Better off saying nothing at all?: Improving difficult social interactions by understanding fears and language use

最好什么都不说？：通过理解恐惧和语言使用来改善困难的社交互动

• 批准号: ES/R004838/2
• 负责人: Gillian Sandstrom
• 金额: $ 3.97万
• 依托单位: University of Sussex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FR004838%2F2
• 关键词: Better; off; saying; nothing; Improving

Humans are social beings who need to feel connected to people, and understood by others in order to thrive. When this need to belong is not met, there are serious negative consequences for physical and mental health. Indeed, loneliness puts people at as much risk of early death as smoking, and at greater risk than obesity (Holt-Lunstad, Smith & Layton, 2010). Loneliness is a widespread social issue in the UK; a recent poll conducted by the Jo Cox commission on loneliness found that "almost three-quarters of older people in the UK are lonely" (The Guardian, 2017). Given the prevalence of loneliness, and its negative consequences, it is crucial to understand the intrapersonal and situational barriers that discourage people from talking to one another, and thus constrain people from fulfilling their need to belong. An understanding of these barriers will form the basis of interventions to encourage more frequent - and more positive - interactions. People generally enjoy socializing and spend a great deal of time talking, but in certain situations they struggle to know what words to say. For example, most people find it challenging to talk to someone who is experiencing a difficult situation (e.g., a cancer diagnosis, the loss of a loved one). It is said that in times of trouble, you find out who your real friends are; the people who let you down decide they're better off to say nothing at all rather than say the "wrong" thing. What exactly are people worried about, and are there actually "wrong" things to say? This project will address these questions, and draw upon the answers to identify ways of increasing the frequency and quality of interactions, thus improving the social support people receive when they need it most.My recent research has focused on talking to strangers - another situation that finds many people at a loss for words. I have found that, although talking to strangers is generally enjoyable and makes people feel connected, people report a wide range of worries about doing it. The proposed project will build upon this work by examining not only how people feel before social interactions, but also what they say during interactions. Importantly, this project will go beyond the single situation of talking to a stranger, to test the extent to which these predictors of interaction success (i.e., how people feel and what they say) are similar across situations (e.g., talking to a person of a different ethnicity, a wheelchair user, a cancer patient). Evidence of similarities across people and situations will prove invaluable in developing interventions to improve interaction success. This project will begin by collecting descriptive information about 1) the worries people have when considering different types of social interactions ("fears"; e.g., their partner might not talk enough, or might not like them), and 2) the things people wish that others would and would not say ("phrases"; e.g., both cancer patients and people living with disability dislike it when people tell them they're "so brave"). Next, I will extract themes from these qualitative responses, and develop survey instruments to assess fears and phrase use. This will allow me to quantitatively examine the extent to which fears and phrase use vary between people (i.e., related to individual differences) and within people (i.e., related to the situation). Then I will run experiments to examine the effects of fears and phrases on interaction success in real-life social interactions, ultimately testing interventions with the goal of increasing interaction success. The research findings will be of interest to health care professionals, and a range of social organisations that work to fight loneliness, to encourage social acceptance and integration (e.g., for the disabled, for minority ethnic people), or to support people confronting difficult situations (e.g., bereavement, serious illness).

人类是社会生物，需要与他人建立联系并被他人理解才能茁壮成长。如果这种归属感得不到满足，就会对身心健康产生严重的负面影响。事实上，孤独使人们面临的早死风险与吸烟一样高，比肥胖更高（Holt-Lunstad，Smith &莱顿，2010）。孤独是英国普遍存在的社会问题;乔考克斯委员会最近进行的一项关于孤独的民意调查发现，“英国近四分之三的老年人感到孤独”（卫报，2017年）。考虑到孤独的普遍性及其负面影响，理解阻碍人们相互交谈的内在障碍和情境障碍至关重要，从而限制人们实现归属感。对这些障碍的理解将构成干预措施的基础，以鼓励更频繁和更积极的互动。人们通常喜欢社交，花很多时间聊天，但在某些情况下，他们很难知道该说什么。例如，大多数人发现与正在经历困难情况的人交谈是一种挑战（例如，癌症诊断，失去亲人）。有人说，在困难的时候，你会发现谁是你的真实的朋友;那些让你失望的人决定他们最好什么都不说，而不是说“错误”的话。人们到底在担心什么，真的有“错误”的话要说吗？这个项目将解决这些问题，并根据答案找出提高互动频率和质量的方法，从而改善人们在最需要的时候获得的社会支持。我最近的研究集中在与陌生人交谈上--这是另一种发现许多人无言以对的情况。我发现，虽然与陌生人交谈通常是令人愉快的，让人们感到联系，但人们报告说，这样做有各种各样的担忧。拟议中的项目将建立在这项工作的基础上，不仅研究人们在社交互动之前的感受，而且研究他们在互动过程中说了什么。重要的是，这个项目将超越与陌生人交谈的单一情况，以测试这些互动成功的预测因素（即，人们的感觉和他们说的话）在不同情况下是相似的（例如，与不同种族的人交谈，轮椅使用者，癌症患者）。在制定干预措施以提高互动成功率方面，人员和情况之间的相似性证据将被证明是非常宝贵的。这个项目将开始收集描述性信息1）当考虑不同类型的社会交往时，人们的担忧（“恐惧”;例如，他们的伴侣可能说得不够多，或者可能不喜欢他们），以及2）人们希望其他人会说和不会说的事情（“短语”;例如，癌症患者和残疾人都不喜欢别人说他们“很勇敢”）。接下来，我将从这些定性回答中提取主题，并开发调查工具来评估恐惧和短语使用。这将使我能够定量地检查恐惧和短语使用在人们之间的差异程度（即，与个体差异有关）和人内（即，与形势有关）。然后，我将进行实验，研究恐惧和短语对现实生活中社交互动成功的影响，最终测试以提高互动成功为目标的干预措施。研究结果将对医疗保健专业人员和一系列致力于对抗孤独的社会组织感兴趣，以鼓励社会接受和融合（例如，为残疾人，为少数民族人民），或支持面临困难的人（例如，丧亲之痛、重病）。