Measuring Behavior 2005: Bond and Tse

Divergent patterns of social behavior result in rejection and reduced social reinforcement

A.J. Bond and W.S. Tse

Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, London, UK

Social skills are important for integration into society. These skills can be defined as the ability to acquire and use behaviors necessary for effective and satisfying interpersonal functioning and include both non-verbal and verbal elements. Substantial evidence has found that impaired social functioning is correlated with current depression. Two psychosocial models of depression, Coyne’s social interaction model, and Lewinsohn’s social skill model, have been proposed to explain the mechanism of depression on social integration. In general, both models agree that depression weakens social skills, resulting in reduced social support. To elucidate these mechanisms, non-verbal and verbal behaviors involved in interpersonal interaction can be studied. Untreated depressed patients are less active in engaging in social interaction, as indicated by paucity of speech and increased response latency and they participate less, as indicated by lack of eye contact in interpersonal exchanges. This behavior can lead to rejection by others. Much less work has examined the consequences of manic behavior on social integration. Therefore these two behaviors, depression which can be viewed as passive or submissive and mania which can be viewed as active or dominant were modelled in the laboratory. A standard behavioral measurement protocol in which interpersonal interaction style can be classified was constructed and resulted in 4 different styles. Two of the roles portrayed abnormal social behavior, active non-participant ‘manic’ and passive non-participant ‘sad’, and two portrayed normal social behavior, active participant ‘warm’ and passive participant ‘shy’. The interaction of subjects with a confederate acting these 4 roles and their subsequent behavior on a dyadic game was recorded. Subjects were more likely to reject confederates in the manic or sad roles. This was shown by both non-verbal behavior and verbal report. They also behaved more punitively on the dyadic game. Thus displaying depressed or manic behavior not only results in social rejection but also in the reduction of social reinforcement.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.