scholarly journals People accurately predict the transition probabilities between actions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Diana Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Transition Probabilities ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
Current Action ◽  
Action Knowledge

Social interactions require people to read and anticipate others’ future actions. Here we investigate how people predict others’ future actions, based solely on knowledge of their current action. We first measured the actual transition probabilities between actions in five naturalistic datasets, including movie scripts, day-recall surveys, task instructions, and annotated videos. We then tested whether participants could accurately judge the transition probabilities between actions in five respective preregistered studies. In all studies, participants accurately predicted the transition probabilities between actions. These predictions drew upon conceptual knowledge of actions – described by the six-dimensional ACT-FASTaxonomy. Together these results indicate that people can accurately anticipate others’ moves in the dance of social life, and that the structure of action knowledge may be tailored to making these accurate predictions.

scholarly journals People accurately predict the transition probabilities between actions

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. eabd4995
Author(s):  
Mark A. Thornton ◽  
Diana I. Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Transition Probabilities ◽  
Accurate Knowledge ◽  
Action Knowledge

Social life is a complex dance. To coordinate gracefully with one’s partners, one must predict their actions. Here, we investigated how people predict others’ actions. We hypothesized that people can accurately predict others’ future actions based on knowledge of their current actions, coupled with knowledge of action transitions. To test whether people have accurate knowledge of the transition probabilities between actions, we compared actual rates of action transitions—calculated from four large naturalistic datasets—to participants’ ratings of the transition probabilities between corresponding sets of actions. In five preregistered studies, participants demonstrated accurate mental models of action transitions. Furthermore, we found that people drew upon conceptual knowledge of actions—described by the six-dimensional ACT-FASTaxonomy—to guide their accurate predictions. Together, these results indicate that people can accurately anticipate other people’s moves in the dance of social life and that the structure of action knowledge may be tailored to making these predictions.

Fast Foes: The affective consequences of interacting in a negative self-disclosure situation.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gordils ◽  
Jeremy Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Cardiovascular Responses ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Negative Behaviors ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Affective Consequences

Background and Objectives: Social interactions involving personal disclosures are ubiquitous in social life and have important relational implications. A large body of research has documented positive outcomes from fruitful social interactions with amicable individuals, but less is known about how self-disclosing interactions with inimical interaction partners impacts individuals. Design and Methods: Participants engaged in an immersive social interaction task with a confederate (thought to be another participant) trained to behave amicably (Fast Friends) or inimically (Fast Foes). Cardiovascular responses were measured during the interaction and behavioral displays coded. Participants also reported on their subjective experiences of the interaction. Results: Participants assigned to interact in the Fast Foes condition reported more negative affect and threat appraisals, displayed more negative behaviors (i.e., agitation and anxiety), and exhibited physiological threat responses (and lower cardiac output in particular) compared to participants assigned to the Fast Friends condition. Conclusions: The novel paradigm demonstrates differential stress and affective outcomes between positive and negative self-disclosure situations across multiple channels, providing a more nuanced understanding of the processes associated with disclosing information about the self in social contexts.

scholarly journals Working from Home During Covid-19: Doing and Managing Technology-enabled Social Interaction With Colleagues at a Distance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Banita Lal ◽  
Yogesh K. Dwivedi ◽  
Markus Haag
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Work Lives ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Time Basis

AbstractWith the overnight growth in Working from Home (WFH) owing to the pandemic, organisations and their employees have had to adapt work-related processes and practices quickly with a huge reliance upon technology. Everyday activities such as social interactions with colleagues must therefore be reconsidered. Existing literature emphasises that social interactions, typically conducted in the traditional workplace, are a fundamental feature of social life and shape employees’ experience of work. This experience is completely removed for many employees due to the pandemic and, presently, there is a lack of knowledge on how individuals maintain social interactions with colleagues via technology when working from home. Given that a lack of social interaction can lead to social isolation and other negative repercussions, this study aims to contribute to the existing body of literature on remote working by highlighting employees’ experiences and practices around social interaction with colleagues. This study takes an interpretivist and qualitative approach utilising the diary-keeping technique to collect data from twenty-nine individuals who had started to work from home on a full-time basis as a result of the pandemic. The study explores how participants conduct social interactions using different technology platforms and how such interactions are embedded in their working lives. The findings highlight the difficulty in maintaining social interactions via technology such as the absence of cues and emotional intelligence, as well as highlighting numerous other factors such as job uncertainty, increased workloads and heavy usage of technology that affect their work lives. The study also highlights that despite the negative experiences relating to working from home, some participants are apprehensive about returning to work in the traditional office place where social interactions may actually be perceived as a distraction. The main contribution of our study is to highlight that a variety of perceptions and feelings of how work has changed via an increased use of digital media while working from home exists and that organisations need to be aware of these differences so that they can be managed in a contextualised manner, thus increasing both the efficiency and effectiveness of working from home.

scholarly journals The neural bases of vitality forms

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Di Cesare ◽  
Marzio Gerbella ◽  
Giacomo Rizzolatti
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Action Execution ◽  
Motor Responses ◽  
Motor Behaviors ◽  
Neurophysiological Studies ◽  
Internal States ◽  
Neural Bases

Abstract Unlike emotions, which are short-lasting events accompanied by viscero-motor responses, vitality forms are continuous internal states that modulate the motor behaviors of individuals and are devoid of the autonomic modifications that characterize real emotions. Despite the importance of vitality forms in social life, only recently have neurophysiological studies been devoted to this issue. The first part of this review describes fMRI experiments, showing that the dorso-central insula is activated during the execution, the perception and the imagination of arm actions endowed with different vitality forms as well as during the hearing and the production of speech conveying vitality forms. In the second part, we address the means by which the dorso-central insula modulates the networks for controlling action execution and how the sensory and interoceptive information is conveyed to this insular sector. Finally, we present behavioral data showing the importance of vitality forms in social interactions.

scholarly journals Value computations underlying human proposer behaviour in the Ultimatum Game

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erdem Pulcu ◽  
Masahiko Haruno
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Social Value Orientation ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Optimal Decisions ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Social Decision Making

AbstractInteracting with others to decide how finite resources should be allocated between parties which may have competing interests is an important part of social life. Considering that not all of our proposals to others are always accepted, the outcomes of such social interactions are, by their nature, probabilistic and risky. Here, we highlight cognitive processes related to value computations in human social interactions, based on mathematical modelling of the proposer behavior in the Ultimatum Game. Our results suggest that the perception of risk is an overarching process across non-social and social decision-making, whereas nonlinear weighting of others’ acceptance probabilities is unique to social interactions in which others’ valuation processes needs to be inferred. Despite the complexity of social decision-making, human participants make near-optimal decisions by dynamically adjusting their decision parameters to the changing social value orientation of their opponents through influence by multidimensional inferences they make about those opponents (e.g. how prosocial they think their opponent is relative to themselves).

scholarly journals THE URGENCY OF LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE IN SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esron Ambarita
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Emotional Factors

This paper aims at exploring the urgency of linguistic communication in social interactions in relation with the theory of model of linguistic communication. Linguistics as the scientific study of language can be viewed theoretically and practically. Theoretically, it is considered as scientific study of language, and practically, linguistics is largely a way of talking about language, and, therefore, a precise vocabulary is required so that specialists in the field can communicate accurately with each other. Communication is a must which is required in verbal and written communication. Integrating language skills is the only approach to be done in interactive communication. Communication and language seem to be a two-side coin. That is to say, where there is communication, there is, at least, one language, and vice versa, where there is a language, there is communication as well. The urgency of linguistic com¬munication is even more important in many other aspects of social life. Linguistic communication is not simply a matter of sending and receiving messages, but also involves sensitivity to emotional factors and the complex and subtle dynamics that operate between people. In social interaction, human beings always use language in communication, either verbally or non verbally. Verbal communication is called linguistic communication. In linguistic communication, universally the speech can be directly understood by other communicator because communication is done using oral language. It means, in case the message reciever does not understand the massage vonveyed, he directly can clarify it to the sender of the message. There are a lot of things involved when linguistic communication is done, such as, individual identity, social structure, culture, context, and social interaction.

scholarly journals Real-time individual benefit from social interactions before and during the lockdown: The crucial role of personality, neurobiology and genes.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximilian Monninger ◽  
Pascal M Aggensteiner ◽  
Tania M Pollok ◽  
Iris Reinhard ◽  
Alisha S.M. Hall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Protective Role ◽  
Individual Risk ◽  
Amygdala Volume

Background: Social integration is a major resilience factor for staying healthy. However, the COVID-19-pandemic led to unprecedented restrictions in social life. The consequences of these social lockdowns on momentary well-being are yet not fully understood. Method: We investigated the individual affective benefit from social interactions in a longitudinal birth cohort study. We used two real-time, real-life ecological momentary assessments once before and once during the initial lockdown of the pandemic (N~6800 total observations) to determine the protective role of social interactions on well-being. Moreover, we used a multimethod approach combining the ecological assessment data with individual risk and resilience factors to analyze the moderating mechanisms of personality, neurobiology and genes. Results: Social contacts were linked to higher positive affect both during normal times and during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the beneficial role of social embedding. Moreover, this relationship was moderated by amygdala volume, neuroticism and polygenic risk for schizophrenia. In detail, participants with a larger left amygdala volume and higher trait neuroticism exhibited an affective benefit from more social interactions prior to the pandemic. This pattern changed during the pandemic with participants with smaller amygdala volumes and lower neurotic traits showing a social affective gain during the pandemic. Moreover, participants with low genetic risk for schizophrenia showed an affective benefit from social interactions irrespective of the time point. Conclusion: Our results highlight the protective role of social integration on momentary well-being. Thereby, we offer new insights into how this relationship is differently affected by a person's neurobiology, personality, and genes under adverse circumstances.

scholarly journals Comparing measures of social complexity: larger mountain gorilla groups do not have a greater diversity of relationships

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1931) ◽  
pp. 20201026
Author(s):  
Robin E. Morrison ◽  
Winnie Eckardt ◽  
Tara S. Stoinski ◽  
Lauren J. N. Brent
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Mountain Gorilla ◽  
Fine Scale ◽  
Unit Size ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Social Unit ◽  
The Social

Social complexity reflects the intricate patterns of social interactions in societies. Understanding social complexity is fundamental for studying the evolution of diverse social systems and the cognitive innovations used to cope with the demands of social life. Social complexity has been predominantly quantified by social unit size, but newer measures of social complexity reflect the diversity of relationships. However, the association between these two sets of measures remains unclear. We used 12 years of data on 13 gorilla groups to investigate how measures of social complexity relate to each other. We found that group size was a poor proxy for relationship diversity and that the social complexity individuals experienced within the same group varied greatly. Our findings demonstrate two fundamental takeaways: first, that the number of relationships and the diversity of those relationships represent separate components of social complexity, both of which should be accounted for; and second, that social complexity measured at the group level may not represent the social complexity experienced by individuals in those groups. These findings suggest that comprehensive studies of social complexity, particularly those relating to the social demands faced by individuals, may require fine-scale social data to allow accurate comparisons across populations and species.

Hearing Impairment and Loneliness in Older Adults in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 073346482094408
Author(s):  
Alison R. Huang ◽  
Jennifer A. Deal ◽  
George W. Rebok ◽  
Jayant M. Pinto ◽  
Linda Waite ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Hearing Impairment ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Comorbidity Index ◽  
Reported Health ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Fair Poor

Hearing impairment impacts fluidity of communication and social interactions and thus may contribute to loneliness. We investigated the cross-sectional association between hearing impairment and loneliness in community-dwelling older U.S. adults using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project ( N = 3,196). Individuals reporting fair/poor hearing had 50% (95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.09–2.05]) higher odds of any loneliness compared with those reporting excellent hearing after adjusting for comorbidity index, functional and cognitive ability, self-reported health, and demographic characteristics. Test for trend suggests a dose–response relationship over levels of hearing impairment. Hearing impairment is highly prevalent and may be an important target for consideration in interventions to reduce loneliness. Further investigation of whether treatment of hearing impairment alleviates loneliness and its disabling effects is also needed.

scholarly journals Lost Touch? Implications of Physical Touch for Physical Health

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A Thomas ◽  
Seoyoun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Lower Blood Pressure ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Lower Blood ◽  
Lower Likelihood ◽  
Physical Touch ◽  
Path Models ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Objectives Growing research on the impact of physical touch on health has revealed links to lower blood pressure, higher oxytocin levels, and better sleep, but links to inflammation have not been fully explored. Physical touch may also buffer stress, underscoring its importance during the stressful time of living in the COVID-19 global pandemic—a time that has substantially limited social interactions and during which physical touch has been specifically advised against. Method We analyze nationally representative longitudinal data on older adults (N = 1,124) from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project using cross-lagged path models. Results More frequent physical touch is significantly related to a lower likelihood of subsequent elevated inflammation. Discussion These findings highlight the importance of finding safe ways to incorporate physical touch, even in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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