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Feeling like you\u2019re part of the gang is crucial to the human experience. All people get stressed out when we\u2019re left out.<\/p>\n
A new study published in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that a feeling of inclusion can come from something as simple as eye contact from a stranger.<\/strong><\/p>\n Psychologists already know that humans have to feel connected to each other to be happy. A knitting circle, a church choir, or a friendly neighbor can all feed that need for connection. Eric D. Wesselmann of Purdue University wanted to know just how small a cue could help someone feel connected. He cowrote the study with Florencia D. Cardoso of the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata in Argentina, Samantha Slater of Ohio University, and Kipling D. Williams of Purdue. \u201cSome of my coauthors have found, for example, that people have reported that they felt bothered sometimes even when a stranger hasn\u2019t acknowledged them,\u201d Wesselmann says. He and his authors came up with an experiment to test that.<\/p>\n The study was carried out with the cooperation of people on campus at Purdue University. A research assistant walked along a well-populated path, picked a subject, and either met that person\u2019s eyes, met their eyes and smiled, or looked in the direction of the person\u2019s eyes, but past them\u2014past an ear, for example, \u201clooking at them as if they were air,\u201d Wesselmann says. When the assistant had passed the person, he or she gave a thumbs-up behind the back to indicate that another experimenter should stop that person. The second experimenter asked, \u201cWithin the last minute, how disconnected do you feel from others?\u201d<\/p>\n People who had gotten eye contact from the research assistant, with or without a smile, felt less disconnected than people who had been looked at as if they weren\u2019t there.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThese are people that you don\u2019t know, just walking by you, but them looking at you or giving you the air gaze\u2014looking through you\u2014seemed to have at least momentary effect,\u201d Wesselmann says. Other research has found that even being ostracized by a group you want nothing to do with, like the Ku Klux Klan, can make people feel left out, so it\u2019s not surprising that being pointedly ignored can have the same effect. \u201cWhat we find so interesting about this is that now we can further speak to the power of human social connection,\u201d Wesselmann says. \u201cIt seems to be a very strong phenomenon.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: Feeling like you\u2019re part of the gang is crucial to the human experience. All people get stressed out when we\u2019re left out…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[273,12,98],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":905,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}