Choosing to Enter or Avoid Diagnostic Social Situations

Abstract

Three studies suggest that people control the nature of their relationships, in part, by choosing to enter (or avoid) situations providing feedback about other people's social interest. In Study 1, chronically avoidant individuals (but not others) preferred social options that would provide no information about other people's evaluations of them over social options that would, but did not prefer nondiagnostic situations more generally. In Study 2, chronically avoidant students (but not others) in a methods class preferred to have their teacher assign them to working groups (a nondiagnostic situation) over forming their own groups (a diagnostic situation). In Study 3, individuals experimentally primed to feel avoidant were less likely than those primed to feel secure to choose to receive feedback about how another person felt about them. Overall, the research suggests that choices of socially diagnostic versus socially nondiagnostic situations play an important role in guiding people's social relationships.