Catherine D. Rawn

Social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation

When peoples deeply ingrained need for social connection is thwarted by social exclusion, profound psychological consequences ensue. Despite the fact that social connections and consumption are central facets of daily life, little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how belongingness threats affect consumer behavior. In four experiments, we tested the hypothesis that social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation. Relative to controls, excluded participants were more likely to buy a product symbolic of group membership (but not practical or self-gift items), tailor their spending preferences to the preferences of an interaction partner, spend money on an unappealing food item favored by a peer, and report being willing to try an illegal drug, but only when doing so boosted their chances of commencing social connections. Overall, results suggest that socially excluded people sacrifice personal and financial well-being for the sake of social well-being.

People Use Self-Control to Risk Personal Harm: An Intra-Interpersonal Dilemma:

People will smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, binge eat, drink coffee, eat chili peppers, fail tests, steal, ingest illicit drugs, engage in violent and sadistic actions including killing, have sex, and seek to become HIV positive for the sake of interpersonal acceptance. The self-control for personal harm model reconceptualizes behaviors that have both urge and control components as demonstrating either successful or failed self-control, depending on the incipient urge. The model underscores the role of expected social rewards as an important incentive for which people sometimes engage in personally risky and aversive behaviors despite feeling that they would rather avoid the behaviors and attendant harm. Research from diverse perspectives converges to show that risky behaviors, which might on the surface appear to be self-control failures, can in fact require self-control exertion.

Embrace Chattering Students: They May Be Building Community and Interest in Your Class

When students chatter in class it can be disruptive, but could that chatter also have some redeeming qualities? We asked students to keep track of their social interactions in a particular class. On days when students had more social interactions than usual, they reported a greater sense of belonging, which was, in turn, related to greater class enjoyment (i.e., a within-person effect). Further, students who tended to have more social interactions than others reported a greater sense of belonging, which was, in turn, related to greater class enjoyment (i.e., a between-person effect). These results held when examining daily ratings of social interactions, belonging, and class enjoyment, and when examining overall end-of-semester ratings. Critically, higher average daily feelings of belonging mediated the effect of the number of average daily classroom interactions on students’ end-of-semester class enjoyment and marginally on grades. For educators, promoting peer-to-peer conversation may create a positive effect by which students judge the overall class experience positively.

Are Females Disinclined to Tinker in Computer Science

Our study explores the use of tinkering strategies across genders in undergraduate students of Computer Science. We present a definition and a framework for tinkering as it applies to this context, and use these to investigate how students across genders tinker with hardware and software. Our goal is to examine gender-based differences in tinkering behaviour and to discuss the meaning and implications of these differences on teaching and learning in Computer Science. We gathered data via interviews and a questionnaire and used both qualitative and quantitative methods for analysis. Our work is preliminary and suggests further areas of research in this domain.