Nilam Ram’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

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Publications (328)


Men and Women Transitioning to Singlehood in Young Adulthood and Midlife
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  • Full-text available

October 2024

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99 Reads

Psychology and Aging

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Christiane A. Hoppmann

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Research has long shown that men suffer more from romantic breakups than women. We predicted that men would on average be less inclined to initiate separation, decline with the separation more in well-being and increase more in loneliness, are less satisfied with singlehood, and desire a new partner more than women. We theorized that these gender differences in separation adaptation could be linked to men’s higher reliance on their partners for emotional support. Because socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that with age people shift toward more fulfilling social connections, we also expected men’s dependency on their partners for emotional support to be smaller in midlife than in young adulthood. To examine our hypotheses, we analyzed multiyear within-person longitudinal change data from 1,530 mostly unmarried participants from the annual German pairfam study who had experienced a relationship dissolution. We applied propensity score matching to compare separation-related changes in well-being and loneliness to case-matched controls who remained in a romantic relationship. Results showed that men relative to women were less likely to initiate separation, less satisfied with singlehood, and wished for a partner more. In contrast to our expectations, the gender differences observed did not differ by age, and no gender differences were found in separation-related changes in well-being and loneliness. Dissolution-related effects on well-being were only evident for marital relationships, while dissolution-related effects on loneliness were equally strong for marital and nonmarital dissolutions. Our study suggests that previous findings on gender-specific divorce-induced changes in well-being may not generalize to nonmarital dissolutions.

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Personality Differences Drive Conversational Dynamics: A High-Dimensional NLP Approach

October 2024

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7 Reads

This paper investigates how the topical flow of dyadic conversations emerges over time and how differences in interlocutors' personality traits contribute to this topical flow. Leveraging text embeddings, we map the trajectories of N=1655N = 1655 conversations between strangers into a high-dimensional space. Using nonlinear projections and clustering, we then identify when each interlocutor enters and exits various topics. Differences in conversational flow are quantified via topic entropy\textit{topic entropy}, a summary measure of the "spread" of topics covered during a conversation, and linguistic alignment\textit{linguistic alignment}, a time-varying measure of the cosine similarity between interlocutors' embeddings. Our findings suggest that interlocutors with a larger difference in the personality dimension of openness influence each other to spend more time discussing a wider range of topics and that interlocutors with a larger difference in extraversion experience a larger decrease in linguistic alignment throughout their conversation. We also examine how participants' affect (emotion) changes from before to after a conversation, finding that a larger difference in extraversion predicts a larger difference in affect change and that a greater topic entropy predicts a larger affect increase. This work demonstrates how communication research can be advanced through the use of high-dimensional NLP methods and identifies personality difference as an important driver of social influence.



From Behavioral Genetics to Idiographic Science: Methodological Developments and Applications Inspired by the Work of Peter C. M. Molenaar

August 2024

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12 Reads

Multivariate Behavioral Research

This special issue is a collection of papers inspired by Dr. Molenaar's work and innovations - a tribute to his passion for advancing science and his ability to ignite a spark of creativity and innovation in multiple generations of scientists. Following Dr. Molenaar's creative breadth, the papers address a wide variety of topics - sharing of new methodological developments, ideas, and findings in idiographic science, study of intraindividual variation, behavioral genetics, model inference/identification/selection, and more.


Intraindividual variability in air pollution and affect arousal for three individuals with different levels of affective sensitivity to air pollution (ASAP)
Fluctuations in air pollution (blue line) and affect arousal (orange line) over time (x-axis) are shown for three individuals (rows). The correlation coefficient, r, indicates the strength of covariation for each individual’s air pollution and affect arousal.
Within-person and between-person associations for affect and air pollution
Panel A: Within-person associations of daily air pollution and daily arousal. Panel B: Between-person associations of overall air pollution and overall arousal. Panel C: Within-person associations of daily air pollution and daily valence. Panel D: Between-person associations of overall air pollution and overall valence. In Panels A and C, the thin black lines show interindividual differences in affective sensitivity to air pollution (ASAP), while the thick blue line represents the prototypical individual’s ASAP.
Descriptive statistics for air pollution and two characteristics of affective states: Arousal and valence
Results from multilevel models for affect arousal and affect valence
Affective Sensitivity to Air Pollution (ASAP): Person-specific associations between daily air pollution and affective states

August 2024

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61 Reads

Individuals’ sensitivity to climate hazards is a central component of their vulnerability to climate change. In this paper, we introduce and outline the utility of a new intraindividual variability construct, affective sensitivity to air pollution (ASAP)–defined as the extent to which an individual’s affective states fluctuate in accordance with daily changes in air quality. As such, ASAP pushes beyond examination of differences in individuals’ exposures to air pollution to examination of differences in individuals’ sensitivities to air pollution. Building on known associations between air pollution exposure and adverse mental health outcomes, we empirically illustrate how application of Bayesian multilevel models to intensive repeated measures data obtained in an experience sampling study (N = 150) over one year can be used to examine whether and how individuals’ daily affective states fluctuate with the daily concentrations of outdoor air pollution in their county. Results indicate construct viability, as we found substantial interindividual differences in ASAP for both affect arousal and affect valence. This suggests that repeated measures of individuals’ day-to-day affect provides a new way of measuring their sensitivity to climate change. In addition to contributing to discourse around climate vulnerability, the intraindividual variability construct and methodology proposed here can help better integrate affect and mental health in climate adaptation policies, plans, and programs.


(Mis)measurement of Political Content Exposure within the Smartphone Ecosystem: Investigating Common Assumptions

July 2024

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36 Reads

Journal of Quantitative Description Digital Media

The affordances of the smartphone are shifting individuals toward ever smaller and more fragmented units of political experience that are primarily provided by social contacts and non-traditional sources and voices. Accordingly, granular investigations of individuals' exposure to political content must motivate political communication theories away from theories based on exposure to extended, uninterrupted political narratives that are constructed by news professionals and formal information outlets. In this piece, we use a novel approach to granular assessment of political exposure on smartphones, to reveal significant 1 Daniel Muise:


Alone Together, Together Alone: The Effects of Social Context on Nonverbal Behavior in Virtual Reality

July 2024

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70 Reads

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1 Citation

Presence Teleoperators & Virtual Environments

Social virtual reality (VR), by definition, focuses on people, using networked VR systems to bring avatars together. Previous studies have examined how different factors affect social interaction, in small groups such as dyads or triads. However, in a typical social VR scene there tends to be dozens of avatars, even those not directly interacting with a given user. Furthermore, beyond the virtual environment, VR users are also situated in various immediate physical social contexts. In two field experiments, we investigate how the presence of virtual and physical people contextualize and influence nonverbal behaviors. Study 1 examines virtual context and asks how interacting with others in a private or public virtual environment influences nonverbal outcomes during interactions in a social VR platform. Across two sessions, participants (n = 104) met either in a private virtual environment with their group members alone or in a public environment surrounded by four other groups. Results showed that participants moved their avatars slower and stood closer to group members in public versus private environments. Study 2 examines physical context and asks how interacting with virtual others while physically together or alone influences nonverbal behaviors. Participants (n = 61) met in virtual environments while they were in either a shared physical environment or separated physical environments. Results showed that, compared to remote participants, participants who were physically together moved their bodies more slowly, but their avatars faster. Moreover, there was more mutual gaze among remote participants. We discuss implications to theories of social influence in VR.


Small Data Approaches to Link Faster Time Scale Engagement Dynamics with Slower Time Scale Outcomes in Biobehavioral Interventions

June 2024

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4 Reads

Chinese Political Science Review

This study illustrates the application of time series clustering and feature engineering techniques to small data obtained at a fast time-scale from biobehavioral interventions to identify slower time-scale health outcomes. Using data from 26 adult kidney stone patients engaged with mini-sipIT, a month-long digital health intervention targeting increased fluid intake, we identified distinct patterns of engagement with both manual app tracking and automated smart water bottles and examined how those patterns were related to subsequent urine volume. Time-series based analysis of engagement revealed that manual tracking was significantly associated with increased urine volume, highlighting the potential for active self-monitoring to improve health behaviors. In contrast, differential patterns of engagement with automated tracking were not related to differences in urine volume. These findings suggest that small data approaches can effectively bridge time scales in behavioral interventions, and that manual engagement methods may be more beneficial than automated ones in fostering behavior change. Absent large datasets to support identification of engagement patterns via deep learning, time series clustering and feature engineering provide valuable tools for linking fast time-scale engagement processes with slow time-scale health outcome processes. This study was conducted with the approval of the Institutional Review Board (STUDY00015017), granted on 9/22/2021.



Citations (61)


... Intuitive interfaces with precise information, educational resources, and interactive features help to make informed decisions. This helps instill a vital sense of agency among patients and change them from passive care recipients into knowledgeable stakeholders in the healthcare process [19,78]. ...

Reference:

Human–computer interaction in healthcare: Comprehensive review
Alone Together, Together Alone: The Effects of Social Context on Nonverbal Behavior in Virtual Reality

Presence Teleoperators & Virtual Environments

... Most consider aging a consequence of biology and not chronology. A recent study found that old age was perceived as beginning at age 75 (Wettstein et al., 2024). Imagine the positive impact this could have on the faculty shortage if this was embraced by search committees in academic nursing! ...

Postponing Old Age: Evidence for Historical Change Toward a Later Perceived Onset of Old Age

Psychology and Aging

... The global rise of mobile and computer-mediated communication over the past two decades has penetrated each and every niche of people's daily lives (Humphreys et al., 2018;ITU, 2023). The drastic increase in the potential to use media across situations, coupled with advances in measuring mobile media use, has drawn attention to the heterogeneity in circumstances in which people do so (Vaid et al., 2024). For example, listening to one's favorite playlist on Spotify can occur when with family at home using a smart speaker, when with colleagues at work using a computer, or when jogging alone using a smartphone with earbuds. ...

Variation in social media sensitivity across people and contexts

... The distance between each pair of participants was taken after filtering out the smallest 150 distance points (i.e.,~5 seconds), to account for behaviors that are not of interest that may have occurred at the beginning of each recording, such as participants entering the recording and their avatars spawning in the same starting location. Interpersonal distance was calculated based on head positions (for examples of similar procedures, see Bailenson, Blascovich, Beall, & Loomis, 2003;Han, DeVeaux, Hancock, Ram, Harari, & Bailenson, 2024;Wieser, Pauli, Grosseibl, Molzow, & Mühlberger, 2010). Note, interpersonal distance may look different using different body-part positions (i.e., distances based on head to head positions versus body-part to body-part positions), as head or body sizes are not being accounted for. ...

The influence of spatial dimensions of virtual environments on attitudes and nonverbal behaviors during social interactions
  • Citing Article
  • February 2024

Journal of Environmental Psychology

... In response to these limitations, recent years have witnessed the emergence of novel, non-invasive approaches to hydration assessment [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. These innovative methods represent a paradigm shift in how we approach hydration monitoring, offering several advantages over their traditional counterparts. ...

Promoting fluid intake to increase urine volume for kidney stone prevention: Protocol for a randomized controlled efficacy trial of the sipIT intervention
  • Citing Article
  • January 2024

Contemporary Clinical Trials

... However, causal estimates from the SCM modeling approach will continue to be biased in the presence of contamination. Therefore, contamination will need to be corrected in this, as well as any, modeling approach estimating maltreatment effects (see Shenk et al., 2023) for an in-depth introduction to contamination in child maltreatment research and ways to control it). ...

Contamination in Observational Research on Child Maltreatment: A Conceptual and Empirical Review With Implications for Future Research
  • Citing Article
  • December 2023

Child Maltreatment

... Besides the distinct advantage of being dry and not requiring post-visit washing, the stiffness of these comb electrodes and the small footprint at the end of each comb tine allows for easier penetration through the hair, and even the ability to penetrate longlasting and permanent styles like braids and locs. Finally, exciting new efforts are underway to account for individual differences in hair texture and volume analytically 28 . ...

The effect of hair type and texture on electroencephalography and event-related potential data quality

Psychophysiology

... In essence, the Screenomics framework lets researchers watch and record media users via an "over-the-shoulder" perspective in natural settings, enabling inspection of JQD: DM (2024) Political Content Exposure Assumptions core media behaviors and patterns at the micro-temporal level. For example, researchers have detected emotional balancing in media selections over time (Cho, Reeves, Ram, & Robinson, 2023), documented consistency in micro-temporal usage choices (such as usage session durations) across highly dissimilar media environments (Muise, Lu, Pan, & Reeves, 2022), and even identified how payday loan advertisements cause upticks in psychological stress among vulnerable populations, by measuring subtle linguistic and structural differences in media engagement before and after ad exposures (Lee, Hamilton, Ram, Roehrick, & Reeves, 2023). Hence, the granularity of digital trace data available through the Screenomics framework facilitates investigation of several research questions related to the core theoretical and methodological interests of this paper. ...

Balancing media selections over time: Emotional valence, informational content, and time intervals of use
  • Citing Article
  • November 2023

Heliyon

... A growing body of evidence suggests that such indicators of more rapid epigenetic aging may also be associated with developmental measures in children. Youth with greater EAA are more likely to have experienced stress/adverse childhood experiences 22 with future cognitive impairment 23 and depression and anxiety 24 . Our report adds to the growing body of work that examines EAA with respect to childhood markers of growth and maturation. ...

Epigenetic age acceleration as a biomarker for impaired cognitive abilities in adulthood following early life adversity and psychiatric disorders

Neurobiology of Stress

... Examples of methodological approaches used include cluster analysis (e.g., [62,63]), latent class analysis (e.g., [64][65][66]), and trajectory analysis (e.g., [39,42,67]), which have been used to identify subtypes within a population. These methods aim to identify groups of similar individuals based on their characteristics or patterns of response. ...

Long-Term Aging Trajectories of the Accumulation of Disease Burden as Predictors of Daily Affect Dynamics and Stressor Reactivity

Psychology and Aging