They heard all eight clips for each version together in randomized order, so the chances of remembering clips one version to the next was actually quite slight.

We found that, on the full (unaltered) audio clip, people were around 80% accurate on identifying whether the relationship was positive or negative (the criterion in almost all these kinds of experiments), against an expectation of 50% had they responded at random. Moreover, they still managed 75% accuracy with the altered vocal clips, and even 60% accuracy with the pure tone versions (still well above chance). Even when asked to identify the actual type of relationship in individual clips, they performed at much better than chance level: around 30% correct on the full audio clip, and 20% correct on the other two versions—against an expectation of just 12.5% if they had been responding at random. More importantly, both groups of language speakers were as good with the other language as they were with their own.

So it seems that Mehrabian was right after all. Notwithstanding all the criticism of his claims, a lot of the information about social relationships is contained in the nonverbal cues—though our results suggest it is more like 80% than the 93% estimated by Mehrabian. In other words, we certainly get some additional information from the words, but actually we could get by pretty well without them.

That does raise a puzzle. If so little information is contained in the words, why do we have language at all? We could have carried on growling and whinnying at each other, and that would have done just fine. So what difference do the words actually make? I would suggest it allows us to do two thing: specify time and place.

Nonverbal communication, like the equally complex vocal communication of all monkeys and apes, is very good at telling you how I feel about you right now, but it won’t allow me to tell you how I felt about you last month—or would like to feel about you next month. It won’t allow me to suggest that we meet up at the coffee bar on Main Street at four o’clock next Thursday—or that I met Susan and James there last Thursday. What’s more important, perhaps, is that I couldn’t tell you a story that required you to imagine being in another time or place. There would be no novels and no plays, no histories and no community folklore. And it is these that provide an important part of community bonding.


For Further Reading

Dunbar, R. I. M., Robledo del Canto, J.-P., Tamarit, I., Cross, I., & Smith, E. (2021). Nonverbal auditory cues allow relationship quality to be inferred during conversations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00386-y.
 

Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK, and he studies social evolution in humans and other primates.

 

What are College Teacher Evaluations Really Based on?


In his TED talk, Chris Anderson reminded us that nonverbal communication and its enormous impact were fine-tuned and perfected by millions of years of evolution. He believes that online video lectures, such as TED and MOOCs, will revolutionize the spread of ideas in a magnitude similar to the impact that the Guttenberg print-revolution had on the spread of ideas in printed language.

Our research demonstrates that teachers’ expressiveness and enthusiasm plays a critical role in engaging students. Since higher education is going through vast changes towards a digital revolution, nonverbal communication becomes more critical than ever and thus, should have a salient presence in the methodology of evaluating teaching effectiveness.

How Is Instructor Effectiveness Typically Measured?

In the standard method (Students' Evaluations of Teaching or SET), students evaluate their teachers via questionnaires at course end, focusing on aspects such as clarity, organization, and exams. The consensual view is that these evaluations reflect "student satisfaction" as a proxy for learning outcomes and "objective" lecturer evaluations that are more difficult to measure.

Is There Another Way?

Yes. A different approach exists, which measures the teacher’s nonverbal cues of expressivity and enthusiasm that are called nonverbal immediacy or NVI. However, this approach and the SET approach have been totally estranged from each other for decades! And this is despite research showing that ratings of brief instances of instructors' nonverbal behavior also predict overall student evaluations. SET scholars reject the validity of teachers' nonverbal expressivity, viewing nonverbal predictors of teaching effectiveness as potential biases that might disguise unsatisfactory pedagogy, for example a teacher who is charming and likeable but whose students don’t learn much.

The estrangement between the two approaches could have been resolved long ago by administering both sets of questionnaires in the classrooms of the same teachers. That is exactly what we did in our 2021 research, hypothesizing that both sets of data reflect components of teaching effectiveness. Kahneman's theory of "fast and slow thinking" perfectly describes how NVI and SET might fit together in student evaluations. Students’ impressions of the teacher’s nonverbal expressiveness and enthusiasm, reflecting “fast thinking,” are formed intuitively right at the beginning of the course. Ratings of clarity, content, and didactic organization at the end of the course reflect slow and reasoned thinking.

At different points in time during their courses—with several hundred instructors in two colleges—we gave students both types of questionnaires. Correlations between the two sets of evaluations were extremely high, meaning an instructor either got high ratings on both, or low ratings on both—in other words, the two kinds of evaluations were close to being interchangeable. Thus, teaching effectiveness can be validly measured by both conventional didactic SET and expressive NVI delivery style. For three quarters of the teachers, their high or low standing matched on the two kinds of evaluation, and only for a quarter of the teachers was there a discrepancy—for example, where the traditional SET ratings were high while the nonverbal NVI ratings were low. Thus, a teacher can be good by conventional standards while being rather dull nonverbally, and vice versa, but such instances are very much in the minority.

The Importance of Teachers’ Nonverbal Communication

Thus, instead of viewing fast, intuitive evaluations as biased and educationally irrelevant, they must be viewed as effective predictors of subsequent slow evaluations. We actually believe it is likely that the later evaluations are heavily affected by the earlier impressions, meaning students are fitting their late, more complex judgments to their already existing intuitive judgments.

We maintain that in the 2020s, the emphasis of effective teaching is shifting from didactics to the style of delivery—from conveying information in a clear and organized manner, to inspiring enthusiasm and curiosity in students. The digital revolution of the last decades has been fully cemented by the COVID-19 epidemic and the necessity to abandon conventional frontal classroom teaching. Nonverbal communication plays a critical role in this revolution. Interactive online videos take center stage in online learning. Students would probably prefer to substitute a dull old-fashioned teacher with a charismatic and inspiring MOOC or TED instructor.

TED talks, in fact, are a good example of "acquired charisma." The long and massive training involved in the preparation of TED talks suggests that charisma and enthusiasm are trainable, rather than being some kind of natural endowment. Teachers will have to undergo massive training for improving their delivery style and nonverbal communication skills. And these aspects would need to be measured in student evaluations collected as early as possible in the course, so as to allow timely and effective feedback to the teachers.


For Further Reading

Babad, E., Sahar-Inbar, L., Hammer, R., Turgeman-Lupo, K., & Nessis, S. (2021). Student evaluations fast and slow: It's time to integrate teachers' nonverbal behavior in evaluations of teaching effectiveness. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 45,  321–338.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00364-4

Kahneman, Daniel (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan.

Pinto, M. B., & Mansfield, P. M. (2010). Thought processes college students use when evaluating faculty: A qualitative study. American Journal of Business Education, 3(3), 55-61. 


Elisha Babad is Professor Emeritus in educational and social psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His research includes teacher expectancy effects in classrooms and the teacher's pet phenomenon. More recent research is on the influence of TV interviewers’ nonverbal behavior on viewers' perceptions of the interviewee, voters' wishful thinking, and the role of nonverbal behavior in student evaluations of teachers.

Ronen Hammer is the head of the Center of the Advancement of Teaching and an instructor at the Instructional Technologies Department at HIT - Holon Institute of Technology, Israel.

Limor Sahar-Inbar is an instructor at the Industry Engineering and Technology Management Department and a team member at the Center of the Advancement of Teaching at HIT Holon Institute of Technology, Israel. Her research examines consumers' preferences between volume and similarity in electronic word of mouth.

How Angry Do You Sound When You Are Irritated with Your Romantic Partner?

Psychologists have long been interested in the words people use to express themselves because words often convey more than their literal meaning. For example, couples who frequently use the word “we” are more likely to be satisfied with their relationship, and single people are more likely to be interested in dates who use words that are similar to the words they use themselves.

Our research team was interested in learning more about the words that romantic partners say to one another when feeling irritated or annoyed because these are often the moments that escalate into more intense conflict. Of course, we assumed that romantic partners would use more anger words such as “mad,” “hate,” and “stupid” when they felt more annoyed with their partners.  

But we also wondered whether people’s past family experiences influence how often they use anger words. Considerable research shows that people who grow up in aggressive homes are more likely to be aggressive in their own romantic relationships. But no one has looked specifically at the language they use. It makes sense that people who grow up with aggressive parents might be more likely to use anger words when they feel irritated with their partners. 

To test this idea, we asked heterosexual dating couples in their early 20s to carry around a smart phone that recorded 50% of the couple’s conversations over the course of one day. We transcribed these conversations and used a software program that counts the frequency of various words to calculate the proportion of total spoken content that were words that expressed anger.  The smart phones also alerted couples to complete a brief survey every hour to report how irritated or annoyed they felt towards their partner in the past hour.

We found that men used more anger-related words during times when they felt more annoyed with their partners.  In addition, men who had received more verbal aggression from their parents while growing up tended to use more anger words in conversations with their partners, regardless of how annoyed they were at the moment.

An unanticipated finding was that women used more anger words during times of the day that their partners reported feeling more irritated. In other words, men’s irritation—but not women’s irritation—was related to women’s use of anger-related words.  It’s possible that, rather than using anger words when they are irritated, women use more indirect ways of expressing their annoyance, such as by ignoring their partner or using an irritated tone of voice.

Interestingly, women who grew up with very verbally aggressive parents were more likely to express anger words when they felt annoyed with their partner. Thus, both men and women’s use of anger words related to their experiences growing up.  But for men, having parents who were aggressive was reflected in more anger words sprinkled throughout the day, whereas for women, exposure to aggressive parents was reflected in using more anger words at the time they felt annoyed.

The words you use with your romantic partner appear to change in connection to your moods, your partner’s moods, and your family history. If you don’t want to repeat the communication patterns of your parents, you may want to explore using different ways of expressing annoyance toward your partner.


For further reading

Han, S. C., Schacter, H. L., Timmons, A. C., Kim, Y., Sichko, S., Pettit, C., & Margolin, G. (2020). Feelings of annoyance and spoken anger words in couples’ everyday lives: The role of family-of-origin aggression. Social Psychological and Personality Science. doi:10.1177/1948550620958806

 

Sohyun Han is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California. She studies risk and resilience, childhood adversity, close relationships, and daily biopsychosocial processes.

Women Communicate More Details than Men. So what?

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Over the last few years, I begin my leadership classes by asking my students “Who do you think provides more details in communication: men or women? Who do you think communicates more abstractly: men or women?” I generally find that my students believe that women give more details and that men speak more abstractly.

As my students guess, my research finds persistent gender differences in communication. Across a variety of contexts, women tend to use more concrete language, focusing on ways in which people can attain objectives, providing specifics, and using words that are easier to visualize. On the other hand, men tend to use more abstract language, focusing on the end goals or the larger purpose of actions, focusing on the gist of the message rather than the details, and using more abstract and difficult-to-visualize words. These gender differences in language exist across age groups, across status levels, and in both written and spoken language.

Why do these gender differences occur? My colleagues and I believe that gender differences in social interaction patterns may explain why women speak more concretely than men. Girls often interact in smaller and closer-knit groups than boys do. They are also more likely to build closeness and establish rapport with others. These gender differences persist across the lifespan. But we know that abstract speech is better suited for communication with large and heterogeneous groups. After all, abstract language is less idiosyncratic, and it is more relevant and relatable to those who are different from us. So, concrete speech may be better suited to meet women’s typical communication goals in small groups, and abstract speech may be better suited to meet men’s goals of interacting in larger groups.

Interestingly, our research shows that, when women are asked to imagine their audience being psychologically distant and dissimilar to them, women use abstract speech as much as men do. This finding shows that differences in how much men and women use abstract speech do not reflect differences in their ability to communicate abstractly. Instead, men and women seem to adapt their communication to their social goals.

Gender differences in abstract speech have important implications for women’s leadership. People use how abstractly other people talk as a cue about their status and power, and those who speak abstractly are more likely to be selected for leadership roles. As a result, women’s tendency to speak concretely may interfere with their ability to rise to high power positions. Although people may rely on speech abstraction to make decisions about someone’s leadership potential, it is unlikely that the use of abstract speech is actually related to a leader’s effectiveness.

When it comes to leadership effectiveness, leaders’ ability to adapt their speech to the context appears to be more important than their use of either abstract or concrete speech. In fact, women’s use of concrete speech may explain why many female leaders, such as Jasienda Arden (the Prime minister of New Zealand) and Tsai Ing-Wen (President of Taiwan), are outshining their male counterparts in leading their countries against the coronavirus pandemic. Their early stay-at-home orders and clear, concrete, and specific expectations may have effectively guided their citizens to take precautionary action.

In order to increase their likelihood of emerging as leaders, women would benefit from using more abstract communication. Yet, when people actually lead, both men and women must adapt their speech style to the context. To ensure that men and women are provided with equal access to leadership positions, it is important that decision makers, such as hiring managers, stop relying on speech abstraction to decide who has leadership potential. Selecting leaders based on their tendency to use abstract communication unduly impacts women’s emergence as leaders.  And this is unfortunate because research shows that women’s leadership styles are equally, if not more effective, than men’s traditional leadership styles.


For Further Reading

Joshi, P. D., Wakslak, C. J., Appel, G., & Huang, L. (2020). Gender differences in communicative abstraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 118(3), 417-435.

 

Priyanka Joshi is a Professor of Management at San Francisco State University. She studies gender, communication style, and leadership.  

 

What WAS that Masked Man Saying? How Wearing a Mask May Influence Our Interactions with Other People

The CDC recommends that all Americans wear masks when in public to slow the spread of COVID-19.  Although the health benefits of masks seem clear, the social effects of covering much of one’s face are less obvious.

After all the disruption and pain this pandemic has already caused, masks are yet another hassle—often ill-fitting and uncomfortable, incompatible with glasses and earrings, and even now, in short supply. Medical masks are associated with sickness and hospitals and thus serve as a constant reminder that the virus is still amongst us. People feel silly wearing masks—and, more seriously, members of some demographic groups worry about associations between mask-wearing and criminal behavior. Beyond all these negative associations, masks present a serious challenge when trying to communicate our feelings to other people via facial expressions such as smiling and frowning. However, humans are flexible and creative—and may develop novel behaviors as they adapt to masks.

Paradoxically, in the short term, wearing masks may actually enhance communication in some contexts. Research conducted in pre-masked times showed that people often believe that they are being clearer with their facial expressions than they actually are.  So, if the novelty and hassle of wearing a mask reminds people that their facial expressions are obscured, then perhaps wearing a mask will lead them to compensate by exerting more effort to make their emotions and intentions clearer. Who knows? Perhaps we will also make a greater effort to discern other people’s intended emotions, knowing that their mask hinders our ability to infer what they’re feeling.

We also might attend more to our emotional messages by being explicitly verbal, for example by telling people, "This makes me so happy" rather than relying on our smiles to convey our happiness, or by asking people directly, "Is that alright?," rather than making assumptions from an ambiguous facial expression.

We may also try to communicate more simply and to repeat ourselves more, the way we do with children, foreigners, and people who appear to have limited cognitive abilities.  Or, we may resort to corporal booster systems, using an exaggerated wave of the hand to acknowledge someone's presence or putting both our thumbs up to indicate that it's fine for someone to roll their grocery cart in front of ours on their way to establishing social distance. The highly expressive "motionese"—the broad hand motions and exaggerated movements we usually reserve for communicating with babies and toddlers—may be pulled out for interactions between masked adult strangers.

And all this is happening at the same time that many of us are spending more time in Zoom meetings, where we have ample opportunity to observe just how expressive and clear—or more likely, inexpressive and unclear—our usual facial expressions are. We may learn more about our own habitual levels of expressiveness and discover that we have a "resting bitch face" (or, in my case, given my neurotic nature, a “resting worry face”). Maybe people will become better calibrated in knowing when they have and have not communicated clearly.

What will be interesting to see is what happens if wearing masks becomes necessary over a long period of time, and we cease being keenly aware of them and their masking properties. Will using new ways to be explicitly expressive when masked become the new norm? Will we find ourselves developing new "speech registers"—styles of language specific to particular settings—for communicating with and without masks, much in the same way that some of us currently reflect less of our regional accents when speaking before a professional group than we do with our family?

One can almost imagine our significant other reminding us, "I get it, honey—you don't have be so emotional. Remember, you took your mask off!" Or, as we acclimate to wearing masks, will we revert to being just as egocentric as ever, assuming that other people can "read" our ambiguous facial expressions—but now with the added difficulty of doing so without seeing the lower half of our faces?

History suggests that if ambiguous and misinterpreted communication becomes problematic with masks, we'll adapt. After all, when emails and texts took over what had previously been spoken telephone calls, tone of voice and other paralinguistic cues could no longer be used to convey emotion—but then, ta-da!: emoji emerged.  Let’s hope humans will find an equally adorable—and pragmatic—fix for communicating emotions while wearing masks.


For Further Reading

Barr, C. L., & Kleck, R. E. (1995). Self-other perception of the intensity of facial expressions of emotion: Do we know what we show? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(4), 608–618. https://doi-org.libproxy.uoregon.edu/10.1037/0022-3514.68.4.608

Brand, R. J., Baldwin, D. A., & Ashburn, L. A. (2002). Evidence for 'motionese': Modifications in mothers' infant-directed action. Developmental Science, 5(1), 72–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7687.00211
DePaulo, B. M., & Coleman, L. M. (1986). Talking to children, foreigners, and retarded adults. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 945–959. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.945
 

Sara Hodges studies how accurately people understand each other and is a professor of social psychology at the University of Oregon.

Turning Complaints into Opportunities

Ever felt like you knew someone that complained too much? Perhaps you have even considered cutting ties with this person because they always talked about their problems? New research by close relationships researchers Kori Krueger and Amanda Forest at the University of Pittsburgh propose that an individual expressing negativity is an opportunity for the listener to practice instrumentality in the relationship—a practice that in turn has benefits for the relationship.

The personality trait of instrumentality is defined as someone who facilitates, supports, or enables a partner’s goal pursuit in some way. In relationships, when individuals are expressing negative thoughts or concerns, that is an indication to their partner, the listener, that their needs and goals are not being met. In other words, it is a sign that there is something that they could do to help their distressed partner—all in an attempt to alleviate the issues that could be inhibiting that individual from having positive experiences.

Krueger described that depending on the situation, instrumental people help their partners by taking on affectionate actions to cheer them up, find a way to help solve their partner’s problem, or to provide emotional support.

In their research, Krueger and Forest conducted four studies in which they Whether negative disclosures provided an opportunity for listening partners to practice instrumentality more than it does with positive or neutral disclosures. They also looked at whether negativity is less aversive and interpersonally costly when listeners are able to be instrumental compared to when they are not.

The results of their study revealed that negative disclosures posed as an opportunity for partners to practice instrumentality—which consequently has an effect on relationship quality. Data suggested that being instrumental increased the strength of the relationship between the individual disclosing and the listener. However, the key to whether the negative disclosure is beneficial or not—is determined if their listener can actually be instrumental in that process. In other words, the likeliness of the listener being able to take action in response to their partner’s negative disclosure dictates whether or not listening to that was actually beneficial.

When negative disclosures present itself, consider it not as a negative effect on the relationship but as a positive opportunity to strengthen your relationship with the other individual with instrumentality. The answer to their problem isn’t brushing them off or invalidating the issue’s capacity to affect them, but it starts with a simple question, “What can I do to help?”


Written By: Katie Linh Pham, MA Candidate at Loyola Marymount University

Session: "Listening to Negativity Can Be Beneficial: The Role of Feeling Instrumental” was part of the symposium Turning Negatives into Positives: Negatively-Valenced Interactions Can Benefit Relationships held Saturday, February 29, 2020.

Speaker: Kori Krueger, University of Pittsburgh

Co-Author: Amanda Forest, University of Pittsburgh

Unleash the Tongue: The Effect of Sex on Self-Disclosure

The sexual behavioral system evolved to motivate reproductive acts. The primary strategy for achieving this goal is to approach a potentially fertile partner, convince him or her to have sex, and engage in genital intercourse. However, human offspring are vulnerable throughout an exceptionally prolonged development period. Hence, in ancestral environments, sexual partners needed to stay together long enough to jointly care for their offspring during the period of maximum vulnerability, thereby increasing the offspring’s chances of survival and future reproductive success.

Over the course of human evolution, selection pressures have produced mechanisms that keep sexual partners attached to each other for an extended period, motivate them to remain in a committed relationship and engage in co-parenting behaviors following an offspring’s birth.1 Several characteristics of human sexuality suggest that the sexual system has been “exploited” by evolutionary processes to serve such a function.2 Humans, for example, tend to have sex in private and to sleep together afterwards. Humans also frequently have sex in the “missionary position”, which, by contrast to the typical sex positions of most mammals (e.g., canines), allows partners to maintain face-to-face contact during sexual intercourse. These and other similar behavioral tendencies foster extended close contact between sexual partners and make them feel more intimate with each other, thereby promoting enduring attachment bonds between them.

Although the literature suggests that sex contributes to attachment formation and maintenance, only a handful of studies have addressed the possibility that activation of the sexual system affects the motivation to engage in non-sexual relationship-promoting behaviors. A study3 published recently in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin explored whether sexual priming would increase the use of strategies that foster relationship development. Three studies examined whether exposing people to sexual stimuli, implicitly or explicitly, would motivate them to reveal personal information to a prospective romantic partner, and whether this self-disclosure, in turn, would further increase their desire for future interactions with this person. In all studies, participants were exposed to sexual stimuli (vs. neutral ones) and instructed to self-disclose to an opposite-sex stranger who was presented as a potential romantic option. 

In Study 1, heterosexual participants were subliminally exposed (i.e., outside of their awareness) to either sexual or neutral stimuli. Specifically, participants were told that in order to assess their compatibility with the other participant, they should indicate their food, clothing, and location preferences for a date with her or him. Then, they were asked to choose one of two options from each of seven categories (e.g., color of clothes: black or blue; location: bar or restaurant). Before each pair of options, participants were exposed to either a sexual (an attractive naked, reclining man shown from the groin up for female participants; an attractive, naked, kneeling woman photographed from behind for male participants) or a neutral prime, which was presented subliminally. Then, participants disclosed over Instant Messenger a personal event to an opposite-sex stranger. Judges and participants rated the extent to which personal information was revealed during the interaction. Results revealed that merely thinking about sex, even without being aware of it, encouraged self-disclosure.

Study 2 replicated these findings in relatively naturalistic conditions. Participants watched either an erotic (a scene from the movie "Original Sin" in which the actors Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie are having sexual intercourse) or a neutral movie about cats' behavior. Then, participants were asked to self-disclose an embarrassing personal event to another participant during face-to-face interaction. Study 3 set out to provide evidence that priming sexuality rather than priming relationships more broadly increases self-disclosure to an opposite-sex stranger and, in turn, the motivation to engage in relationship-initiation behaviors. To do so, participants watched videos depicting couples interacting either sexually or intimately but non-sexually and disclosed to an opposite-sex confederate over Instant Messenger an embarrassing personal event. Following this interaction, participants rated the extent to which they self-disclosed to the other participant and reported whether and where they would wish to spend a first date with him or her.

Overall, the findings indicate that activation of the sexual system encourages self-disclosure, a strategy that allows people to become closer to a potential partner. Self-disclosure, in turn, further increases the desire for this partner and fosters relationship development. Sharing of private aspects of the self with another individual is a well-documented way for adults to increase interpersonal intimacy and enhance relationship formation.4 The present research suggests that sexual activation facilitates this process, such that when two strangers meet, sexual interest will determine the extent to which personal information will be revealed during their interaction: Heightened sexual interest in a prospective partner is likely to increase self-disclosure, whereas a lack of sexual interest is likely to inhibit it.


See the original article posted here.

Gurit Birnbaum works at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya (Israel).  Her research focuses on the underlying functions of sexual fantasies and on the convoluted role played by sexuality in the broader context of close relationships.

References:

1Fletcher, G. J. O., Simpson, J. A., Campbell, L., & Overall, N. C. (2015). Pair-bonding, romantic love, and evolution: The curious case of Homo sapiens. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 20-36.

2Birnbaum, G. E., & Finkel, E. J. (2015). The magnetism that holds us together: Sexuality and relationship maintenance across relationship development. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 29-33.

3Birnbaum, G. E., Mizrahi, M., Kaplan, A., Kadosh, D., Kariv, D., Tabib, D., Ziv, D., Sadeh, L., & Burban, D. (in press). Sex unleashes your tongue: Sexual priming motivates self-disclosure to a new acquaintance and interest in future interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

4Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457–75. 

Five Things to Know About Clapping

Clapping, an often-overlooked behavior, is so pervasive that it can be likened to yawning, smiling, and laughing—a ubiquitous part of daily life. But you may never have given it deep thought. I will delve into five intriguing insights about this seemingly simple act.

Clapping and Applauding Are Two Separate Things

Usually used as synonyms, they are different. Clapping is the action of open hands colliding to compress and explode a small air bubble between palms—mainly to produce a characteristic sound. Clapping in itself has no connotations about its meaning, as it's an objective description of the action. Clapping can capture attention, convey specific messages like "hurry up," or contribute to maintaining a rhythm.

On the other hand, applause is when the claps carry specific meanings, just as certain stylized hand movements do, such as the "thumbs up" or "okay" signs. These gestures, called emblems, are culturally understood and can be translated into words or phrases. Applauding is a conscious and deliberate action, and typically it conveys specific messages of approval, congratulations, or positive recognition.

The Origins of Clapping

The evolutionary origins of clapping remain shrouded in mystery, leaving us to ponder several possibilities.

  • It may have emerged as an audible behavior that redirects peers' attention, signaling something worthy of notice, whether positive or negative.
  • Clapping could represent a playful and enthusiastic non-aggressive movement akin to the "play face" observed in particular primates.
  • It might serve as a display of threat or dominance, using powerful sounds and providing cues about hand size and, by extension, the individual's strength.
  • Clapping could function as a means of expressing affiliation from a distance, akin to a pseudo hug.
  • Clapping may have originated as a way to foster a sense of collective belonging, with the synchronized act of clapping promoting a feeling of group unity.

These explanations are all plausible, and the true origin of clapping likely encompasses elements from all of these.

Clapping May Express Your Identity

The pioneering work of Bruno Repp brought evidence that the sound produced when clapping may be unique to each individual, similar to the distinctive vocal tract sounds that can identify a person's voice. Clapping, like talking, offers a distinctive type of information about the configuration of specific movements in a given moment. Since the vocal tract sounds may convey sufficient audible information to identify a person, could this be the case for clapping also? Two subsequent studies found that algorithms could be trained to detect the spectral changes in the sound of claps and, as a result, achieve a good enough recognition rate.

Clapping Can Coordinate the Simultaneous Behavior of Thousands of Individuals

As exotic as it sounds, clapping sounds are as contagious as a disease. They go from one person to another, synchronizing between unknown persons like fire in the forest. While the factors influencing clapping "contagion," such as culture, audience, show type, and timing, are manifold, clapping's power of imitation and synchrony is rivaled only by the famous "Mexican wave" phenomenon seen in stadiums. Studies have shown that people can easily coordinate their claps, but replicating such coordination with jumps is considerably more challenging. Undoubtedly, clapping is an extraordinary behavior.

Claps May Be Used Strategically: From Intimidation to Influence

Throughout history, those in positions of power have recognized the significant social impact that clapping can have. Fascinating historical accounts reveal the strategic use of clapping to manipulate perceptions and exert influence. For instance, Emperor Heraclius of the Roman Empire orchestrated a meeting with a barbarian king, enlisting hired spectators to clap, to instill a sense of intimidation in his adversaries. Similarly, Emperor Nero famously employed the tactic of paying over 5,000 individuals to applaud him vigorously during public events, creating an illusion of widespread support.

Over time, the concept of "claques" emerged, with theater managers hiring paid applauders to enhance the audience experience. Even in the realm of television, canned applause tracks have been employed to heighten the perceived audience response. In the present day, clapping remains an integral part of sports culture, with fans using it to demonstrate their unwavering support for their favorite teams and players. In team sports, such as football, clapping also serves the additional purpose of intimidating rival teams, creating an electrifying atmosphere for home fans.

To Sum Up

Clapping and applause are universally recognized actions that usually convey positive social messages across cultures worldwide. While the precise origin of clapping remains a mystery, several hypotheses offer insights into its possible beginnings. Fascinatingly, clapping has the potential to reveal one's identity through the unique sound each individual produces. Moreover, clapping possesses an extraordinary ability to swiftly forge a sense of synchronicity among strangers, uniting thousands of individuals in a collective experience. Notably, clapping also holds a remarkable power to evoke intimidation and influence over others. Its resounding impact cannot be understated.


For Further Reading

Crawley, A. (2023). Clap, clap, clap—Unsystematic review essay on clapping and applause. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09786-9

Repp, B. H. (1987). The sound of two hands clapping: An exploratory study. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 81(4), 1100–1109. doi: 10.1121/1.394630


Alan Crawley is a psychologist specializing in nonverbal communication and is a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.