Content uploaded by W. Keith Campbell
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by W. Keith Campbell on Feb 13, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Relationship Closeness Induction Task
Abstract
Presents the Relationship Closeness Induction Task (RCIT), a structured self-disclosure procedure for the induction of relationship closeness in the laboratory. The RCIT consists of 29 questions, which become progressively more personal, and requires 9 min to administer. The validity of the RCIT has been previously demonstrated in several experiments, in which it fostered high levels of relationship closeness, induced high levels of group entitativity, and allowed participants adequate privacy and comfort. The RCIT affords the researcher with several advantages, such as theory-testing potential, avoidance of methodological pitfalls, and convenience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... To be specific, bilateral prefrontal cortexes (PFC) have been proven to be involved in cognitive and emotional processing (Balconi and Pagani 2015), while bilateral temporo-parietal junctions (TPJ) are associated with the understanding of others' mental states during social interaction (Frith and Frith 2006;Nguyen et al. 2021b). Besides, we asked all dyads to evaluate the conversation and the impression of their partners, which have also been used to ref lect the quality of communication (Sedikides et al. 1999). We hypothesized that (i) the HH autistic dyads displayed atypical behavioral patterns during the conversation, when compared with the LL and HL autistic dyads and (ii) both HH and LL autistic dyads achieved high effects of communication indicated by high INS as well as high subjective evaluations of social communication, when compared with the HL autistic dyads. ...
... Each of the two participants independently answered a set of questions including inquiries about their majors, hobbies, etc. (see Supplementary Materials for examples). The questions were adopted from the Relationship Closeness Induction Task (RCIT; Sedikides et al. 1999). When participant A answered the questions, participant B wore noise-reduction headphones and listened to music. ...
... This was designed to measure the self-evaluations of the conversation and their partners in dyads, using the Conversation Evaluation Questionnaire and the Peer Evaluation Questionnaire both adapted from RCIT (Sedikides et al. 1999; see Supplementary Materials). The Conversation Evaluation Questionnaire included 6 items on a 3-point scale (1-No, 2-Do not Know, 3-Yes) measuring subjective feelings during the conversations (e.g. ...
Autism is characterized by atypical social communication styles. To investigate whether individuals with high autistic traits could still have effective social communication among each other, we compared the behavioral patterns and communication quality within 64 dyads of college students paired with both high, both low, and mixed high-low (HL) autistic traits, with their gender matched. Results revealed that the high-high (HH) autistic dyads exhibited atypical behavioral patterns during conversations, including reduced mutual gaze, communicational turns, and emotional sharing compared with the low-low and/or HL autistic dyads. However, the HH autistic dyads displayed enhanced interpersonal neural synchronization during social communications measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy, suggesting an effective communication style. Besides, they also provided more positive subjective evaluations of the conversations. These findings highlight the potential for alternative pathways to effectively communicate with the autistic community, contribute to a deeper understanding of how high autistic traits influence social communication dynamics among autistic individuals, and provide important insights for the clinical practices for supporting autistic people.
... However, everyday conversations rarely take 45 min. Therefore, researchers have developed a shorter self-disclosure task that lasts 9 min (Sedikides et al., 1999). We used this procedure, for the first time, in parent-child dyads. ...
... The self-disclosure task capitalizes on the principle that a vital feature of a loving relationship is reciprocal and escalating self-disclosure (Collins & Miller, 1994). We modeled the task after prior socialpsychological procedures applied in adult interactions (Aron et al., 1997;Sedikides et al., 1999). Specifically, we selected and added questions appropriate for parent-child interactions (e.g., instead of asking F I G U R E 1 Experimental setup for reciprocal self-disclosure task. ...
Feeling loved by one's parents is critical for children's health and well‐being. How can such feelings be fostered? A vital feature of loving interactions is reciprocal self‐disclosure, where individuals disclose intimate information about themselves. In a proof‐of‐concept experiment, we examined whether encouraging reciprocal self‐disclosure in parent‐child dyads would make children feel more loved during the conversation. Participants were 218 children (ages 8–13, 50% girls, 94% Dutch) and one of their parents (ages 28–56, 62% women, 90% Dutch). Parent‐child dyads received a list of 14 questions and took turns asking them each other for 9 min. Dyads were assigned randomly to engage in self‐disclosure (questions invoking escalated intimacy) or small talk (questions invoking minimal intimacy). Before and after, children reported how loved they felt by their parent during the conversation. Self‐disclosure made children feel more loved during the conversation than did small talk. Compared to small talk, self‐disclosure did not instigate conversations that were lengthier or more positive; rather, it instigated conversations that were more emotionally charged (reflecting anger, anxiety, and sadness), social (discussing family and friends), reflective (creating insight), and meaningful (addressing deeply personal topics, including the passing of loved ones). The dyad's gender composition did not significantly moderate these effects. Our research suggests that reciprocal self‐disclosure can make children feel more loved in the moment, uncovers linguistic signatures of reciprocal self‐disclosure, and offers developmental scientists a tool to examine causal effects of reciprocal self‐disclosure in parent‐child dyads. Future work should examine long‐term effects in everyday parent‐child interactions.
Research Highlights
How can parents make children feel more loved by them in the moment? We theorize that these feelings can be cultivated through reciprocal self‐disclosure.
In a proof‐of‐concept experiment, we examined effects of reciprocal self‐disclosure versus small talk in 218 parent‐child dyads, with children aged 8−13.
Self‐disclosure (vs. small talk) made children feel more loved during the conversation. Linguistically, self‐disclosure instigated conversations that were more emotionally charged, social, reflective, and meaningful.
This research provides an experimental method to study self‐disclosure in parent‐child dyads and suggests that self‐disclosure can make children feel more loved in the moment.
... In all studies, participants began by providing their consent to participate. To create a situation where we could manipulate group members leaving, participants completed an adapted form of the Relationship Closeness Induction Task (RCIT; Sedikides et al., 1999). This task involves answering questions which become progressively more personal leading to induced closeness through mutual self-disclosure. ...
People leave groups. We examined the psychological consequences for the remaining group members; specifically , whether the departure of a member can produce feelings of ostracism (being excluded and ignored). We manipulated systematically the number of group members who left (zero, one, or two out of the two other group members) during a get to know you interaction (Study 1), a word creativity task (Study 2), and a virtual ball-toss game (Cyberball; Study 3). We measured participants' feelings of ostracism and associated outcomes overall and based on the relationships with each group member. Overall, participants felt worse when two group members left compared to one or no group members leaving. At the individual relationship level, we found evidence of partial ostracism as participants felt negative when evaluating their interaction with a group member who left. By using a multi-level approach, we found the everyday experience of a group member leaving produces a void, harming those left behind. We considered how this void could have implications for group dynamics theory and organizational practices. Groups do not stay the same forever-rather, a group's composition changes over time. For instance, after playing for the New England Patriots for 20 seasons and winning six Super Bowls, Tom Brady,
... Speakers. Four speakers, two Indians and two British each recorded their voice asking two questions, giving a total of eight Speech Prosody 2024 2-5 July 2024, Leiden, The Netherlands questions from the Relationship Closeness Induction Task [9] in an audio-only format. The British speakers are native British speakers from Britain while the Indian speakers are originally from India. ...
Letting someone else know that you value their presence, characteristics, effort or activities is central to building and maintaining human relationships. We investigated whether deliberate memory display is an effective means to convey such value. We examined these questions in the context of a simulated job interview (Experiments 1, 2 and 3, total N = 404) and a simulated ‘ice breaker’ exercise between new acquaintances (Experiment 4, total N = 156). Across experiments, results consistently indicated that memory display was not only an effective method of conveying value, but that memory display made other efforts to convey value more effective. Moreover, without external prompting, participants underutilized memory display despite its efficacy. These findings document the efficacy of memory display in the deliberate communication of value and suggest that deliberate memory display might be an underutilized strategic asset in the management of human relationships.
People's well‐being can be enhanced from interactions with strangers and weak ties, but people often do not seek such interactions because of perceived barriers. With data combined from several laboratory studies that involved pairs of strangers who engaged in a getting‐acquainted task, participants' pre‐interaction forecasts of the enjoyment and liking (i.e., rewards) that they would experience in the interaction and their self‐report of presentation concerns (a cost) were compared to their post‐interaction reports of actual enjoyment, liking, and self‐presentation concerns experienced in the interaction. Findings indicated that the dyad members expressed moderate self‐presentation concerns (i.e., worry about the impression they would make) prior to the interaction. They also expected that they would only moderately enjoy the interaction and moderately like the other. These estimates, however, were miscalibrated. The participants experienced lower self‐presentation concerns in the interaction than they had expected and enjoyed the interaction and liked their conversation partner more than they had expected. Variation was found in the forecasts and in the gap between pre‐interaction expectations and actual experiences as a function of shyness (and social anxiety). Implications of the findings are discussed for enhancing people's weak‐tie interactions.
While intergroup contact in online contexts has been acknowledged as effective in reducing stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, i.e. intergroup bias, the underlying processes remain unclear. This study focuses on intersubjective processes and tests perceived social presence and closeness, as a means for strengthening the effects of online intergroup contact on attitudes towards the outgroup member and intergroup bias. We conducted a pre-post multigroup (White and Black) study on 267 participants (females n = 162, 60.7%; M age = 22.19, SD = 4.90) who chatted online with a fictitious outgroup member (online bot). Multigroup path analysis results showed that, regardless of the participant's membership in the majority group (White people) or minority group (Black people), social presence and closeness, i.e. intersubjective processes occurring during online intergroup contact, are positively related to attitude toward the outgroup member, but not to intergroup bias, which is positively related to attitude toward the outgroup member. Theoretical implications for the literature on online intergroup contact will be discussed.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.