Affiliative Responses Research Articles

Autonomic and facial electromyographic responses to watching eyes.

We measured participants' psychophysiological responses and gaze behavior while viewing a stimulus person's direct and averted gaze in three different conditions manipulating the participants' experience of being watched. The results showed that skin conductance responses and heart rate deceleration responses were greater to direct than averted gaze only in the condition in which the participants had the experience of being watched by the other individual. In contrast, gaze direction had no effects on these responses when the participants were manipulated to believe that the other individual could not watch them or when the stimulus person was presented in a pre-recorded video. Importantly, the eye tracking measures showed no differences in participants' looking behavior between these stimulus presentation conditions. The results of facial electromyography responses suggested that direct gaze elicited greater zygomatic and periocular responses than averted gaze did, independent of the presentation condition. It was concluded that the affective arousal and attention-orienting indexing autonomic responses to eye contact are driven by the experience of being watched. In contrast, the facial responses seem to reflect automatized affiliative responses which can be elicited even in conditions in which seeing another's direct gaze does not signal that the self is being watched.

Understanding Mass Panic and Other Collective Responses to Threat and Disaster

While mass panic (and/or violence) and self-preservation are often assumed to be the natural response to physical danger and perceived entrapment, the literature indicates that expressions of mutual aid are common and often predominate, and collective flight may be so delayed that survival is threatened. In fact, the typical response to a variety of threats and disasters is not to flee but to seek the proximity of familiar persons and places; moreover, separation from attachment figures is a greater stressor than physical danger. Such observations can be explained by an alternative “social attachment” model that recognizes the fundamentally gregarious nature of human beings and the primacy of attachments. In the relatively rare instances where flight occurs, the latter can be understood as one aspect of a more general affiliative response that involves escaping from certain situations and moving toward other situations that are perceived as familiar but which may not necessarily be objectively safe. The occurrence of flight-and-affiliation depends mainly on the social context and especially the whereabouts of familiar persons (i.e., attachment figures); their physical presence has a calming effect and reduces the probability of flight-and-affiliation, while their absence has the opposite effect. Combining the factors of perceived physical danger and the location of attachment figures results in a four-fold typology that encompasses a wide spectrum of collective responses to threat and disaster. Implications of the model for predicting community responses to terrorist attacks and/or use of weapons of mass destruction are briefly discussed.

Cues to individuality in Greylag Goose faces: algorithmic discrimination and behavioral field tests

Cues to individuality, and the corresponding capacity for individual-level discrimination, can allow individually specific investment by conspecifics into offspring, partners, neighbors or competitors. Here we investigated possible cues to individuality via faces in an ancient avian lineage, the Greylag Goose (Anser anser). Konrad Lorenz could famously name each Greylag Goose in ‘his’ flock from a photograph. Confirming this anecdotal observation, we developed facial recognition software that can reliably (~ 97% accuracy) assign a goose face to a goose ID within a database, using bill morphology normalized during photo preparation. To explore conspecific detection of individuality cues, we erected life-size photos of geese and measured subjects’ responses to photos of themselves (unfamiliar goose), their partner, and another flock mate. Geese displayed significantly greater affiliative response to photos of their partners, providing evidence that geese can use two-dimensional images as cues to determine social category (partner/non-partner) and/or individual-level recognition. Our methods provide novel approaches to automatically detect and monitor geese and to test avian cognition. Our approach may also create new opportunities for species monitoring approaches more generally using photographic images and citizen-science engagement.

Forgiveness and Affiliative Responses to Workplace Incivility

Forgiveness and Affiliative Responses to Workplace Incivility

Preschoolers' Beliefs, Emotions and Intended Responses toward Peer Behaviors: Do Children's Sex, Age, and Social Behavior Make a Difference?

Children's self-imposed isolation in the company of others (social withdrawal due to shyness or unsociability) and active isolation due to direct aggressive behaviors can challenge successful engagement in the peer group. The developmental attributional perspective acknowledges that children's intended affiliative responses are, in part, guided by their emotions and beliefs toward peers' social behaviors and may differ depending on children's sex, age group, and social behavior. This study aimed to (1) describe preschoolers' beliefs, emotions, and intended affiliative preferences toward aggressive, shy, and unsociable peers, depending on children's sex and age group, and (2) explore the associations between preschoolers' beliefs, emotions and intended affiliative preferences, depending on children's social behaviors and children's sex or age group. A total of 158 preschoolers aged 3-6 years were interviewed, using the Child Attributions Interview to assess their beliefs, emotions and intended affiliative preferences toward peers. Teachers completed the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale to assess children's prosocial behaviors, aggressive-anger, and anxious-withdrawal. Preschoolers' perspectives toward shy and unsociable peers were less negative than toward aggressive peers. However, participants in our sample were not fully aware of the different intentionality and social motivations of shy and unsociable peers. Higher levels of perceived social standing, social motivation and sympathy predicted higher affiliative preferences toward shy, unsociable, and aggressive peers. However, the magnitude of the associations between preschoolers' beliefs, emotions and intended affiliative preferences differed, depending on children's sex, age group and prosocial behavior, especially toward aggressive and shy peer behaviors. These findings are in line with the developmental attributional perspective, but highlight the need to account for developmental specificities, sex differences in peer relationships and children's individual differences in social behaviors.

Shared Stressful Situations and Affiliation in Stranger Dyads: An experimental Analysis

According to the tend-and-befriend theory, shared stressors may create situations in which the inclination to interact with another person (i.e., immediate affiliative desire) is elevated. This may create a situational context in which sustained affiliative responses towards an interaction partner are more likely to occur in the longer-term. In the present study, we randomly assigned 85 undergraduate stranger dyads (N = 170 participants; all women) to either shared stress or shared control experiences and measured immediate affiliative desire. The strangers in the dyads then interacted with one another in a discussion task, and participants’ long-term affiliative responses (liking and future intentions to affiliate) were assessed. The evidence suggested that shared stressful experiences (vs. the shared control experiences) promoted significantly more immediate affiliative desire. Furthermore, immediate affiliative desire mediated the association between shared stress and long-term affiliative responses. These findings offer insight into how shared stress may influence friendship development.

Japanese complaint responses in textbook dialogues and ordinary conversations: learning objects to expand interactional repertoires

Abstract This study examines Japanese complaint responses appearing in naturally occurring interaction and textbook dialogues. The comparative analysis highlights that complaint responses in textbooks differ from those in mundane conversation. The inevitable difficulty for textbooks to reflect temporal and multimodal features of interaction results in the designs of affiliative responses being minimal and disaffiliative responses being more explicit. In contrast, conversation data indicates that complaint response turns are more intricately designed with multimodal semiotic resources and are precisely positioned according to the sequential development of complaints. By conducting empirical analyses, the study identifies interactional repertoires that are not observed in textbooks but employed in actual conversations. In doing so, it aims to expand the variety of the analysis of textbook dialogues to help calibrate the input for Japanese language pedagogy, while presenting a reference point for Japanese language learners to better understand the interactional organization of complaint sequences in mundane conversations.

Goals, Power and Similarity: Responses to Banter in Initial Interactions

Bantering can serve as an important strategy for relationship management. Guided by Multiple Goals Theory (MGT), politeness, and relational power, this study examines banter as a playful means to signal the desire for a possible relationship and/or to reinforce a sense of self. Specifically, this study examines responses to banter during initial interactions after an affiliative tease. A total of 623 participants read two hypothetical interactions involving a banter and/or a non-banter response. Respondents then completed measures about their affiliative responses, facework intentions, perceived similarity, power, and communication satisfaction. Results indicated banter was a significant influencer on affiliative responses and less facework management. Perceived similarity mediated the relationship of perceived power and communication outcomes in the context of banter. Results provided support for Multiple Goals Theory for initial interactions. Future research on banter as a communication strategy is discussed.

“Ay no I do feel exhausted”: Affiliative practices and interpersonal relationships in indirect complaints in Spanish

Indirect complaints, particularly situation-oriented and third-party-oriented, are a ubiquitous social action that speakers use to navigate trouble and build interpersonal relationships. Research has shown that affiliation constitutes the preferred response to this type of complaint and its absence can be treated as accountable. However, how different affiliative responses to complaints unveil existing and emergent relationship between participants has received limited attention. Drawing on interactional and interpersonal pragmatics, this study analyses how, in indirect complaints in Spanish, affiliation, nonaffiliation, disaffiliation, and selective affiliation reflect existing degrees of closeness between participants and affect their achievement of interactional intimacy. The data comes from phone conversations (from Talkbank) in Spanish between friends and relatives. The findings indicate that complainants recruit affiliation orienting to both the perceived degree of closeness in their existing relationships (e.g. claiming co-membership, common ground) and the interactional construction of intimacy through affective reciprocity. In the data, selective affiliation, a phenomenon where interactants co-complain but the elements with which they appear to affiliate trigger interactional misalignment, best illustrates this dual attention through subsequent interactional work. By exploring affiliative responses in complaining, this study contributes to the topic of complaints in Spanish and our understanding of how relationships are co-constructed in interaction.

The Particle Jako ("Like") in Spoken Czech: From Expressing Comparison to Mobilizing Affiliative Responses.

This contribution investigates the use of the Czech particle jako (“like”/“as”) in naturally occurring conversations. Inspired by interactional research on unfinished or suspended utterances and on turn-final conjunctions and particles, the analysis aims to trace the possible development of jako from conjunction to a tag-like particle that can be exploited for mobilizing affiliative responses. Traditionally, jako has been described as conjunction used for comparing two elements or for providing a specification of a first element [“X (is) like Y”]. In spoken Czech, however, jako can be flexibly positioned within a speaking turn and does not seem to operate as a coordinating or hypotactic conjunction. As a result, prior studies have described jako as a polyfunctional particle. This article will try to shed light on the meaning of jako in spoken discourse by focusing on its apparent fuzzy or “filler” uses, i.e., when it is found in a mid-turn position in multi-unit turns and in the immediate vicinity of hesitations, pauses, and turn suspensions. Based on examples from mundane, video-recorded conversations and on a sequential and multimodal approach to social interaction, the analyses will first show that jako frequently frames discursive objects that co-participants should respond to. By using jako before a pause and concurrently adopting specific embodied displays, participants can more explicitly seek to mobilize responsive action. Moreover, as jako tends to cluster in multi-unit turns involving the formulation of subjective experience or stance, it can be shown to be specifically designed for mobilizing affiliative responses. Finally, it will be argued that the potential of jako to open up interactive turn spaces can be linked to the fundamental comparative semantics of the original conjunction.

Upregulating positive affect through compassion: Psychological and physiological evidence

Positive emotion regulation, that is, upregulating, maintaining, and savoring positive emotions, also bears the potential to counteract and thus mitigate negative affect. In this narrative review, we report on the social emotion of compassion as a particularly efficient form of positive emotion regulation. Compassion emerges as an affiliative response to the suffering of others. It is characterized by feelings of warmth and kindness and an initiation of prosocial caring behavior towards others. The inherent positivity of compassion is also in line with its related neural correlates. Compassion is associated with activity in the ventral striatum, the (subgenual) anterior cingulate cortex, and the orbitofrontal cortex, brain regions related to strong positive emotions, such as romantic and maternal love. In addition to its long tradition in Eastern philosophy, the practice of compassion has in recent years found its way into interventions in Western psychology, for example, within compassion-focused therapy. Recent findings confirm that affect-related mental training promoting compassion is also linked to functional and structural changes in neural networks associated with positive emotions and emotion regulation. This compassion-related plasticity in the neural systems of positive emotion regulation suggests that incorporating compassion into psychological interventions could prove to be a particularly effective way to support positive emotion regulation.

The effects of oxytocin and vasopressin administration on fathers’ neural responses to infant crying: A randomized controlled within-subject study

In a randomized double-blind within-subject control study we investigated the effects of oxytocin and vasopressin administration on neural reactivity to infant cry sounds in 70 first-time fathers in the first year of fatherhood. Additionally, we examined whether effects of oxytocin and vasopressin administration on neural reactivity were moderated by fathers’ early childhood experiences. Neural reactivity to infant cry sounds (versus control sounds) was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Furthermore, participants reported on their childhood experiences of parental harsh discipline and parental love withdrawal. Whole brain analyses revealed no significant effect of vasopressin or oxytocin administration on neural activation in response to infant cry sounds. Region of interest analyses showed decreased amygdala activation in both the oxytocin condition and the vasopressin condition as compared to placebo. We found no moderating effects of fathers’ early childhood experiences. Our findings suggest that oxytocin administration may decrease feelings of anxiety or aversion to a crying infant. Whether decreased amygdala activation after vasopressin administration might be explained by contextual factors (e.g., absence of high levels of threat, unfamiliarity of the infant) or represents an affiliative response to infant distress warrants further investigation. Findings of the present study showed that oxytocin and vasopressin are important hormones implicated in neural models of infant cry perception in fatherhood.

Affiliative Responses to External Stress in Couples

Affiliative Responses to External Stress in Couples

“Stirring it up!” Emotionality in audience responses to political speeches

Speaker-audience interaction in political speeches has been conceptualised as a form of dialogue between speaker and audience. Of particular importance is research pioneered by Atkinson (e.g., 1983, 1984a, 1984b) on the analysis of rhetorical devices utilised by politicians to invite audience applause. Atkinson was not concerned with emotionalisation in political speech-making, rather with how applause was invited in relation to group identities through ingroup praise and/or outgroup derogation. However, his theory has provided important insights into how speakers invite audience responses, and a powerful stimulus for associated research. The purpose of this article is to address the shortfall of emotionalisation research within the realm of political speeches. We begin with an account of Atkinsons influential theory of rhetoric, followed by a relevant critique. The focus then turns to our main aim, namely, how key findings from previous speech research can be interpreted in terms of emotionalisation. Specifically, the focus is on audience responses to the words of political speakers, and how different forms of response may reflect audience emotionality. It is proposed that both duration and frequency of invited affiliative audience responses may indicate more positive emotional audience responses, while uninvited interruptive audience applause and booing may provide notable clues to issues on which audiences have strong feelings. It is concluded that there is strong evidence that both invited and uninvited audience responses may provide important clues to emotionalisation - both positive and negative - in political speeches.

The dynamics of social cohesion in response to simulated intergroup conflict in banded mongooses.

Intergroup conflict is widespread in nature and is proposed to have strong impacts on the evolution of social behavior. The conflict–cohesion hypothesis predicts that exposure to intergroup conflict should lead to increased social cohesion to improve group success or resilience in future conflicts. There is evidence to support this prediction from studies of affiliative responses to outgroup threats in some animal societies. However, most of these studies have focused on behavioral changes over short time periods (minutes and hours after exposure to an outgroup), and hence very little is known about the dynamics and durability of responses to intergroup conflict over the longer term. We investigated this question by simulating intergroup encounters in wild banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) and measuring social behavior before, during, and after these encounters over a 5‐day period. We also ran control trials with non‐threatening stimuli. Banded mongooses reacted immediately to intrusion stimuli by vocalizing, grouping together, and advancing on the stimulus. In the first 5 min after simulated intrusions, we saw an elevation in grooming levels, but in the hour after exposure grooming rates declined sharply, contrary to our expectation. In the two subsequent days, grooming rates remained at this depressed rate. In control trials, the initial increase in grooming was not seen, but grooming declined compared to the longer‐term time periods. Grooming changed across time, but not in the same pattern as during intrusions, suggesting that intrusions had an impact above and beyond that of the experimental setup. The dynamics of grooming responses were short lived and more complex than we initially expected. We suggest this unexpected result may be linked to the frequency of aggressive intergroup encounters in this system. As control and experimental trials were run at different times of year, future work would be needed to confirm that these relative patterns are replicable. Our results indicate short‐lived impacts of outgroup threat on measures of social cohesion in this species, but cannot confirm longer‐term changes.

Multimodal Practice for Mobilizing Response: The Case of Turn-Final Tu Vois 'You See' in French Talk-in-Interaction.

One of the most frequent verbal expressions that people use when interacting with each other in French is tu vois ‘you see’ (Cappeau, 2004). Drawing on interactional linguistics and multimodal analysis, we examine the interactional functioning of this verbal expression when occurring in turn-final position. Previous studies on tu vois ‘you see’ in this position document only its use for marking the end of an utterance or for turn-yielding. The following aspects have thus far remained unexplored: The interactional environment in which the construction occurs, how it is connected to the speaker’s embodied conduct, the way in which it contributes to mobilizing a response from the recipient, as well as the nature of this response. Our paper addresses these issues and shows that turn-final tu vois ‘you see’ is systematically produced with a final rising intonation and coupled with the speaker’s gaze directed to the recipient. This multimodal practice is recurrently deployed in turns conveying the speaker’s emotional stance, in turns performing a dispreferred action, like disagreeing, and in turns claiming insufficient knowledge. The response that is invited using this multimodal practice is distinctly tailored to each of these actions: an affiliative response, an aligning response, and a response addressing the prior speaker’s claim of insufficient knowledge from the recipient’s own point of view. By presenting an in-depth study of the action sequences in which tu vois ‘you see’ is employed, as well as of its multimodal packaging, this contribution highlights the prospective, i.e., response-mobilizing potential of this interactional resource and shows that its use entails sequential implications even when it accompanies actions that project only weakly a response from the recipient.

An Effortful Approach to Social Affiliation in Schizophrenia: Preliminary Evidence of Increased Theta and Alpha Connectivity during a Live Social Interaction.

People with schizophrenia often experience a profound lack of motivation for social affiliation—a facet of negative symptoms that detrimentally impairs functioning. However, the mechanisms underlying social affiliative deficits remain poorly understood, particularly under realistic social contexts. Here, we investigated subjective reports and electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity in schizophrenia during a live social interaction. Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 16) and healthy controls (n = 29) completed a face-to-face interaction with a confederate while having EEG recorded. Participants were randomly assigned to either a Closeness condition designed to elicit feelings of closeness through self-disclosure or a Small-Talk condition with minimal disclosure. Compared to controls, patients reported lower positive emotional experiences and feelings of closeness across conditions, but they showed comparably greater subjective affiliative responses for the Closeness (vs. Small-Talk) condition. Additionally, patients in the Closeness (vs. Small-Talk) condition displayed a global increase in connectivity in theta and alpha frequency bands that was not observed for controls. Importantly, greater theta and alpha connectivity was associated with greater subjective affiliative responding, greater negative symptoms, and lower disorganized symptoms in patients. Collectively, findings indicate that patients, because of pronounced negative symptoms, utilized a less efficient, top-down mediated strategy to process social affiliation.

Assessing Without Words: Verbally Incomplete Utterances in Complaints

This study investigates the use of verbally incomplete utterances in French-language complaints about third parties or situations. In these cases, a speaker initiates a turn with verbal means but stops talking before reaching lexico-syntactic completion. The utterance becomes recognizable as an expression of negative stance or as a precise negative assessment by virtue of the linguistic formatting of the turn-initiation, its position within the larger interactional context, and the speaker’s accompanying bodily-visual displays and vocalizations. Data consist of video-recorded coffee-break conversations among first and second language speakers of French. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis, the analysis documents recurrent linguistic formats of the verbally incomplete utterances and examines the interactional deployment of the utterances in two distinct sequential contexts: (1) in the initiation of complaints, and (2) at the end of complaint tellings or reports. In the first of these, the action of leaving a turn verbally incomplete and expressing stance with bodily-visual means allows the speaker to prepare the grounds for the complaint by foreshadowing the negative valence of the upcoming talk. In the latter case, the verbally incomplete utterance and accompanying vocal and/or embodied conduct are deployed as a summary assessment or upshot of the complaint which shows, rather than merely describes, the complaint-worthiness of the situation. In both cases, the utterances work to enhance the chances for the speaker to obtain affiliative responses from coparticipants. While prior studies on verbally incomplete utterances have suggested that such utterances may be specifically suitable for subtly dealing with delicate actions, in this study the utterances are sometimes produced as part of multimodal ‘extreme-case expressions’ that convey negative stance in a high-grade manner. The findings contribute to a better understanding of interactional uses of verbally incomplete utterances and of the multimodal nature of negative assessments. The study thereby furthers our understanding of how grammar and the body interface as resources for the accomplishment of context-specific actions and the organization of social interaction.

Developmental Effects of Oxytocin Neurons on Social Affiliation and Processing of Social Information.

Hormones regulate behavior either through activational effects that facilitate the acute expression of specific behaviors or through organizational effects that shape the development of the nervous system thereby altering adult behavior. Much research has implicated the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) in acute modulation of various aspects of social behaviors across vertebrate species, and OXT signaling is associated with the developmental social deficits observed in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs); however, little is known about the role of OXT in the neurodevelopment of the social brain. We show that perturbation of OXT neurons during early zebrafish development led to a loss of dopaminergic neurons, associated with visual processing and reward, and blunted the neuronal response to social stimuli in the adult brain. Ultimately, adult fish whose OXT neurons were ablated in early life, displayed altered functional connectivity within social decision-making brain nuclei both in naive state and in response to social stimulus and became less social. We propose that OXT neurons have an organizational role, namely, to shape forebrain neuroarchitecture during development and to acquire an affiliative response toward conspecifics.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Social behavior is developed over the lifetime of an organism and the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) modulates social behaviors across vertebrate species, and is associated with neuro-developmental social deficits such as autism. However, whether OXT plays a role in the developmental maturation of neural systems that are necessary for social behavior remains poorly explored. We show that proper behavioral and neural response to social stimuli depends on a developmental process orchestrated by OXT neurons. Animals whose OXT system is ablated in early life show blunted neuronal and behavioral responses to social stimuli as well as wide ranging disruptions in the functional connectivity of the social brain. We provide a window into the mechanisms underlying OXT-dependent developmental processes that implement adult sociality.

Horse Behavior towards Familiar and Unfamiliar Humans: Implications for Equine-Assisted Services.

Simple SummaryResearch on equine-assisted services (EAS) has traditionally focused on human benefits, while relatively little research has focused on the horse’s behavior and welfare. Therefore, this initial study aims to shed light on EAS horses’ behavior towards familiar and unfamiliar humans and how social behaviors might connect to EAS horse selection and retention. The results demonstrate that horses with no prior EAS experience show more interest in approaching familiar and unfamiliar people under certain test conditions compared to horses with more EAS experience. Interestingly, this social behavior did not appear to be linked to whether a horse was chosen for, or remained in, an EAS program. In addition, horse characteristics, such as startling at a new object, did not appear to influence selection and retention for EAS work. These findings indicate that EAS providers may have unique reasons for horse selection, and future research is needed to determine the specific characteristics of successful EAS horses.While human benefits of animal-assisted therapy programs have been documented, relatively little research has been conducted on behavioral factors that predict a successful equine-assisted services (EAS) horse. This study compares the behavior of experienced and non-experienced EAS horses as well as horses selected for future EAS work in a series of sociability and temperament tests. No significant differences were found between experienced and non-experienced horses in the sociability measures or for most of the temperament tests; however, significant differences were found between groups in the brushing test, with non-experienced horses showing more affiliative behaviors towards the familiar handler and unfamiliar persons. No significant differences were found between selected and non-selected horses in the temperament tests. However, non-selected horses were found to show significantly more affiliative behaviors towards a familiar person during a sociability test compared with selected horses. These findings suggest that the social behavior and temperament of EAS horses may not be significantly different from other available horses not selected for EAS work. Instead, these decisions may primarily reflect subjective impressions of fit. Interestingly, on measures where significant differences were identified, the horses not actively engaged in or selected for therapy were the ones that showed greater affiliative responses to familiar and unfamiliar humans. Reasons for why this may be, as well as future directions in EAS selection, are discussed.