Judgments Of Affiliation Research Articles

Beyond simultaneity: Temporal interdependence of behavior is key to affiliative effects of interpersonal synchrony in children

Interpersonal synchrony (IPS) is the temporal coordination of behavior during social interactions. IPS acts as a social cue signifying affiliation both when children witness IPS between others and when they experience it themselves. However, it is unclear which temporal qualities of IPS produce these effects and why. We hypothesized that both the simultaneity and temporal regularity of partners’ actions would influence affiliation judgments and that subjective perceptions of IPS (“togetherness”) would play a role in mediating these relations. In two online tasks, children aged 4 to 11 years listened to a pair of children tapping (witnessed IPS; n = 68) or themselves tapped with another child (experienced IPS; n = 63). Tapping partners were presented as real, but the sounds attributed to them were computer generated so that their temporal relations could be experimentally manipulated. The simultaneity and regularity of their tapping was systematically manipulated across trials. For witnessed IPS, both the simultaneity and regularity of partners’ tapping significantly positively affected the perceived degree of affiliation between them. These effects were mediated by the perceived togetherness of the tapping. No affiliative effects of IPS were found in the experienced IPS condition. Our findings suggest that both the simultaneity and regularity of partners’ actions influence children’s affiliation judgments when witnessing IPS via elicited perceptions of togetherness. We conclude that temporal interdependence—which includes but is not limited to simultaneity of action—is responsible for inducing perceptions of affiliation during witnessed IPS.

Culturally valued facial expressions enhance loan request success.

Why do people share resources with some strangers, but not others? This question becomes increasingly relevant as online platforms that promote lending world-wide proliferate (e.g., www.kiva.org). We predicted that lenders from nations that value excitement and other high-arousal positive states (HAP; e.g., United States) would loan more to borrowers who show excitement in their profile photos because the lenders perceive them to be more affiliative (e.g., trustworthy). As predicted, using naturally occurring Kiva data, lenders from the United States and Canada were more likely to lend money to borrowers (N = 13,500) who showed greater positive arousal (e.g., excitement) than were lenders from East Asian nations (e.g., Taiwan), above and beyond loan features (amount, repayment term; Study 1). In a randomly selected sample of Kiva lenders from 11 nations (N = 658), lenders from nations that valued HAP more were more likely to lend money to borrowers who showed open "excited" versus closed "calm" smiles, above and beyond other socioeconomic and cultural factors (Study 2). Finally, we examined whether cultural differences in lending were related to judgments of affiliation in an experimental study (Study 3, N = 103). Compared with Koreans, European Americans lent more to excited borrowers because they viewed them as more affiliative, regardless of borrowers' race (White, Asian) or sex (male, female). These findings suggest that people use their culture's affective values to decide with whom to share resources, and lend less to borrowers whose emotional expressions do not match those values, regardless of their race or sex. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The rare preference effect: Statistical information influences social affiliation judgments

Shared preferences—liking the same things—facilitate and strengthen bonds between individuals. However, not all shared preferences are equally meaningful; sharing a rare preference with someone is often more exciting and meaningful than sharing a common preference. Here we present evidence for the rare preference effect: Participants chose to interact with (Experiment 1), and endorsed interactions between (Experiment 2), individuals who shared a rare preference, rather than those who shared a common preference, and this tendency increased with the relative rarity of the preference. While having a preference usually implies knowing and liking something, the presence of shared knowledge alone was sufficient to give rise to the rare preference effect (Experiments 3 & 4). Further, we find that social affiliation judgments are modulated by the causal process by which individuals came to have shared knowledge: Participants preferred to interact with someone who acquired a shared preference deliberately rather than accidentally (Experiment 5). In addition to the many cultural and emotional factors that drive mutual attraction, these results suggest that people’s decisions about with whom to interact are systematically influenced by the statistics of the social environment.

Ventral striatal activity mediates cultural differences in affiliative judgments of smiles

Previous research demonstrates that European Americans judge excited (vs. calm) smiles as more affiliative (warm, friendly, extraverted) than do Chinese, and that these differences are in part due to European Americans valuing excitement, enthusiasm, and other high arousal positive states (HAP) more than Chinese. But what mechanisms underlie these differences? To answer this question, European Americans (n = 19) and Chinese (n = 19) viewed excited (vs. calm) targets and then rated targets’ leadership potential (or familiarity, as a control) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. After scanning, participants then rated the same targets in terms of basic social traits such as affiliation, dominance, and competence. Consistent with previous findings, European Americans rated excited (vs. calm) targets as more affiliative than did Chinese. As predicted, European Americans showed greater ventral striatal activity (VS; associated with anticipation of reward) as they began to rate the excited (vs. calm) targets than did Chinese, and cultural differences in affiliation judgments were mediated by these cultural differences in VS activity (but not by activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, insula, or amygdala). However, while the cultural difference in affiliation judgments was driven by European Americans rating the excited (vs. calm) targets as more affiliative; the cultural difference in VS activity was driven by the calm (vs. excited) targets eliciting greater VS activity among Chinese, which more closely matched the cultural differences in ideal affect observed in this sample. Consistent with Affect Valuation Theory, these findings suggest that affective responses mediate cultural differences in affiliative judgments.

Detecting affiliation in colaughter across 24 societies.

Laughter is a nonverbal vocal expression that often communicates positive affect and cooperative intent in humans. Temporally coincident laughter occurring within groups is a potentially rich cue of affiliation to overhearers. We examined listeners' judgments of affiliation based on brief, decontextualized instances of colaughter between either established friends or recently acquainted strangers. In a sample of 966 participants from 24 societies, people reliably distinguished friends from strangers with an accuracy of 53-67%. Acoustic analyses of the individual laughter segments revealed that, across cultures, listeners' judgments were consistently predicted by voicing dynamics, suggesting perceptual sensitivity to emotionally triggered spontaneous production. Colaughter affords rapid and accurate appraisals of affiliation that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and may constitute a universal means of signaling cooperative relationships.

The contribution of movement correlation in perceptual judgments of affiliation during social interaction

The contribution of movement correlation in perceptual judgments of affiliation during social interaction

Appearance-based politics: Sex-typed facial cues communicate political party affiliation

Consequential political judgments often rely on facial appearance, yet the facial cues that compel such judgments remain unspecified. We predicted that judgments of political party affiliation, and by extension their accuracy, rely on the sex-typicality of facial cues (i.e., the degree of facial masculinity and femininity). In Study 1, we found that among Republicans/Conservatives in the 111th U.S. House of Representatives, women were significantly more sex-typical than men. This was not true for Democrats/Liberals. In Study 2, we examined the relationship between sex-typicality of facial cues and social judgments. We found that the accuracy of Republican categorizations was positively related to feminine cues in women but negatively related to masculine cues in men. In contrast, the opposite pattern was true for Democratic categorizations. Facial sex-typicality mediated the interaction between politician sex and party and perceiver party affiliation judgments. We discuss the implications that these findings have for electoral politics.

When the Frame Paints the Picture

Alcohol myopia theory and relational framing theory were used to explain how alcohol consumption affects perceptions of sexual scenarios. In a within-subjects design, participants (N = 51) evaluated scenarios that emphasized consensual cues only and scenarios with consensual and nonconsensual sexual behaviors (mixed cues). Participants read both scenario types at three blood alcohol levels (.00, .04, and .08 g/dl). Participants viewed affiliation judgments as significantly more relevant than dominance judgements when evaluating the consensual scenarios, regardless of their level of alcohol consumption. For the mixed cues scenarios, participants did not view either dimension as more relevant when sober; when drinking, they viewed dominance judgments as more relevant. As alcohol consumption increased, women were more likely to report that they would act like the female in both scenario types, whereas men were more likely to act like the male in the consensual scenario only.

Framing Social Reality

Relational communication researchers have asserted that dominance and affiliation are the fundamental features of social reality. The authors argue that when individuals interpret interaction, they focus on one dimension or the other, such that dominance and affiliation are differentially salient. On that premise, the authors hypothesized that the relative salience of dominance or affiliation would be a function of the goal-defined context. Further, some investigators have argued that the notion of involvement is also essential to the study of relational communication. Although the authors concur, they believe that involvement is a fundamentally different type of construct than dominance or affiliation. The authors hypothesized that involvement is relevant to both dominance and affiliation judgments; it functions as an intensifier variable. A study was conducted in which participants rated the relevance of a series of word pairs that operationalized dominance, affiliation, and involvement within 12 interaction scenarios. Although there was evidence that the biological sex of the judge moderated the magnitude of some effects, the results were uniformly supportive of the hypotheses.

Children's Use of Head Orientation and Eye Contact in Making Attributions of Affiliation

ABRAMOVITCH, RONA, and DALY, ELEANOR M. Children's Use of Head Orientation and Eye Contact in Making Attributions of Affiliation. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 519-522. 2 studies were conducted to investigate children's use of head orientation and eye contact as cues for judging affiliation. In the first study 40 preschool children were shown videotaped female dyads who faced or did not face each other. The children were asked which dyads liked or did not like each other. Subjects were able to make accurate judgments of affiliation based on head orientation. In the second study 32 preschool children and 30 elementary school children were asked with which of two female confederates they would like to interact. The confederates were presented on videotapes in which the only difference between them was absence or presence of eye contact-the confederate either looked into the camera or kept her eyes down. The preschool children showed no preference based on eye contact. However, the older children showed a significant preference. There was no significant sex difference in either study.

Sex differences in the use of proximity and eye contact in judgments of affiliation in preschool children.

Sex differences in the use of proximity and eye contact in judgments of affiliation in preschool children.