How Does Surgeons' Autonomic Physiology Vary Intraoperatively?: A Real-time Study of Cardiac Reactivity.

OBJECTIVE: To measure the physiological responses of surgical team members under varying levels of intraoperative risk. BACKGROUND: Measurement of intraoperative physiological responses provides insight into how operation complexity, phase of surgery, and surgeon seniority impact stress. METHODS: Autonomic nervous system responses (interbeat intervals, IBIs) were measured continuously during different surgical operations of various complexity. The study investigated whether professional role (eg attending surgeon), operative risk (high vs. low), and type of primary operator (attending surgeon vs. resident) impacted IBI reactivity. Physiological synchrony captured the degree of correspondence between individuals' physiological responses at any given time point. RESULTS: A total of 10,005 observations of IBI reactivity were recorded in 26 participants during 16 high-risk (renal transplant and laparoscopic donor nephrectomy) and low-risk (arteriovenous fistula formation) operations. Attending surgeons showed greater IBI reactivity (faster heart rate) than residents and nurses during high-risk operations and while actively operating (Ps<0.001). Residents showed lower reactivity during high-risk (relative to low-risk) operations (P<0.001) and similar reactivity regardless of whether they or the attending surgeon was operating (P=0.10). Nurses responded similarly during low-risk and high-risk operations (P=0.102) but were more reactive when the resident was operating compared to when the attending surgeon was the primary operator (P<0.001). In high-risk operations, attending surgeons had negative physiological covariation with residents and nurses (P<0.001). In low-risk operations, only attending surgeons and nurses were synchronized (P<0.001). CONCLUSION: Attending surgeons' physiological responses were well-calibrated to operative demands. Residents' and nurses' responses were not callibrated to the same extent. This suggests that risk sensitivity is an adaptive response to stress that surgeons acquire.

Conservatives negatively evaluate counterstereotypical people to maintain a sense of certainty.

People frequently use physical appearance stereotypes to categorize individuals when their group membership is not directly observable. Recent research indicates that political conservatives tend to use such stereotypes more than liberals do because they express a greater desire for certainty and order. In the present research, we found that conservatives were also more likely to negatively evaluate and distribute fewer economic resources to people who deviate from the stereotypes of their group. This occurred for people belonging to both preexisting and novel groups, regardless of whether the stereotypes were real or experimentally fabricated. Critically, conservatives only negatively evaluated counterstereotypical people when the stereotypes were functional-that is, when they expected that they would need to use the stereotypes at a later point to categorize individuals into groups. Moreover, increasing liberals' desire for certainty led them to negatively evaluate counterstereotypical people just like conservatives did. Thus, conservatives are not only more likely to use stereotypes than are liberals, but are especially likely to negatively evaluate counterstereotypical people to organize the social world with greater certainty.

Contagious Anxiety: Anxious European Americans Can Transmit Their Physiological Reactivity to African Americans.

During interracial encounters, well-intentioned European Americans sometimes engage in subtle displays of anxiety, which can be interpreted as signs of racial bias by African American partners. In the present research, same-race and cross-race stranger dyads ( N = 123) engaged in getting-acquainted tasks, during which measures of sympathetic nervous system responses (preejection period, PEP) and heart rate variability were continuously collected. PEP scores showed that African American partners had stronger physiological linkage to European American partners who evidenced greater anxiety-greater cortisol reactivity, behavioral tension, and self-reported discomfort-which suggests greater physiological responsiveness to momentary changes in partners' affective states when those partners were anxious. European Americans showed physiological linkage to African American and European American partners, but linkage did not vary as a function of their partner's anxiety. Using physiological linkage offers a novel approach to understanding how affective responses unfold during dynamic intergroup interactions.

The liberal illusion of uniqueness.

In two studies, we demonstrated that liberals underestimate their similarity to other liberals (i.e., display truly false uniqueness), whereas moderates and conservatives overestimate their similarity to other moderates and conservatives (i.e., display truly false consensus; Studies 1 and 2). We further demonstrated that a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives in the motivation to feel unique explains this ideological distinction in the accuracy of estimating similarity (Study 2). Implications of the accuracy of consensus estimates for mobilizing liberal and conservative political movements are discussed.

Stress contagion: physiological covariation between mothers and infants.

Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states that emanate from the individual and may influence others. We explored affect contagion in the context of one of the closest dyadic units, mother and infant. We initially separated mothers and infants; randomly assigned the mothers to experience a stressful positive-evaluation task, a stressful negative-evaluation task, or a nonstressful control task; and then reunited the mothers and infants. Three notable findings were obtained: First, infants' physiological reactivity mirrored mothers' reactivity engendered by the stress manipulation. Second, infants whose mothers experienced social evaluation showed more avoidance toward strangers compared with infants whose mothers were in the control condition. Third, the negative-evaluation condition, compared with the other conditions, generated greater physiological covariation in the dyads, and this covariation increased over time. These findings suggest that mothers' stressful experiences are contagious to their infants and that members of close pairs, like mothers and infants, can reciprocally influence each other's dynamic physiological reactivity.

Lost in the categorical shuffle: evidence for the social non-prototypicality of black women.

The white male norm hypothesis (Zárate & Smith, 1990) posits that White men's race and gender go overlooked as a result of their prototypical social statuses. In contrast, the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) posits that people with membership in multiple subordinate social groups experience social invisibility as a result of their non-prototypical social statuses. The present research reconciles these contradictory theories and provides empirical support for the core assumption of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis-that intersectional targets are non-prototypical within their race and gender ingroups. In a speeded categorization task, participants were slower to associate Black women versus Black men with the category "Black" and slower to associate Black women versus White women with the category "woman." We discuss the implications of this work for social categorical theory development and future intersectionality research.

Racial attitudes and visual cues in political judgments: support for Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

The present longitudinal study examined the complex role of race-including racial attitudes and visual representations of race-in White Americans' responses to Obama during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Consistent with prior research, participants who perceived Obama as darker skinned were less likely to vote for him and generally evaluated Obama less positively. It is important to note, however, that these effects were stronger among Whites with more egalitarian expressed racial attitudes. Moreover, this pattern occurred over and above effects of political orientation and remained stable over a 2-month period, including pre- and postelection. Implications of these findings for understanding the complex and persistent influence of race in politics are considered.

Physiological linkage among successful high-status women in international teams.

In contemporary society, decisions are often made by teams whose members represent different nationalities and genders. In the current work, participants from 55 countries formed groups of 3 to 4 people to select one of the 5 firms in a mock firm search. In all groups, one woman was randomly assigned to have higher status than her groupmates; she was also surreptitiously instructed to persuade her group to select one (randomly assigned) firm. We measured cardiac interbeat intervals for participants throughout the decision-making process to assess physiological linkage-the degree to which a 'sender's' physiological response predicts a 'receiver's' physiological response at a subsequent time interval. On average, high-status women were successful at persuasion. The physiological responses of successful high-status women were also predicted by the responses of their female groupmates: stronger linkage to female group members during the task was associated with success at persuading the group. Successful high-status women were also perceived as more persuasive than others in the group. This work shows that the link between status and successful persuasion generalizes to women among heterogeneous international teams. It also suggests that attention to others-often associated with physiological linkage-may be useful in persuading others during decision-making.

Emotional Empathy in the Social Regulation of Distress: A Dyadic Approach.

Although research suggests distressed individuals benefit from others' empathy, it is unclear how an individual's level of empathy influences dyadic responses during emotional situations. In the current study, female participants (N = 140; 70 dyads) were paired with a stranger. One member of each dyad (the experiencer) was randomly assigned to undergo a stressful task and disclose negative personal experiences to their partner (the listener). Experiencers paired with listeners higher in dispositional emotional empathy had less negative affect during emotional disclosure and lower sympathetic nervous system reactivity during the stressful task and disclosure. Listeners higher in emotional empathy reported more negative affect in response to their partner's distress. Furthermore, for listeners higher in emotional empathy, those who more accurately rated their partner's emotions were more physiologically influenced by their partners. Findings shed light on interpersonal functions of empathy and suggest a stranger's level of emotional empathy regulates distressed partner's emotions and physiology.

Oxytocin increases physiological linkage during group therapy for methamphetamine use disorder: a randomized clinical trial.

Patients and psychotherapists often exhibit behavioral, psychological, and physiological similarity. Here, we test whether oxytocin-a neuropeptide that can enhance expressivity and social perception-influences time-lagged "linkage" of autonomic nervous system responses among participants and facilitators during group therapy. Physiological linkage estimates (n = 949) were created from ten cohorts, each with two facilitators (n = 5) and four to six participants (n = 48), over six weekly sessions of group therapy for methamphetamine use disorder. All participants of a cohort received oxytocin or placebo intranasally in a randomized double-blind procedure before each session. Cardiac interbeat intervals (IBI) were measured continuously during sessions to estimate physiological linkage, operationalized as one cohort-mate's IBI reactivity during one minute predicting another cohort-mate's IBI reactivity during the following minute. In oxytocin cohorts, participants and facilitators experienced significant physiological linkage to their cohort-mates (i.e., their physiological responses were predicted by the prior responses of their cohort-mates) and significantly more linkage than people in placebo cohorts. Both effects occurred during the first and second sessions but not later sessions. Results suggest that oxytocin may enhance psychosocial processes often associated with linkage-such as social engagement-in groups and highlight oxytocin's potential to improve group cohesion during group therapy.Clinical Trials Registration: NCT02881177, First published on 26/08/2016.

Similarity and agreement in self-and other perception: a meta-analysis.

The authors examined the consistency of person perception in two domains: agreement (i.e., do two raters of the same person agree?) and similarity (i.e., does a perceiver view two persons as similar to one another?). In each domain, they compared self-judgments with judgments not involving the self (i.e., self-other agreement vs. consensus, in the case of agreement, and assumed similarity vs. assimilation, in the case of similarity). In a meta-analysis of 24 studies, they examined the effects of several moderating variables on each type of judgment. In general, moderators exerted similar effects irrespective of whether judgments of the self were involved. Group size did have stronger effects on self-other agreement and assumed similarity than on consensus and assimilation. The authors also present evidence that new measures of assumed similarity and self-other agreement using the Social Relations Model seem to be relatively independent of the moderators.

Controlling the uncontrolled: Are there incidental experimenter effects on physiologic responding?

The degree to which experimenters shape participant behavior has long been of interest in experimental social science research. Here, we extend this question to the domain of peripheral psychophysiology, where experimenters often have direct, physical contact with participants, yet researchers do not consistently test for their influence. We describe analytic tools for examining experimenter effects in peripheral physiology. Using these tools, we investigate nine data sets totaling 1,341 participants and 160 experimenters across different roles (e.g., lead research assistants, evaluators, confederates) to demonstrate how researchers can test for experimenter effects in participant autonomic nervous system activity during baseline recordings and reactivity to study tasks. Our results showed (a) little to no significant variance in participants' physiological reactivity due to their experimenters, and (b) little to no evidence that three characteristics of experimenters that are well known to shape interpersonal interactions-status (using five studies with 682 total participants), gender (using two studies with 359 total participants), and race (in two studies with 554 total participants)-influenced participants' physiology. We highlight several reasons that experimenter effects in physiological data are still cause for concern, including the fact that experimenters in these studies were already restricted on a number of characteristics (e.g., age, education). We present recommendations for examining and reducing experimenter effects in physiological data and discuss implications for replication.

Keep it to yourself? Parent emotion suppression influences physiological linkage and interaction behavior.

Parents can influence children's emotional responses through direct and subtle behavior. In this study we examined how parents' acute stress responses might be transmitted to their 7- to 11-year-old children and how parental emotional suppression would affect parents' and children's physiological responses and behavior. Parents and their children (N = 214; Ndyads = 107; 47% fathers) completed a laboratory visit where we initially separated the parents and children and subjected the parent to a standardized laboratory stressor that reliably activates the body's primary stress systems. Before reuniting with their children, parents were randomly assigned to either suppress their affective state-hide their emotions from their child-or to act naturally (control condition). Once reunited, parents and children completed a conflict conversation and two interaction tasks together. We measured their sympathetic nervous system (SNS) responses and observed interaction behavior. We obtained three key findings: (a) suppressing mothers' SNS responses influenced their child's SNS responses; (b) suppressing fathers' SNS responses were influenced by their child's SNS responses; and (c) dyads with suppressing parents appeared less warm and less engaged during interaction than control dyads. These findings reveal that parents' emotion regulation efforts impact parent-child stress transmission and compromise interaction quality. Discussion focuses on short-term and long-term consequences of parental emotion regulation and children's social-emotional development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Relational anxiety in interracial interactions.

Most of the research on intergroup anxiety has examined the impact of people's own anxiety on their own outcomes. In contrast, we show that in intergroup interactions, one's partner's anxiety is just as important as one's own anxiety (if not more important). Using a diary study among college roommates, we show that partners' anxiety predicts respondents' anxiety across time on a daily basis, as well as respondents' interest in living together again the next year. We discuss the importance of taking a relational approach to understanding intergroup interactions.

HIV transmission risk among HIV seroconcordant and serodiscordant couples: dyadic processes of partner selection.

Selecting sex partners of the same HIV status or serosorting is a sexual risk reduction strategy used by many men who have sex with men. However, the effectiveness of serosorting for protection against HIV is potentially limited. We sought to examine how men perceive the protective benefits of factors related to serosorting including beliefs about engaging in serosorting, sexual communication, and perceptions of risk for HIV. Participants were 94 HIV negative seroconcordant (same HIV status) couples, 20 HIV serodiscordant (discrepant HIV status) couples, and 13 HIV positive seroconcordant (same HIV status) couples recruited from a large gay pride festival in the southeastern US. To account for nonindependence found in the couple-level data, we used multilevel modeling which includes dyad in the analysis. Findings demonstrated that participants in seroconcordant relationships were more likely to believe that serosorting reduces concerns for condom use. HIV negative participants in seroconcordant relationships viewed themselves at relatively low risk for HIV transmission even though monogamy within relationships and HIV testing were infrequent. Dyadic analyses demonstrated that partners have a substantial effect on an individual's beliefs and number of unprotected sex partners. We conclude that relationship partners are an important source of influence and, thus, intervening with partners is necessary to reduce HIV transmission risks.

Interracial roommate relationships: negotiating daily interactions.

Jobs, social group memberships, or living arrangements lead many people to interact every day with another person from a different racial background. Given that research has shown that interracial interactions are often stressful, it is important to know how these daily interactions unfold across time and what factors contribute to the success or failure of these interactions. Both members of same-race and mixed-race college roommate pairs completed daily questionnaires measuring their emotional experiences and their perceptions of their roommate. Results revealed that roommates in mixed-race dyads experienced less positive emotions and intimacy toward their roommates than did roommates in same-race dyads and that the experience of positive emotions declined over time for ethnic minority students with White roommates. Mediation analyses showed that the negative effects of roommate race were mediated by the level of intimacy-building behaviors performed by the roommate. Implications for future research and university policies are discussed.

Bringing close others to the emergency department for an acute coronary event is associated with increased patient perception of threat.

OBJECTIVE: Relationship quality is one of the most consistent psychosocial predictors of physical and mental health. Yet, little research examines relationship types or support within the immediate context of acute health events. We tested the unexplored role that close others play in patients' experience of threat during evaluation for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in the Emergency Department (ED), as well as the indirect effect of close others on ACS-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). METHOD: Participants were 871 patients evaluated for ACS at an urban academic ED (60.86 years old; 54.08% male; 56.37% Hispanic, 19.86% Black, 16.65% White). Threat perceptions were assessed in-ED and median 3 days later. ACS-induced PTSD was assessed median 41 days later using the PTSD checklist cued to a specific stressor. Non-overlapping categories were created representing close others in the ED (i.e., spouse/significant other, child), non-close others (e.g., neighbor), or no one. RESULTS: Patients who brought close others recalled experiencing greater threat in the ED: vs. no one, b = 0.11, p = .072; vs. non-close others, b = 0.16, p = .030. There was no direct effect of close others on ACS-induced PTSD; however, recalled threat mediated the effect of close others on development of ACS-induced PTSD, ps < .05. CONCLUSIONS: Close others were associated with recalling greater threat during ED evaluation, which predicted ACS-induced PTSD. ACS-induced PTSD is associated with medication nonadherence, event recurrence, and mortality, highlighting the need to develop a greater understanding of the impact stressful medical environments have on patients and close others.

The fragility of intergroup relations: divergent effects of delayed audiovisual feedback in intergroup and intragroup interaction.

Intergroup interactions between racial or ethnic majority and minority groups are often stressful for members of both groups; however, the dynamic processes that promote or alleviate tension in intergroup interaction remain poorly understood. Here we identify a behavioral mechanism-response delay-that can uniquely contribute to anxiety and promote disengagement from intergroup contact. Minimally acquainted White, Black, and Latino participants engaged in intergroup or intragroup dyadic conversation either in real time or with a subtle temporal disruption (1-s delay) in audiovisual feedback. Whereas intergroup dyads reported greater anxiety and less interest in contact after engaging in delayed conversation than after engaging in real-time conversation, intragroup dyads reported less anxiety in the delay condition than they did after interacting in real time. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding intergroup communication and social dynamics and for promoting positive intergroup contact.

A guide for the estimation of gender and sexual orientation effects in dyadic data: an actor-partner interdependence model approach.

The study of gender differences is a pervasive topic in relationship science. However, there are several neglected issues in this area that require special care and attention. First, there is not just one gender effect but rather three gender effects: gender of the respondent, gender of the partner, and the gender of respondent by gender of the partner interaction. To separate these three effects, the dyadic research design should ideally have three different types of dyads: male-female, male-male, and female-female. Second, the analysis of gender differences in relational studies could benefit from the application of recent advances in the analysis of dyadic data, most notably the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Third, relationship researchers need to consider the confounding, mediating, and moderating effects of demographic variables. We use the American Couples (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983) data set to illustrate these points.

Physiological linkage to an interaction partner is negatively associated with stability in sympathetic nervous system responding.

Recent work has demonstrated that people can be influenced by the physiological states of their interaction partners, showing physiological linkage to them from one moment to the next. In a study of unacquainted dyads who interacted for 30 min (ndyads = 47), we examine the novel question: Are people who show physiological linkage to their partners in sympathetic nervous system responding also less stable in their own responses? Understanding this relationship has important implications for how social relationships impact affective functioning and health. Results using multilevel modeling demonstrated that the within-person correlation between linkage and stability was negative-the more dyad members were physiologically influenced by their interaction partners, the less stable they were in their own physiological responding. This work shows that physiological linkage can come at a cost to people's own stability, meaning our physiological states are more vulnerable to social influence than previously thought.