Ratings Of Friendliness Research Articles

Texting!!!

Abstract Previous research shows that females use more exclamation marks than males, often to establish rapport. The purpose of the present studies was to test whether people associate texters’ use of exclamation marks with friendliness and femaleness. If this association is due to normative expectations, we hypothesized that females would appear less friendly if they did not use an exclamation mark in texting. In Study 1, participants rated a texter using an exclamation mark to be highly female and highly friendly. The gender results disappeared when friendliness was controlled for. In Study 2, we tested whether friendliness ratings decreased if texters violated gender-associated punctuation. Participants rated a texter with a gendered name on friendliness. Regardless of gender, participants inferred greater friendliness to texters using an exclamation mark. That is, there was no evidence of a cost for violating this gender expectation. We conclude that people predict that a texter using an exclamation mark is likely to be female, but do not penalize females for not using an exclamation mark.

The effect of facial colour on implicit facial expressions

ABSTRACT Humans recognise reddish-coloured faces as angry. However, does facial colour also affect “implicit” facial expression perception of which humans are not explicitly aware? In this study, we investigated the effects of facial colour on implicit facial expression perception. The experimental stimuli were “hybrid faces”, in which the low-frequency component of the neutral facial expression image was replaced with the low-frequency component of the facial expression image of happiness or anger. In Experiment 1, we confirmed that the hybrid face stimuli were perceived as neutral and, therefore, supported implicit facial expression perception. In Experiment 2, the hybrid face stimuli were adjusted to natural and reddish facial colours, and their friendliness ratings were compared. The results showed that the expression of happiness was rated as more friendly than the expression of anger. In addition, the expression of happiness was rated as friendlier when the low-frequency happy component was red, but the friendliness rating of the expression of anger did not change when it was presented in red. In Experiment 3, we affirmed the implicit facial expression perception even in reddish colours. These results suggest that facial colour modulates the perception of implicit facial expressions in hybrid facial stimuli.

Do say “thank you”: verbal expressions of politeness and gratitude influence interpersonal perceptions

This study investigates how expressions of politeness and gratitude influence interpersonal perceptions of a job interviewee’s trustworthiness and personality. A pilot study disentangled politeness and gratitude ratings for phrases. Statements expressing politeness with high or low gratitude were selected and inserted into a job-interview transcript, with the female interviewee depicted as either the same age or 20 years older than the 136 participants. Results showed that, irrespective of the speaker’s perceived age, expressing politeness significantly improved the overall impression that the female interviewee made (likeable, friendly, employable and trustworthy) and did not reduce how assertive she appeared. Expressing higher gratitude reduced formality and increased friendliness ratings. We conclude that expressing politeness and gratitude impacts positively on perceptions of women, in line with Politeness Theory.

Approach or avoidance: Neural correlates of intelligence evaluation from faces.

Intelligence is among the key determinants of power and social status in modern societies. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we examined the neural correlates of intelligence evaluation from faces. Participants underwent scans while they evaluated the perceived intelligence and friendliness of faces. We found that medial orbitofrontal cortex activity increased linearly with friendliness ratings. The relationship between perceived intelligence and brain activity was positively linear in the right caudate nucleus and U-shaped (i.e., strong responses to unintelligent-looking or intelligent-looking faces) in the right anterior insula/inferior frontal gyrus. Perceived intelligence was also significantly positively correlated with both friendliness and attractiveness. Furthermore, intelligence rating scores had a positive linear effect on reaction times in the friendliness rating task, suggesting that participants had greater conflicts when making friendliness judgments for faces that appeared to belong to intelligent individuals. In addition, the degree of this effect predicted individual differences in the positive linear modulatory effect of intelligence scores in the right caudate nucleus. Our interpretation was that the activity in the caudate nucleus revealed an approach-avoidance conflict with regard to highly intelligent people, that is, they were perceived as attractive but also potentially threatening. Although our interpretations are merely suggestive because we did not measure the approach-avoidance behaviors directly, our findings have important implications for understanding the dynamics of human interaction in modern societies that increasingly allocate power and status based on intelligence.

Naltrexone Maintenance Decreases Cannabis Self-Administration and Subjective Effects in Daily Cannabis Smokers.

Given that cannabis use is increasing in the United States, pharmacological treatment options to treat cannabis use disorder are needed. Opioid antagonists modulate cannabinoid effects and may offer a potential approach to reducing cannabis use. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled human laboratory study, we assessed the effects of naltrexone maintenance on the reinforcing, subjective, psychomotor, and cardiovascular effects of active and inactive cannabis. Nontreatment-seeking, daily cannabis smokers were randomized to receive naltrexone (50 mg: n=18 M and 5 F) or placebo (0 mg; n=26 M and 2 F) capsules for 16 days. Before, during, and after medication maintenance, participants completed 10 laboratory sessions over 4-6 weeks, assessing cannabis' behavioral and cardiovascular effects. Medication compliance was verified by observed capsule administration, plasma naltrexone, and urinary riboflavin. Relative to placebo, maintenance on naltrexone significantly reduced both active cannabis self-administration and its positive subjective effects ('good effect'). Participants in the placebo group had 7.6 times (95% CI: 1.1-51.8) the odds of self-administering active cannabis compared with the naltrexone group. This attenuation of reinforcing and positive subjective effects also influenced cannabis use in the natural ecology. Naltrexone had intrinsic effects: decreasing ratings of friendliness, food intake, and systolic blood pressure, and increasing spontaneous reports of stomach upset and headache, yet dropout rates were comparable between groups. In summary, we show for the first time that maintenance on naltrexone decreased cannabis self-administration and ratings of 'good effect' in nontreatment-seeking daily cannabis smokers. Clinical studies in patients motivated to reduce their cannabis use are warranted to evaluate naltrexone's efficacy as a treatment for cannabis use disorder.

Effects of Encoding Tasks on the Own-Age Face Recognition Bias

ABSTRACT In the current study, we evaluated the own-age face recognition bias by using various encoding tasks to evaluate the robustness and potential limitations of the own-age bias. One hundred sixty young adults studied photographs of children, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults and were assigned to one of four encoding conditions (i.e., age estimate, attractiveness rating, friendliness rating, and a face search task). Subsequent recognition tests revealed a robust own-age bias such that participants recognized own-age faces better than other-age faces regardless of encoding task. The current study showed that encoding tasks that focus on socially relevant characteristics (i.e., attractiveness ratings and friendliness ratings) do not eliminate or weaken the own-age bias compared to tasks that specifically focus on the age of the face. These findings indicate that in-group/out-group categorization requires little conscious processing and may be automatic, which is consistent with Sporer's (2001) in-group/out-group model (IOM) of facial processing.

Effects of cocaine prior to and during bupropion maintenance in cocaine-abusing volunteers

The effects of cocaine were examined prior to and during bupropion maintenance in nonopioid-dependent cocaine abusers. Prior to bupropion maintenance, subjects underwent an experimental session during which repeated cocaine doses (0, 50, 100 mg/70 kg) were administered intranasally. Then subjects were maintained on bupropion (150 and 300 mg per day) and underwent experimental sessions as before. Cocaine, regardless of bupropion, produced dose-related increases in several stimulant-like self-reports, performance and cardiovascular measures. Bupropion decreased POMS ratings of friendliness and vigor, regardless of cocaine dose. Bupropion enhanced and attenuated cocaine-induced increases in ratings on the LSD and BG subscales of the ARCI, respectively. These results suggest that bupropion does not alter the acute subjective or cardiovascular effects of cocaine in a robust manner.

Social Knowledge and Social Competence: Number and Quality of Strategies as Predictors of Peer Behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of two different measures of preschool children's social strategy knowledge to predict classroom behavior with peers. Thirty-two 4- and 5-year-old children attending a university sponsored preschool were administered the Preschool Interpersonal Problem-Solving Tests (PIPS) and an enactive assessment of strategy knowledge. Observational and teacher-rating measures of children's positive and aggressive peer behavior were also obtained. Significant correlations were obtained between (a) the number of strategies produced in the enactive measure and cooperative play ratings by teachers, (b) the number of strategies produced in the PIPS and observations of positive peer behavior, and (c) ratings of friendliness in the PIPS and teacher-rated cooperative play and aggression and observations of aggression. Results are discussed in terms of implications for social skill training.

Differences in social skills performance between institutionalized juvenile male offenders and a comparable group of boys without offence records.

Eighteen institutionalized young male offenders and 18 boys without criminal records, comparable in terms of age, academic performance and social background, were videotaped during a five-minute standardized interview with a previously unknown adult. The videotapes were then subjected to a behavioural analysis of 13 responses which had previously been suggested to be important social skill components. The tapes were also shown to six independent judges who rated each tape in terms of social skills performance, social anxiety, friendliness, and employability. The offender group was found to differ significantly from the non-offender group in terms of the level of eye-contact, head movements, amount spoken, fiddling movements, and gross body movements. The offender group was also rated in significantly less favourably terms on the scales of social skills performance, social anxiety, and employability, compared to the non-offender groups. No significant difference was found in terms of friendliness ratings. Correlation analyses between the specific behavioural measures and the subjective rating scales revealed statistically significant associations between six of the 13 behavioural measures and one or more of the subjective rating scales. The provides some indication of the type of responses important in determining the impression made by adolescent male in an interview situation.

Validation of social skills of adolescent males in an interview conversation with a previously unknown adult.

Seventy convicted young male offenders were videotaped during a 5-min standardized interview with a previously unknown adult. In order to determine the social validity of the behavioral components of social interaction for this population, measures of 13 behaviors were obtained from the tapes. These measures were then correlated with ratings of friendliness, social anxiety, social skills performance, and employability made by four independent adult judges from the same tapes. It was found that measures of eye contact and verbal initiations were correlated significantly with all four criterion rating scales. The frequencies of smiling and speech dysfluencies were both significantly correlated with ratings of friendliness and employability. The amount spoken was found to be a significant predictor of social skills performance whereas the frequency of head movements influenced judgments of social anxiety. The latency of response was negatively correlated with social skills and employability ratings and the frequency of question-asking and interruptions correlated significantly with friendliness, social skills, and employability ratings. Finally, the levels of gestures, gross body movements, and attention feedback responses were not found to influence judgments on any of the criterion scales. The implications of the study for selection of targets for social skills training for adolescent male offenders are discussed.

The validity of role play tests for assessing social skills in children

A correlational study was conducted in an effort to examine the validity and reliability of role play tests for assessing social skills in children. Twenty-two male and twenty female elementary school children, ranging in age from 8–10 years, responded to role play scenarios involving social interactions. In addition to the role play procedure, a number of other assessment strategies were utilized: (1) observations of behavior in naturalistic settings, (2) sociometric ratings, and (3) teachers' ratings. Results did not support the validity of the role play test. Correlations between role play performance and criterion measures were generally quite low. Test-retest reliability of the role play tests also was unacceptable. Further, results indicated that while several significant relationships were found between children's sociometric scores and teachers' ratings of interpersonal behavior, little association was found between these measures and global ratings of friendliness in role play and in vivo situations. Results are discussed in terms of the validity and utility of role play tests for children, the relationship of these data to previous research in social skills assessment, and the heuristic value of examining research concerning children's interpersonal functioning from developmental and social psychological perspectives.

The Qualities of Leadership: How Male Medical Students Evaluate Their Female Peers

The Bales Group Space Questionnaire, which measures perceptions of dominance, friendliness, and orientation toward task accomplishment, was given to the members of six-person anatomy dissection groups containing one, two, or three women. The medical students were asked to characterize themselves and other group members once at the start of the term and again at its conclusion. Male medical students ranked women relatively low on dominance, regardless of the number of women in a group, both at the start and at the end of the term. Women were ranked as neither highly friendly nor highly unfriendly. There was no effect of time or of group composition on ratings offriendliness. Group composition did affect male perception of women's task orientation. In groups with one woman, women were ranked relatively low on task orientation. In groups with more than one woman, women were equally distributed along the ranks in task orientation. The results suggest that males tend to stereotype women's behavior and exclude them from leadership positions.

Interpersonal distance and impression formation.

Impression formation was examined as a function of interpersonal physical distance in an interview. It was predicted that a confederate would be rated less socially active as the distance between him and the subject increased. The hypothesis was supported by a significant negative linear trend in the composite ratings of friendliness, aggressiveness, extraversion, and dominance A variation in this trend, indicating that confederates seated closest to the subject were seen as less socially active, was explained in terms of compensatory behaviors minimizing the effect of close physical proximity