Did smartphones enhance or diminish well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Introduction: As smartphones have become increasingly integrated into people's lives, researchers have attempted to answer whether they are beneficial or detrimental to well-being. Of particular interest to the current study is the role that smartphones played during the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Methods: In an intensive longitudinal study, we explore how varying uses of smartphones relate to well-being using the Displacement-Interference-Complementarity framework. Results: Consistent with pre-pandemic research, we show that people felt better, calmer, and more energetic when they used their phones more for complementary purposes (i.e., to access information, entertainment, and connection not otherwise available). In contrast to most pre-pandemic research, however, we find no evidence that any type of phone use predicted lower well-being during the pandemic. Discussion: Overall, this study lends support to the idea that smartphones can be beneficial for individuals, particularly during times when face-to-face interaction is limited.

Do People Know How Their Romantic Partner Views Their Emotions? Evidence for Emotion Meta-Accuray and Links with Momentary Romantic Relationship Quality.

Do people know how their romantic partner (i.e., the perceiver) views the self's (i.e., the metaperceiver's) emotions, displaying emotion meta-accuracy? Is it relevant to relationship quality? Using a sample of romantic couples (Ncouples = 189), we found evidence for two types of emotion meta-accuracy across three different interactions: (a) normative emotion meta-accuracy, knowing perceivers' impressions of metaperceivers' emotions that are in line with how the average person may feel, and (b) distinctive emotion meta-accuracy, knowing perceivers' unique impression of metaperceivers' emotions. Furthermore, across interactions, normative emotion meta-accuracy was positively related to momentary relationship quality for metaperceivers and perceivers and this link was especially strong in the conflict interaction. Distinctive emotion meta-accuracy was negatively related to momentary relationship quality across interactions for perceivers and in the conflict interaction for metaperceivers. Overall, it may be adaptive for metaperceivers to accurately infer perceivers' normative impressions and to remain blissfully unaware of their unique impressions.

Please and no, thank you: politeness norms alter compliance more when refusing than when making or acquiescing to a request.

Research indicates that using polite words does not enhance compliance. However, this work focuses on requests, not responses, which also are compliance-relevant behaviors that might depend on politeness. In 12 experiments (4 preregistered), we examined the role of politeness in compliance by manipulating the politeness of people's requests and responses. Polite requests increased compliance relative to what people wanted to do, d = .95. Adding a polite word to a request, however, did not significantly increase compliance, d = .11. In terms of responses, polite acceptances did not increase compliance, d = .08, but polite declines mattered. Respondents were sooner to decline a request if they could reply with "No, thank you" rather than a less polite "No," d = -.34. These data indicate that politeness norms shape compliance, but the key norm might not be whether people comply with polite others, but rather whether people can politely decline the request.

Social Media Use Predicts Greater Liking in In-Person Initial Interactions.

Does how people generally engage with their online social networks relate to offline initial social interactions? Using a large-scale study of first impressions (N = 806, Ndyad = 4,565), we examined how different indicators of social media use relate to the positivity of dyadic in-person first impressions, from the perspective of the participants and their interaction partners. Many forms of social media use (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, passive) were associated with liking and being liked by others more, although some forms of use (e.g., Facebook, active) were not associated with liking others or being liked by others. Furthermore, most associations held controlling for extraversion and narcissism. Thus, while some social media use may be generally beneficial for offline social interactions, some may be unrelated, highlighting the idea that how, rather than how much, people use social media can play a role in their offline social interactions.