Cheering My Friends Up: The Unique Role of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Strategies in Social Competence

A systematic investigation has been lacking regarding children’s deliberate regulation of others’ emotions which is labeled interpersonal emotion regulation (ER). Based on a theoretically derived model of Interpersonal Affect Classification, we examined children’s interpersonal ER strategy use in the peer group. Participants were 398 fourth and fifth grade children from the Midwestern United States. Children rated themselves regarding their use of intrapersonal and interpersonal ER strategies as well as attention to friends’ emotions. Teacher-report and peer nominations were used to assess social competence regarding prosocial behavior and emotion sharing. Awareness of and attention to friends’ emotions were positively and more strongly associated with interpersonal ER than intrapersonal ER. Children reported affective engagement most strongly followed by humor, cognitive engagement, and attention to improve friends’ feelings. Among the four interpersonal ER strategies, only affective engagement was uniquely associated with social competence; intrapersonal ER was not associated with social competence. The findings support the significance of broadening the focus of ER to the interpersonal domain to promote the development of children’s ER and social competence.

The short-term, circumscribed, and conditional effects of cross-partisan conversation

Scholars and activists have raised alarm about affective polarization---voters' increasing dislike for supporters of opposing political parties---and its potential negative implications for democracy. Organizations, activists, and scholars have identified cross-partisan conversations as a promising paradigm for reducing affective polarization and, in turn, bolstering democratic accountability. However, existing theory and empirical work remains ambiguous. We argue that cross-partisan conversations have potential to reduce intergroup prejudices, but that such one-shot interactions are likely to have short-term effects that decay, would be circumscribed within the interpersonal domain and not extend to democratic attitudes, and would be conditional on topic, diminishing if the conversations dwell on group differences. We support this argument with results from two unique experiments where we paired outpartisan strangers in real time to discuss randomly assigned topics face-to-face over video calls. In Study 1, we found that non-political conversations between outpartisans dramatically decreased affective polarization, reversing over two decades' worth of increases. However, these impacts decayed completely in a follow-up survey. Moreover, the conversations had no effect on outcomes related to democratic accountability, such as support for outpartisan politicians. Study 2 replicated Study 1's results in a more representative sample and included conversations about group differences (i.e., politics). We again found large effects of non-political cross-partisan conversations on affective polarization, but that conversations about group differences had no effects. All conversations were again ineffective at changing democratic attitudes. Our results support our argument regarding the conditional, short-term, and circumscribed effects of cross-partisan conversations.

Distinguishing Interpersonal and Ideological Prosociality: Introducing the Construct of Ideological Prosociality

Prosociality refers to dispositions and behaviors intended to benefit others, and the present study assumed that these dispositions reflect people’s values. Much of the research on prosociality has examined prosociality in what can be called the interpersonal domain, e.g., helping others. I propose that prosociality also exists in the ideological domain. People hold prosocial values that concern collectives, not specific individuals. Multilevel analyses of data collected in Wave 8 of the European Social Survey (44,000 respondents in 23 countries) found significant positive relationships between ideological prosocial values and attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, attitudes about the environment and climate change, gays and lesbians, social benefits, and income equality. Moreover, these relationships remained after controlling participants’ sex, income, happiness, and political orientation. In contrast, with the exception of attitudes about the environment, relationships between these attitudes and interpersonal prosocial values were either negative or not significant.

Cultivating the Interpersonal Domain: Compassion in the Supervisor-Doctoral Student Relationship

The long-term and complex supervisor-doctoral student relationship is often characterised by tension and frictions. In higher education research, models, and interventions that take the potential beneficial interpersonal effects of compassion into account seem to be scarce. Hence, the aim of this study was to conceptualise the potential role compassion could have in the cultivation of an affiliative and sustainable supervisor-doctoral student relationship. The concept of compassion was investigated and analysed in relation to a contemporary model of supervisor behaviours. Furthermore, a systematic literature search in the scientific databases PubMed, PsychInfo, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar was performed. The conceptual analysis revealed that the interpersonal domain, in which compassion could afford a shared sense of warmth, is neglected in previous definitions. Furthermore, the integration of compassion into a model of adaptive supervisor behaviour indicates a strong case for a salutary role for compassion in the supervisor-doctoral student relationship. However, the literature review showed that empirical data are lacking, and more studies are needed. The role of compassion deserves to be investigated empirically in this particular interpersonal context.

Health-related quality of life assessment in eating disorders: adjustment and validation of a specific scale with the inclusion of an interpersonal domain

Purpose Quality of life is a fundamental aspect of both clinical practice and research on eating disorders (ED) due to the significant impacts these disorders have on everyday life. Disorder-specific scales can improve the quality of research and findings and offer greater sensitivity and responsiveness. However, no specific instrument is available in Italian for ED. The aim of this paper is to adjust and to validate a reliable scale with specific items regarding physical and interpersonal well-being. Methods The Italian version of the Eating Disorder Quality of Life (IEDQOL) scale was developed, on the basis of the original English scale, with the addition of items pertaining to physical well-being and interpersonal interactions. In this study, 180 ED patients and 190 healthy controls from the community were enrolled both from inpatient units and outpatient services. A statistical analysis with an exploratory factorial approach was performed in order to validate the tool. Results The results showed that the IEDQOL has very good psychometric properties with test–retest validity and sensitivity between patients and controls (d = 2.17 for total score). Moreover, the interpersonal domain showed excellent psychometric values (Cronbach’s α > 0.70 in all the subgroups) and a robust correlation with other quality of life constructs. Conclusion Future studies on the Italian population should use IEDQOL as outcome element that can be useful also with other disorder-specific psychopathological constructs and corroborate the reliability of the data. Future research in the ED field should only use this specific tool. Level of evidence Case–control analytic study, Level III.

Darwin's Psychology

Darwin has long been hailed as forefather to behavioural science, and even more so nowadays, with the growing popularity of evolutionary psychologies. This is the first book to examine Darwin’s own extensive writings about psychological matters. It finds that Darwin’s fulcrum was the agency of living creatures—both in his psychology and in his theory of evolution. A careful reading of Darwin’s writings on topics from climbing plants to babies shows that no individual-based theory of evolution can explain everything about human action. The interpersonal domain, group-life and culture, are also key, whether we consider the dynamics of conscience, emotional expressions or the dramas of desire. For example, Darwin argues that the anatomy and physiology of evolutionarily ‘purposeless’ facial movements gain meaning through their perception by others. His explanation of blushing adds a layer of complexity to such recognition—my blush results from my perception of how you are reading me. A similar reflexive dynamic governs how Darwin understands sexual desire, conscience, the setting of social standards, and the place of culture in human agency. Testing the main plank of Darwin’s psychology—that a capacity for group-interaction underpins the most human aspects of human agency—has awaited contemporary research, being recently confirmed by film-studies of young babies. Darwin’s writings frame a surprisingly well-resourced arena for elaboration of a socialized, agentic account of how we and our fellow creatures live. Moreover, Darwin stands at the forefront of moves toward an evolutionary biology in which organisms lead and genes follow.

Between Social and Semantic Networks: A Case Study on Classroom Complexity

Classrooms are complex in their real sets. To understand such sets and their emergent patterns, network approach provides useful theoretical and methodological tools. In this work, we used network approach to explore two domains of complexity in a classroom: the interpersonal domain, via social networks; and the representational domain, through collective semantic networks. This work is grounded in both Social Network Analyses and Social Representation Theory for gathering information from interpersonal and representational domains. We investigated a physics high school classroom by proceeding sociometric tests and by using words freely evoked by students to explore relations between students’ dyad’s weights, in social networks, and emerging consensus in semantic networks. Our findings showed closer relations between social ties’ weight and consensus formed on intra-school representational objects, while consensus on extra-school representational objects is less dependent on the classroom interpersonal ties’ strength.

Interaction of both positive and negative daily-life experiences with FKBP5 haplotype on psychosis risk

Background. There is limited research on the interaction of both positive and negative daily-life environments with stress-related genetic variants on psychotic experiences (PEs) and negative affect (NA) across the extended psychosis phenotype. This study examined whether the FK506 binding protein 51 (FKBP5) variability moderates the association of positive and negative experiences in the moment with PEs and NA in participants with incipient psychosis and their nonclinical counterparts. Methods. A total of 233 nonclinical and 86 incipient psychosis participants were prompted for a 1-week period to assess their day-to-day experiences. Participants were genotyped for four FKBP5 single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs3800373, rs9296158, rs1360780, and rs9470080). Results. Multilevel analyses indicated that, unlike the risk haplotype, the protective FKBP5 haplotype moderated all the associations of positive experiences with diminished PEs and NA in incipient psychosis compared with nonclinical group. Conclusions. Participants with incipient psychosis showed symptomatic improvement when reporting positive appraisals in the interpersonal domain, which suggests that these act as a powerful coping mechanism. The fact that this occurred in daily-life underscores the clinical significance of this finding and pinpoints the importance of identifying protective mechanisms. In addition, results seem to concur with the vantage sensitivity model of gene–environment interaction, which poses that certain genetic variants may enhance the likelihood of benefiting from positive exposures.