Social Psychology Brown Bag:

Susannah

Title:
Face-to-face versus social media confrontation and the role of relationship closeness

Abstract:
In this talk, I will discuss and compare how two communication contexts -- face-to-face and on social media -- may differentially influence how people engage in confrontation, as well as the role of relationship closeness in influencing these effects. To this end, I will describe a series of experimental studies and one crowdsourcing study using Twitter data.

Laura

Title:
What We Would (but Shouldn't) Do for Those We Love: Universalism versus Partiality in Responding to Others' Moral Transgressions

Abstract:
Previous work shows that people say they are more likely to protect a close (versus distant) other who commits a serious moral transgression. But do people believe it is morally right to preferentially protect close others in this way? Across four studies, we show that people believe they should protect close others more than distant others. However, we also document a striking discrepancy between how people think they actually would act, and what they morally should do, when it comes to protecting close others. This suggests that moral decisions involving close relationships may be a context in which people are particularly likely to fail to do what they think is right.