More action, less closeness: Number of actions and feelings of closeness in interpersonal relationships

Can actively interacting with other people make us like them and feel close to them even if the interactions are trivial? Does a context that requires more interactions affect feelings of closeness? A series of experiments examined the underlying processes related to liking and feeling close to other people. Experiments 1 and 2 involved a social multi-target Go / No-Go paradigm in which participants pressed a key to socialize with some targets and withheld the key for others. Participants liked more and felt closer to those with whom they did (vs. did not) interact. However, for feelings of closeness, the effect of active interactions depended on whether participants interacted with a higher (vs. lower) number of targets. Experiment 3 introduced target people who expressed negative (vs. neutral-positive) emotions and trivial key presses without social meaning. Findings showed no effects of active interactions on liking but the effects on feelings of closeness remained, implying that these feelings did not derive from evaluations. The processes leading to feelings of closeness were further characterized in other experiments. Experiment 4 showed that the relation between number of actions and differences in feelings of closeness to action and inaction targets, which was present even under conditions of high distraction, was fully mediated by feelings of familiarity. Experiment 5 disentangled number of actions and percentage of actions, showing that a lower number of actions, and not a lower percentage of actions, was a prerequisite for the effect identified in prior experiments. Altogether, the research showed that active interactions with other people only increase feelings of closeness when the number of interactions is lower, in which people can fully develop familiarity with whom they interacted.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Dai, Wenhao

Contributors dc:contributor

• Albarracin, Dolores
• Cohen, Dov
• Sundaram, Hari
• Shavitt, Sharon
• Stern, Chadly

• Action
• inaction
• feelings of closeness
• loneliness
• Go / No-Go paradigm

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Wenhao Dai

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116030

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116030