Why didn't you tag me?!: Social exclusion from Instagram posts hurts, especially those with a high need to belong

Humans are highly sensitive to ostracism experiences and thus, even very short occurrences of being excluded and ignored can threaten fundamental needs and lower mood. We investigated whether not being tagged causes similar negative responses as being excluded in real life. Using a multi-method approach, we show across five studies (total N = 1149) that not being tagged in a posted photo strongly threatens fundamental needs. This effect is moderated by individuals' need to belong, such that individuals with a higher need to belong experience not being tagged as more aversive. Results replicate across vignette studies in which participants imagine not being tagged on Instagram (Studies 2 and 3) and across studies using an alleged group task paradigm that mimicked the psychological mechanism of not being tagged outside of Instagram (Studies 4a and 4b). All experimental studies were pre-registered and we freely share all materials, code and data. Extending ostracism effects to the social media phenomenon tagging, the present research bridges real-world and digital social interactions. The results add to theoretical knowledge on social media, ostracism, and digital well-being and have practical implications for social media app design, social media interventions and our everyday interactions that increasingly happen online

You should go for diversity, but I'd rather stay with similar others: Social distance modulates the preference for diversity

Organizations often state that they value diversity. The workforce, however, is often quite homogeneous, reflecting a striking mismatch between aspirations and reality. Based on the distinction between desirability and feasibility concerns, we provide a psychological argument for this mismatch. We hypothesize that social distance influences individuals' choices regarding diversity. When being socially more distant, individuals prefer to assemble a diverse team, due to a stronger impact of pro-diversity desirability concerns. In contrast, when being socially close, individuals prefer similar team members, due to a stronger weighing of anti-diversity feasibility concerns. Four studies investigate the different decision outcomes when being socially distant compared to close. Study 1 shows that working in a diverse group is perceived as desirable, but less feasible. Study 2 investigates the impact of psychological distance on individuals' choices of working with a more different (when being socially distant) or similar partner (when being socially close). Study 3 shows that participants created a more diverse team for another person (distance condition) than for themselves (proximity condition). In Study 4, participants did not create a more diverse group for a stranger (distance condition) than for a friend (adjusted proximity condition), however, participants weighted feasibility concerns less strongly for strangers than for friends. Implications for diversity research and practice are discussed

Showing with whom I belong: The desire to belong publicly on social media

Despite a plethora of social media use research, surprisingly little is known about what social media users post about, and, more importantly, why . In three studies ( N = 1,140), we present novel evidence for a disposition describing individual differences in the desire to display belonging on social media: the desire to belong publicly (DTBP). We validate an eight-item DTBP scale, encompassing the desire to display both a high quantity (e.g., having many friends) and a high quality of belonging (e.g., having close friends) on social media. The scale shows good internal consistency and test-retest reliability over two weeks. DTBP is related to, but conceptually distinct from neighboring constructs such as need to belong and need for popularity, as well as other personality dimensions known to drive social media behaviors such as extraversion, public self-consciousness, and social comparison propensity. DTBP is related to indicators of active and passive social media use, daily use of social media, frequency of posting about belonging, and social media addiction, above and beyond other constructs, and on different social media platforms (i.e., Instagram and Facebook). In sum, DTBP is a reliable and valid construct that aids the understanding of why and how individuals use social media

Entwicklung und Überprüfung einer Kurzskala zur Messung akademischen Betrugsverhaltens im Selbstbericht

Akademisches Betrugsverhalten ist ein bedeutsames Phänomen, zu dessen Prävalenz und Randbedingungen im Hochschulsektor deutliche Forschungslücken bestehen, insbesondere aufgrund Ermangelung valider und ökonomischer Selbstberichtsmaße. Die vorliegende Kurzskala zur Erfassung akademischen Betrugsverhaltens soll unter Bedingung hoher Testökonomie eine verhaltensbezogene Erfassung von akademischen Betrugsverhalten im Selbstbericht ermöglichen. Die Itemgenese orientierte sich an umfassenden englischsprachigen Verhaltensinventaren. Insgesamt werden mit jeweils einem Item die zentralen Komponenten „Nutzung unerlaubter Hilfsmittel und Hilfestellungen“, „Plagiarismus“ und „Täuschung zur eigenen Vorteilnahme“ erfasst. Analysen zur Testgüte des 3-Item-Maßes in einer Stichprobe von N = 1 994 Studierenden zeigen eine akzeptable interne Konsistenz und ein deutliches Muster konvergenter Validität (Assoziationen mit umfassenderen Verhaltensinventaren und der Persönlichkeitseigenschaft Ehrlichkeit / Bescheidenheit). Konfirmatorische Faktoranalysen verdeutlichen, dass sich die Skala für die latente Modellierung des Konstruktes eignet und sie messinvariant für verschiedene Fachgruppen sowie Geschlechter ist. In der Summe bietet die vorgestellte Kurzskala eine verhaltensbezogene, ökonomische und reliable Messung akademischen Betrugsverhaltens

Who gets ostracized? A personality perspective on risk and protective factors of ostracism

Ostracism, excluding and ignoring others, results from a variety of factors. Here, we investigate the effect of personality on the likelihood of becoming a target of ostracism. Theorizing that individuals low in conscientiousness or agreeableness are at risk of getting ostracized, we tested our hypotheses within five pre-registered studies: Four experiments investigating participants' willingness to ostracize targets characterized by different personality traits and a reverse correlation face modelling study where we determined and subsequently validated the stereotypical face of an ostracized person. A survey study within a representative German data panel further corroborated our findings. In line with our hypotheses, persons low in conscientiousness or agreeableness provoke more ostracism intentions (Studies 1, 2, and 4), are more likely to be actually ostracized by others (Study 3), represent the stereotype of an "ostracizable" person (Study 5), and report experiencing more ostracism (Study 6). Effects remained stable even after controlling for likeability of the target (Study 2 and 4). Moreover, being described as negative on one personality dimension could not be compensated by being described as positive on the other (Study 4). In exploratory analyses, we further investigated the effects of openness to experience, neuroticism and extraversion. In sum, we find evidence that personality affects the likelihood of becoming a target of ostracism, and that especially low agreeableness and conscientiousness represent risk factors

Us and the virus: understanding the COVID-19 pandemic through a social psychological lens

From a social psychological perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated protective measures affected individuals’ social relations and their basic psychological needs. We aim to identify sources of need frustration (stressors) and possibilities to bolster need satisfaction (buffers). Particularly, we highlight emerging empirical research in areas in which social psychological theorizing can contribute to our understanding of the pandemic’s social consequences: Loneliness, social networks, role conflicts, social identity, compliance, trust, reactance, and conspiracy beliefs. We highlight directions for future social psychological research as the pandemic continues

Abundance and scarcity: classical theories of money, bank balance sheets and business models, and the British restriction of 1797‐1818.

The thesis looks through the lens of bank balance sheet accounting to investigate the structural change in the British banking system between 1780 and 1832, and how classical quantity theorists of money attempted to respond to the ensuing financialisation of the wartime economy with its growing reliance on credit funded with paper-based instruments (the ‘Vansittart system’ of war finance). The thesis combines contributions to three separate fields to construct a holistic historical example of the challenges faced by monetary economists when ‘modelling’ financial innovation, credit growth, ‘fringe’ banking, and agent incentives – at a time of radical experimentation: the suspension of the 80-year-old gold standard (“the Restriction”). First, critical text analysis of the history of economics argues that the 1809-10 debate between Ricardo and Bosanquet at the peak of the credit boom, bifurcated classical theory into two timeless competing policy paradigms advocating the ‘Scarcity’ or ‘Abundance’ of money relative to exchange transactions. The competing hypotheses regarding the role of money and credit are identified and the rest of the thesis examines the archival evidence for each. Second, the core of the thesis contributes to the historical literature on banking in relation to money by reconstructing a taxonomy of bank business models, their relationships with the London inter-bank settlement system, and their responses to the Restriction - drawing on some 17,000 mostly new data points collected from the financial records of London and Country banks. The final section contributes to the economic history of money by constructing aggregated views of total bank liabilities from the firm-level data, scaled to recently available British GDP estimates. These are examined to establish (with hindsight) the relative merits and lacuna of the competing theoretical hypotheses postulated by political economists. It was the period of deleveraging after 1810 that revealed the lacuna of both paradigms

The experience of ostracism over the adult life span

Ostracism, that is, being excluded and ignored by others, is a highly painful and threatening experience for individuals. Most empirical research on ostracism has been carried out in the lab or focused on samples in specific contexts. Here, we investigate the effects of age on how individuals experience ostracism within a broad, representative sample of the adult German population (the Socio-Economic Panel). We find a generally negative relation between ostracism and age, such that older adults report experiencing ostracism less frequently. Further analyses show that a particular dip in the ostracism frequency curve around the age of 65 might be at least partly due to leaving the workforce. We further investigate cross-sectional as well as longitudinal effects of age on relations between ostracism frequency and psychological well-being, showing relatively stable associations between ostracism and negative emotions, reduced life satisfaction, as well as dysfunctional social behavior across the adult life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved