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Lok, Wai Yan Iris

University of British Columbia

For decades, researchers have emphasized the important role that close relationships play in satisfying people’s fundamental need for belonging. More recently, a growing body of research suggests that talking to strangers may also promote feelings of social connection; yet, people readily forego these opportunities. A popular assumption in the current literature is that people avoid talking to strangers because they underestimate others’ willingness to talk. In this dissertation, I test this causal claim by enabling people to exchange explicit social signals about their willingness to talk. To facilitate recent research examining the impact of contextual factors (e.g., talking to strangers) on momentary feelings of social connection, I start by developing and validating the 10-item UBC State Social Connection Scale (UBC-SSCS). In Study 1, I develop an initial pool of items and confirm my factor structure. In Study 2, I show that the UBC-SSCS is sensitive to a recall manipulation that asks participants to write about an experience in which they spent time alone versus with others, and that the UBC-SSCS is associated with other theoretical constructs in expected ways. In Study 3, I show that the UBC-SSCS is able to distinguish between participants who are alone versus socializing with friends, and that the scale is more sensitive to variations in people’s momentary experiences compared to trait measures of social connection. Next, I test whether allowing people to exchange explicit social signals increases social interactions between strangers. Overall, I find limited evidence for my hypothesis. The ability to send explicit social signals did not significantly promote social interactions between commuters on buses (Study 4), students at a food court (Study 5b), and groups of students at an outdoor field (Study 6). Under ideal conditions, however, explicit social signals can have a marginal impact on sociability—such as getting people to engage in deeper conversations (Study 7). Reflecting on my findings, I propose a broader model that outlines a conjunctive set of conditions that need to be met before a person decides to engage with a stranger.

Text

2023-04-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/84249

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/