Psychology of Social Connection

[Tyler]

My quarantine has been spent watching a lot of reality TV. Specifically, romantic shows such as Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, and the Bachelor. There are so many different iterations of shows asking you to watch two people fall in love and stick around to see if their relationship lasts. Clearly there is something intriguing about watching a romantic relationship develop and seeing the drama play out. While watching, we get to see the heartbreak but also the blossoming of new love. A staple of these shows is the interviews where each person shares their thoughts on the state of the relationship. Often, these thoughts involve trying to figure out whether their love interest likes them back and in general trying to understand the others’ perspective. 

This makes sense because perspective-taking is a critical part of any relationship. Perspective-taking involves stepping into the mind of another person to understand what they are thinking and feeling. In romantic relationships, perspective-taking occurs all throughout the course of the relationship. From the beginning, both parties are trying to identify whether their interest in the other is reciprocated. Rejection hurts and can be extremely uncomfortable. Even though we might try hard to figure out what someone else is thinking, it is really difficult for us to accurately identify their thoughts and feelings especially in regards to romantic relationships. Bohns & DeVincent (2019) found that those who initiate romantic relationships underestimate how difficult it is for the other person to reject their advances. While I was watching the Bachelor, I could palpably feel this discomfort every time Matt James sent girls home. The girls were also very disappointed and upset and I imagine they would have trouble empathizing with Matt’s position.

Perspective-taking is important throughout the relationship as well. Understanding your partner’s perspective is crucial for the well-being of romantic relationships (Ramezani et al. 2020). The reality TV shows take advantage of this fact by inserting uncertainty into the plots of the show. For example, in Love is Blind, the couples are engaged throughout the show and must decide at the altar whether to say I do. This creates a tension between the couples as they try to figure out what their partner is going to say when they get to the wedding. Similarly, in Married at First Sight, the couples are married and must decide at the end of the show whether to stay married or get divorced. Oftentimes you can tell who will reject their partner and who will feel blindsided by the rejection. It can still be heartbreaking to watch as someone realizes that their view of the relationship was very different from their partner’s view of the relationship. Luckily perspective-taking and empathy can be improved through Theory of Mind training as evidenced in the Ramezani et al. (2020) paper. Theory of Mind training involves teaching couples how to identify mental states so that they can learn to understand the mental states of their partners (Ramezani et al. 2020). While this would be the healthiest for these relationships, I don’t think it would not be as entertaining for the audience.

[Yufeng]

As mentioned above, romantic relationships do require high demand for perspective-taking and empathy abilities, becoming even harder when it comes to the affective forecasting part. Namely, when we have a crush on someone, whether we can accurately predict if they have similar feelings to us; or whether we can wisely step out when the others show no interest in us through their implicit cues, is very important but troublesome to us. 

We may sometimes wonder why we keep regretfully missing someone we care about in the crowds without forming a stronger bond with him/her. In the series Sex Education, which narrates a teenage boy Otis with a sex therapist mother teams up with his high school classmate Maeve to set up an underground sex therapy clinic at school, Maeve and Otis soon realize that they share far more in common than they had originally thought and secretly develop romantic feelings for one another. However, neither of them acts on their impulses out of fear that the other does not feel the same way, and they end up passing by each other while forming romantic relationships with others (watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DenrhhJkZM ). 

Whenever you encounter this kind of situation, do not overly blame yourself and regard it as common. We do desire one day we can have some magic power to predict the significant others’ feelings, which we cannot possibly get. However, there are still some ways to improve our forecasting accuracy to some extent.

Part 1: Causes

To begin with, I want to mention some of the nature behind the affective forecasting process towards the one we like. When we experience the feelings of desperately desiring someone, admittedly it is partially attributed to their physical attractiveness, personality and probably similarity and complementarity. Nevertheless, have you ever thought about the uncertainty itself of whether they like us can increase romantic attraction, which can be exemplified by an experiment, of which the female participants in the uncertain condition were most attracted to the men – even more attracted than were participants who were told that the men liked them a lot(Erin R. Whitchurch, 2011). After that, the attraction along with our perceived rarity, acting as an incentive, will influence our affective forecasting and then our motivation. 

Honestly, it interests me firstly regarding why people sometimes flinch, facing the attraction, even though performing actively can significantly increase the possibility of success. It is reminiscent of people’s fear of being rejected, rejection sensitivity, as we’ve talked about in the class. Interestingly, to dig it deeper, I found the subjective expected pleasure theory. Especially when the unobtained outcome is more desirable, the anticipated pleasure about the obtained outcome declines because people anticipate disappointment when they imagine getting the worse outcome or anticipate regret when they imagine having made the wrong choice. Moreover, as for the forecasting process, the displeasure of getting the worst of two outcomes is typically greater in magnitude than the pleasure of receiving the better outcome(Barbara A. Mellers 2001). In other words, people tend to imagine possible bad outcomes more negatively than they originally are. Along with this, the anticipated pleasure will determine our next steps of decision-making(Barbara A. Mellers 2001). 

The next question comes to what causes the misperception. The signal detection theory (SDT) describes this as the sensitivity of distinguishing sexual intent cues from friendly cues (Figure 1). Specifically, the insensitive one can perceive more overlaps between the friendly cues and sexually interested cues. It should be highlighted that these sensitivity variances are not only due to inheritable or gender differences, but also due to stimulus such as clothing style, dating variables, alcohol, attractiveness(Farris et al., 2008) etc.. According to this theory, misperception may arise from people’s different signal detection sensitivity. For instance, the insensitive one (panel a) cannot distinguish the large parts of the overlap, when dating a sensitive one (panel b). Additionally, decision criteria can also affect the outcomes (Figure 2). For instance, the liberal one (point a) may mistake some friendly cues as sexual intent cues, while the conservative one (point b) may neglect some sexual intent cues as friendly cues. This can explain why males perceive both males and females as having more sexual interest than do females – their perception thresholds are different. Evolutionary theorists have suggested that men’s reproductive goals are better achieved by over-perceiving (lower threshold) rather than underperceiving women’s level of sexual interest(Parkhill, 2015). Overall, the bias will result in the misperception and I hypothesize that the misperception outcomes will in turn influence the sensitivity due to the close relationship between rejection and self-evaluation. 

Figure 1. Normal probability distributions representing perception of friendliness and sexual interest. Panel a depicts the perceptual distributions of an individual who is relatively insensitive to the difference between friendliness and sexual interest. Panel b depicts the perceptual distributions of a more sensitive individual(Farris et al., 2008). 

Figure 2. Normal probability distributions representing perception of friendliness and sexual interest. Decision criterion points are depicted to illustrate decisional bias. Point ‘A’ represents a liberal criterion; point ‘B’ represents a conservative criterion(Farris et al., 2008).

Part 2: Solutions

Even though it is pretty hard to maintain accurate affective forecasting, we still can figure out some possible solutions based on those findings. For instance, we should know clearly the uncertainty feelings can give us certain kinds of illusions, to avoid suffering from obsessive love disorder. 

Plus, we should consider the possible effects of SDT if we always step into misperception. To be more specific, we should deliberately know more about others’ perspectives, especially the significant other you are dating with. According to the research, even though people can more accurately predict their affective reactions to a future event when they know how a neighbor in their social network reacted to the event than when they know about the event itself or some predictions of the observers(Gilbert et al., 2009), they are still more prone to conjure an inaccurate vision based on the presence of event information(Knowing, 2009). Thus, the takeaway is that we should forecast based on the actual feelings of surrogates currently experiencing the event or neighbors/observers’ advice. 

On top of that, despite of the subjective expected pleasure theory, we still can mentally subtract positive events to improve our affective state, according to the evidence that Internet respondents and university staff members who wrote about how they might never have met their romantic partner were more satisfied with their relationship than were those who wrote about how they did meet their partner(Koo et al., 2008).

Finally, never overlook the beneficial consequences for mood by actively engaging in positive self-representation, even to strangers, because The failure to recognize the affective benefits of putting one’s best face forward may underlie forecasting errors regarding the emotional consequences of the most common forms of social interactions(Dunn et al., 2007).

References

Barbara A. Mellers , A. P. M. (2001). Anticipated Emotions as Guides to Choice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6). 

Bohns, V. K., & DeVincent, L. A. (2019). Rejecting unwanted romantic advances is more difficult than suitors realize. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(8), 1102-1110.

Dunn, E. W., Biesanz, J. C., Human, L. J., & Finn, S. (2007, Jun). Misunderstanding the affective consequences of everyday social interactions: the hidden benefits of putting one’s best face forward. J Pers Soc Psychol, 92(6), 990-1005. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.990 

Erin R. Whitchurch, T. D. W. a. D. T. G. (2011). ”He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not . . . ”: Uncertainty Can Increase Romantic Attraction. Psychological Science(22), 172. 

Farris, C., Treat, T. A., Viken, R. J., & McFall, R. M. (2008, Jan). Sexual coercion and the misperception of sexual intent. Clin Psychol Rev, 28(1), 48-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2007.03.002 

Gilbert, D. T., Killingsworth, M. A., Eyre, R. N., & Wilson, T. D. (2009, Mar 20). The surprising power of neighborly advice. Science, 323(5921), 1617-1619. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1166632 

Knowing, M. I. v. Y. F. C. P. A. F. B. I. B. (2009). My Imagination vs. Your Feelings: Can Personal Affective Forecasts Be Improved By Knowing. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 15(4), 351-360. 

Koo, M., Algoe, S. B., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008, Nov). It’s a wonderful life: mentally subtracting positive events improves people’s affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts. J Pers Soc Psychol, 95(5), 1217-1224. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013316 

Parkhill, A. J. J.-T. A. A. M. R. (2015). Why Do Some Men Misperceive Women’s Sexual Intentions More Frequently Than Others Do? An Application of the Confluence Model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 

Ramezani, A., Ghamari, M., Jafari, A., & Aghdam, G. F. (2020). The effectiveness of a Theory of Mind (ToM) training program in promoting empathy between married couples. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 19(1), 1-25.