The School of Psychology would like to invite you to this seminar on 26th January 2021, 3-4pm.
We are delighted to announce our Guest Speaker Dr Stephanie Burnett Heyes.
Dr Burnett Heyes conducts research on social interactions and emotions in adolescents and young adults. Current projects include a) developing virtual reality interventions to promote adolescents’ discussion and reflection on ‘risky’ decision-making in peer contexts, b) investigating the interplay between social interactions, mood and wellbeing in real-world social networks, and c) measuring and manipulating mood in the bipolar spectrum to shed light on mechanisms of mood instability. Since 2015 Dr Burnett Heyes has held a lectureship at the University of Birmingham. From 2012-2015 she was a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology and Department of Psychiatry.
Presentation title: Sharing the load: Mood contagion in adolescent social networks
Abstract: Human emotions are frequently social, and the people we interact with can alter our momentary mood. But does emotional ‘contagion’ extend over prolonged periods of hours to days, and if so, how do these dynamics unfold in real-world social groups? Answering this question is empirically challenging, due to issues around experimental control. Here, I focus on a study that took an interdisciplinary approach to answering this question. Block and Burnett Heyes (in press at Emotion) gathered daily mood and social interaction data from two independent, bounded adolescent social networks during periods of high communal activity and low external contact (residential music performance tours). Analysis using statistical network models showed that in both networks, participants became reciprocally more similar in mood to their interaction partners. This constitutes evidence for social influence on mood, i.e. mood ‘contagion’ at the network level. Interestingly, the social influence effect was greater for negative than for positive mood (e.g. a cheerful adolescent can alleviate a friend’s sad mood, but risks becoming sad in the process). In contrast, we found no evidence for social selection based on mood (e.g. adolescents do not avoid a friend who is having a bad day). We discuss next steps for studies such as these, including understanding social buffering and the ‘cost’ of social support. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines psychological research questions with social network data collection and analysis methods can shed light on research questions of interest to psychologists, and generate new hypotheses to test.
ALL STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY STAFF AND EXTERNAL VISITORS WELCOME
Please join us by using this link: https://surrey-ac.zoom.us/j/97095208405
No registration required.
