Methods for Assessing Social Referencing of Risk Perception

1. Methods for Assessing Social Referencing of Risk Perception Gwenda Simons & Brian Parkinson Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford

2. Understanding how people arrive at choices where risk is involved often focuses on the individual in isolation. Previous research shows that own affect influences perceptions of decision options: Affect priming (automatic activation of associated semantic content). Affect as information (“how do I feel about it?” Schwarz & Clore, 1983). Background

3. In our research project we consider if and how people may take into account the (emotional) responses of another person in reacting to- and dealing with worrying issues or decisions involving some level of risk or uncertainty. • Influence of another person’s affect may occur by modulating our appraisal of the (decision) situation. • The reactions of another person can help us to make sense of a situation or give us an idea of how the other person appraises the situation and the risk involved and thus influences our behaviour. • In turn our affective reactions will influence their appraisals and emotional reactions.

4. We see emotions not as individual responses to private appraisals, but as interpersonal processes of relational alignment. • Emotional communications are oriented to actual, perceived, and anticipated (emotional) responses of others. • Affect is not simply an informational input to a decision process, but part of the process of co-ordinating perspectives on an issue (How do you feel about it? How do you feel about how I feel about it? etc).

5. The research project uses different and innovative methods: • Diary studies • Interviews • Laboratory experiments (quiz-game) • Online survey (Risk Inventory) • Diary and observation of real-time interactions (+ video-cued recall)

6. This interaction research is collaborative: Claudia Marinetti (DPhil candidate researching the Illusion of Transparency) • We have further received assistance from the following internship students: Michaela Rohr, Kornelia Gentsch, Robyn Migliorini & Mina Yadegar

7. Interaction study:Research questions • How do people regulate their own and each other’s emotions when interacting with their partner in relation to issues which worry them or pose a certain amount of risk? • Does such regulation always have its intended effects? • Can we detect specific patterns of interpersonal emotion regulation in people sharing a close relation? (e.g. one partner always expressing his or her worry or anxiety or indeed enhancing it when the other partner does not).

8. Method • 16 couples with at least one child under the age of ten (14 mixed gender, 2 same gender). • Aged between 25 and 57 (M = 36.03, SD = 7.36). • Mixed background and occupation

9. Diary keeping: • Each partner provides diary data over the course of 1-2 weeks for every discussion the couple has about concerns/decisions relating to their young child(ren) • Description of the concern/decision • Appraisals of these concerns • Emotional reactions to these concerns • Attempts to regulate their own emotion presentation and that of their partner. 

11. Lab-based session: • Partners are video-recorded whilst talking about some of the issues recorded in their diaries. • We select 2 topics: • 1 where the partners agree on their level of worry experienced during the original discussion • 1 where the partners disagree on their level of worry • Several questionnaires are completed (Interaction Rating Scale, BEQ, ERQ, TAS). • Computer-based emotion recognition task. • Video-cued recall procedures (e.g., Levenson & Gottman, 1985).

12. Video-cued recall procedure in order to solicit reports of: • Experienced level of worry. • Emotion regulation (own and other’s emotions). • Perceived emotion and emotion regulation in the other partner. • Facial expression.

13. Some preliminary findings • We split the diary topics into those where the partners agreed on the level of worry they experienced in relation to the discussion and those where they disagreed. • Worry agreement diary topics • Minimal or no difference in level experienced worry between partners • Overall worry level (M = 3.81, SD =1.59) • Worry disagreement diary topics • One partner more worried than the other (M difference = 2.75, SD =1.12) • Overall worry level (M = 4.00, SD =1.85)

14. Examples of issues discussed • “Whether or not to take son to see doctor.” • “Whether or not to follow health visitor’s suggestion to wake baby daughter up during the night for a feed because she is not putting on enough weight.” • “What to do about child’s misbehaviour in nursery.” • “Son is being bullied at school.” • “Daughter is grinding her teeth at night.”

15. Participants reported that the lab-based conversations felt fairly natural (M = 4.33, SD = 1.54 on 7-point scale). • Levels of worry recorded in the diary and the mean levels of worry experienced in the lab-based conversation (as measured in the video-cued recall) correlated positively and significantly (r (64) = .346, p = .005).

16. Video-cued recall data • Initial analysis of the Video-cued recall data revealed some interesting findings: • Around half of the couples showed clear disagreement in the level of worry that one partner experienced and the other partner perceived. • The greater the difference in experienced worry (i.e. the worry reported by both partners), the less successful one partner was in correctly identifying the level of worry in the other (correlation absolute difference scores: r(64) = .819, p <.001).

17. Video-cued recall data continued: • Difficulties in correctly identifying their partner's level of worry may be due to difficulties in detecting the level to which their partner is actually trying to hide or enhance his or her expression of worry (correlation absolute difference scores: r(64) = .387, p =.002). • Overall partner B (in all but 2 cases the male partner) was less worried by the issues discussed in the lab compared to partner A (always female), t(62) = 2.12, p = .038. • Partner A perceived her partner to be somewhat more worried than he (or she) actually felt (M difference = -0.95, SD = 1.42), whereas Partner B perceived his (or her) partner to be a little less worried than she actually felt (M difference = 0.42, SD = 1.60).

18. Some early conclusions • We were able to recreate real-life interactions in the lab. • Video-cued recall was a successful method for discovering the patterns of emotional reactions to the worrying (and risky) issues reported in the diary and discussed in the lab. • There are indications that those partners who are aware of their partners attempts at emotion regulation are better at detecting their partner’s ‘true’ levels of experienced emotion (and act accordingly?!).

19. More analyses to follow: • More elaborate analysis of the reciprocal patterns of emotional influence. • Specific factors which influence the patterns (e.g. ability to recognise emotional expressions, facial expressiveness, tendency to inhibit expressions). • Speech content. • Analyses of nonverbal behaviour (FACS and untrained judges).

20. Thank you! Contact: gwenda.simons@psy.ox.ac.uk

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