Expressing appreciation is linked to interpersonal closeness and inter-brain coherence, both in person and over Zoom

Expressing appreciation is essential for establishing interpersonal closeness, but virtual interactions are increasingly common and create social distance. Little is known about the neural and inter-brain correlates of expressing appreciation and the potential effects of virtual videoconferencing on this kind of interaction. Here, we assess inter-brain coherence with functional near-infrared spectroscopy while dyads expressed appreciation to one another. We scanned 36 dyads (72 participants) who interacted in either an in-person or virtual (Zoom®) condition. Participants reported on their subjective experience of interpersonal closeness. As predicted, expressing appreciation increased interpersonal closeness between dyad partners. Relative to 3 other cooperation tasks (i.e. problem-solving task, creative-innovation task, socio-emotional task), we observed increased inter-brain coherence in socio-cognitive areas of the cortex (anterior frontopolar area, inferior frontal gyrus, premotor cortex, middle temporal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and visual association cortex) during the appreciation task. Increased inter-brain coherence in socio-cognitive areas during the appreciation task was associated with increased interpersonal closeness. These findings support the perspective that expressing appreciation, both in-person and virtually, increases subjective and neural metrics of interpersonal closeness.

What Matters in a Relationship-Age, Sexual Satisfaction, Relationship Length, and Interpersonal Closeness as Predictors of Relationship Satisfaction in Young Adults

Relationship satisfaction is one of the key elements affecting overall life satisfaction. This study aimed to identify significant predictors of relationship satisfaction in young adults in a romantic relationship. The study was questionnaire-based, involving 237 young adults who were currently in a relationship. Three self-rating scales were used: CSI-32 Relationship Satisfaction Scale, Sexual Satisfaction Questionnaire, and Unidimensional Relationship Closeness Scale. Sexual satisfaction proved to be a main predictor of relationship satisfaction in both sexes. For women, interpersonal closeness was additionally important, with a sense of closeness found to be even more important than sexual satisfaction for women cohabiting with their partners. Cohabiting people are generally more satisfied with their relationship, and a higher level of closeness and applied caresses can additionally be observed in them. In contrast, the relationship length appeared to matter only for men living with their partner: they were more satisfied with the relationship at the beginning of the relationship, and then their level of satisfaction declined. Relationship satisfaction in young adults appears to be determined by other factors depending on gender and cohabitation status. Nevertheless, at this age, sexual satisfaction proves to be one of the most critical factors for a sense of relationship satisfaction.

The Effects of Health Care Chatbot Personas With Different Social Roles on the Client-Chatbot Bond and Usage Intentions: Development of a Design Codebook and Web-Based Study

Background

The working alliance refers to an important relationship quality between health professionals and clients that robustly links to treatment success. Recent research shows that clients can develop an affective bond with chatbots. However, few research studies have investigated whether this perceived relationship is affected by the social roles of differing closeness a chatbot can impersonate and by allowing users to choose the social role of a chatbot.

Objective

This study aimed at understanding how the social role of a chatbot can be expressed using a set of interpersonal closeness cues and examining how these social roles affect clients’ experiences and the development of an affective bond with the chatbot, depending on clients’ characteristics (ie, age and gender) and whether they can freely choose a chatbot’s social role.

Methods

Informed by the social role theory and the social response theory, we developed a design codebook for chatbots with different social roles along an interpersonal closeness continuum. Based on this codebook, we manipulated a fictitious health care chatbot to impersonate one of four distinct social roles common in health care settings—institution, expert, peer, and dialogical self—and examined effects on perceived affective bond and usage intentions in a web-based lab study. The study included a total of 251 participants, whose mean age was 41.15 (SD 13.87) years; 57.0% (143/251) of the participants were female. Participants were either randomly assigned to one of the chatbot conditions (no choice: n=202, 80.5%) or could freely choose to interact with one of these chatbot personas (free choice: n=49, 19.5%). Separate multivariate analyses of variance were performed to analyze differences (1) between the chatbot personas within the no-choice group and (2) between the no-choice and the free-choice groups.

Results

While the main effect of the chatbot persona on affective bond and usage intentions was insignificant (P=.87), we found differences based on participants’ demographic profiles: main effects for gender (P=.04, η_p²=0.115) and age (P<.001, η_p²=0.192) and a significant interaction effect of persona and age (P=.01, η_p²=0.102). Participants younger than 40 years reported higher scores for affective bond and usage intentions for the interpersonally more distant expert and institution chatbots; participants 40 years or older reported higher outcomes for the closer peer and dialogical-self chatbots. The option to freely choose a persona significantly benefited perceptions of the peer chatbot further (eg, free-choice group affective bond: mean 5.28, SD 0.89; no-choice group affective bond: mean 4.54, SD 1.10; P=.003, η_p²=0.117).

Conclusions

Manipulating a chatbot’s social role is a possible avenue for health care chatbot designers to tailor clients’ chatbot experiences using user-specific demographic factors and to improve clients’ perceptions and behavioral intentions toward the chatbot. Our results also emphasize the benefits of letting clients freely choose between chatbots.

From "Fast Friends" to True Friends: Can a Contact Intervention Promote Friendships in Middle School?

The protective role of friendships in middle school is well established, yet no research to date has examined how to build friendships among middle school peers. In the present research, we adapted the Fast Friends procedure for inducing interpersonal closeness to promote friendships among students (n = 301) in middle school. Given the growing diversity in the K-12 population and the benefits of cross-ethnic friendships for ethnic majority and minority youth, we examined whether the intervention was equally effective at fostering same- and cross-ethnic friendships. Results indicated that the intervention successfully increased interpersonal closeness and friendships for participants in both same- and cross-ethnic conditions. Implications for using Fast Friends to promote the healthy social development of adolescent youth are discussed.

Inclusion of the other in the self as a potential risk factor for prolonged grief disorder: A comparison of patients with matched bereaved healthy controls

Pathological grief has received increasing attention in recent years, as about 10% of the bereaved suffer from one kind of it. Pathological grief in the form of prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a relatively new diagnostic category which will be included into the upcoming ICD-11. To date, various risk and protective factors, as well as treatment options for pathological grief, have been proposed. Nevertheless, empirical evidence in that area is still scarce. Our aim was to identify the association of interpersonal closeness with the deceased and bereavement outcome. Interpersonal closeness with the deceased in 54 participants (27 patients suffering from PGD and 27 bereaved healthy controls) was assessed as the overlap of pictured identities via the inclusion of the other in the self scale (IOS scale). In addition to that, data on PGD symptomatology, general mental distress and depression were collected. Patients suffering from PGD reported higher inclusion of the deceased in the self. By contrast, they reported feeling less close towards another living close person. Results of the IOS scale were associated with PGD severity, general mental distress and depression. Inclusion of the deceased in the self is a significant statistical predictor for PGD caseness.

Sharing Happy Stories Increases Interpersonal Closeness: Interpersonal Brain Synchronization as a Neural Indicator

Our lives revolve around sharing emotional stories (i.e., happy and sad stories) with other people. Such emotional communication enhances the similarity of story comprehension and neural across speaker-listener pairs. The theory of Emotions as Social Information Model (EASI) suggests that such emotional communication may influence interpersonal closeness. However, few studies have examined speaker-listener interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) during emotional communication and whether it is associated with meaningful aspects of the speaker-listener interpersonal relationship. Here, one speaker watched emotional videos and communicated the content of the videos to 32 people as listeners (happy/sad/neutral group). Both speaker and listeners’ neural activities were recorded using EEG. After listening, we assessed the interpersonal closeness between the speaker and listeners. Compared with the sad group, sharing happy stories showed a better recall quality and a higher rating of interpersonal closeness. The happy group showed higher IBS in the frontal cortex and left temporoparietal cortex than the sad group. The relationship between frontal IBS and interpersonal closeness was moderated by sharing happy/sad stories. Exploratory analysis using support vector regression (SVR) showed that the IBS could also predict the ratings of interpersonal closeness. These results suggest that frontal IBS could serve as an indicator of whether sharing emotional stories facilitate interpersonal closeness. These findings improve our understanding of emotional communication among individuals that guides behaviors during interpersonal interactions.

Relating self-other overlap to ingroup bias in emotional mimicry

Humans tend to show congruent facial expressions automatically in reaction to their partners which is defined as emotional mimicry. Although occurring unconsciously, this tendency has been proven to be modulated by social contextual factors such as group membership. Ingroup bias in emotional mimicryhas been well-documented in previous research; however, few studies have investigated the underlying mechanism. Based on the mimicry-as-social-regulator model, this study explored whether the ingroup bias in emotional mimicry arises from the greater self-ingroup overlap. By recording participants' facial electromyographic responses while passively viewing dynamic emotional clips performed by either racial ingroup or outgroup actors, Study 1 validated the presence of ingroup bias in the mimicry of happiness, but not anger. Using asimilar procedure in Study 2, anew sample was employed (N = 37), and a measurement of self-other overlaps via the Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale was added. The results of Study 2 reproduced the ingroup bias in happy mimicry, and further demonstrated that the effect of group membership on emotional mimicry was mediated by the self-other overlap. In summary, this study provides evidence that the level of interpersonal closeness predicts emotional mimicry.

Loudness Perceptions Influence Feelings of Interpersonal Closeness and Protect Against Detrimental Psychological Effects of Social Exclusion

We propose that perceptions of auditory loudness and interpersonal closeness are bidirectionally related. Across 12 experiments (total N = 2,219; 10 preregistered; with Singaporean, British, U.S. American, and Australian participants), we demonstrated that louder audio made people feel physically (Study 1a) and socially (Study 1b) closer to others, presumably because loudness activates interpersonal closeness-related concepts implicitly (Studies 1c and 1d). This loudness-interpersonal closeness effect was observed across diverse samples (Studies 2a, 3a, and S1), for longer listening intervals (Study 2b), and in natural settings (Studies 3a and 3b). Conversely, individuals made to feel socially excluded rated their surroundings as quieter (Study 4). Furthermore, following social exclusion, individuals showed a preference for louder volume (Study 5). Finally, exposure to loud stimuli mitigated detrimental psychological effects of social exclusion (Study 6). Theoretical implications for the social cognition of loudness, social exclusion and compensatory strategies, and practical implications for ameliorating loneliness are discussed.

Reduced Social Connectedness and Compassion Toward Close Others in Patients With Chronic Depression Compared to a Non-clinical Sample

Reduced social functioning in depression has been explained by different factors. Reduced social connectedness and prosocial motivation may contribute to interpersonal difficulties, particularly in chronic depression. In the present study, we tested whether social connectedness and prosocial motivation are reduced in chronic depression. Forty-seven patients with persistent depression and 49 healthy controls matched for age and gender completed the Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale (IOS), the Compassionate Love Scale (CLS), the Beck Depression Inventory-II, and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. A Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with IOS and CLS as dependent variables revealed a highly significant difference between both groups. The IOS and the CLS-subscale Close Others were lower in persistent depression, whereas there was no difference in the CLS-subscale Strangers/Humanity. IOS and CLS-Close Others showed significant negative correlations with depressive symptoms. Connectedness to family members as measured by the IOS was negatively correlated with childhood trauma in patients with chronic depression. The results indicate that compassion and perceived social connection are reduced in depressed patients toward close others, but not to others in general. Implications for the treatment of depression are discussed.

Perceived Closeness and Autistic Traits Modulate Interpersonal Vocal Communication

Vocal modulation is a critical component of interpersonal communication. It not only serves as a dynamic and flexible tool for self-expression and linguistic information but also plays a key role in social behavior. Variation in vocal modulation can be driven by individual traits of interlocutors as well as factors relating to the dyad, such as the perceived closeness between interlocutors. In this study we examine both of these sources of variation. At an individual level, we examine the impact of autistic traits, since lack of appropriate vocal modulation has often been associated with Autism Spectrum Disorders. At a dyadic level, we examine the role of perceived closeness between interlocutors on vocal modulation. The study was conducted in three separate samples from India, Italy, and the UK. Articulatory features were extracted from recorded conversations between a total of 85 same-sex pairs of participants, and the articulation space calculated. A larger articulation space corresponds to greater number of spectro-temporal modulations (articulatory variations) sampled by the speaker. Articulation space showed a positive association with interpersonal closeness and a weak negative association with autistic traits. This study thus provides novel insights into individual and dyadic variation that can influence interpersonal vocal communication.

Android Pretending to Have Similar Traits of Imagination as Humans Evokes Stronger Perceived Capacity to Feel

The perception of robots as mindful enriches how humans relate to them. Given that congruence in perceived representations of the world enable humans to experience commonality in mental states (a shared reality), we propose that congruence between humans, and robots will encourage humans to attribute humanlike mental capacities to robots. To investigate this, we assessed the mental perceptions of a robot in a visual imagination task using Gray et al. mind perception scale, which evaluates experience (capacity to feel), and agency (capacity to plan and do). For each ambiguous picture in the designed task, humans, and a robot imagined an animal. The task was performed under six conditions (2 × 3: Lead/Follow for Low/Medium/High). In the Lead condition, the robot records its perceived animal first; in the Follow condition, the robot records after the human participant. The experiment had three different degrees of congruence: Low (0%), Medium (60%), and High (100%). The results showed that perceived experiences were higher in the Lead condition, suggesting that the robot is perceived to be empathetic. It is probable that the Follow condition was perceived as mimicry rather than shared reality. Therefore, the order of response may have played an important role in commonality in mental states. No differences were observed in the perceived agency across all conditions. These results suggest that the order of response affects how humans perceive the minds of robots. Additionally, we assessed a post-task questionnaire to evaluate the interpersonal closeness that the humans felt toward the android. The main effect was observed in the degrees of congruence. This result is in line with those of previous studies that report relationships across sharing of similarities and friendliness.

People as Means to Multiple Goals: Implications for Interpersonal Relationships

The present research examines the implications of having relationship partners who serve as means to multiple goals. Specifically, we test the hypotheses that (a) partners who serve more goals will be evaluated as more interpersonally close, supportive, and responsive than those who serve fewer goals, and (b) partners who serve more goals will be less common in social networks than those who serve fewer goals. Three studies ( N = 1,064) found consistent support for these hypotheses while examining relationships with all members of participants' active social network and their full range of goal pursuits. In addition, we found that the association between number of goals a partner serves and relationship evaluation is stronger for people who perceived their social networks as less (vs. more) instrumental on average, and among people who perceived their relationships as less close, less supportive, and less responsive, on average. Implications for close relationships are discussed.

The Possible Antecedents and Consequences of Matching of Food Intake: Examining the Role of Trait Self-Esteem and Interpersonal Closeness

Although there is evidence that people tend to match their intake to that of others, less is known about the motives underlying this effect. The current study, therefore, examined the relationship between self-esteem, a specific factor that has been related to the likelihood of social matching. Further, we examined the effects of food matching on interpersonal closeness among eating companions. The sample included 89 female dyads. All dyads had free access to palatable snack food during a 15 min interaction. For each dyad the matching score was calculated, as well as both individual's trait self-esteem scores and interpersonal closeness with their eating partner. The overall degree of matching within dyads was high, replicating the findings of previous research. No relationship, however, was found between trait self-esteem and the degree of matching. Furthermore, there was no effect of matching on perceived interpersonal closeness with or liking of the other person. These results suggest that self-esteem might not be a robust predictor of matching and that matching of food intake may not result in increased perceived interpersonal closeness or liking among eating partners.

Joint attention, shared goals, and social bonding

There has recently been interest in the ways in which coordinated movements encourage coactors to feel socially closer to one another, but this has generally overlooked the importance of necessary precursors to this joint action. Here we target two low-level behaviours involved in social coordination that may mediate a relationship between joint actions and social bonding, namely joint attention and shared goals. Participants engaged in a simple reaction time task while sitting next to a partner performing the same task. In a joint attention condition, both participants attended to stimuli presented on the same half of a computer screen, while in a control condition, they attended to opposite sides of the computer screen. Shared goals were manipulated by giving participants the instruction to keep below a threshold score for both individual response times and accuracy (individual goal), or their joint mean response time and accuracy (i.e., averaging their mean response time and accuracy with that of their partner: shared goal). Attending to the same side of the screen led to higher ratings on a composite social bonding index directed towards a partner, while shared goals did not cause any effects on partner ratings. Joint attention was sufficient to encourage social closeness with an interaction partner, which suggests that any activities which encourage attending to the same point in space could have some influence on how connected coactors feel about one another.

Coping with early stage breast cancer: examining the influence of personality traits and interpersonal closeness

The study examines the influence of personality traits and close relationships on the coping style of women with breast cancer. A sample of 72 Italian patients receiving treatment for early stage breast cancer was recruited. Participants completed questionnaires measuring personality traits (Interpersonal Adaptation Questionnaire), interpersonal closeness (Inclusion of the Other in the Self Scale), and adjustment to cancer (Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer Scale). We hypothesized that diverse personality traits and degrees of closeness contribute to determine the coping styles shown by participants. Multiple regression analyses were conducted for each of the five coping styles (Helplessness/Hopelessness, Anxious Preoccupation, Avoidance, Fatalism, and Fighting Spirit) using personality traits and interpersonal closeness variables (Strength of Support Relations, and Number of Support Relations) as predictors. Women who rated high on assertiveness and social anxiety were more likely to utilize active coping strategies (Fighting Spirit). Perceived strength of relationships was predictive of using an active coping style while the number of supportive relationships did not correlate with any of the coping styles. Implications for assessment of breast cancer patients at risk for negative adaptation to the illness and the development of psychosocial interventions are discussed.