Jeff Bowen is a social psychologist who has been an associate teaching professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences since the fall of 2017. He primarily teaches undergraduate research methods and statistics classes and also runs an undergraduate research lab focused on the social psychology of interpersonal relationships. In an interview with The News-Letter, Bowen discussed his lab’s focuses on romantic partnerships, how people navigate both online and in-person social experiences and the methods used to measure these concepts and experiences.
Bowen’s group recently wrapped up a study exploring the psychological differences between long-distance and close-distance relationships. One aspect he examined was the misconception that long-distance relationships are automatically doomed and are not as happy as compared to close-distance relationships. However, Bowen found out that relationships did lose intimacy and satisfaction after a transition from long-distance into close-distance, even though the idea of being close-distance was desirable for most long-distance partners.
Bowen began to investigate the psychological mechanisms behind these seemingly contradictory observations. He ended up converging on a phenomenon called “psychological distance,” where people tended to treat long-distance relationships in more abstract terms, while close-distance relationships were thought to be more concrete.
“If you're far away, you can get on Zoom or FaceTime with them and talk, but it's not the same as having the physical contact and true co-presence,” Bowen said. “So we're interested in understanding the long distance itself as a psychological feature of these relationships, and seeing if that helps explain this two-pronged idea that you can manage a long-distance relationship pretty successfully at a distance, but when you shift to proximity, that introduces new challenges.”
The ideas Bowen studies fall under the general concept of relationship cognition, which are the mental processes that individuals use to think about and maintain their relationships. Ultimately, he seeks to find shared psychological explanations that account for the relative success of long-distance relationships and the challenges that arise when transitioning to close-distance relationships.
As Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular holidays dedicated to celebrating romantic relationships, social psychologists have conducted a significant amount of research on the effects of and attitudes towards Valentine’s Day.
“People have done some interesting things in terms of understanding how consequential experiences on Valentine's Day are to different partners,” Bowen explained. “There are some partners who put a lot of stake into the day, and if it goes well, it really strengthens the relationship, at least in the short term. And for the same people putting a lot of stake in it, if it goes poorly or doesn't meet their expectations, it can be pretty harmful in the short run.”
Gift giving, a central activity of Valentine’s Day, has also been the subject of extensive research by psychologists.
“Receiving gifts seems on the surface like it would be the more preferable experience for some, but for other partners, the gift-giving is what’s really invigorating for them,” Bowen said. “Part of the explanation for that is the idea that knowing what the partner will like – giving them a gift – is a reflection that you understand and value them.”
Bowen emphasized the importance of keeping up with the ever-dynamic landscape of relationships, with social media being a growing and relevant space and tool for research regarding attraction. There are three traditional categories for studying online processes. The first is called translational, which takes an analog tool like a survey, and makes it digital. The second is called phenomenological methods, which takes a phenomenon that has transformed drastically online, an example being cyberbullying. The third category, which social media can be used for, is labelled as novel methods. Bowen described using the features of Instagram as a method to examine momentary experiences of attraction.
“You could present people with photos at a lab. You could ask them to respond really quickly to certain stimuli. You could ask them to express their opinions and try and get at that information rapidly, almost like a snap judgment. But swiping behavior in the context of Tinder and certain other dating apps is already a data source that's capturing this brevity of exposure. It's offering clues based on what's presented in those images, in terms of what is driving people's choices to swipe one way or the other. Taking the design of such tools and recognizing different data produced outside of people's conscious awareness offer compelling insights,” Bowen said.
Bowen listed a few characteristics present in Instagram that help create conditions to examine attraction, such as whether a person is following the participant, whether the participant is following the person, both or neither. With these alterations, an image of the Instagram profile can be created, and the participant’s reaction to these conditions can be measured.
Lastly, Bowen offered his overarching thoughts about the nature of human relationships.
“The thing that I often come back to is how the breadth and the flexibility of our psychology as human beings is largely where it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years… Grounding in that can be helpful. Even if we are expressing ourselves in new spaces and in new ways [like social media], those fundamental components are still there, as part of the nature of being a person. I think it sometimes can just be helpful to remind ourselves of that, [which is] very simple but also endlessly dynamic. Both from the perspective of studying it and living it, I think that's a nice thing to anchor into.”
