RT @PRPietromonaco: New article highlights the need for more cross-cultural research on close relationship processes and provides a templat….

RT @cmleckfor: When it comes to social interactions, is more really merrier? According to my recent work, the answer is "no!" Findings from….

Thanks for reading all of this if you have gotten this far, and please check out our pre-print linked above if you want to read more.

It's been a privilege to work closely with the amazing @jholtlunstad to develop the project. Special shout outs to my student @daisibrand for absolutely crushing it with her first (!) first-author paper here, and to my student Michael Harvey for his machine-learning stats wizardy.

These results are the best evidence we have to date of the sorts of live events that may help people feel more socially connected, and come on the heels of the recent U.S. Surgeon General report on the "healing effects" of social connection.

All of these findings controlled for a number of potential confounds, including baseline reports of socioemotional factors (e.g., loneliness, subjective happiness) and other individual differences (e.g., demographics, personality).

Across a large variety of event types, the strongest predictors of feeling socially connected were events that were in-person (versus virtual), involved active participation (versus passive participation), and those that were attended with others (versus alone).

We administered surveys to event attendees before and after events and then used machine learning to identify which characteristics of live events reliably predict feelings of social connection following event attendance.

With these pandemic insights in hand, we sought to investigate how and under what conditions live events are associated with feeling socially connected with others in a sample of over 1,500 users of Eventbrite, a widely-used event management and ticketing platform (@eventbrite).

However, we also lost a lot of opportunities to do other social things in larger groups, like going to see shows at clubs (a favorite pastime in @VisitAthensGA), plays, wine tastings, book readings, fitness classes, and other kinds of live events.

But more interesting, I think, is how important the loss of what we call "weak social ties" was. For months, there were no more chats with shopkeepers, bartenders, barbers, people at the gym, you name it.

One of the big insights that emerged from the pandemic is the critical importance of social relationships for people's happiness and well-being (to which my relationship science colleagues and I reply, well, duh).

Very excited to share our new preprint:."Actively Participating in Live Events as an Avenue for Social Connection" in collaboration with @daisibrand, @andrewsproctor , Michael Harvey, and @jholtlunstad .

Aw, the pleasure is all mine @daisibrand!.

RT @andrewsproctor: I am excited to be presenting this weekend at the #SPSP2023 Annual Convention on the project I have been working on wit….

RT @cmleckfor: Have you wondered who is more likely to ghost? In a new paper in @JoSoPerRel w/ co-first author @NatashaRWood, @RelationScie….

RT @DianaTamir: 📢 The Princeton Social Neuro Lab is hiring! 📢. We're looking for a full-time Research Assistant to study social interaction….

RT @ajbravo_PhD: For those interested, my department has a FULLY FUNDED Masters Program in Experimental Psychology. The deadline is Februar….

RT @universityofga: If Twitter really does stop working in the next few days or weeks, at least we’ll go out with the @GeorgiaFootball Nati….

So grateful and honored to be part of this amazing team.