A wealth of evidence suggests that social relationships and social interactions are more satisfying when partners accurately understand one another’s true thoughts and feelings. However, most research on interpersonal understanding (empathic accuracy) has focused on profiling the most effective perceiver, with very little work on how targets contribute to a perceiver’s empathic ability and resulting interaction outcomes. Targets want to be understood, but how do their own cognitive biases and behavioral responses help or hinder this process? Research on the illusion of transparency shows that people tend to overestimate how easily others can detect their innermost thoughts and feelings. Critically, perceived transparency can result in adverse social outcomes (e.g., lower perceptions of social support, feelings of rejection), suggesting that targets can sometimes undermine other people’s ability to understand them and respond to their needs. To investigate this idea, my dissertation included two experimental laboratory studies designed to test the hypothesis that when targets overestimate the transparency of their own feelings, they are less effective at conveying their needs. In turn, perceivers should be less accurate at inferring the targets’ thoughts and feelings, thereby hindering perceivers’ ability to provide effective social support. In Study 1, I manipulated perceived transparency and measured expressiveness during a disclosure task. In Study 2, I manipulated perceived transparency among romantic couples and created an opportunity for targets to seek and receive support from their partners. Study 1 findings reveal that the manipulation consistently increased expressiveness rather than decreased it, and Study 2 showed few significant differences by condition. The findings are discussed in terms of methodological and conceptual difficulties I encountered in empirically distinguishing perceived transparency from expressiveness.

Perceived responsiveness – defined as the perception that one is understood, validated, and cared for by close others, or the overall belief that one’s needs are sensitively met – is a core component of close relationships and an important predictor of health and psychological well-being. However, past research and theoretical models have been based primarily on individualistic cultures and lacked consideration of cultural fit, or how different cultural goals and values would affect what is perceived as responsive and its consequences. The current studies aimed to explore (a) what are the specific behaviors each culture perceives to be responsive, and (b) how do these specific behaviors and culture affect individual well-being? In addition, because much of this research has been conducted in the social support area, the current studies will also explore whether the answers to these questions depend on whether one seeks support for stressors or good news, as well as the role of general perceived responsiveness in these processes. Study 1 used a mixed-methods approach (qualitative and quantitative) to explore what behaviors 108 European-Americans (from individualistic cultures) and 95 Asian (from collectivistic cultures) participants (N = 203) perceived as responsive when disclosing stressors and good news. Study 2 was a two-week diary study in which 101 European-American and 77 Asian participants (N = 178) tracked their daily social interactions (specifically negative and positive events and responsive behaviors) and daily psychological well-being. While both studies found that there were largely no cultural differences in the perceived responsiveness of support behaviors, there were some differences in how culture and perceived responsiveness impacted mental health. In Study 1 and contrary to what I predicted, European-American participants’ psychological well-being was positively associated with perceiving implicit support as responsive while sharing stressors. In Study 2, only Asian participants’ psychological well-being was positively associated from perceiving emotional and instrumental support as responsive when sharing good news. Exploratory analyses on general perceived responsiveness did find that European-American participants’ psychological well-being increased as general perceived responsiveness of their disclosees increased. In Study 2 though, Asian participants’ well-being also increased when perceiving their interaction partner as more responsive, but only when sharing good news. This line of research hopes to illuminate how perceived responsiveness changes, as well as stays the same, depending on cultural fit to gain a better understanding of how perceived responsiveness functions and benefits individuals via their close relationships.

Recent research has shown the benefits of affectionate touch in romantic relationships, such as how engaging in touch can promote relationship quality and buffer stress, but no prior research has examined how touch affects willingness to sacrifice for one’s partner or how contextual factors might moderate this link, such as intimacy level. We manipulated touch in the lab by assigning one couple member (the target) to receive or not receive touch from their partner, and we also manipulated whether this occurred in a context low or high in intimacy. Afterwards, we measured targets’ willingness to sacrifice behaviorally (dividing tickets to determine who would do a stressful task) and via a self-report measure (willingness to replace one’s partner to do the stressful task). We predicted that receiving touch generally would lead to higher willingness to sacrifice than not receiving touch. Also, we predicted that touch and intimacy level would interact, where targets would be the most willing to sacrifice when receiving touch in a high intimacy context, and least willing if they do not receive touch in a high intimacy context. Although results did not support these hypotheses in the full sample, we found that female targets who received touch were less willing to sacrifice than male targets who received touch. Additionally, targets (regardless of gender) receiving touch reported marginally higher perceived partner responsiveness than targets who did not. Our findings can advance our understanding of affectionate touch’s role in close relationships and determine when touch can benefit individuals and relationships.

Background and objectives

Research design and methods

Results

Discussion and implications