Megan K. McCarty

Emotional contagion of anger is automatic: An evolutionary explanation

Emotional contagion--the transfer of emotions between people--is thought to occur automatically. We test the prediction, based on evolutionary psychology, that negative, threat-related emotions transfer more automatically than positive emotions. We introduce a new paradigm for investigating emotional contagion where participants are exposed to videos of faces that morph from neutral to angry or happy expressions. Participants watched these videos under high or low cognitive load. Participants reported more happiness in the happy condition than the anger condition and more anger in the anger condition than the happy condition, supporting our new paradigm. Participants in the happy condition were significantly happier under low compared with high load. Participants were equally angry in high and low load conditions.

When door holding harms: gender and the consequences of non-normative help

This work explored the potential negative consequences of unexpected help. A behavioral observation and a survey study found that men are unlikely to have the door held open for them in a chivalrous manner, whereby they walk through the door before the person helping them does. In an experimental field study, passersby were randomly assigned to experience this type of door-holding help or not. Males who had the door held for them in this manner by a male confederate reported lower self-esteem and self-efficacy than males who did not have the door held for them. Females were unaffected by door-holding condition. These results demonstrate negative consequences of seemingly innocuous but unexpected helping behavior that violates gender norms.

Interaction in Small Groups

This chapter reviews both current and classic research on small group interaction. The chapter begins with a brief review of the primary methods used to study small groups. This is followed by a discussion of research on power, status, and leadership, reviewing research on role differentiation, the development of status structures, and theories of leadership. A discussion of inclusion and exclusion processes in groups follows, including research on cohesiveness and social identity versus ostracism, social rejection, and schisms in groups, as well as a discussion of majority and minority influence. The final content section reviews motivation and coordination processes in groups, including social facilitation and social loafing, transactive memory systems, and information exchange. In concluding statements, we note that research on small groups has moved beyond the previous disciplinary boundaries of social psychology to fields such as organizational behavior, education, and industrial engineering, and this move has added topics of interest to the more traditional social psychological and sociological explorations of status and power.

The Cognitive Costs of the Counter-Stereotypic: Gender, Emotion, and Social Presence

We explored the concurrent and subsequent cognitive consequences of the experience of gender counter-stereotypic emotions. Participants experiencing gender counter-stereotypic emotions were expected to display less emotional expression and demonstrate poorer cognitive performance when in the public condition than when in the private condition. Seventy-one women and 66 men completed an anger- or sadness-inducing task privately or publicly. Participants completed two cognitive tasks: one during and one after the emotion-induction task. Participants exhibited poorer performance during and following gender counter-stereotypic emotions only in the public condition. Direct evidence for greater suppression of gender counter-stereotypic emotions in the public conditions was not obtained. These results suggest that the same public emotional events may be differentially cognitively depleting depending on one’s gender, potentially contributing to the perpetuation of stereotypes.

With a little help from your friend: Transactive memory in best friendships

Transactive memory is a system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information between people, where each person has knowledge of the other’s memory. Through two studies, we assessed whether transactive memory occurs in best friendships (N = 682). Results showed that transactive memory systems (TMSs) do exist in best friendships. Importantly, stronger TMSs are associated with higher friendship quality (satisfaction and commitment), and their strength is related to different friendship characteristics (e.g., trust). A novel method for assessing TMS structure was developed. Mixed-gender friendships were associated with more differentiated structures (different knowledge), and friendships higher in inclusion of other in the self were associated with more integrated structures (similar knowledge). These studies have implications for the quality and operation of friendships.

When inclusion hurts: The role of valence in moderating the effects of being in the loop

ABSTRACT We explored conditions under which being in the loop may be an undesirable experience. We tested whether information valence moderates the effects of being in versus out of the loop in four studies. In a pilot study, participants imagined positive and negative events and indicated the degree to which they would like to know this information. In Study 1, participants imagined being in or out of the loop on positive or negative information and indicated how they would feel. In Study 2, participants relived an actual experience when they were in or out of the loop on positive or negative information. In Study 3, participants were in or out of the loop on positive or negative information needed for an upcoming task. These studies provide evidence that being in the loop on negative information can be an unenjoyable experience, threatening fundamental needs and increasing negative affect.