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Some people, other people -- Strangers in a strange lab -- Sex -- Race/ethnicity -- Birth order -- Physical attractiveness -- The taijitu of androgyny -- The big five -- Shyness and self-consciousness -- Self-monitoring -- How it all adds up : an integration

Following Kuhn, it is proposed that there are two major paradigms for the study of social cognition. The first and most traditional paradigm relies on single-subject designs, and is therefore limited to the study of subjective phenomena. It prescribes that subjects 'responses be kept independent, and treats any interdependence in these responses as a statistical nuisance. In contrast, the second paradigm relies on dyadic and small group designs and addresses both subjective and intersubjective phenomena It prescribes that the naturally occurring interdependence in the subjects' responses be preserved and studied as an important set of phenomena in their own right. This second, intersubjective paradigm may be especially conducive to the integration of research on social cognition with research on social interaction and group dynamics.

These things called empathy: eight related but distinct phenomena / Daniel Batson -- Emotional contagion and empathy / Elaine Hatfield et al. -- Being imitated: consequences of nonconsciously showing empathy / Rick B. van Baaren et al. -- Empathy and knowledge projection / Raymond S. Nickerson et al. -- Empathic accuracy: its links to clinical, cognitive, developmental, social, and physiological psychology / William Ickes -- Empathic responding: sympathy and personal distress / Nancy Eisenberg and Natalie D. Eggum -- Empathy and education / Norma Deitch Feshbach and Seymour Feshbach -- Rogerian empathy in an organismic theory: a way of being / Jerold D. Bozarth -- Empathy in psychotherapy: dialogue and embodied understanding / Mathias Dekeyser et al. -- Empathic resonance: a neuroschience perspective / Jeanne C. Watson and Leslie S. Greenberg -- Empathy, morality, and social convention: evidence from the study of psychopathy and other psychiatric disorders / R. J. R. Blair and Karina S. Blair -- Perceiving others in pain: experimental and clinical evidence on the role of empathy / Liesbet Goubert et al. -- Neural and evolutionary perspectives on empathy / C. Sue Carter et al. -- "Mirror, mirror, in my mind": empathy, interpersonal competence, and the mirror neuron system / Jennifer H. Pfeifer and Mirella Dapretto -- Empathy versus personal distress: recent evidence from social neuroscience / Jean Decety and Claus Lamm -- Empathic processing: its cognitive and affective dimensions and neuroanatomical basis / Simon G. Shamay-Tsoory

AbstractThe incremental validity of social absorption and social individuation in predicting relationship satisfaction beyond anxious and avoidant attachment was assessed in a sample of 400 heterosexual couples. Results indicated that the actor's and partner's social absorption scores and the absolute difference between the partners' social individuation scores made significant unique contributions to the actor's satisfaction in a model that included avoidant and anxious attachment. This model accounted for 49% of the variance in the actors' satisfaction scores. Satisfaction was high when both partners were predisposed toward behavioral interdependence but suffered when the partners were discrepant in their need to cognitively distinguish self and other. Possible explanations for these findings and their implications for marital satisfaction are discussed.

Purpose– The purpose of this research is to (1) to identify personality variables that reliably predict verbal rudeness ( i.e by replicating previous findings) and (2) to investigate what personality variables predict more general ugly confrontational behaviors.Design/methodology/approach– In Study 1, the authors used an online survey to collect information regarding individual differences in social desirability, self-esteem, narcissism, blirtatiousness, behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, conventional morality (CM), thin-skinned ego defensiveness (TSED), affect intensity for anger and frustration (AIAF), and verbal rudeness. In Study 2, the authors used a similar online survey to collect the same information, but extended the survey questionnaire to include measures of entitlement, psychopathology, Machiavellianism, and a retrospective checklist of ugly confrontational behaviors.Findings– In Study 1, regression analyses revealed that CM, behavioral inhibition, and behavioral activation reward responsiveness were significant negative predictors of rudeness. AIAF, TSED and behavioral activation drive were significant positive predictors of rudeness. In Study 2, regression analyses revealed that CM was again a significant negative predictor of rudeness. AIAF, and narcissism were significant positive predictors of rudeness. CM also negatively predicted ugly confrontational behaviors, whereas AIAF, blirtatiousness, and Machiavellianism were positive predictors.Originality/value– Although several measures of aggression exist, the current studies of rudeness and ugly confrontational behavior specifically assess tendencies to abuse strangers. These studies begin to establish a personality profile of the type of person that might abuse strangers.

AbstractFollowing their qualitative review of the findings from 10 relevant studies, Graham and Ickes (1997) speculated that reliable gender‐of‐perceiver differences in empathic accuracy (a) were limited to studies in which the empathic inference form made empathic accuracy salient as the dimension of interest, and (b) therefore reflected the differential motivation, rather than the differential ability, of female versus male perceivers. These speculations were tested more rigorously in the present study, which examined a larger set of 15 empathic accuracy studies and applied the techniques of quantitative meta‐analysis to test Graham and Ickes'(1997) moderating variable hypothesis. The hypothesis was strongly supported, consistent with a motivational interpretation previously proposed by Berman (1980) and by Eisenberg and Lemon (1983), which argues that reliable gender differences in empathy‐related measures are found only in situations in which (a) subjects are aware that they are being evaluated on an empathy‐relevant dimension, and/or (b) empathy‐relevant gender‐role expectations or obligations are made salient.

Objective self awareness was varied to determine its effect on compliance and reactance. The experimental procedure was similar to that used in an early study of reactance (Brehm and Sensenig, 1966). The principal. result was that objective self awareness increased compliance, a result
that is consistent with those of a number of other studies (e.g., Wicklund and Duval, 1971, Exp. II; Duval, 1976). In addition, males and females were found to differ in response to a threat to their freedom. Males tended to show traditional patterns of reactance and compliance, whereas females
were more compliant under a high threat to freedom and displayed reactance-like behavior under a low degree of threat.

Is husbands' wife‐directed aggression related to unusual accuracy (hypersensitivity) or to bias (being likely to inappropriately infer criticism or rejection) when they infer women's critical/rejecting thoughts and feelings? Results of a study using the empathic accuracy paradigm and signal detection analyses revealed that the greater the husbands' bias to overattribute criticism and rejection to the thoughts and feelings of women they had never met, the more the husbands reported behaving in a verbally aggressive way toward their own wives. This finding discourages the conclusion that maritally aggressive men are uniquely provoked by their own female partners, and instead suggests that they are biased to overattribute criticism and rejection to women in general. The strength of this overattribution bias correlated negatively with the men's accuracy in inferring the actual content of the women's thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, the husbands' thematic accuracy (their ability to accurately specify which of the stimulus women's thoughts and feelings really were critical or rejecting) was associated with their self‐reported marital satisfaction.

AbstractEmpathic accuracy research indicates that partners achieve only moderate success at reading each other's thoughts. The current study identifies specific patterns of online thought that contribute to empathic inaccuracy during conflict interactions. Married/cohabiting partners completed a conflict interaction and reported their own thoughts during video‐assisted recall of the interaction, also inferring the thoughts of the other partner. Content analysis of these online thoughts demonstrated a high degree of mindfulness about the process of communication, along with a perspective bias, in which partners tended to construe their own communication as constructive and the other partner's communication as avoidant and confrontational. Specific mind‐reading errors linked to both the thematic content and affective tone of online thought predicted lower overall empathic accuracy.