Social Interaction - Social Affiliation and Attraction

Question 1

The need to belong

Answer 1

• Baumeister and Leary, 1995:
  
  • “Human beings have a fundamental need to form and maintain a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships”
  • “We need relationships to survive and thrive”

Question 2

the need to belong - evolutionary perspective

Answer 2

• Early humans lived in small groups surrounded by a difficult environment.
  
  • Adaptive to be social and caring - more likely to survive, mature, and reproduce.
  • Our species evolved and became characterised by people who were close to others, caring, and sought acceptance.
  • Evolutionary perspective is speculative.
  • But large accumulation of evidence supporting the idea of a fundamental, profound need to belong - better health and wellbeing.

Question 3

the need to belong 2

Answer 3

• People have a fundamental need for social connection.
  
  • The need to belong is like our need for food:
    1. Relationships are easy to form and difficult to break
    2. Without close connections, we suffer.
    3. Our need to belong can be satiated
    4. The need to belong universal

Question 4

social bonds are easy to form and difficult to break

Answer 4

• Babies instantly form attachments
  
  • Difficulty ending relationships

Question 5

without relationships, we suffer

Answer 5

• Rejection hurts - pain, reduced wellbeing, intellectual functioning e.g., DeWall and Bushman, 2011
  
  • Lack of social network is a strong predictor of illness and mortality (Coyne et al, 2001; Holt-Lunstad et al, 2010)

Question 6

relationships and morality

Answer 6

• Subjective - living together/alone and marital status didn’t matter as much
  
  • Together, these findings suggest that:
  • Need to feel socially connected is a matter of life or death
  • Especially important that relationships are highly satisfying (can truly fulfil need to belong)

Question 7

the need to belong can be satiated

Answer 7

· We have a limited number of friends - 6 friends in college (Wheeler and Nezlek, 1977)
· People spend less time with friends when in romantic relationships
· Could be beneficial to expand social network, people need a sufficient number of relationships

Question 8

the need to belong is universal

Answer 8

· People everywhere need (close) relationships
· Reviewed evidence does not seem culture-specific:
- Relationships everywhere are easy to form and difficult to break
· This universality suggests belonging is a basic need, that we share worldwide

Question 9

Surviving or thriving? The quality of relationships:

Answer 9

· Relationship quality promotes surviving and thriving
· Pleasant daily social interactions associated with greater life satisfaction (Sun et al, 2020)
· Top 10% happiest people (compared to average and unhappy people) are highly social and have the strongest, most satisfying and fulfilling relationships (not per se romantic) (Diener & Seligman, 2002)
· Those that are thriving have the most satisfying relationships

Question 10

Social interaction - quantity and quality:

Answer 10

· We have reviewed the benefits of:
- Having at least a good number of social interactions
- Importance of high-quality relationships
Other aspects of social interactions that benefit health and wellbeing

Question 11

types of relationships

Answer 11

· Friends
· Family
· Colleagues, fellow students
· Romantic partner
· Strangers

Question 12

“weak” ties

Answer 12

· Interactions with weak ties may be untapped resource for wellbeing
· Participants instructed to engage with barista (vs. efficient interaction) felt happier, due to greater sense of belonging (Sanderstron and Dunn, 2014)
· Even weak ties - strangers we can meet anywhere - contribute to our belonging and wellbeing
· Similar study replicated this idea
· Participants instructed to engage with bus driver: greet, expressing thanks (vs. no such instruction) felt happier
· Engaging with and being kind to others benefits wellbeing (Gunaydin et al, 2021)

Question 13

“weak” ties - why?

Answer 13

· Positive interactions help us recognise value of others, feel connected (Algoe, 2012)
· Others typically feel happy and respond positively

Question 14

“Weak” ties - but we tend to underestimate:

Answer 14

· How happy target will feel (Epley and Schroeder, 2014)
· How much people like us after a conversation (Boothby et al, 2017)
· Positive effects of our kind acts and expressions of gratitude (Kumar and Epley, 2022)

Question 15

Social interaction - quantity, quality, and diverse:

Answer 15

· We have reviewed the benefits of:
- Having at least a good number of social interactions
- Importance of high-quality relationships
- Importance of weak ties
· Suggests there are benefits to interacting with a wider variety of relationships in our lives:
· Relational Diversity of people’s social profile - “… the richness and evenness of relationship types across one’s social interactions.” (Collins et al., 2022)
· Captures:
- How many different relationship types
- How evenly interactions distributed among types
· Relational Diversity & health and wellbeing:
· 4 studies (incl. daily study): ~50,000 participants!
- Replicates benefits of amount of interactions
- Additionally, benefits of relational diversity
· Actual interactions – what about perceived diversity and time spent with others?

Question 16

What is attraction?:

Answer 16

· Evaluating another person positively (not just romantic)
· We are often attracted to people whose presence is rewarding (Clore and Byrne, 1974)

Question 17

What are the forces that attract?

Answer 17

1. Reciprocity
   
   2. Similarity
   3. Familiarity (proximity)

Question 18

reciprocity

Answer 18

• We like people who like us
  
  • We like others more after knowing they like us (Backman and Secord, 1959; Birnbaum et al, 2018)
  • They like us specifically (not just everyone)

Question 19

similarity

Answer 19

· Mostly: Birds of a feather flock together!
- We like people who are like us, especially when they have similar backgrounds (e.g., age, race, education), interests, and share attitudes and values (e.g., Hampton et al., 2019).
· Why?
- Trust others more when similar (Singh et al., 2017)
- Feel assured others will like us & enjoy spending time with similar others (Hampton et al., 2019)

Question 20

similarity - not always

Answer 20

· Personality: similarity doesn’t really matter
· Actual traits (e.g., agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability) matter more than similarity on traits (Weidman et al., 2017)
- These traits generally make it more enjoyable to interact with people (Watson et al., 2014)

Question 21

similarity - perceived

Answer 21

· Perceived similarity makes people like each other more than actual similarity (Tidwell et al., 2013)
· Perceived similarity increases the more relationships progress (Goel et al., 2010)
· Outside observers may see actual (dis)similarities and wrongly conclude that opposites attract

Question 22

familiarity

Answer 22

· Familiarity (or proximity):
· The people who, by chance, you see and interact with the most (more familiar) are most likely to become friends or romantic partners
- “Contrary to popular belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best; they are merely the people who got there first.” - Sir Peter Ustinov

Question 23

familiarity - MIT housing study

Answer 23

· Physical proximity & friendship formation
· Students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology were randomly assigned to one of 17 buildings in a housing complex on campus
· Virtually no one knew anyone in the complex beforehand
· 65% of the residents had at least one friend who lived in their own building
· But those living in the same building represented only 5% of all residents.

Question 24

familiarity - how does it work?

Answer 24

1. We have an increased opportunity to meet people who live close to us.
   
   2. We tend to like things more after we have been repeatedly exposed to them and they become more familiar to us.
      · = mere exposure effect
      · There’s a limit: initial disliking may breed contempt after further exposure