Christina M. Brown

Friends With Benefits: On the Positive Consequences of Pet Ownership

Social support is critical for psychological and physical well-being, reflecting the centrality of belongingness in our lives. Human interactions often provide people with considerable social support, but can pets also fulfill ones social needs? Although there is correlational evidence that pets may help individuals facing significant life stressors, little is known about the well-being benefits of pets for everyday people. Study 1 found in a community sample that pet owners fared better on several well-being (e.g., greater self-esteem, more exercise) and individual-difference (e.g., greater conscientiousness, less fearful attachment) measures. Study 2 assessed a different community sample and found that owners enjoyed better well-being when their pets fulfilled social needs better, and the support that pets provided complemented rather than competed with human sources. Finally, Study 3 brought pet owners into the laboratory and experimentally demonstrated the ability of pets to stave off negativity caused by social rejection. In summary, pets can serve as important sources of social support, providing many positive psychological and physical benefits for their owners.

The Simple Life: On the Benefits of Low Self-Complexity

This article examines the spillover amplification hypothesis, which proposes that because people lower in self-complexity experience stronger responses to life events they will show relatively better well-being in the presence of positive factors (e.g., better social support) and relatively poorer well-being in the presence of negative factors (e.g., a history of negative experiences). Across three studies, support for spillover amplification was found. Specifically, people lower in self-complexity revealed greater self-esteem, less depression, and fewer illnesses when they had greater social support (Study 1) and more desirable personality characteristics (Study 2), yet they had poorer well-being if they had a history of many negative life events (Study 3). Thus, how ones self-concept is represented in memory moderates the relationship between many well-established factors and well-being.

Self-compassion, empathy, and helping intentions

The trait of self-compassion has three components: (1) kindness toward oneself when facing pain or failure; (2) perceiving one’s experiences as part of a larger human experience rather than feeling isolated; and (3) holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness. The present research explores if self-compassion predicts willingness to help others and empathy for others in need of help. Study 1 found that self-compassion predicted greater willingness to help a hypothetical person while simultaneously reducing empathy for that person. Study 2 used a more nuanced measure of empathy and found that self-compassion was only related to feeling less personal distress in response to someone else’s emergency. In addition, in Study 2, self-compassion only predicted greater helping intentions when the target was at fault for the emergency. Lastly, both self-compassion and empathy were uniquely related to participants’ willingness to help an individual in need.

Effort or Escape: Self-concept Structure Determines Self-regulatory Behavior

The current research examined the interaction between self-complexity, affect, and perceived goal attainability on self-regulation. Participants received failure feedback about their performance and were given the opportunity to reduce this discrepancy through practice. Greater self-complexity was associated with greater practice, regardless of affect and perceived effectiveness of practice. Lower self-complexity was only associated with greater practice when participants experienced negative affect and believed practice was effective at improving performance. These results suggest that those greater in self-complexity self-regulate when external cues signal the presence of a self-discrepancy, whereas those lower in self-complexity self-regulate when negative affect signals the presence of a discrepancy. However, when the discrepancy cannot be reduced directly, lower self-complexity individuals escape the situation to avoid negative affect.

Never Let Them See You Cry Self-Presentation as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Exclusion and Self-Esteem

A debate exists concerning whether exclusion harms self-esteem. We hypothesized that social exclusion does harm self-esteem, but that this effect is evident only when self-presentational concerns to “appear fine” are minimal or people are unable to alter their report of self-esteem. In the first three studies, participants’ explicit and implicit self-esteem were measured following an exclusion or comparison condition where self-presentational pressures were likely high. Because respondents can easily control their reports on explicit measures, but not on implicit ones, we hypothesized that exclusion would result in lower self-esteem only when implicit measures were used. Results confirmed this hypothesis. In the final study, self-presentational concerns were directly manipulated. When self-presentational concerns were high, only implicit self-esteem was lowered by exclusion. But, when such concerns were low, this impact on self-esteem was seen on implicit and explicit measures. Implications for the sociometer hypothesis and the recent self-esteem debate are discussed.

Social Inclusion Facilitates Interest in Mating

According to a life history framework, variability across an organisms lifespan necessitates trade-offs between behaviors that promote survival and those that promote reproduction. Adopting this perspective, the current work investigates how social acceptance or rejection can influence the differential priority placed on mating and survival motivations. Because social acceptance is an important survival-related cue (i.e., group living provides protection from predators and sharing of resources), we predicted that recent experiences of social acceptance should increase peoples motivation to mate. In support of this prediction, Study 1 found that participants who were included in an electronic ball-toss game showed more interest in mating (regardless of the potential mates attractiveness) than excluded and control participants. In Study 2, participants who recalled an experience of social acceptance viewed sexual affiliation as more important than did participants in rejection and control conditions. Collectively, these results suggest an adaptive trade-off such that interest in mating increases upon satiation of affiliative needs. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that the experience of social acceptance can have unique effects and should not be treated as the sole comparison condition when studying social rejection.

Discrepancy-based and anticipated emotions in behavioral self-regulation.

Discrepancies between ones current and desired states evoke negative emotions, which presumably guide self-regulation. In the current work we evaluated the function of discrepancy-based emotions in behavioral self-regulation. Contrary to classic theories of self-regulation, discrepancy-based emotions did not predict the degree to which people engaged in self-regulatory behavior. Instead, expectations about how future self-discrepancies would make one feel (i.e., anticipated emotions) predicted self-regulation. However, anticipated emotions were influenced by previous discrepancy-based emotional experiences, suggesting that the latter do not directly motivate self-regulation but rather guide expectations. These findings are consistent with the perspective that emotions do not necessarily direct immediate behavior, but rather have an indirect effect by guiding expectations, which in turn predict goal-directed action.

Personal, Interpersonal, and Situational Influences on Behavioral Self-Handicapping

ABSTRACT This study explored the combined effects of personal factors (participant sex), interpersonal factors (experimenter sex), and situational factors (performance feedback) on two forms of behavioral self-handicapping. Participants received non-contingent success or failure feedback concerning their performance on a novel ability and were given the opportunity to self-handicap before performing again. Behavioral self-handicapping took the form of (a) exerting less practice effort (practice) or (b) choosing a performance-debilitating tape (choice). Men practiced least after failure feedback and chose a debilitating tape if they were interacting with a female experimenter. Generally, across all participants in both choice and practice conditions, high performance concern and the presence of a male experimenter led to the most self-handicapping. Results are interpreted in terms of self-presentational concerns that emphasize a desire to impress or an awareness of the female or male experimenters acceptance of self-handicappers.

Social exclusion and female mating behavior: rejected women show strategic enhancement of short-term mating interest.

Because cost asymmetries in sexual reproduction have historically enabled women to exchange sexual access for other resources, including social resources, we tested the possibility that social exclusion would lead women to display an elevated preference for short-term mating strategies in the service of reaffiliation. In Study 1, women were given false feedback to manipulate social inclusion or exclusion prior to indicating their endorsement of short and long-term mating behaviors. Socially excluded women indicated greater interest in short-term mating and reduced interest in long-term mating. In Study 2, women wrote about a social inclusion, social exclusion, or control experience and then indicated their preference for different male body types. Women in the social exclusion condition preferred more muscular male partners – a pattern of preference typical of short-term mating – than women in the other conditions. Collectively, these results are consistent with a social exchange theory of womens sexual behavior following social exclusion.

Social Inclusion Facilitates Risky Mating Behavior in Men

Although past research has reliably established unique effects of social exclusion on human cognition and behavior, the current research focuses on the unique effects of social inclusion. Recent evidence indicates that social inclusion leads to enhanced prioritization of reproductive interests. The current study extends these findings by showing that the pursuit of these inclusion-induced reproductive goals occurs in sex-specific ways. Across three experiments, social inclusion led men, but not women, to endorse riskier, more aggressive mating strategies compared to control and socially excluded participants. Specifically, included men were more likely to endorse sexual aggression (Experiment 1), high-risk mate poaching behaviors (Experiment 2), and high-risk mate retention tactics (Experiment 3). These results demonstrate that the experience of social inclusion can affect sex-differentiated preferences for risky mating strategies.