A Precondition for Feeling Positively In-Sync with Less Familiar People: Psychosocial Safety (2023)

Undergraduates: Mia Foglesong, Landry A. Kuehn, Catherine J. Berman, Barbara L. Fredrickson

Faculty Advisor: Barbara Fredrickson
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Fredrickson et al. (2016) postulates that just like love, positivity resonance has preconditions: one is perceived safety. Positivity resonance has been found to be associated with positive benefits to people as well as communities. Psychological safety experienced among strangers and acquaintances may be moderated by expected discrimination of identity on aspects such as gender, race, age, and socioeconomic status. Facing decisions about whether an individual should conceal stigma may increase ambiguity in interpersonal interactions. Increased focus on self could characterize rumination and may reduce connectedness with weak-tie relations, therefore mediating perceived positivity resonance. We are interested in furthering studying weak-tie relations and the impact of anticipated discrimination on experienced positivity resonance. In this study, we tested if anticipated discrimination moderates the effect of perceived safety threat on everyday experiences of positivity resonance in weak-tie interactions. Using a longitudinal dataset representative of the North Carolina population (n = 1550), we tested relationships between perceived safety threat, anticipated identity-related discrimination and stigma, and experienced positivity resonance. Using multilevel modeling, we found that anticipated discrimination moderates the trait (between-person) effects of perceived social threat on positivity resonance, but doesn’t moderate the state (within-person) effect. The group that experienced the most positivity resonance on a given day had lower perceived psychological safety threat and lower anticipated discrimination.

Keywords: positivity resonance, psychological safety, anticipated discrimination

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