Search

Supplemental Material for Reciprocal Self-Disclosure: Although Respondents are Reluctant to Steal the Spotlight, Self-Disclosers Feel Validated, Understood, and Cared for when Respondents Share Comparable Experiences by Zachary A. Reese and Kristin Orrach in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

When people self-disclose positive or negative experiences, should we share our own relevant experiences? Or should we avoid stealing the spotlight? In this preregistration, we propose Study 4 of a four-study paper. Prolific participants (N = 701) will recall either positive or negative past self-disclosures, indicate whether their conversation partner used reciprocal self-disclosure (Yes/No), and evaluate their conversation partner’s responsiveness with a three-item responsiveness measure (Laurenceau et al., 1998). With this study, we aim to replicate effects from our prior, more tightly controlled studies in a more naturalistic context.

People compare themselves to other people every day (B. P. Buunk et al., 2005; Faelens et al., 2021; Pinkus et al., 2008; Wheeler & Miyake, 1992). Sometimes people outperform others (i.e., make downward comparisons), and other times they are outperformed by others (i.e., make upward comparisons). How do these comparisons make people feel? Past research suggests relationship closeness is an important moderator of feelings about social comparisons. Yet, exactly how closeness moderates these feelings is unclear. Some studies suggest people feel particularly negatively about upward comparisons to close others and particularly positively about downward comparisons to close others; other studies show the reverse. Two factors may underlie this divide. First, past studies have measured and manipulated closeness in inconsistent ways. Second, responses to social comparisons may be heterogeneous as a function of individual differences such as agentic and communal values, avoidant and anxious attachment, trait self-esteem, and social comparison orientation. In this dissertation, I examine how people feel about social comparisons to highly close (“identity”), somewhat close (“unit”), and not at all close (“non-unit”) targets, and whether the aforementioned individual differences moderate feelings across and within these relationship types. Participants (N = 512 Prolific workers) completed individual difference measures and described important upward and downward comparisons to one of the three relationship types. After describing each comparison, they completed various outcome measures including explicit and implicit positive and negative affect, state closeness, and state self-esteem. Results show that people generally felt more positively about downward comparisons than upward comparisons. However, this effect was smaller in closer relationships because people felt more positively about upward comparisons to close (“identity”) relationship targets versus less close (“unit,” “non-unit”) targets. Closeness did not moderate responses to downward comparisons. Across relationship types, each of the examined individual differences predicted feelings about downward versus upward comparison. Namely, the people who felt more positively about downward comparisons than upward comparisons tended to score higher in agentic values, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, and social comparison orientation, and lower in communal values and trait self-esteem. These individual differences were often stronger predictors of feelings about comparisons in close (“identity”) relationships than in less close (“unit,” “non-unit”) relationships. Taken together, these findings suggest that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, “How does social comparison make people feel?” To understand how people feel about social comparisons, we have to understand their personalities and relationships.

Prejudice against people of color, women, and senior citizens manifests in inequitable treatment of these populations, among others. While curing the world of prejudice is perhaps too ambitious a goal for the humble psychologist, understanding precisely how prejudice leads to discrimination – and whether one might undermine that process – is an important first step on this scientific journey. Such was the goal of my research lab at the University of Strasbourg in France, where we investigated the sinister role cognitive automaticity played in the exhibition of prejudice. Building on research which showed that mindfulness practitioners exhibit less discriminatory behavior toward people with physical disabilities, we aimed to identify precisely why mindfulness practice was so beneficial, hypothesizing that such was an effect of “de-automatization.” In other words, it is not simply the case that mindfulness practitioners are less bigoted, but rather that they are better equipped to override the force of prejudice via enhanced cognitive control, namely executive functions., http://blogs.goucher.edu/verge/reduire-les-attitudes-discriminatoires-par-la-pratique-de-la-meditation-le-role-des-fonctions-executives/