SOCPSY 3A03 Test 2

Weeks 4-6

Social Identity Theory

• Social identification → in-group bias

• In-group favouritism: like people more who are in-group members than out-group

• Fundamental need for belonging

The Social Cure

• Multiple social groups → protects against poorer health

• All eggs in one basket vs many baskets

Social Identity and Life Transitions

• Students → university → lower well-being

• More group memberships → less depression

• New social identity → better well-being

• Belonging to more groups → lower depression

• Stronger university social identity → higher well-being and motivation

• Social Cure for Loneliness

Social Cure for Loneliness

• Loneliness: “ psychological experience of unwanted social isolation”

• Social Prescribing

Social Prescribing

• Used by healthcare professionals to increase social integration

• Help people buffer against social identity loss by encouraging to join new group that promotes social identity

Benefits of Group Type Diversity

Reduce loneliness, increase well-being

The Social Cure Across Cultures

• High Relational Mobility: freely enter/leave groups (western, independent)

• Low Relational Mobility: group memberships less permeable (non-western, collectivistic)

What Happens When We Belong to Social Groups that are Unsuccessful?

• Membership in low esteem group → decreases well-being

• High Strength and Centrality of Social Identity

  • Success → Bask in Reflected Glory (BIRGing)

  • Loss → less likely to Cut Off Reflected Failure (CORFing), re-affirm in-group commitment

• Low Strength and Centrality of Social Identity

  • Less BIRGing, more CORFing

Social Identification and Discrimination

• Black Americans facing discrimination → lower well-being, but stronger social identification

  • But should hold social structures responsible rather than individual to empower themself

• BBC Prison Study

BBC Prison Study

• Better version of Stanford Prison Experiment

• Prisoners: strong social identity

• Guards: social identity did not develop

Reading: Social Group Memberships Protect Against Depression - Cruwys et al

• Belonging to more social groups → lower future depression

• Positive effects especially strong for depressed individuals

• More group memberships linked to lower relapse risk

• Building social group connections useful for public health interventions

Reading: Tackling Loneliness Together - Haslam et al

• Social prescribing reduces loneliness and improves mental health when it successfully connects people to groups

• Group membership and social identification key

• Benefits greater when individuals feel they belong to and identify with groups they join

• Social identity-based approaches improve outcomes across different SP levels (community, group, and individual interventions)

Social Ties and Mental Health

• Tie Strength

• Vitamin S and Well-Being

Tie Strength

• Weak Ties: low time spent together and emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity

  • Weak ties → well-being and mental health

  • Small talk with stranger → well-being

• Strong Ties: high time spent together and emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocity

  • Relationship problems → people seek counselling

  • Social isolation → mortality

  • Poor-quality strong-tie relationships → depression

• Strength of Weak Ties

  • Diffusion of information through social network

  • More likely to be exposed to more information

Vitamin S and Well-Being

• Vitamin S: Vitamin Social contact

• Most interactions with strangers benign

• Strangers benign

• Interactions with strangers can fulfil need for social contact

How do Social Ties Enhance Mental Health?

• Main Model Effect

• Stress-Buffering Model

Main Effect Model

• Social relationships improve mental health for everyone regardless of person’s stress levels

• Social network support: people more likely to seek help if social network suggests it first → social influence → positive health behaviours → improved mental health

• Social contact itself → positive psychological states → positive health behaviours → improved mental health

• Positive psychological states → decrease psychological response to stress → improved mental health

Stress-Buffering Model

• Social relationships improve mental health mainly for people who experience high stress

• Perceived availability of social support → decrease appraisal as stressful → lowers negative stress response → improved mental health

• Perceived availability of social support → lowers negative stress response → improved mental health

Attachment Theory

• How early childhood relationships influence perceptions of social support availability as adults

• Infant’s history of interactions with primary caregiver → willingness to trust and depend on close others

• Attachment Anxiety

• Attachment Avoidance

• Attachment Security

Attachment Anxiety

• Caregiver inconsistently responsive

• Negative model of self

  • Worry about caregiver’s availability, fear abandonment

• Threats → hyperactivating strategies

  • Seek closeness, feel angry, distressed, possessive

Attachment Avoidance

• Caregiver neither sensitive nor responsive

• Negative model of others

  • Mistrustful and self-reliant

• Avoid closeness

• Threat → deactivating strategies

  • Deny attachment needs

Attachment Security

• Low in anxiety and avoidance

• Caregiver sensitive and responsive

• Positive model of self and others

  • Self is worthy of love

  • Comfortable with closeness

Attachment and Mental Health

Insecurity (anxiety/avoidance) → risk of depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, personality disorders

Attachment-Mental Health Link: Mechanisms

1. Low self-worth

2. Emotional dysregulation

3. Relationship problems

• Attachment insecurity ↔ genetic predispositions to mental health disorders and stressful life events

• Main Effect Model: high attachment security more likely to seek social network support in healthier ways

• Stress-Buffering Model: secure individuals more likely to perceive social support as available, less likely to appraise event as stressful

Attachment-Mental Health Link: Main Effect Model

Attachment-Mental Health Link: Stress-Buffering Model

Committed Relationships Can Protect Mental Health

• Marriage → better physical and mental health

• Committed Relationships Linked to Better Health

• Premarital Relationships and Health

Why are Committed Relationships Linked with Better Health?

1. Selection Hypothesis: people with better mental health more likely to get married

2. Social Support Hypothesis: ties in with Main Effect and Stress-Buffering models

3. Behavioural Regulation Hypothesis: spouses encourage healthier behaviour

Premarital Relationships and Health

• Premarital relationships similar to marital relationships

• Risky behaviour in university students

  • Students in committed relationships (vs single students) → less risky behaviour → better mental health (but not physical health)

Happy Singles

• Single people who avoid conflict as high in life satisfaction as people involved in relationship

  • Free of relationship anxiety

• More single people than ever before

Relationship Maintenance and Mental Health

• Staying in committed, low-quality relationship bad for mental health

• Predictors of greater relationship quality:

  • Few negative communication behaviours

  • More interactional synchrony

  • More positive support behaviours

• Self-Expanding Relationships Decrease Depression

• Sexual Satisfaction as Relationship Maintenance

Self-Expanding Relationships Can Decrease Depression

• Self-Expansion: augmenting or re-organizing self-concept to include new content or skills

  • Incorporate partner’s identity, engage in activities that are novel and arousing

• Self-expanding relationship → decrease depression

Sexual Satisfaction as Relationship Maintenance

• Sexual satisfaction → relationship quality

• Sexual frequency → relationship satisfaction well-being

• Make-up sex after a fight → maintains relationship quality

Breakups and Mental Health

• Related to onset of:

  • Negative emotions and intrusive thoughts

  • Major depression

  • Physiological disruption

• Breakup Narratives

• Attachment Anxiety

• Ghosting and Breadcrumbing

• Divorce and Depression

Breakup Narratives Reveal Clues about Mental Health

• Study conducted over 6 months of breakup description:

• Time 1: detailed explanation of breakup reasoning

• Time 2: simplified version as they went through search for meaning and have greater sense of closure

• Language

Language and breakup Narratives

• Writing about breakup featured higher frequency of:

  • Negative emotion words

  • Causal words

  • Sensory words

  • Present-tense words

  • First-person pronouns

• Can detect future breakup

  • Increase in I-words (preoccupied with internal turmoil), we-words (collective focus and difficulty dissociating from relationship), and cognitive processing words (meaning making)

  • Low analytic thinking words

Attachment Anxiety and Reactions to Breakups

• Anxious have more negative reactions

  • Distress, drug/alcohol abuse, preoccupation with ex-partners

  • Social media surveillance of ex

  • Harder time letting go, rebounding helps

Breaking up by Ghosting or Breadcrumbling

• Ghosting: ending a relationship by disappearing

  • Drop in relational value

• Breadcrumbing: stringing partners along with intermittent attention/flirtation

• Breadcrumbing associated with poorer psychological well-being

Divorce and Depression

• Poor marital quality ↔ depression

• Less evidence that depression generates stressful marital interactions

Breakups can Relieve Depression

• Divorce experienced as loss, humiliation, shock → onset of depression

• Ending bad marriage → recovery from depression

• Divorce as escape from chronic stress of bad marriage

Reading: Romantic Relationships and Mental Health - McIntyre et al

• Higher self-expansion in romantic relationships → lower depression symptoms

• Daily level: higher self-expansion = lower same-day depression (no reliable next-day or partner effects)

• Longitudinally: increases in self-expansion over time → decreases in depression and better mental health

• Overall pattern: more relationship self-expansion linked to better mental health outcomes

Reading: Psychological Correlates of Ghosting and Breadcrumbing - Navarro et al

• Breadcrumbing: lower life satisfaction, higher loneliness, higher helplessness

• Ghosting: no significant relationship with any psychological outcomes

• Combined victims: worst well-being outcomes overall

• Regression results: breadcrumbing predicts lower life satisfaction and higher loneliness (weak effect for helplessness)

• Overall: breadcrumbing shows negative psychological impact, ghosting does not in this study

Reading: Social Media Language Effect on Romantic Breakups - Seraj et al

• Language changes appear ~3 months before breakup, peak at breakup, normalize by ~6 months after

• More I/we words and cognitive processing, less analytic thinking

• Effects show up across all online activity, not just relationship posts

• Longer posting about breakup → worse long-term adjustment

Screen Time and Adolescent Mental Health

• Depression and suicide deaths increased

• Correlated with electronic device use

• Linear dose-response

Social Media Use and Adolescents’ Depression

• Gender difference: girls’ internet use predicts later depression

• Contributes to teenage depression

• Contributes to social comparison

Why Might Social Media Use Contribute to Teenagers’ Depression?

• Social media use at night → poorer sleep quality

• Cyberbullying

• Edited images make people have negative self-image

Social Comparison Theory

• Find out where you stand

Downward Comparison

• Someone is worse off → relief, schadenfreude

• Feel superior to others

Upward Comparison

• Someone is better off

• Feel inferior to others

• Negative emotions

• Envy lowers well-being

Evidence that Social Media Use Increases Envy

• Social Presentation

  • Dramatic performances

  • Goffman’s theory

• Seeing Attractive/Successful People

  • High envy

• Upward Conditions

  • Make people feel negative, emphathetic towards others’ failures

Mechanisms Linking Adolescent Social Media Use to Mental Health Problems

• Behavioural Mechanism: risky behaviour → high publicness and permanence

• Cognitive Mechanism: social comparison → high quantifiability

• Neurobiological Mechanism: increasing stress → low synchronicity

Do Adolescents with Diagnosed Mental Disorders Use Social Media Differently?

• Unhealthy use of social media ↔ mental health disorder

• Internalizing disorder

Correlation of Digital Technology Use with Teenagers’ Well-Being

• Digital technology use contributes to poorer well-being, small effects

• Null Effects of Social Technology

• Active social media use increases social capital

• Prosocial use of social media increases well-being

  • Canadians > Thais: knowledge-sharing → greater life satisfaction

  • Canadians = Thais: emotionally-supportive prosocial behaviour → greater well-being

Null Effects of Social Technology Use on Mental Health

• No evidence that social technology contributes to suicide

• Active-Passive Model

Active-Passive Model

• Distinguishes between active and passive use of social media

• Active: direct interaction with users

• Passive: social media use that does not directly interact with other users

Reading: Social Media and Well-Being: Pitfalls, Progress, and Next Steps - Kross et al

• Social media has small negative effect on well-being

• Results mixed when looking only at time spent online

• Main conclusion: how people use social media matters more than how much they use it

Reading: Increase in negative Well-Being Due to Social Media Use - Twenge et al

• Depression and suicide rates increased among adolescents after 2010, especially in girls

• More in-person activities and exercise → better mental health

• Screen use increased while nonscreen activities decreased over same period

• Main conclusion: rising social media and phone use may have contributed to worsening adolescent mental health

Stigma

Goffman: prejudice and discrimination directed at people with “devalued” attributes

Mental Health Stigma

Cues, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination

Mental Health Stigma: Cues

• Psychiatric symptoms

• Deficits in social skills

• Physical appearance

• Labels

Mental Health Stigma: Sterotypes

• Beliefs about a stigmatized group

• Inaccurate and can lead to stigma

Mental Health Stigma: Prejudice

Believe stereotypes + negative emotional reactions

Mental Health Stigma: Discrimination

• Acting on one’s prejudice

  • Outgroup hostility, ingroup favouritism

  • Avoidance

Public Stigma

• Negative reactions from members of public

  • Ex. employers, landlords, police officers, medical professionals

• Mental health more stigmatized than physical health, psychotic > anxiety, depressive disorders

Self-Stigma

Negative reactions towards oneself

Underutilization of Mental Health Services

• Stigma → may not seek treatment at all

• Stigma → underutilize services, low adherence

• Stigma → end treatment early

How Does Stigma Lead to More Negative Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking?

Mental health stigma → greater anxiety → lower self-efficacy → more negative attitudes toward seeking professional help

Reducing Stigma

• Protest

• Education

• Contact

• Empowerment

Reading: How Stigma Interferes With Mental Health Care - Corrigan

• Mental health stigma is major barrier to seeking and continuing treatment

• People avoid care to escape label of mental illness and associated discrimination

Mental Health Literacy

“Knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention”

Mental Health Literacy: Recognition of When a Disorder is Developing

• Delay help-seeking after onset

• Need to get rid of ethnocentrism

• Recognition of depression

  • Canada, Australia > Japan, Sweden

• Depression > schizophrenia, anxiety disorders

  • Low recognition → less help-seeking

• Delayed recognition in youth

• Recognition → help-seeking, but risk of stigma and labelling

Mental Health Literacy: Knowledge and Beliefs About Help-Seeking and Treatment

• Knowledge of sources available and belief sources effective

• Informal Help: friends, family, spouses

• Professional Help: doctor, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, counsellor

  • Informal > professional

    • Less helpful for severe problems

    • Non-Western > Western

• Public: negative attitudes towards medication, positive attitudes towards psychological interventions

• Positive beliefs → more likely to seek

Mental Health Literacy: Knowledge of Self-Help Options for Milder Mental Health Problems

• Public has positive attitudes towards self-help

• Effective to try different self-help techniques in waves

  • Self-help for mild/moderate distress

  • More severe → professional help

Mental Health Literacy: Mental Health First Aid Skills

Family/friends can recognize person’s disorder and provide social support

Mental Health Literacy: Knowledge of Mental Illness Prevention

• Societal Level

  • Reduce likelihood of trauma and structural inequality

• Individual Level

  • Public and therapists agree on everyday prevention

  • Disagree about stress: public avoid stress, professionals → face stress head-on

What Role do Influencers Play in Mental Health Literacy?

• Young people more vulnerable to mental health problems, few pursue professional help-seeking

• Mental health influencers on TikTok and Instagram

  • 23% TikTok and 7% posts reflected component of recognition

  • <10% promoted knowledge of professional help-seeking

  • Majority of Instagram accounts promoted crisis support

Reading: Empowering the Community to Take Action - Jorm

• Mental health literacy generally low in public

• Many struggle to recognize mental disorders and know how to get help

• Educational interventions consistently improve mental health literacy

• Better mental health literacy → improved help-seeking and support

• Increasing mental health literacy should be public health priority