Unfamiliar Others Research Articles

How interpersonal distance varies throughout the lifespan

Interpersonal Distance (IPD) is defined as the physical distance that individuals maintain between themselves and others during social interactions. While literature has extensively focused on this everyday social behavior, how IPD changes throughout the lifespan remains an open question. In this study, 864 participants, aged 3–89 years, performed the Stop Distance Paradigm in their real-life environments, and we measured the distance they kept from both familiar and unfamiliar others during social interactions. We found that IPD not only differs based on the identity of the other person (familiar versus unfamiliar) but critically declines as a function of age, following two distinct non-linear trends for familiar and unfamiliar others. Moreover, behavioral variability also undergoes a lifetime development, with IPD becoming more stable as age increases. Overall, the present study suggests that IPD is a complex and acquired behavior that changes throughout the lifespan and varies according to individual and situational variables.

Pedagogy with a heartbeat: The transformative potential of citizen science in education

Over the past few years, we have worked together in a citizen science project called Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet (see also Goldin et al. 2021, Goldin et al., 2023). In this project we engaged with 420 young learners in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. We came to see participating schools as collaborative ecosystems where young citizens become entangled with water through experiential encounters that make science alive and relevant. Through our engagement with citizen science, we experienced the transformative power of affect and the relevance of emotions in education as a social and political project. In our pedagogy we depart from the idea that human beings are separate from the biosphere, thus recognising the interdependency of all life forms on earth. We believe that keeping science education in laboratories and libraries affirms what Bozalek and Zemblyas (2023) call “privileged irresponsibility”. We propose that citizen science and its transformative potential can be one way to redress such irresponsibility. Through impactful encounters with human – nonhuman entanglement and the emotions which are evoked in this process, citizen science can create opportunities for responseability (Bozalek & Zemblyas, 2023), through teaching and learning with the heart. Such entanglement also resonates with relationality as the currency of care theorists. In the context of our citizen science work, caring for unfamiliar others is a form of non-humancentred care with unfamiliar water bodies in which the binary of inside-outside learning becomes porous as the geographies of water penetrate the classroom walls. In Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet, we noted how watery spaces and images move back and forth caring-with and through human bodies – waterbodies to school, school to waterbodies. The entanglement with the nonhuman resonates with Massumi’s (2015) notion of becoming where there is an unrolling of an event that is a becoming of two together.

Into the unknown: Maternal responsiveness influences young children's support‐giving expectations of fathers but not unfamiliar others

AbstractInteractions with primary caregivers shape children's expectations of interactions with others, but the mechanism is not clear yet. We included Han Chinese children aged 5–6 (N = 121, 61 boys) from a city in East China and tested their support‐giving expectations of mothers, fathers and unfamiliar others after observing mother–child interactions with different levels of maternal responsiveness. Across two studies, we found that children's support‐giving behaviour and willingness expectations decreased significantly in the unresponsive condition for mothers and fathers but not for unfamiliar others; while these expectations did not change significantly for all partners in the responsive condition. The results suggest that relationship type between children and interaction partners moderates the effects of maternal responsiveness on children's expectations of partners' support‐giving. They shed light on how young children understand and represent interpersonal interactions.

Facial first impressions following a prison sentence: Negative shift in trait ratings but the same underlying structure

The first impressions we form of unfamiliar others can often guide many important decisions such as whether someone is guilty of a crime or the severity of their sentence, even in the presence of more relevant information. While most of the current work in this context has focused on their impact during trial proceedings and sentencing, little is known about the potential impact of first impressions following a guilty sentence and the success of the subsequent reintegration into society. Here, we used a data-driven approach to address this question by first collecting unconstrained spontaneous impressions from two groups of perceivers – one group believed that the identities they were presented with had received a prison sentence, whereas the other received no additional semantic information (Study 1). This then allowed us to establish the most prevalent traits people refer to when describing their first impressions in this context and to reveal the underlying structure of these impressions using an Exploratory Factor Analysis (Study 2). We find a substantial negative shift in social evaluation following the knowledge of a prison sentence, both in terms of spontaneous descriptions and specific trait ratings. However, this additional contextual information did not affect the underlying structure of first impressions. These findings support social evaluation theories arguing for a more complex interplay between bottom-up visual and top-down semantic or contextual cues during the formation of facial first impressions but also reveal important constraints to the impact of such cues on the core impression formation processes.

Attention toward emotions is modulated by familiarity with the expressor: A comparison between bonobos and humans.

Why can humans be intolerant of, yet also be empathic toward strangers? This cardinal question can be tackled by studying emotions in our closest living relatives, bonobos. Their striking xenophilic tendencies make them an interesting model for reconstructing the socioemotional capacities of the last common ancestor of hominids. Within two dot-probe studies, we compared bonobos' and humans' attention toward scenes depicting familiar (kith and kin) or unfamiliar individuals with emotional or neutral expressions. Results show that the attention of bonobos is biased toward emotional scenes depicting unfamiliar bonobos, but not toward emotional groupmates (Study 1). In contrast, Study 2 shows that human attention is biased toward emotional rather than neutral expressions of family and friends, but not toward unfamiliar others. On the one hand, our results show that an attentional bias toward emotions is a shared phenomenon between humans and bonobos, but on the other, both species have their own unique evolutionarily informed biases. These findings support previously proposed adaptive explanations for xenophilia in bonobos that potentially biases them toward emotional expressions of unfamiliar conspecifics, and parochialism in humans, which makes them sensitive to the emotional expressions of close others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Social influences on mask‐wearing intentions during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractFace mask‐wearing is important for reducing COVID‐19 spread. Masking is a publicly visible behavior and thus, social factors such as descriptive and personal norms, risk images, and impression management concerns are salient and likely influential. Study 1 (N = 381) surveyed participants during the early stages of the pandemic, assessing correlational relationships between social factors and masking intentions. Study 2 (N = 778) replicated Study 1 at a later stage in the pandemic and experimentally manipulated the group to which norms and risk images referred—familiar, unfamiliar, or general others. Study 1 findings revealed that perceived descriptive norms, personal norms, and risk images, together strongly related to face mask‐wearing independent of COVID‐19 threat perception. Study 2 results revealed that people's impressions of non‐mask wearers were less negative and their perceptions of mask‐wearing less normative among familiar versus unfamiliar others. People were also less likely to wear masks among familiar versus unfamiliar others. These results indicate that specific care should be taken to develop interventions that will increase masking in the presence of familiar others.

Distrust as a form of inequality

Navigating social hierarchies is a ubiquitous aspect of human life. Social status shapes our thoughts, feelings, and actions toward others in various ways. However, it remains unclear how trust is conferred within hierarchies and how status-related cues are used when resources are on the line. This research fills this knowledge gap by examining how ascribed, consensus-based status appearance, and perceived status appearance impact investment decisions for high- and low-status partners during a Trust Game. In a series of pre-registered experiments, we examined the degree to which participants trusted unfamiliar others with financial investments when the only available information about that person was their socioeconomic status (SES). In Study 1, SES was ascribed. Studies 2 and 3 conveyed SES with visual antecedents (clothing). Across all three experiments, participants trusted high SES partners more than low SES partners. In addition, subjective perceptions of status based on visual cues were a stronger predictor of trust than consensus-based status judgments. This work highlights a high status-trust bias for decisions where an individual’s money is on the line. In addition, high-status trust bias may occur simply because of an individual’s subjective assumptions about another’s rank.

An Insula-Enriched Regulator of Retinoic Acid Marks a New Intersection in the Neural Circuitry of Mouse Social Behavior

An Insula-Enriched Regulator of Retinoic Acid Marks a New Intersection in the Neural Circuitry of Mouse Social Behavior

Features of the perceived age among representatives of ethno-cultural groups with different appearance

The authors focus on the phenomenon of perceived age and the ethno-cultural factor of its construction. The subject of the study is: the perceived age of the objects of perception, attitude to them, self-assessment of age and attitude to their appearance of the subjects of perception (women, representatives of Slavic and Caucasian peoples). The study was carried out within the framework of a socio-psychological approach to the appearance and model of ethnolucism by V.A. Labunskaya. The main method of research was the procedure of "Photo-visual representations of the external appearance" by T.A. Vorontsova. The scientific novelty of the study was the identification of the influence of the ethno-cultural factor on the construction of the age of an unfamiliar person and the assessment of their age. The main conclusions of the study: 1) the belonging of the subjects of perception to an ethnocultural group associated with the type of appearance affects the self-esteem of the perceived age, the planned life expectancy, the attitude towards unfamiliar others; 2) the age attributed to the perceived stranger is associated with the attitude towards him regardless of the ethno-cultural group; 3) the structure of the perception of the age of an unfamiliar other is identical from the point of view of the central and peripheral categories and does not depend on the ethno-cultural factor.

The Effect of Eating Alone and Eating with Familiar or Unfamiliar Others on Food Intake: A Systematic Review

Aims and Design: Individuals’ food intake may vary depending on their situation and with whom they are having their meal. Thus this systematic review aimed to compare the effect of social facilitation between eating alone and eating with others, and evaluate the social modeling effect when eating with familiar or unfamiliar others, on food intake. Data Sources: Articles were screened and reviewed based on titles, abstracts and keywords. Inclusion criteria included experimental design, English language, open-accessed, and published from 1980 until the review was conducted in 2018. Review Methods: Using the PRISMA method, potential studies were identified on Science Direct, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus, and BASE databases using two different keywords combinations. Results: Seventeen studies were included. For social facilitation, seven studies found that food intake increases when eating alone while five others stated it would increase when eating with others. One study suggested that it increases in both situations. For social modeling of food intake, two studies found that it commonly occurs when an individual eats in the presence of unfamiliar others, while one study reported that it happens more often with familiar others. Two other studies observed that social modeling occurs in both situations. Conclusion and Impact: Food intake tends to increase when eating alone than eating with others while the presence of familiar or unfamiliar others may either increase or limit an individual’s food consumption to socially match their co-eaters’ intake. Thus, good self-control is crucial for setting a dietary limit regardless of whether ones are eating alone or with familiar or unfamiliar others.

Stavovi o vakcinaciji kod adolescenata i mladih odraslih osoba - uloga poverenja i znanja

The present study investigates the predictive contribution of generalized trust (in a relatively large circle of unfamiliar others, e.g., the authorities, healthcare system, alternative medicine) and particularized trust (in significant others, such as family members and friends) and vaccination knowledge in explaining the youth's vaccination intention, as well as the moderating role of vaccination status in the previously mentioned relationships. A total of 835 adolescents and emerging adults (aged 15 to 25, Mage = 18.35, SD = 2.86) from Serbia completed the measures of vaccination intention and vaccination status, generalized and particularized trust, and vaccination knowledge. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that the prior uptake of the vaccine against the coronavirus (vaccination status) was the best predictor of the youth's intention to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the future (vaccination intention). In addition, trust in the authorities and media, trust in the health-care system and science, and knowledge about vaccines stood out as significant positive predictors, while trust in alternative medicine and God('s will) negatively influenced the behavioural intention to vaccinate. Contrary to expectations, trust in the family and friends did not contribute to the explanation of the AEA's intention to get vaccinated. Besides, no moderating role of vaccination status was detected; regardless of the vaccination status, the same determinants of the AEA's vaccination intention were registered. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the light of the importance of the development of evidence-based national vaccination programmes for young people that can have a preventive role in a period of global confidence crisis.

Existential threat and responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup members.

The present research investigates how emotional displays shape reactions to ingroup and outgroup members when people are reminded of death. We hypothesized that under mortality salience, emotions that signal social distance promote worldview defense (i.e., increased ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation), whereas emotions that signal affiliation promote affiliation need (i.e., reduced ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation). In three studies, participants viewed emotional displays of ingroup and/or outgroup members after a mortality salience or control manipulation. Results revealed that under mortality salience, anger increased ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation (Study 1), enhanced perceived overlap with the ingroup (Study 3), and increased positive facial behavior to ingroup displays-measured via the Facial Action Coding System (Studies 1 and 2) and electromyography of the zygomaticus major muscle (Study 3). In contrast, happiness decreased ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation (Study 2), and increased positive facial behavior towards outgroup members (Study 3). The findings suggest that, in times of threat, emotional displays can determine whether people move away from unfamiliar others or try to form as many friendly relations as possible.

Interdigitated Columnar Representation of Personal Space and Visual Space in Human Parietal Cortex.

Personal space (PS) is the space around the body that people prefer to maintain between themselves and unfamiliar others. Intrusion into personal space evokes discomfort and an urge to move away. Physiologic studies in nonhuman primates suggest that defensive responses to intruding stimuli involve the parietal cortex. We hypothesized that the spatial encoding of interpersonal distance is initially transformed from purely sensory to more egocentric mapping within human parietal cortex. This hypothesis was tested using 7 Tesla (7T) fMRI at high spatial resolution (1.1 mm isotropic), in seven subjects (four females, three males). In response to visual stimuli presented at a range of virtual distances, we found two categories of distance encoding in two corresponding radially-extending columns of activity within parietal cortex. One set of columns (P columns) responded selectively to moving and stationary face images presented at virtual distances that were nearer (but not farther) than each subject's behaviorally-defined personal space boundary. In most P columns, BOLD response amplitudes increased monotonically and nonlinearly with increasing virtual face proximity. In the remaining P columns, BOLD responses decreased with increasing proximity. A second set of parietal columns (D columns) responded selectively to disparity-based distance cues (near or far) in random dot stimuli, similar to disparity-selective columns described previously in occipital cortex. Critically, in parietal cortex, P columns were topographically interdigitated (nonoverlapping) with D columns. These results suggest that visual spatial information is transformed from visual to body-centered (or person-centered) dimensions in multiple local sites within human parietal cortex.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Recent COVID-related social distancing practices highlight the need to better understand brain mechanisms which regulate "personal space" (PS), which is defined by the closest interpersonal distance that is comfortable for an individual. Using high spatial resolution brain imaging, we tested whether a map of external space is transformed from purely visual (3D-based) information to a more egocentric map (related to personal space) in human parietal cortex. We confirmed this transformation and further showed that it was mediated by two mutually segregated sets of columns: one which encoded interpersonal distance and another that encoded visual distance. These results suggest that the cortical transformation of sensory-centered to person-centered encoding of space near the body involves short-range communication across interdigitated columns within parietal cortex.

Neural and Affective Responses to Prolonged Eye Contact with One's Own Adolescent Child and Unfamiliar Others

Eye contact is crucial for the formation and maintenance of social relationships, and plays a key role in facilitating a strong parent-child bond. However, the precise neural and affective mechanisms through which eye contact impacts on parent-child relationships remain elusive. We introduce a task to assess parents’ neural and affective responses to prolonged direct and averted gaze coming from their own child, and an unfamiliar child and adult. While in the scanner, 79 parents (n = 44 mothers and n = 35 fathers) were presented with prolonged (16-38 s) videos of their own child, an unfamiliar child, an unfamiliar adult, and themselves (i.e., targets), facing the camera with a direct or an averted gaze. We measured BOLD-responses, tracked parents’ eye movements during the videos, and asked them to report on their mood and feelings of connectedness with the targets after each video. Parents reported improved mood and increased feelings of connectedness after prolonged exposure to direct versus averted gaze and these effects were amplified for unfamiliar targets compared to their own child, due to high affect and connectedness ratings after videos of their own child. Neuroimaging results showed that the sight of one's own child was associated with increased activity in middle occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus relative to seeing an unfamiliar child or adult. While we found no robust evidence of specific neural correlates of eye contact (i.e., contrast direct > averted gaze), an exploratory parametric analysis showed that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity increased linearly with duration of eye contact (collapsed across all “other” targets). Eye contact-related dmPFC activity correlated positively with increases in feelings of connectedness, suggesting that this region may drive feelings of connectedness during prolonged eye contact with others. These results underline the importance of prolonged eye contact for affiliative processes and provide first insights into its neural correlates. This may pave the way for new research in individuals or pairs in whom affiliative processes are disrupted.

Dating Apps: The Uncertainty of Marketised Love

Dating apps promise a ‘digital fix’ to the ‘messy’ matter of love by means of datafication and algorithmic matching, realising a platformisation of romance commonly understood through notions of a market’s rationality and efficiency. Reflecting on the findings of a small-scale qualitative research on the use of dating apps among young adults in London, we problematise this view and argue that the specific form of marketisation articulated by dating apps is entrepreneurial in kind, whereby individuals act as brands facing the structural uncertainty of interacting with ‘quasi-strangers’. In so doing, we argue, dating app users enact a Luhmanian notion of interpersonal trust, built on the assessment of the risk of interacting with unfamiliar others that is typical of digitally mediated contexts dominated by reputational logics. From a sociocultural perspective, dating apps emerge as sociotechnical apparatuses that remediate the demand to rationally choose a partner while at the same time reproducing the (im)possibility of doing so. In this respect, far from offering a new form of efficiency, they (re)produce the ontological uncertainty (Illouz, 2019) that characterises lovers as entrepreneurs.

Understanding the Consequences of Moment-by-Moment Fluctuations in Mood and Social Experience for Paranoid Ideation in Psychotic Disorders.

Among individuals with psychotic disorders, paranoid ideation is common and associated with increased impairment, decreased quality of life, and a more pessimistic prognosis. Although accumulating research indicates negative affect is a key precipitant of paranoid ideation, the possible protective role of positive affect has not been examined. Further, despite the interpersonal nature of paranoid ideation, there are limited and inconsistent findings regarding how social context, perceptions, and motivation influence paranoid ideation in real-world contexts. In this pilot study, we used smartphone ecological momentary assessment to understand the relevance of hour-by-hour fluctuations in mood and social experience for paranoid ideation in adults with psychotic disorders. Multilevel modeling results indicated that greater negative affect is associated with higher concurrent levels of paranoid ideation and that it is marginally related to elevated levels of future paranoid ideation. In contrast, positive affect was unrelated to momentary experiences of paranoid ideation. More severe momentary paranoid ideation was also associated with an elevated desire to withdraw from social encounters, irrespective of when with familiar or unfamiliar others. These observations underscore the role of negative affect in promoting paranoid ideation and highlight the contribution of paranoid ideation to the motivation to socially withdraw in psychotic disorders.

Levels of Self-representation and Their Sociocognitive Correlates in Late-Diagnosed Autistic Adults

The cognitive representation of oneself is central to other sociocognitive processes, including relations with others. It is reflected in faster, more accurate processing of self-relevant information, a “self-prioritisation effect” (SPE) which is inconsistent across studies in autism. Across two tasks with autistic and non-autistic participants, we explored the SPE and its relationship to autistic traits, mentalizing ability and loneliness. A SPE was intact in both groups, but together the two tasks suggested a reduced tendency of late-diagnosed autistic participants to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar others and greater ease disengaging from the self-concept. Correlations too revealed a complex picture, which we attempt to explore and disentangle with reference to the inconsistency across self-processing studies in autism, highlighting implications for future research.

Avoiding the Familiarity Trap: How entrepreneurs reach beyond their network to attract co-founders

Entrepreneurs assemble teams almost exclusively composed of people they already know, even though there are potential benefits of adding someone from beyond their personal network. Despite the proliferation of new programs and platforms aimed at giving entrepreneurs access to vastly broader pools of potential team members, entrepreneurs likely struggle to attract unfamiliar others to the venture. By integrating similarity attraction theory with research on surface-level and deep-level diversity, we explain how entrepreneurs can better attract unfamiliar others to their venture if they share deep-level similarity (e.g., personality, goals), rather than surface-level similarity (e.g., ethnicity, gender). We test our theory using survey and archival data from a sample of entrepreneurs and potential team members enrolled in an incubator program designed to help entrepreneurs form a team and launch their venture. Our model and results show that entrepreneurs can attract unfamiliar others to their venture when they are similar on less-visible dimensions and that adding a team member from beyond the entrepreneur’s network promotes early venture success.

Behavioral Immune System Responses to Coronavirus: A Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory Explanation of Conformity, Warmth Toward Others and Attitudes Toward Lockdown

Behavioral immune system (BIS) describes psychological mechanisms that detect cues to infectious pathogens in the immediate environment, trigger disease-relevant responses and facilitate behavioral avoidance/escape. BIS activation elicits a perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) which can result in conformity with social norms. However, a response to superficial cues can result in aversive responses to people that pose no actual threat, leading to an aversion to unfamiliar others, and likelihood of prejudice. Pathogen-neutralizing behaviors, therefore, have implications for social interaction as well as illness behaviors and responses to health communications. In this study, we investigate how PVD influences conformity, attitudes to other people and to lockdown regulations through the lens of the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST). RST describes personality in terms of biologically-driven approach and avoidance motivations which support personal goals. Participants from the United Kingdom public (N = 605) completed an RST personality questionnaire and then read either (a) coronavirus morbidity-mortality statistics and current United Kingdom government lifestyle regulations, (b) just the regulations (as presented in most government publicity materials), or (c) no information at all. They all completed the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease scale to assess BIS-relevant Germ Aversion and Perceived Infectability, followed by questions measuring social conformity, warmth toward others and attitudes toward lockdown measures. Significantly lower PVD scores were observed in the no-information condition, with the other conditions showing no difference. In terms of RST, approach behaviors related to goal-drive persistence work alongside fear in explaining conformity to social norms. Reward related approach behaviors partially explained warmth toward others, indicating that social rewards gained through interaction continue to be strong drivers of behavior. We found no role for RST traits in attitudes toward lockdown. Overall, coronavirus-related behavior is not driven purely by fear, but also by social and/or protection goals regulated by approach motivation. This study presents new insights into public perceptions of coronavirus and government regulated lifestyle restrictions, helping to explain social behaviors in terms of biologically driven mechanisms. Such understanding is vital if we are to successfully motivate public behavior to constrain spread of the virus.

How Stable is Generalized Trust? Internal Migration and the Stability of Trust Among Canadians

More trust in unfamiliar others often indicates higher quality of life for individuals and societies. Current litertaure has thus far provided two distintive theories to explain why some people are more trusting than others. A culture theory views trust as a persistent human trait that people learned from socialization early in life. An experiential theory suggests that people constantly update their trust according to changing life experiences in different contexts. To test how stable trust can be, in this article I consider whether the experience of growing up in a low trust place and then migrating to a high trust place would change migrants’ trust and vice versa. In Canada, trust is lower in Quebec. My analyses of data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Surveys show that Quebecers who emigrated to live in other regions of the country continue to show a lower level of trust, and that English Canadians who migrated to live in Quebec remain more trusting than local natives. This is especially true among migrants who migrated as an adult. My additional analysis also shows that Quebec migrants residing in the Atlantic region, closer to Quebec, seem to have more trust than Quebecers residing in the Prairie regions and British Columbia that are overwhelmingly English-speaking and far away from Quebec geographically, which yields some support for the experiential theory of trust. Nonetheless, the overall pattern lends stronger support for the cultural theory that an individual’ trust in others is stabilized early in life.