Therese Ragen

ScienceDaily (June 17, 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615171632.htm

You need to move out of your apartment. Do you call in your friends and family to haul boxes and furniture or contact a moving company? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that sometimes the emotions connected with asking for favors can actually drive people to the market.

According to the study’s author, Jean-Sébastien Marcoux (HEC Montréal), many researchers romanticize gift-giving. “They praise it for humanizing market relationships, for making the market meaningful, and for providing an escape from the commodifying logic of capitalist exchanges,” Marcoux writes. Other researchers have examined the dark side of gift giving: the troublesome feelings that arise from social indebtedness. But Marcoux’s research examines how feelings of perpetual obligation affect people’s attitudes toward the market.

Marcoux conducted a ten-year (1997-2007) ethnographic study in Montréal on moving. His methods involved interviews, observations, photography, and even moving furniture. He chose to study moving because it’s an act that can involve the market, the “gift economy,” or both. “Moving is a social event particularly favorable to the emergence of reciprocal relations,” writes Marcoux. “Moreover, many people who move use both the gift economy and the market to do so.”

By studying moving, Marcoux got an in-depth look at people who were often in the midst of traumatic life events, such as divorce, job loss, separation, or death of a loved one. Marcoux found that the guilt and obligation connected with asking for help from family and friends often drove people to seek the simpler transactions of the marketplace.

“It is important to recognize that withholding requests for gifts, services, and favors from significant others can be a driving force for using the market,” writes Marcoux. “People use the market to free themselves from the straitjacket of social expectations—from the sense of indebtedness and emotional oppression—which constrains them in their reciprocity relations inside the gift economy,” Marcoux concludes.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610091337.htm

A bidirectional association exists between couples’ sleep quality and the quality of their relationship, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Results indicate that on a day to day basis, couples’ relationship quality affects their sleep, and their sleep also affects their subsequent relationship functioning. For men, better sleep (as indicated by diary–based sleep efficiency) was associated with more positive ratings of relationship quality the next day. For women, negative partner interactions during the day were associated with poorer sleep efficiency for both themselves and their partner that night.

“When we look at the data on a day-by-day basis, there seems to be a vicious cycle in which sleep affects next day relationship functioning, and relationship functioning affects the subsequent night’s sleep,” said principal investigator Brant Hasler, clinical psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona. “In this cycle, conflict with one’s partner during the day leads to worse sleep that night, which leads to more conflict the following day. Although these results are preliminary due to the relatively small sample size and a subjective measure of sleep quality, the woman’s perception of the relationship seems particularly important, as it impacts both her own and her partner’s subjective sleep quality that night.”

The study involved data from 29 heterosexual, co-sleeping couples who did not have children. Each completed sleep diaries for seven days. Each partner was asked to record the quality of interactions with their partner six times a day.

Hasler said that interventions directed at improving either quality of sleep or relationships may provide overall benefits, as the two directly impact each other. Hasler recommends that couples should resolve disputes before going to bed and avoid confrontational discussions on a day when one or both of them had a bad night’s sleep.

Adapted from materials provided by American Academy of Sleep Medicine, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

ScienceDaily (June 5, 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090602204301.htm

University of Pennsylvania psychologists studying the cognitive mechanisms behind human friendship have determined that how you rank your best friends is closely related to how you think your friends rank you. The results are consistent with a new theory called the Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship, distinct from traditional explanations for human friendship that focused on wealth, popularity or similarity.

The study, performed by Penn cognitive psychologists Peter DeScioli and Robert Kurzban, has demonstrated that human friendship is caused, in part, by cognitive mechanisms aimed at creating a ready-made support group for potential conflicts. People call on friends for help in a variety of disputes, ranging from trivial arguments to violent fights. This study suggests that people have specialized decision processes that prioritize those individuals who tend to be most helpful in conflicts, those with fewer stronger commitments to others.

Researchers performed question-and-answer studies in which participants ranked their closest friends in a number of ways, including, for example, the benefits they receive from the friendship, the number of secrets shared and how long the friendship has been ongoing. Each time, whether participants were an online community, random passersby on a metropolitan street or undergraduate students in a laboratory, friendship rankings were most strongly correlated with individuals’ own perceived rank among their partners’ other friends.

“Historically, the main theory has been that humans build friendships in order to trade in goods and services,” DeScioli, lead author, said. “The problem we focused on was that friendship involves more than exchange. People want friends who care about them and do not give just to get something back in return. We thought that theories about alliances might help explain why friends are primarily concerned with each others’ needs rather than the benefits they can get in return for helping.”

Traditional evolutionary approaches to explain human friendship apply the Theory of Reciprocal Altruism: Friends function as exchange partners; however, a wealth of empirical evidence from social psychology is inconsistent with the theory. For example, in prior studies it was shown that people do not keep regular tabs on the benefits given and received in close relationships. Also, people seem to help friends even when they are unlikely to be capable of repayment. For cognitive psychologists, it is unclear what humans and their complex brains are up to in creating these relationships.

The new Penn theory has origins in models of alliance building between nations, which prepare for conflict in advance but may not expect anything in return immediately.

“Friendships are about alliances,” Kurzban, an associate professor, said. “We live in a world where conflict can arise and allies must be in position beforehand. This new hypothesis takes into account how we value those alliances. In a way, one of the main predictors of friendship is the value of the alliance. The value of an ally, or friend, drops with every additional alliance they must make, so the best alliance is one in which your ally ranks you above everyone else as well.”

In short, the hypothesis is much more optimistic about the reasons for friendship than existing theories which point toward popularity, wealth and proximity as reasons for friendship.

“In this hypothesis,” Kurzban said, “it’s not what you can do for me, it’s how much you like me. In this manner even the weakest nations, for example, or the least popular kid at the party with nary an alliance in the room is set up to be paired with someone looking for a friend.”

More darkly, the new model also serves as an explanation for some petty human behaviors not explained by traditional friendship theories. For example, the Alliance Hypothesis explains why people are extremely concerned with comparisons to others in their social circle. It also explains how jealousies and aggression can erupt among groups of friends as alliances are shifted and maintained.

If the Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship is correct, then theories about alliances from game theory and international relations might help us better understand friendship. These theories suggest that people in conflict would benefit strategically from ranking their friends, hiding their friend-rankings and ranking friends according to their own position in partners’ rankings. To employ these tactics in their friendships, people need to gather and store information about their friends’ other friendships. That is, they have to readily understand the social world not only from their own perspective but also from the perspectives of their friends.

Although friendship is a core element of human social life, its evolved functions have been difficult to understand. Human friendship occurs among individuals who are neither relatives nor mates, so the function of this cooperative behavior is not as clear as when reproduction or genetic relatives are involved. Similar relationships have been observed in non-human species — hyenas use partners to gain access to carcasses and male dolphins employ “wingmen” to attain females for mating — and considerable progress has been made in understanding these non-human relationships. But the functions of human friendship have been more elusive.

The study, appearing in the current issue of the online journalPublic Library of Science One, was conducted by DeScioli and Kurzban of the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn.

It was supported by a fellowship from the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080602163842.htm

ScienceDaily (June 4, 2008) — The actor Sir Peter Ustinov once famously said “Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who get there first.” Psychologists now believe there is some truth to this argument. Rather than picking our friends based on intentional choice and common values and interests, our friendships may be based on more superficial factors like proximity (think neighbors) or group assignments (your department at work).

Mitja Back, Stefan Schmukle, and Boris Egloff of the University of Leipzig sought to test the notion that random proximity and random group assignment at zero acquaintance would foster friendship in the long run. The researchers investigated 54 college freshmen upon encountering one another for the first time at the beginning of a one-off introductory session and randomly assigned them a seat number in a group of chairs organized in rows.

As reported in a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, sitting in neighboring seats as a result of randomly assigned seat numbers when meeting for the first time led to higher ratings of friendship intensity one year later. The same was true even if participants were merely in the same row.

The counterintuitive finding suggests that friendships may not be as deliberate we think. “In a nutshell,” write the authors, “people may become friends simply because they drew the right random number.”

Adapted from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080602163842.htm

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519214936.htm

Cambridge University researchers have discovered that whether someone is a ‘people-person’ may depend on the structure of their brain: the greater the concentration of brain tissue in certain parts of the brain, the more likely they are to be a warm, sentimental person.

Why is it that some of us really enjoy the company of others while some people are detached and independent? In an effort to explore these questions, Maël Lebreton and colleagues from the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry, in collaboration with Oulu University, Finland, examined the relationship between personality and brain structure in 41 male volunteers.

The volunteers underwent a brain scan using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). They also completed a questionnaire that asked them to rate themselves on items such as ‘I make a warm personal connection with most people’, or ‘I like to please other people as much as I can’. The answers to the questionnaire provide an overall measure of emotional warmth and sociability called social reward dependence.

The researchers then analysed the relationship between social reward dependence and the concentration of grey matter (brain-cell containing tissue) in different brain regions. They found that the greater the concentration of tissue in the orbitofrontal cortex (the outer strip of the brain just above the eyes), and in the ventral striatum (a deep structure in the centre of the brain), the higher they tended to score on the social reward dependence measure. The research is published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Dr Graham Murray, who is funded by the Medical Research Council and who led the research, said: “Sociability and emotional warmth are very complex features of our personality. This research helps us understand at a biological level why people differ in the degrees to which we express those traits.” But he cautioned, “As this research is only correlational and cross-sectional, it cannot prove that brain structure determines personality. It could even be that your personality, through experience, helps in part to determine your brain structure.”

Interestingly, the orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum have previously been shown to be important for the brain’s processing of much simpler rewards like sweet tastes or sexual stimuli.

Dr Murray explained: “It’s interesting that the degree to which we find social interaction rewarding relates to the structure of our brains in regions that are important for very simple biological drives such as food, sweet liquids and sex. Perhaps this gives us a clue to how complex features like sentimentality and affection evolved from structures that in lower animals originally were only important for basic biological survival processes.”

The research could also lead to new insights into psychiatric disorders where difficulties in social interaction are prominent, such as autism or schizophrenia.

“Patients with certain psychiatric conditions often experience difficulties in feeling emotional closeness, and this can have a big impact on their life. It could be that the cause of these difficulties is at least partly due to brain structural features of those disorders,” said Dr Murray.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Cambridge, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429172241.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2009) — Boredom, not only conflicts, causes couples to lose interest in their marriage, new findings indicate.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Stony Brook University interviewed 123 couples in their seventh year of marriage and again nine years later.

“These findings show directly, for the first time, that not only conflicts but also simple boredom with the relationship can shape relationships over the long term,” said Terri Orbuch, a research professor at U-M Institute for Social Research and Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Orbuch collaborated on the new study, which is published in the journal Psychological Science, with lead author Irene Tsapelas and Arthur Aron of Stony Brook University.

The researchers examined boredom in predicting relationship quality over nine years. They focused on years seven and 16 among a representative sample of black American and white American couples in the Detroit area.

Both individuals in each couple were of the same race and entering into their first marriages, and the wife was younger than 35 years old.

Participants were asked “During the past month, how often did you feel that your marriage was in a rut, or getting into a rut, that you do the same thing all the time and rarely get to do exciting things together as a couple?”

Other questions asked how satisfied they were in the marriage and directed them to select a picture that best described how close they were with each other.

The study indicated that greater boredom in year seven predicted significantly less satisfaction at year 16. In addition, greater satisfaction in year seven did not significantly predict less boredom in year 16.

Being bored with the marriage undermines closeness, which in turn reduces satisfaction, Orbuch said.

“It suggests that excitement in relationships facilitates or makes salient closeness, which in turn promotes satisfaction in the long term,” she said.

Couples can reduce boredom by participating together in exciting activities. The closeness may lead to greater satisfaction, partner responsiveness, commitment and trust, the researchers said.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429172241.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2009)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422085150.htm

Dating couples whose dreams include marriage would do well to step back and reflect upon the type of support they’ll need from their partners when they cross the threshold, a new Northwestern University study suggests.

Will the partner who supports your hopes and aspirations while you are dating also help you fulfill important responsibilities and obligations that come with marriage? The answer to that question could make a difference in how satisfied you are after tying the knot.

Believing a partner is there to help you grow into the person you aspire to be predicted higher relationship satisfaction for both dating and married couples, the study showed. But the belief that your partner helps you live up to your responsibilities and uphold your commitments only predicted higher relationship satisfaction after marriage.

For dating couples, the relationship itself tends to revolve around whether things are moving forward. Happiness with a partner depends on whether the relationship will grow into something more, whether a partner will support the dreams the other eventually hopes to achieve.

For married couples, the feeling that their partners are helping them to advance their relationships and realize their ideal achievements is still important. But the relationships of married couples, now more interconnected both practically and psychologically, tend to revolve around upholding the commitment made to their partners. Unlike dating couples, married couples also put a high premium on their partners’ support of whatever they determine to be necessary obligations.

“In other words, the feelings of being loved and supported that people use to judge who makes a good girlfriend or boyfriend may not be completely trustworthy in deciding who makes a good husband or wife,” said Daniel Molden, assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern and lead author of the study. “Those feelings may only partially capture the emotions that will determine your satisfaction with the person you marry.”

The findings, Molden said, could be important in explaining why so many marriages fall apart.

The study, which will be published in the July issue ofPsychological Science, included 92 heterosexual dating couples and 77 married couples. They completed a battery of questionnaires that included an assessment of how much they thought their partner understood and supported both the hopes and responsibilities they had set for themselves. To measure how different types of perceived support were related to happiness with the relationship, couples also completed well-validated measures of satisfaction, intimacy and trust.

Previous research overwhelmingly demonstrates an important connection between feelings about partner support and satisfaction with a relationship but does not reveal any differences for dating versus married couples.

By identifying different ways in which people feel supported by their partners, the new Northwestern study goes beyond past work to show that support for maintaining perceived responsibilities seems to be important for satisfaction only after marriage.

The study also showed that different types of perceived support predicted differences in people’s overall satisfaction with their lives.

“People planning to get married should think about not only how their partners support what they hope to achieve but also about how their partners support what they feel obligated to accomplish,” Molden said. “We could end up with both happier marriages and more satisfied people in general.”

Besides Molden, the study’s co-investigators are Northwestern’s Gale Lucas and Eli Finkel; Madoka Kumashiro, Goldsmiths, University of London; and Caryl Rusbult, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Adapted from materials provided by Northwestern University.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406102632.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — A group of German investigators has published a randomized controlled trial on how to overcome constant worries in the current issue of Psyhotherapy and Psychosomatics.

Worry exposure (WE) is a core element of cognitive-behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Its efficacy as a stand-alone treatment method (without further cognitive-behavioral therapy interventions) has never been tested.

This study examined whether WE alone is as efficacious as the empirically supported stand-alone treatment for GAD, applied relaxation (AR). In a randomized controlled study, 73 outpatients meeting DSM-IV criteria for GAD as primary diagnosis were allocated to either WE or AR or a waiting list control group; in a 2nd randomization procedure the waiting list subjects were reallocated to WE or AR.

The treatment was manualized (15 sessions with WE or AR), included 6-month and 1-year follow-ups, as well as last observation carried forward and completer analyses, and was controlled for allegiance effects.The Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Scale were used as primary outcome measures. Self-report scales of anxiety, worrying and depression including negative metacognition about worrying and thought suppression served as secondary outcome measures.

The dropout rate was moderate. The pre-/posttreatment effects were high for the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (standardized mean difference >1) and for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (standardized mean difference >0.87). The proportion of patients reaching high end state functioning was 48% (WE) and 56% (AR). WE and AR did not differ with regard to dropout rate or treatment effects. The treatment effects were stable at 6 month and 1 year follow-up.

This is the first study to show that a stand-alone exposure in sensu technique – WE – is efficacious in the treatment of GAD. Both AR and WE seem to represent effective principles of change in GAD.

Journal reference:

1. Hoyer, J.; Beesdo, K.; Gloster, A.T.; Runge, J.; Höfler, M.; Becker, E.S. Worry Exposure versus Applied Relaxation in the Treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Psyhotherapy and Psychosomatics, 2009; 78: 106-115 DOI: 10.1159/000201936

Adapted from materials provided by Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, via AlphaGalileo.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406102632.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080321114214.htm

ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2008) — Empathy is an emotional reaction to the plight of others. Empathy can lead to altruistic behaviour, i.e. helping someone with the sole intention of enhancing that person’s wellbeing. If we see people in difficulty, for example, we feel the same emotions, and this may prompt us to help them. Yet the relationship between empathy and altruism is still far from clear. Psychologist Lidewij Niezink has researched this subject. She concluded that when we help friends in need, we are prompted by feelings of empathy, and that when we help relatives we do so because we have expectations of reciprocity.

Niezink will receive her PhD on 27 March 2008 at the University of Groningen.  She measured the empathic responses by telling the participants in the study about a young woman who is in a wheelchair following a serious accident. The participants then had to answer a series of questions designed to show how much they sympathise and identify with the woman.

Social comparison

Among other things, Niezink studied the empathetic reactions of people who often compare themselves with others. ‘We all compare ourselves with the people around us, but some people do this more than others. When the people in this group compare themselves with someone in a worse position, they often experience negative emotions such as tension, agitation, anxiety and irritation.’ Niezink discovered that these negative emotions are actually an expression of empathy. These people feel involved with the person in need, and identify with him/her. The negative emotions are a way of expressing this.

Family and friends

Niezink also studied the role of empathetic feelings in relationships with friends and family members. She discovered that we help friends for different reasons than family members. ‘People help friends out of feelings of empathy, but they help family members because they have expectations about reciprocation.’ This result is surprising, because it was always assumed that empathy was primarily a characteristic of family relationships. ‘But it is logical when you think about it. When you move house, it’s always your brother who comes to help. You can usually rely on family. We do not choose our families, but we do choose our friends. We feel a greater sense of connection with friends, so feelings of empathy are more important.

Altruistic options model

Niezink also compared various studies of empathy, and concludes that the methods varied quite considerably. ‘They are not talking about the same concept. That makes it more difficult to study altruism.’ Niezink then developed the ‘altruistic choice model’. The model works as follows. You see the suffering of others and this leads to a feeling of empathy, over which you have no control. This can be followed by various emotional responses: sympathizing/identifying with the person in question, concern or ‘softheartedness’ (tender feelings). These are responses that we can influence. These responses, in turn, can lead to compassion and altruism, i.e. understanding the other person’s suffering and the willingness to alleviate it. According to Niezink: ‘Altruism is a choice and something that we can actively cultivate when we observe others in need.’

Negative perception unjustified

Niezink is surprised about the fact that altruism is undervalued in our society. ‘We are pack animals. We cannot exist in isolation, so it is no scandal if we are willing to help each other. I’m not saying we must, but we can. Altruism makes the world a more pleasant place.’ It is rewarding to help someone. ‘Some people say, therefore, that helping others is based on selfish motives. If you help someone and it has positive consequences for you, that does not mean to say that your underlying motives are not altruistic.’

Adapted from materials provided by University of Groningen.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080321114214.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090217125553.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2009) — Preschool children who are securely attached to their mothers form closer friendships in the early grade-school years for a number of reasons, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Child Development.

“In a secure, emotionally open mother-child relationship, children develop a more positive, less biased understanding of others, which then promotes more positive friendships during the early school years,” said Nancy McElwain, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development and lead author of the study.

Scientists have known about the link between attachment and friendship quality, but they haven’t understood the reasons it exists, she added.

The study included 1,071 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Researchers assessed mother-child attachment at age three. They also assessed how openly mothers and children acknowledged and communicated about their emotions when the child was four and a half.

“We found several ways in which the early mother-child relationship may affect later friendship quality,” McElwain said. She noted that a number of measures were used.

At four and a half years and again in first grade, children were assessed for what the researchers called a hostile attribution bias. In this type of assessment, the child was given a series of hypothetical vignettes in which a peer did something negative to the child, although it wasn’t clear if the peer had meant to hurt or antagonize the child.

For example, an interviewer might say, “John throws a ball and it hits you in the back.” The child was then asked why his peer had acted in that way. If a child interpreted the peer’s behavior as intentional (for example, “He meant to hit me in the back”), it indicated a hostile attribution bias.

Child language ability was also evaluated at four a half years and again in first grade.

Finally, mothers and teachers were asked to report on the child’s general peer competence in first grade and the quality of the child’s relationship with his or her closest friend in third grade.

Several pathways led from close early mother-child attachment to later friendship quality. In one pathway, children who were securely attached at age three showed more open emotional communication with mothers and better language ability at four and a half, she said.

“Open emotional communication in turn predicted fewer hostile attributions at first grade, which predicted greater teacher-reported friendship quality at third grade,” she said.

“This finding suggests that the way children interpret other people’s behavior may begin to develop in the context of early relationships in the family, and these interpretations may be important for a child’s ability to get along with friends later on,” she said.

In another pathway, open emotional communication and language ability at age four and a half was related to mother- and teacher-reported friendship quality via the child’s general peer competence in first grade.

“When kids feel comfortable talking about their emotions, especially their negative emotions, it increases their social competence with classmates and leads to closer friendships,” she said.

“The preschool years are an interesting period to study because the child’s rapidly growing language skills allow parents and children to share in ways they haven’t been able to before,” she noted.

According to McElwain, the relationship between mother-child attachment and children’s other close relationships may be an especially important one.

“A child’s early attachment relationships are close and emotionally intense. For that reason, those relationships may be important in guiding children’s thinking about and functioning in other close relationships,” she said.

Co-authors of the study are Cathryn Booth LaForce of the University of Washington, Jennifer E. Lansford of Duke University, and Xiaoying Wu and W. Justin Dyer of the University of Illinois.

Journal reference:

1. Nancy L. McElwain, Cathryn Booth-LaForce, Jennifer E. Lansford, Xiaoying Wu, W. Justin Dyer. A Process Model of Attachment-Friend Linkages: Hostile Attribution Biases, Language Ability, and Mother-Child Affective Mutuality as Intervening Mechanisms. Child Development, 2008; 79 (6): 1891 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01232.x

Adapted from materials provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090217125553.htm