Emotional responses to other persons in everyday life situations.

Several times a day over a 4-wk period, 24 West German housewives recorded (a) characteristics of their momentary situation (place, activities, other persons present), (b) their mood states, and (c) their subjective explanations of those mood states. In addition to this time-sampling diary, Ss completed the 16PF twice. The type of social situations and the frequency with which they occurred to the Ss were significantly related to personality measures. Mood states, causal attributions of mood states, actualization, and satisfaction of motives were dependent on characteristics of the person and the environment. Results are discussed in terms of interaction between a person and the social situation. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality effects on social relationships.

Personality influences on social relationships and vice versa were longitudinally studied. Personality affected relationships, but not vice versa. After entry to university, 132 students participated for 18 month in a study in which the Big Five factors of personality, the subfactors Sociability and Shyness, and all significant social relationships were repeatedly assessed. A subsample kept diaries of all significant social interactions. After the initial correlation between personality and relationship quality was controlled for, Extraversion and its subfactors, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness predicted aspects of relationships such as number of peer relationships, conflict with peers, and falling in love. In contrast, relationship qualities did not predict personality traits, and changes in relationship qualities were unrelated to changes in personality traits. Consequences for dynamic-interactionistic views of personality and relationships are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Collectivism-individualism in everyday social life: The middle kingdom and the melting pot.

Used the Rochester Interaction Record (RIR) to investigate the effects of individualism–collectivism on everyday social interaction. Triandis (in press) defined collectivism as placing great emphasis on (a) the views, needs, and goals of the in-group rather than of oneself, (b) social norms and duty defined by the in-group rather than behavior to get pleasure, (c) beliefs shared with the in-group rather than beliefs that distinguish oneself from in-group, (d) great readiness to cooperate with in-group members, and (e) intense emotional attachment to the in-group. University students in the United States, an individualistic country, and Hong Kong, which is highly collectivistic, maintained the RIR for 2 weeks. Consistent with predictions, the Hong Kong students had longer but fewer interactions (half as many) with fewer people, had a higher percentage of group and task interactions, and indicated greater self- and other-disclosure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The intersection of life stage and social events: Personality and life outcomes.

Two studies examined the intersection of life stage with the experience of social events. Study 1 tested whether social events coinciding with early adulthood are more meaningful to individuals than events during other life stages (K. Mannheim, 1972; A. J. Stewart & J. M. Healy, 1989). In 4 of 5 samples of college-educated women (3 age cohorts), the hypothesis was supported. Study 2 examined the impact of the women's movement on the personalities and careers of women who experienced the movement during early adulthood versus early middle adulthood. Women in both cohorts who found the movement meaningful attained higher education, work status, and income levels; were employed in upwardly mobile careers; and were more assertive and self-confident at midlife than women who found the movement less important. Consistent with hypotheses, finding the women's movement meaningful was associated with personality change in the older cohort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressive personality styles, dysphoria, and social comparisons in everyday life.

Sociotropic people are supposedly vulnerable to dysphoria after negative interpersonal events, whereas autonomous people are supposedly vulnerable to achievement-related failures. The present study examined whether these personality styles are borne out in social comparison processes. For 3 weeks, 27 sociotropic and 35 autonomous undergraduates completed records of their social comparisons. Depressive personality style moderated comparison frequency and the affective consequences of comparisons, especially for dysphoric individuals: Dysphoric respondents were especially likely to make comparisons in domains that were congruent with their personalities, and comparisons in congruent domains were associated with greater mood change than comparisons in other domains, perhaps especially for dysphoric respondents. These results have implications for the literatures on social comparison and on depressive personality styles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lying in everyday life.

In 2 diary studies of lying, 77 college students reported telling 2 lies a day, and 70 community members told 1. Participants told more self-centered lies than other-oriented lies, except in dyads involving only women, in which other-oriented lies were as common as self-centered ones. Participants told relatively more self-centered lies to men and relatively more other-oriented lies to women. Consistent with the view of lying as an everyday social interaction process, participants said that they did not regard their lies as serious and did not plan them much or worry about being caught. Still, social interactions in which lies were told were less pleasant and less intimate than those in which no lies were told. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-fulfilling effects of stigmatizing information on children's social interactions.

The stigmatizing effects of negative expectancies were examined in observations of interactions between children with and without a behavior problem. Ss were 68 pairs of unacquainted boys in Grades 3–6. In each dyad, a normal boy was either told that his partner had a behavior problem or given no expectancy; this expectancy manipulation was crossed with the partner's actual diagnostic status with respect to hyperactivity. The perceiver's expectancy that their partner had a behavior problem as well as the actual diagnostic status of the target adversely affected the boys' interactions. Behavioral data suggest how the expectancies were communicated to the target. The processes underlying interpersonal expectancy effects and the ways in which a childhood stigma can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality, social support, and psychological distress in later life.

A conceptual model was developed to address 2 issues that have received relatively little attention in the social support literature. First, an attempt was made to assess the interrelationships among 3 types or dimensions of supportive social relations. In addition, the impact of selected psychological and social factors on social support use was examined. Findings from a nationwide survey of older adults in the United Kingdom suggest that social contact tends to increase the amount of received support, and received support in turn tends to bolster perceptions of support availability in the future (i.e., anticipated support). With regard to the second issue, social roles (especially marital status) and social extraversion emerged as potentially important correlates of social support use in later life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression and everyday social interaction.

Examined the relationships between depressive symptoms and everyday social interaction in a nonclinical population. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and social interaction was measured using a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record. People who were classified as at risk for depression had less rewarding interactions than people who were not at risk. Depressive symptoms and interaction quantity and quality were negatively correlated for participants above the cutpoint, whereas they were uncorrelated for those below the at-risk cutpoint. Results also suggest that, compared with nondepressed people, depressed people derive more rewards from interactions with their closest opposite-sex friends, relative to the rewards they derive from interactions with other opposite-sex friends. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hurricane-related exposure experiences and stressors, other life events, and social support: Concurrent and prospective impact on children's persistent posttraumatic stress symptoms.

Objective: We investigated the influence of hurricane exposure, stressors occurring during the hurricane and recovery period, and social support on children's persistent posttraumatic stress (PTS). Method: Using a 2-wave, prospective design, we assessed 384 children (54% girls; mean age = 8.74 years) 9 months posthurricane, and we reassessed 245 children 21 months posthurricane. Children completed measures of exposure experiences, social support, hurricane-related stressors, life events, and PTS symptoms. Results: At Time 1, 35% of the children reported moderate to very severe levels of PTS symptoms; at Time 2, this reduced to 29%. Hurricane-related stressors influenced children's persistent PTS symptoms and the occurrence of other life events, which in turn also influenced persistent PTS symptoms. The cascading effects of hurricane stressors and other life events disrupted children's social support over time, which further influenced persistent PTS symptoms. Social support from peers buffered the impact of disaster exposure on children's PTS symptoms. Conclusions: The effects of a destructive hurricane on children's PTS symptoms persisted almost 2 years after the storm. The factors contributing to PTS symptoms are interrelated in complex ways. The findings suggest a need to close the gap between interventions delivered in the immediate and short-term aftermath and those delivered 2 years or more postdisaster. Such interventions might focus on helping children manage disaster-related stressors and other life events as well as bolstering children's support systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social comparison in everyday life.

94 college students recorded details of their social comparisons over 2 wks using a new instrument, the Rochester Social Comparison Record. Major results were (1) comparison direction varied with relationship with the target; (2) precomparison negative mood led more often to upward comparison than to downward comparison, supporting a selective affect–cognition priming model in which dysphoria primes negative thoughts about the self (G. H. Bower, 1991; J. P. Forgas et al, 1990) rather than a motivational self-enhancement model (T. A. Wills, 1981, 1991); (3) upward comparison decreased subjective well-being, whereas downward comparison increased it; and (4) high self-esteem individuals engaged in more self-enhancing comparison. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internal comparisons in everyday life.

According to the internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model (H. W. Marsh, 1986), students not only compare their own abilities in a domain with those of other students (social comparison), they also compare their own achievements in different domains (internal comparison). The main purpose of this study was to investigate internal comparison processes in everyday life using an introspective methodology. Over 2 weeks, 67 university students (Study 1) and 65 high school students (Study 2) using a diary instrument recorded more upward than downward internal comparisons, most of them triggered by academic achievement situations. In both studies, multilevel analyses showed links between the direction of comparison and affective state: (a) upward internal comparisons were associated with negative mood states; (b) downward internal comparisons were associated with positive mood states; (c) upward internal comparisons increased positive and decreased negative mood states; (d) downward internal comparisons decreased positive and increased negative mood states. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parents' stressful life events and social networks: Relations with parenting and children's competence.

Explored relations between parents' stressful life events and social networks, parent–child interactions, and children's competence in preschool, in 30 normally functioning, 2-parent families. Family interactions were assessed by home observations, observer ratings, and parent self-reports; children's competence in preschool was assessed by teacher ratings. Stress was not strongly linked with parenting, although loss (deaths of relatives and friends) was associated across methods with decreased warmth for both parents. Structural and functional differences emerged for social support from spouse, kin, and friends. Aspects of mothers' and fathers' social networks were associated with the others' parenting. Partial correlation analyses were consistent with the view that effects of parental stress on child behavior were mediated by parent–child interactions, while social networks influenced children directly. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond reciprocity: Gratitude and relationships in everyday life.

The emotion of gratitude is thought to have social effects, but empirical studies of such effects have focused largely on the repaying of kind gestures. The current research focused on the relational antecedents of gratitude and its implications for relationship formation. The authors examined the role of naturally occurring gratitude in college sororities during a week of gift-giving from older members to new members. New members recorded reactions to benefits received during the week. At the end of the week and 1 month later, the new and old members rated their interactions and their relationships. Perceptions of benefactor responsiveness predicted gratitude for benefits, and gratitude during the week predicted future relationship outcomes. Gratitude may function to promote relationship formation and maintenance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness in social situations.

Conceptualized helplessness in social situations as the perceived inability to surmount rejection, as revealed by causal attributions for rejection, and explored the responses of 130 4th and 5th graders to rejection across popularity levels. Results show that differences in attributions for rejection were related to disruption of goal-directed behavior following rejection. The most severe disruption of attempts to gain social approval (withdrawal and perseveration) was associated with the tendency to emphasize personal incompetence as the cause of rejection, regardless of popularity level. It is suggested that cognitive mediators of overt social behavior and ability to solve problems when faced with difficulties need to be considered in the study of children's social relations. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral activation and inhibition in everyday life.

Joint effects of daily events and dispositional sensitivities to cues of reward and punishment on daily positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) were examined in 3 diary studies. Study 1 showed that positive events were strongly related to PA but not NA, whereas negative events were strongly related to NA but not PA. Studies 2 and 3 examined how the dispositional sensitivities of independent appetitive and aversive motivational systems, the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), moderated these relationships. Participants in Study 2 with higher BAS sensitivity reported more PA on average; those with more sensitive BIS reported more NA. Also, BIS moderated reactions to negative events, such that higher BIS sensitivity magnified reactions to negative events. Study 3 replicated these findings and showed that BAS predisposed people to experience more positive events. Results demonstrate the value of distinguishing within-person and between-person effects to clarify the functionally independent processes by which dispositional sensitivities influence affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of a say-then-do training sequence on children's social behavior.

A say-then-do training sequence was used to teach 3 behaviorally impaired 4–5 yr olds to give and take objects appropriately in a classroom. During Training Phase 1, Ss were taught to self-instruct appropriate behavior before relinquishing or receiving objects from adults and peers in a treatment setting. During Training Phase 2, adult supervision was faded from the treatment, and Ss were required to continue to self-instruct while playing with their peers. Data were collected on appropriate social behavior of Ss in both treatment and extratreatment settings. Results show that the procedures were effective for each S. Ss rapidly acquired the target behavior and were successful in generalizing and maintaining the behavior in an extratreatment setting. Results are discussed as they relate to Ss' initial acquisition of the target behavior, generalization of the target behavior to an extratreatment setting, maintenance of the behavior over time, and the applicability of the training procedures. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Groupthink and uncertainty orientation: Personality differences in reactivity to the group situation.

Groupthink theory explains how situational conditions influence group decision making. The authors predict that certainty-oriented (CO) groups show more groupthink than do uncertainty-oriented (UO) groups under closed- rather than open-leadership conditions, this difference being greater under high- rather than low-cohesion conditions. Groupthink can be diminished by avoiding their leader's biased information. The authors asked 68 groups of 4 to decide the fate of a legal case. They found that CO groups are more influenced by situational conditions than are UO groups and that COs make fewer biased decisions with open- rather than closed-leadership conditions and discuss more facts and take more time under high rather than low cohesion. Cohesion interacts with personality to affect group processes but not the decision outcome. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)