Publications by authors named "Hanne Collins"

Article Synopsis
  • Scholars are concerned that deep partisan divides among the public pose a risk to American democracy.
  • A large study with over 32,000 participants tested 25 different strategies aimed at decreasing partisan animosity and support for undemocratic practices.
  • Results showed that highlighting relatable individuals with differing beliefs and emphasizing shared identities were effective at reducing animosity, while correcting misunderstandings about rival views helped lessen support for undemocratic actions.
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Across all domains of human social life, positive perceptions of conversational listening (i.e., feeling heard) predict well-being, professional success, and interpersonal flourishing.

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We document a link between the relational diversity of one's social portfolio-the richness and evenness of relationship types across one's social interactions-and well-being. Across four distinct samples, respondents from the United States who completed a preregistered survey ( = 578), respondents to the American Time Use Survey ( = 19,197), respondents to the World Health Organization's Study on Global Aging and Adult Health ( = 10,447), and users of a French mobile application ( = 21,644), specification curve analyses show that the positive relationship between social portfolio diversity and well-being is robust across different metrics of well-being, different categorizations of relationship types, and the inclusion of a wide range of covariates. Over and above people's total amount of social interaction and the diversity of activities they engage in, the relational diversity of their social portfolio is a unique predictor of well-being, both between individuals and within individuals over time.

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Given the many contexts in which people have difficulty engaging with views that disagree with their own-from political discussions to workplace conflicts-it is critical to understand how conflictual conversations can be improved. Whereas previous work has focused on strategies to change individual-level mindsets (e.g.

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When listening is spoken.

Curr Opin Psychol

October 2022

Feeling heard is critical to human flourishing-across domains, relationships are strengthened and individual well-being is enhanced when people feel listened to. High-quality conversational listening not only requires the cognitive processes of attention and processing, but also behavioral expression to communicate one's cognitive engagement to others. This need to behaviorally express listening introduces the possibility of deception.

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Extraverts are often characterized as highly social individuals who are highly invested in their interpersonal interactions. We propose that extraverts' interaction partners hold a different view-that extraverts are highly social, but not highly invested. Across six studies (five preregistered; = 2,456), we find that interaction partners consistently judge more extraverted individuals to be worse listeners than less extraverted individuals.

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Recently, many universities have implemented programmes in which therapy dogs and their handlers visit college campuses. Despite the immense popularity of therapy dog sessions, few randomized studies have empirically tested the efficacy of such programmes. The present study evaluates the efficacy of such a therapy dog programme in improving the well-being of university students.

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The scent of another person can activate memories, trigger emotions, and spark romantic attraction; however, almost nothing is known about whether and how human scents influence responses to stress. In the current study, 96 women were randomly assigned to smell one of three scents (their romantic partner's, a stranger's, or a neutral scent) and exposed to an acute stressor (Trier Social Stress Test). Perceived stress and cortisol were measured continuously throughout the study (5 and 7 times, respectively).

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