David DeSteno - US grants

This project brings together two areas of research: intergroup cognition and emotion. The goal is to investigate how social perceivers' emotional states shape their attitudes of specific social targets in ways outside of their awareness and control. Although the past two decades have witnessed new and important insights into psychological processes underlying the form and function of stereotypes and prejudice, the role of the emotional system in shaping these phenomena has only recently been explored systematically. For example, research on the interplay between emotion and social cognition has revealed that specific emotional states (e.g., anger, sadness, happiness) have distinct effects on consciously reported beliefs and attitudes toward social groups, but it is silent about whether and how emotions shape nonconscious expressions of intergroup perception and behavior. Given that emotions exist to promote adaptive responses to important environmental challenges, it seems reasonable to expect that they should influence people's ability to appraise stimuli quickly and automatically as well as slowly and carefully. Moreover, given that membership in social groups, and the benefits and conflicts inherent in such affiliations, play a central role in human life, it is expected that appraisals of social groups are likely to be influenced by emotional states via both automatic and controlled mental processes. This project represents an initial attempt to examine the role of discrete emotions in shaping automatic and controlled intergroup cognition by examining whether specific negative emotions (e.g., anger, sadness) produce different effects on automatic intergroup attitudes and, if so, how such attitudes contrast with self-reported judgments generated after thoughtful consideration.

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): The experience of jealousy negatively impacts both psychological and physical well-being; it can result not only in acute psychological distress, but also in violence aimed at relationship partners. Given this import, much research has attempted to illuminate the functioning of jealousy. Although this work has lead to a consensus regarding the phenomenology of jealousy, agreement regarding its underlying causal mechanisms remains elusive. To date, many competing theories abound, defining jealousy variously as a type of evolved response, dispositional trait, social construction, or equity mechanism. Such lack of consensus has lead to numerous predictions and findings that are often orthogonal and has, thereby, complicated understanding of the processes that underlie jealousy. Increased clarification of these processes stands as an important goal given the negative behavioral sequelae of jealousy. To address this need, a new theory of jealousy is presented that is based on a single mediating mechanism: threat to self-esteem. This theory is capable of integrating findings stemming from the many theoretical frameworks used to study jealousy through a model able to explain both inter- and intra-individual variation in jealousy as a function of biological, dispositional, and cultural influences on self-evaluation. The purpose of the present application is to provide an initial test of the fundamental postulate of this model: threats to self-esteem mediate jealousy and its associated aggressive behaviors. Although past research has been suggestive of the mediational role played by threat to self, direct evidence of its causal influence is lacking. To investigate this question, jealousy will be induced through the development and subsequent threatening of valued working relationships involving participants and confederates acting as partners and rivals. Implicit as well as explicit measures of self-esteem will be used to assess quick and possibly unconscious alterations in self-esteem as well as to combat strategic attempts to conceal self-esteem threats. Manipulations of self-esteem will also be used in order to clarify the causal sequence. A final step will examine whether self-threats and the resulting jealousy lead to aggressive actions; measures of aggression aimed at partners and rivals will be included. Evaluation of the central postulate will provide important evidence regarding the viability of the proposed theory and shape subsequent examinations of its other tenets.

Growing consensus views emotions as psychological mechanisms designed to shape cognition and behavior to meet adaptive challenges. Although the functional role of many negative emotions in guiding behavior has been well established, similar evidence for the importance of positive emotions in shaping judgment and behavior in adaptive ways is only beginning to emerge. Emerging evidence suggests that the functions of positive emotions may focus on challenges related to social interactions (e.g., building social support, trust, status). Embracing this view, the goal of the current project is to investigate the function of gratitude as a distinct positive emotion with respect to challenges presented by social exchange and relationship building. To function adaptively, humans must regularly engage in social and economic exchange. Indeed, reciprocal giving and receiving of resources and support, whether physical, psychological, or fiscal, stands as a fundamental necessity for society to flourish. Yet for all the potential benefits one might receive through exchange or cooperative actions, decisions to engage in such behaviors are fraught with risk. Any exchange of resources entails not only the receipt, but also the offering, of goods or assistance, and in so doing, raises the potential for an asymmetric loss or gain. To explain why humans engage in such risky and/or costly exchange behaviors, psychologists have historically pointed to the development of a social norm for reciprocity. However, given the high adaptive value of social exchange, it is likely that such behaviors may also be shaped by specific emotional responses. Gratitude, in particular, has been theorized to be sensitive to cost/benefit ratios. If true, identification of gratitude as a mediator of such behaviors would be among the first evidence to demonstrate the existence of a discrete positive state designed to meet challenges associated with the building of social capital (i.e., supportive social relationships). To investigate this theory, the current project consists of five experiments in which gratitude and other positive emotions will be manipulated through interpersonal interactions. The effects of these manipulations on reciprocity (e.g., costly assistance provided to a benefactor) and measures of relationship building (e.g., trust, decreased self-interest in favor of a benefactor) will be assessed to determine the distinct role of gratitude. In addition to scientific contributions, this project will advance scientific training of undergraduate and graduate students through their participation in data collection, analysis, and presentation at scientific meetings.

This project investigates a question fundamental to social and economic interactions: Can individuals accurately assess the trustworthiness of unfamiliar others and, if so, through what mechanisms? Decisions to trust constitute a necessary element for the development of stable partnerships and societies. Yet, in the face of the many benefits that come with delayed exchanges, the decision to trust another is often a precarious one. The individual who first extends effort or provides resources is necessarily in the unenviable position of risking that the other will not reciprocate. Consequently, adaptive functioning relies not only on trusting others, but also on the ability to decide if one's partner is worthy of trust. Interestingly, however, previous efforts designed to uncover the signals of trustworthiness have been relatively unsuccessful. Building off initial research by members of the project team which demonstrates that trustworthiness of new partners can be discerned at greater than chance levels, the current project explores a novel route by which individuals may assesses the intentions of potential partners. Rather than looking for specific cues to trustworthiness in isolation, the process of assessing trust will be reconceptualized as a dynamic and iterative one. In short, the project will examine whether decisions to trust are not based simply on reading the cues of others, but rather on a dynamic "dance" whereby partners engage in nonconscious mimicry, and in so doing, are able to use perceptions of their own bodily states to infer their partner's feelings and, thereby, predict their motivations. To investigate this possibility, the research team will conduct experiments examining the interplay of emitted nonverbal signals and mimicry on decisions to trust within the context of behavioral economic games. Moreover, given that many facets of these phenomena often occur outside of human awareness and control, newly developed social robots will be used as interaction partners for humans in several experiments. These robots provide not only exacting control over relevant expressive parameters that is not possible in humans, but also the opportunity to test proposed models by allowing the robot to predict the trustworthiness of human partners. Taken as a whole, this project not only holds potential to increase understanding of the processes the underlie the initial emergence of trust-based relationships, but also to refine the physical and computational architecture that enable robots to infer motives and predict actions of humans and, thereby, increase their utility and value as interaction partners.

The goal of this collaborative research project is to examine the conditions under which incidental emotions exacerbate intergroup prejudice, stereotyping, and discriminatory behavior. In the intergroup context, incidental emotions refer to affective states that individuals may be experiencing immediately before they encounter outgroup members and whose evocation is unrelated to these groups. As such, these states are different from integral emotions, which refer to affective states that are directly evoked by an outgroup when people reflect on or encounter them. The investigators propose a theoretical model that specifies selective attention as the most likely mediator between incidental emotion and subsequent bias in judgments and action.

The primary goal of the present proposal is to test the veracity of the proposed model in three sets of studies. The first set of studies examines the selective attention hypothesis. These studies examine whether incidental emotions cause individuals to focus on members of groups stereotypically associated with the activated emotion, and whether this attention is focused particularly on emotion relevant features of the groups. These studies also examine whether incidental emotion increases emotions explicitly tied to the target group (integral emotion) and a focus on incidental emotion specific features of individuals in the target group. The second set of studies tests the hypothesis that incidental emotion affects perceptions of non-prototypical members of target groups more than prototypic members. The third set of studies focus on the behavioral consequences of incidental emotion. These studies examine the hypothesis that the effect of incidental emotions on attention, and implicit biases can cause discriminatory behaviors. Importantly, this project will build scientific infrastructure by strengthening collaborations between two labs with different expertise: the study of emotion and implicit social cognition. This project will also provide many opportunities for members of underrepresented minorities to be trained in scientific research.

This project is leveraging emerging technologies in social robotics with recent findings from social, developmental, and cognitive psychology to design, implement, and evaluate a new generation of robots that is capable of interacting with and instructing young learners (ages 3 through 6) in a truly social way. The robot incorporates signals that the mind implicitly uses to ascertain another's intentions, motivations, and affiliations (e.g., motor mimicry and synchrony, affective cues, gaze direction), making it capable of serving as a true embodiment of a human instructor. The robotic platform can be controlled remotely, through a direct and proximate connection or a remote, Internet-based operator interface. As such, the system can be placed in several different environments, ranging from a child's home to medical areas where issues of mobility or immunosuppression make it difficult for direct interaction with instructors. Research is aimed at better understanding children's concepts of robot mind and of robots as agents, uncovering mental operations behind learning new words, and adding to what is known about the added value (if any) of non-verbal utterances to understanding, communication, and collaboration.

Emerging research has identified the acquisition of early language and vocabulary skills primary predictors of later academic success. Impoverished vocabulary upon entering kindergarten strongly predicts poor subsequent academic performance. Accordingly, the use of technologies designed to build vocabulary during the preschool years is key to facilitating many types of learning. Interactions with a robotic language partner are expected to have particularly important ramifications for children with compromised opportunities to interact regularly with attentive, nurturing caregivers willing and able to foster their vital socio-intellectual developmental needs. In addition, the rationales, artifacts, and cyber platforms and infrastructure created for this project could lend themselves to a broad range of design extensions, such as providing opportunities for children who are learning English as a second language to participate in English-language-based social activities, outreach to rural areas where children have infrequent access to social activities, supporting children of deaf parents, and assessing/assisting children with pragmatic language impairments.