I (Dr. Susan Sprecher) was asked to write an article about my recent funding from the John Templeton Foundation.
First, an introduction of me, in case you don’t know who I am. I have been in the department for many years (not as long as Dr. Wib Leonard, who has the record of almost 55 years), but I am now close to 40 years. I love all aspects of my job—teaching, research, and service. I also love ISU; it has been the perfect academic home for me.
My scholarship has been in the area of relationships. Sociologists and social psychologists who study relationships examine many topics about relationships, ranging from their initiation and development to their dissolution. We also study such interesting topics as love, sex, and health implications of relationships.
Over my long career, I have studied many topics about close relationships, and am currently completing a multi-year project co-editing the third edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships, which includes over 40 chapters. In July, the International Association for Relationship Research honored me with the Distinguished Career Award for the organization. I need to thank ISU and the department for being supportive of me and my research to make it possible for me to receive this recognition from an international and interdisciplinary organization.
While close relationships have long been the focus of my scholarship and research, more recently my research has focused on what sociologists call “weak ties,” also referred to as peripheral ties, acquaintances, and consequential strangers. I have especially been interested in the well-being outcomes of having a diverse “social portfolio.” My interest in weak ties began years ago when a prior departmental chair (Fred Smith) acquired lab space on the second floor of Schroeder Hall for sociologists (and anthropologists) to conduct research. I took over a corner of this space and started conducting “social interaction studies.” In the basic paradigm, two (previously unacquainted) students arrive (to different rooms) for the study. Student experimenters greet the participants and arrange for them to first complete an online survey, then interact with each other using a getting-acquainted task, and then complete another online survey which assesses their reactions to the interaction. Each study has involved an experimental manipulation, such as mode of communication (face-to-face vs. video communication), type of self-disclosure task (small talk vs. more intimate topics), or information presented about the other prior to the interaction.
Since 2010 when I began conducting these studies, over 1,500 students have participated and over 150 students have worked in research teams in the lab. I have continued to conduct these studies (with modifications) over the years in part because of the opportunities it gives me to add to the research skills of students (who work in the lab) and to contribute to the formation of weak tie interactions for college students, who mostly seem to enjoy participating. Of course, I also enjoy addressing interesting research questions and then writing up the results for conference presentations and publications.
More recently, I received funding from the John Templeton Foundation to support some of the research and scholarship I am doing related to weak ties, including the getting-acquainted interaction studies. The John Templeton Foundation is a philanthropic organization that supports interdisciplinary research that contributes to human flourishing and helps create a better world. ISU also provided an internal grant to me to begin some research prior to when the Templeton funding became available. (Thanks to both!)
One of the tasks I am working on (as a goal of the grant) is to compile the data across the many social interaction studies that I have conducted and examine some new research questions that I did not previously examine as I was conducting each study and that can benefit from analyses conducted with a very large sample. To give you an idea of what I am working on with the compiled data, this summer I wrote two manuscripts that are currently under review at journals, with the titles, “Barriers to Interaction with New Weak Ties: Are Self-Presentational Concerns and Forecasts of Benefits Miscalibrated?” and “Do I Like You and How Much Do I think You Like Me?: Liking in Getting-Acquainted Interactions.” I also have a manuscript in progress titled, “Changes in Well-Being After a Brief Interaction with a Stranger” and furthermore, analyses are underway to examine how individual difference variables (including propensity to experience compassionate love and shyness) are associated with experiences in an initial interaction. I also have been busy writing integrative review chapters summarizing the literature on the role of weak ties in our lives.
If anyone reading this is interested in copies of any of my research, do email me: sprecher@IllinoisState.edu. If any of my prior students who worked in the research lab or past participants are reading this, thank you for your contributions and I hope that you are doing well! Do email me about what you are up to. If any of my retired colleagues are reading this, I promise I will join you in retirement someday, but so far I’m still having too much fun going into Schroeder each day. To current students, colleagues, and staff in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, thanks for being my weak (or closer) ties, enhancing my well-being in my daily life.
Dr. Susan Sprecher is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology.
