People perceive parasocial relationships to be effective at fulfilling emotional needs.

People regularly form one-sided, "parasocial" relationships (PSRs) with targets incapable of returning the sentiment. Past work has shown that people engage with PSRs to support complex psychological needs (e.g., feeling less lonely after watching a favorite movie). However, we do not know how people rate these relationships relative to traditional two-sided relationships in terms of their effectiveness in supporting psychological needs. The current research (Ntotal = 3085) examined how PSRs help people fulfil emotion regulation needs. In Studies 1 and 2, participants felt that both their YouTube creator and non-YouTube creator PSRs were more effective at fulfilling their emotional needs than in-person acquaintances, albeit less effective than close others. In Study 3, people with high self-esteem thought PSRs would be responsive to their needs when their sociometer was activated, just as they do with two-sided relationships.

Even minimal student-instructor interactions may increase enjoyment in the classroom: Preliminary evidence that greeting your students may have benefits even if you can't remember their names.

Students value rapport with their instructors, and benefit from interacting with them; student-instructor contact is related to persistence, satisfaction, grades, etc. Instructors who wish to build rapport with their students are often encouraged to address their students by name. However, learning names is difficult for many people, and when classes are large, or team-teaching restricts the time spent with a group of students, it is even more difficult. Outside the classroom, even minimal social interactions with strangers (e.g., making eye contact, having a brief chat) can increase feelings of connection. Could minimal social interactions between instructors and students also have benefits? A rapport-building intervention was tested on students in three classes taught by two instructors (N = 352). Compared to students in a control condition and students who were assigned to a greeting condition (a minimal interaction designed to enable instructors to recognize students' faces) reported a stronger relationship with the instructor, and greater relationship strength predicted greater interest/enjoyment, relatedness and belonging. This novel intervention produced similar results to a more traditional nameboard condition, designed to enable instructors to learn students' names. These findings raise the intriguing possibility that even when instructors struggle to learn students' names, they can still build rapport with their students by simply greeting them as they enter class.

Buffering the effects of bad news: Exposure to others' kindness alleviates the aversive effects of viewing others' acts of immorality.

Negatively valenced news dominates the press, with stories of death and destruction gaining significant traction while also negatively impacting people's mental health and perceptions of humanity. Given that horrific acts happen and need to be reported, we examined if news stories featuring others' kindness could undo the aversive effects of news stories featuring others' immorality. In Studies 1a-d we tested whether media exposure to the acts of kindness that occurred in response to a terrorist attack could alleviate the aversive effects of media exposure to the terrorist attack. In Study 2, we examined whether, more generally, the aversive effects of news stories featuring immorality (e.g., homicide, paedophilia, bullying) could be alleviated through news stories featuring acts of kindness (e.g., volunteering, philanthropy, caring for the homeless). In Studies 1 and 2, we found that participants exposed to others' immorality and then others' kindness suffered from less aversive changes to their mood, experienced greater levels of elevation and were more inclined to believe in the goodness of others, than participants exposed only to others' immorality. Given this, we suggest there is merit in journalists shining a light on others' kindness if people's affective well-being and belief in the goodness of humanity is to remain intact.

Parasocial relationships on YouTube reduce prejudice towards mental health issues.

Intergroup contact has long been established as a way to reduce prejudice among society, but in-person interventions can be resource intensive and limited in reach. Parasocial relationships (PSRs) might navigate these problems by reaching large audiences with minimal resources and have been shown to help reduce prejudice in an extended version of contact theory. However, previous studies have shown inconsistent success. We assessed whether parasocial interventions reduce prejudice towards people with mental health issues by first creating a new PSR with a YouTube creator disclosing their experiences with borderline personality disorder. Our intervention successfully reduced explicit prejudice and intergroup anxiety. We corroborated these effects through causal analyses, where lower prejudice levels were mediated by the strength of parasocial bond. Preliminary findings suggest that this lower prejudice is sustained over time. Our results support the parasocial contact hypothesis and provide an organic method to passively reduce prejudice on a large scale.

Brief exposure to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: Doom-scrolling has negative emotional consequences, but kindness-scrolling does not.

People often seek out information as a means of coping with challenging situations. Attuning to negative information can be adaptive because it alerts people to the risks in their environment, thereby preparing them for similar threats in the future. But is this behaviour adaptive during a pandemic when bad news is ubiquitous? We examine the emotional consequences of exposure to brief snippets of COVID-related news via a Twitter feed (Study 1), or a YouTube reaction video (Study 2). Compared to a no-information exposure group, consumption of just 2-4 minutes of COVID-related news led to immediate and significant reductions in positive affect (Studies 1 and 2) and optimism (Study 2). Exposure to COVID-related kind acts did not have the same negative consequences, suggesting that not all social media exposure is detrimental for well-being. We discuss strategies to counteract the negative emotional consequences of exposure to negative news on social media.

Correction: Women's visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743.].

Women's visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men.

The attrition of women in academic careers is a major concern, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics subjects. One factor that can contribute to the attrition is the lack of visible role models for women in academia. At early career stages, the behaviour of the local community may play a formative role in identifying ingroup role models, shaping women's impressions of whether or not they can be successful in academia. One common and formative setting to observe role models is the local departmental academic seminar, talk, or presentation. We thus quantified women's visibility through the question-asking behaviour of academics at seminars using observations and an online survey. From the survey responses of over 600 academics in 20 countries, we found that women reported asking fewer questions after seminars compared to men. This impression was supported by observational data from almost 250 seminars in 10 countries: women audience members asked absolutely and proportionally fewer questions than male audience members. When asked why they did not ask questions when they wanted to, women, more than men, endorsed internal factors (e.g., not working up the nerve). However, our observations suggest that structural factors might also play a role; when a man was the first to ask a question, or there were fewer questions, women asked proportionally fewer questions. Attempts to counteract the latter effect by manipulating the time for questions (in an effort to provoke more questions) in two departments were unsuccessful. We propose alternative recommendations for creating an environment that makes everyone feel more comfortable to ask questions, thus promoting equal visibility for women and members of other less visible groups.

The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?

Having conversations with new people is an important and rewarding part of social life. Yet conversations can also be intimidating and anxiety provoking, and this makes people wonder and worry about what their conversation partners really think of them. Are people accurate in their estimates? We found that following interactions, people systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company, an illusion we call the liking gap. We observed the liking gap as strangers got acquainted in the laboratory, as first-year college students got to know their dorm mates, and as formerly unacquainted members of the general public got to know each other during a personal development workshop. The liking gap persisted in conversations of varying lengths and even lasted for several months, as college dorm mates developed new relationships. Our studies suggest that after people have conversations, they are liked more than they know.

Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity.

Physical activity, both exercise and non-exercise, has far-reaching benefits to physical health. Although exercise has also been linked to psychological health (e.g., happiness), little research has examined physical activity more broadly, taking into account non-exercise activity as well as exercise. We examined the relationship between physical activity (measured broadly) and happiness using a smartphone application. This app has collected self-reports of happiness and physical activity from over ten thousand participants, while passively gathering information about physical activity from the accelerometers on users' phones. The findings reveal that individuals who are more physically active are happier. Further, individuals are happier in the moments when they are more physically active. These results emerged when assessing activity subjectively, via self-report, or objectively, via participants' smartphone accelerometers. Overall, this research suggests that not only exercise but also non-exercise physical activity is related to happiness. This research further demonstrates how smartphones can be used to collect large-scale data to examine psychological, behavioral, and health-related phenomena as they naturally occur in everyday life.

Talking Less during Social Interactions Predicts Enjoyment: A Mobile Sensing Pilot Study.

Can we predict which conversations are enjoyable without hearing the words that are spoken? A total of 36 participants used a mobile app, My Social Ties, which collected data about 473 conversations that the participants engaged in as they went about their daily lives. We tested whether conversational properties (conversation length, rate of turn taking, proportion of speaking time) and acoustical properties (volume, pitch) could predict enjoyment of a conversation. Surprisingly, people enjoyed their conversations more when they spoke a smaller proportion of the time. This pilot study demonstrates how conversational properties of social interactions can predict psychologically meaningful outcomes, such as how much a person enjoys the conversation. It also illustrates how mobile phones can provide a window into everyday social experiences and well-being.

Is spending money on others good for your heart?

OBJECTIVE: Does spending money on others (prosocial spending) improve the cardiovascular health of community-dwelling older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure? METHOD: In Study 1, 186 older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure participating in the Midlife in the U.S. Study (MIDUS) were examined. In Study 2, 73 older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure were assigned to spend money on others or to spend money on themselves. RESULTS: In Study 1, the more money people spent on others, the lower their blood pressure was 2 years later. In Study 2, participants who were assigned to spend money on others for 3 consecutive weeks subsequently exhibited lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to participants assigned to spend money on themselves. The magnitude of these effects was comparable to the effects of interventions such as antihypertensive medication or exercise. CONCLUSIONS: Together, these findings suggest that spending money on others shapes cardiovascular health, thereby providing a pathway by which prosocial behavior improves physical health among at-risk older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record

Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties.

Although we interact with a wide network of people on a daily basis, the social psychology literature has primarily focused on interactions with close friends and family. The present research tested whether subjective well-being is related not only to interactions with these strong ties but also to interactions with weak social ties (i.e., acquaintances). In Study 1, students experienced greater happiness and greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more classmates than usual. Broadening the scope in Studies 2A and 2B to include all daily interactions (with both strong and weak ties), we again found that weak ties are related to social and emotional well-being. The current results highlight the power of weak ties, suggesting that even social interactions with the more peripheral members of our social networks contribute to our well-being.

Predicting musically induced emotions from physiological inputs: linear and neural network models.

Listening to music often leads to physiological responses. Do these physiological responses contain sufficient information to infer emotion induced in the listener? The current study explores this question by attempting to predict judgments of "felt" emotion from physiological responses alone using linear and neural network models. We measured five channels of peripheral physiology from 20 participants-heart rate (HR), respiration, galvanic skin response, and activity in corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major facial muscles. Using valence and arousal (VA) dimensions, participants rated their felt emotion after listening to each of 12 classical music excerpts. After extracting features from the five channels, we examined their correlation with VA ratings, and then performed multiple linear regression to see if a linear relationship between the physiological responses could account for the ratings. Although linear models predicted a significant amount of variance in arousal ratings, they were unable to do so with valence ratings. We then used a neural network to provide a non-linear account of the ratings. The network was trained on the mean ratings of eight of the 12 excerpts and tested on the remainder. Performance of the neural network confirms that physiological responses alone can be used to predict musically induced emotion. The non-linear model derived from the neural network was more accurate than linear models derived from multiple linear regression, particularly along the valence dimension. A secondary analysis allowed us to quantify the relative contributions of inputs to the non-linear model. The study represents a novel approach to understanding the complex relationship between physiological responses and musically induced emotion.

It's the recipient that counts: spending money on strong social ties leads to greater happiness than spending on weak social ties.

Previous research has shown that spending money on others (prosocial spending) increases happiness. But, do the happiness gains depend on who the money is spent on? Sociologists have distinguished between strong ties with close friends and family and weak ties--relationships characterized by less frequent contact, lower emotional intensity, and limited intimacy. We randomly assigned participants to reflect on a time when they spent money on either a strong social tie or a weak social tie. Participants reported higher levels of positive affect after recalling a time they spent on a strong tie versus a weak tie. The level of intimacy in the relationship was more important than the type of relationship; there was no significant difference in positive affect after recalling spending money on a family member instead of a friend. These results add to the growing literature examining the factors that moderate the link between prosocial behaviour and happiness.