Shira Gabriel
Biographic Data
| ID | 98828 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shira Gabriel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shira |
| FAMILY NAME | Gabriel |
| SIGNATURE | GABRIEL S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3384-8900 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 35 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Thank you for the music
Social need fulfillment is imperative to well-being, leading to a strong motivation to ensure that social needs are met. The social surrogacy hypothesis proposes that individuals may use non-human social targets, including television characters, books, or comfort foods, to address social needs. The current work sought to examine the social surrogacy hypothesis in the domain of music. Utilizing both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study …
Let the Music Play
This work examined the power of live music events to enhance wellbeing through collective effervescence (CE)—the sense of sacredness and connection felt when in large groups. Four studies ( N = 789) using both university and community samples examined the relationship between live music events and CE and how this relationship contributes to positive, lasting outcomes. Results suggest that CE is highly related to positive outcomes associated with …
How Classroom Economic Disadvantage and Social Class Attitudes Shape Parents’ Educational Preferences
Research indicates that income segregation is a significant problem in U.S. schools. Here, we investigate the role that parent preferences play in this phenomenon. We analyze experimental data from a sample of parents of young children to examine how the proportion of low-income students in a hypothetical classroom and parents’ social class attitudes influence preferences. We find that classroom economic composition affects parents’ preferences b…
When Do Real-World Rejections Motivate People to Seek out Symbolic Social Bonds? Insights From the Risk-Regulation Model
Lack of belonging can negatively affect mental and physical health, but experiences with social rejection are routine. Two studies examined whether being unable to mitigate the risk of rejection in real-world relationships motivates people to defensively immerse themselves in symbolic social bonds with celebrities and fictional characters. Study 1 (four daily diary samples) and Study 2 (cross-sectional sample) operationalized the ability to mitig…
Me in this crowd is like me in that crowd
Social comparison, parasocial relationships, and attachment style
The recent exponential increase in information available online has not only increased access to information about celebrities, but also decreased the degree to which that information is unambiguously positive. In the current work, we examined how positive celebrities (i.e. celebrities who are primarily admired) versus more ambiguous celebrities (i.e. celebrities about whom people have mixed feelings) differentially affect feelings about the self…
Reliving the Good Old Days
Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for one’s past, is associated with, or confers, psychological wellbeing (PWB). We identified a mechanism for this link: collective effervescence, a potent sense of connection to those present in an assembly and a sensation of transcendence (i.e., feeling that an experience is special or sacred). In six studies, involving measurement-of-mediation and experimental-causal-chain designs, nostalgia was associated with,…
Creating a space for the sacred in a secular world
Scholars have long argued that religious rituals are essential for maintaining society, bringing meaning to life and increasing connections via the collective effervescence that they engender. A world in which fewer people attend religious services does not mean that people no longer benefit from the important outcomes associated with religious rituals. The current research examined whether people experience collective effervescence and positive …
How Parasocial Relationships Affect Our Self-Concepts
The chapter surveys the effects of parasocial relationships (PSRs; one-sided relationships with media figures, including celebrities and fictional characters) on individuals’ self-concept, self-esteem, and self-discrepancies. The chapter begins by examining the effects of PSRs on self-esteem and body esteem. After reviewing the literature in these areas, the chapter explores how people use self-expanding properties of PSRs to regulate affect and …
The psychological determinants of classroom preferences
The opportunity for parents to select their children's school is both increasingly common and linked to school segregation in the U.S. Here, we investigate how race and racial attitudes shape parents' classroom preferences, which have direct implications for school choices. We measured the implicit and explicit racial attitudes of both White and Black parents (Study 1: N = 201; mean age = 35.46; 173 women, 28 men; 37 Black, 147 White) of preschoo…
Back where I belong
Social achievement goals and social media
Reflections on the 25th anniversary of Baumeister & Leary’s seminal paper on the need to belong
This special issue celebrates the impact of Baumeister and Leary’s paper on the need to belong on its 25th birthday. This seminal work identified the importance of social connections for humans, suggested that the human need to belong is analogous to our needs for food and water, and identified the invisible hand that guides much of the research in social psychology. The first three articles in this special issue provide examples of how the need …
From “love actually” to love, actually
Belongingness needs have generally been thought to be filled through traditional strategies, but recent research suggests that nontraditional strategies (e.g., parasocial relationship partners, TV shows) may work as well. No work has yet examined the comparative importance of these different social behaviors in contributing to social need fulfillment. The current work utilized a visual measure to assess frequency, variety, and degree of contribut…
From Apprentice to President
Data suggest that the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election was a surprise to most people. We conducted a study to examine the role parasocial bonds formed with Trump due to his appearances on reality television played in his surprising victory. Results suggested that exposure to Trump though The Apprentice and through other media predicted the formation of parasocial bonds with Trump. These parasocial bonds with Trump predicted beli…
What’s good for me depends on what I see in you
Past research has demonstrated that comfort with intimacy differentially affects the extent to which a person assimilates/contrasts to a close other. Specifically, individuals comfortable with intimacy benefit most from assimilating to those who embody positive aspects, whereas individuals uncomfortable with intimacy benefit most from contrasting to those who embody a mix of positive and negative aspects. Using a multi-method approach, the curren…
Let's stay home and watch TV
Sharing a social identity is a key component of interdependence in romantic relationships. In particular, sharing a social network of friends and family members with a romantic partner enhances relationship quality, but maintaining an integrated social network is not always possible. When people lack a shared circle of friends with their partners, sharing media like TV shows, books, and movies with partners may compensate for this deficit and res…
There But for the Grace of God
Past research suggests that thinking counterfactually leads to a perception that major life events are fated or predetermined. We hypothesized that a perception that events are fated will activate perceptions that God played a role in the event, which will increase feelings of religiousness. Because most people view God as a positive influence, we hypothesized that this would only happen when imagining how events might have turned out worse (i.e.…
Threatened belonging and preference for comfort food among the securely attached
A Friend of Yours Is No Friend of Mine
The current research examined the novel hypothesis that a romantic partner’s same-sex friends can elicit jealousy by threatening people’s central role in their partner’s life. Thus, we expected that people whose partners were highly central to their lives would be particularly likely to experience jealousy toward their partner’s same-sex friends and that jealousy would be exacerbated when they had reason to doubt their partner’s commitment. Two s…
The Skinny on Celebrities
Much research demonstrates that exposure to thin media ideals has a negative effect on women’s body image. The present research suggests a notable and important exception to this rule. The authors propose the parasocial relationship-moderation hypothesis—that parasocial, or one-sided, relationships (PSRs) moderate the effects of thin media figures on body image. Specifically, the authors propose that having a PSR with a media figure increases the…
Batman to the rescue! The protective effects of parasocial relationships with muscular superheroes on men's body image
Chicken Soup Really Is Good for the Soul
Theories of social surrogacy and embodied cognition assume that cognitive associations with nonhuman stimuli can be affectively charged. In the current research, we examined whether the “comfort” of comfort foods comes from affective associations with relationships. Two experiments support the hypotheses that comfort foods are associated with relationships and alleviate loneliness. Experiment 1 found that the consumption of comfort foods automati…
What Makes Us Feel the Best Also Makes Us Feel the Worst
Four studies examined the hypothesis that intense emotional experiences are more often centered on interdependent than independent experiences. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that when asked to write about emotionally intense events, participants were more likely to write about interdependent than independent experiences. Study 3 provided evidence that these effects were not due to recall effects based on mere exposure. Finally, Study 4 demonstrate…
Including Others in the Implicit Self
We argue that people include significant others in their implicit self-concepts. That is, people's implicit evaluations of their significant others are related to their own self-evaluations. Data from five different samples supported this idea by demonstrating that people's implicit self-esteem is related to their implicit evaluations of their close others (both implicit self-esteem and implicit evaluations of significant others were assessed usi…
Are there "his" and "hers" types of interdependence? The implications of gender differences in collective versus relational interdependence for affect, behavior, and cognition
Social surrogacy
Shifting social identities as a strategy for deflecting threatening social comparisons
Results of three studies suggest that the multifaceted nature of identity provides a strategic basis for reducing the threat involved in upward social comparisons. After performing worse than a comparison standard, people may strategically emphasize aspects of their identity that differentiate them from the standard, thereby making the standard less relevant for self-evaluation. On the basis of previous research showing that persons low in self-e…
When you and I are "we," you are not threatening
Many theories of self-evaluation emphasize the power of social comparison. Simply put, an individual is thought to gain esteem whenever she or he outperforms others and to lose esteem when he or she is outperformed. The current research explored interdependent self-construal as a moderator of these effects. Two studies used a priming task to manipulate the level of self-construal and investigate effects of social comparison in dyadic (Study 1) an…
Batman to the rescue! The protective effects of parasocial relationships with muscular superheroes on men's body image
When I think of you, I feel more confident about me
Threatened belonging and preference for comfort food among the securely attached
Let's stay home and watch TV
Sharing a social identity is a key component of interdependence in romantic relationships. In particular, sharing a social network of friends and family members with a romantic partner enhances relationship quality, but maintaining an integrated social network is not always possible. When people lack a shared circle of friends with their partners, sharing media like TV shows, books, and movies with partners may compensate for this deficit and res…
Negative self-synchronization
The current research examined whether people will attempt to modify internal aspects of the self to make them congruent with others, even when those modifications have negative implications for the self, a phenomenon we refer to as negative self-synchronization. We proposed that negative self-synchronization will occur only for individuals who are securely attached. Across 4 experiments, participants who were high in secure attachment were more l…
Circle of Friends or Members of a Group? Sex Differences in Relational and Collective Attachment to Groups
In the current investigation, we studied sex differences in belonging needs by exploring men's and women's attachment to groups. Previous work has shown that women's social needs tend to be expressed in terms of relational bonds, whereas men's also have a strong collective component (e.g. Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). In this research, we asked men and women to consider one of their important group memberships and to complete Prentice, Miller, and Li…
A friend is a present you give to your “Self”
Creating a space for the sacred in a secular world
Scholars have long argued that religious rituals are essential for maintaining society, bringing meaning to life and increasing connections via the collective effervescence that they engender. A world in which fewer people attend religious services does not mean that people no longer benefit from the important outcomes associated with religious rituals. The current research examined whether people experience collective effervescence and positive …
“I” Value Freedom, but “We” Value Relationships
The distinction between relatively independent versus interdependent self-construals has been strongly associated with several important cultural differences in social behavior. The current studies examined the causal role of self-construal by investigating whether priming independent or interdependent self-construals within a culture could result in differences in psychological worldview that mirror those traditionally found between cultures. In…
Are there "his" and "hers" types of interdependence? The implications of gender differences in collective versus relational interdependence for affect, behavior, and cognition
Shifting social identities as a strategy for deflecting threatening social comparisons
Results of three studies suggest that the multifaceted nature of identity provides a strategic basis for reducing the threat involved in upward social comparisons. After performing worse than a comparison standard, people may strategically emphasize aspects of their identity that differentiate them from the standard, thereby making the standard less relevant for self-evaluation. On the basis of previous research showing that persons low in self-e…
When you and I are "we," you are not threatening
Many theories of self-evaluation emphasize the power of social comparison. Simply put, an individual is thought to gain esteem whenever she or he outperforms others and to lose esteem when he or she is outperformed. The current research explored interdependent self-construal as a moderator of these effects. Two studies used a priming task to manipulate the level of self-construal and investigate effects of social comparison in dyadic (Study 1) an…
Circle of Friends or Members of a Group? Sex Differences in Relational and Collective Attachment to Groups
In the current investigation, we studied sex differences in belonging needs by exploring men's and women's attachment to groups. Previous work has shown that women's social needs tend to be expressed in terms of relational bonds, whereas men's also have a strong collective component (e.g. Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). In this research, we asked men and women to consider one of their important group memberships and to complete Prentice, Miller, and Li…
When I think of you, I feel more confident about me
A friend is a present you give to your “Self”
Parasocial relationships and self‐discrepancies
The current research proposes that low self‐esteem people can use parasocial relationships to experience movement toward the ideal self, a benefit they may miss in real relationships. In Study 1, low self‐esteem undergraduate psychology students at a public university in the United States felt closest to celebrities who were similar to their ideal self. In Study 2, low self‐esteem college students primed with their favorite celebrity became more …
Social surrogacy
What Makes Us Feel the Best Also Makes Us Feel the Worst
Four studies examined the hypothesis that intense emotional experiences are more often centered on interdependent than independent experiences. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that when asked to write about emotionally intense events, participants were more likely to write about interdependent than independent experiences. Study 3 provided evidence that these effects were not due to recall effects based on mere exposure. Finally, Study 4 demonstrate…
Including Others in the Implicit Self
We argue that people include significant others in their implicit self-concepts. That is, people's implicit evaluations of their significant others are related to their own self-evaluations. Data from five different samples supported this idea by demonstrating that people's implicit self-esteem is related to their implicit evaluations of their close others (both implicit self-esteem and implicit evaluations of significant others were assessed usi…
Negative self-synchronization
The current research examined whether people will attempt to modify internal aspects of the self to make them congruent with others, even when those modifications have negative implications for the self, a phenomenon we refer to as negative self-synchronization. We proposed that negative self-synchronization will occur only for individuals who are securely attached. Across 4 experiments, participants who were high in secure attachment were more l…
Chicken Soup Really Is Good for the Soul
Theories of social surrogacy and embodied cognition assume that cognitive associations with nonhuman stimuli can be affectively charged. In the current research, we examined whether the “comfort” of comfort foods comes from affective associations with relationships. Two experiments support the hypotheses that comfort foods are associated with relationships and alleviate loneliness. Experiment 1 found that the consumption of comfort foods automati…
The Skinny on Celebrities
Much research demonstrates that exposure to thin media ideals has a negative effect on women’s body image. The present research suggests a notable and important exception to this rule. The authors propose the parasocial relationship-moderation hypothesis—that parasocial, or one-sided, relationships (PSRs) moderate the effects of thin media figures on body image. Specifically, the authors propose that having a PSR with a media figure increases the…
Batman to the rescue! The protective effects of parasocial relationships with muscular superheroes on men's body image
A Friend of Yours Is No Friend of Mine
The current research examined the novel hypothesis that a romantic partner’s same-sex friends can elicit jealousy by threatening people’s central role in their partner’s life. Thus, we expected that people whose partners were highly central to their lives would be particularly likely to experience jealousy toward their partner’s same-sex friends and that jealousy would be exacerbated when they had reason to doubt their partner’s commitment. Two s…
Threatened belonging and preference for comfort food among the securely attached
There But for the Grace of God
Past research suggests that thinking counterfactually leads to a perception that major life events are fated or predetermined. We hypothesized that a perception that events are fated will activate perceptions that God played a role in the event, which will increase feelings of religiousness. Because most people view God as a positive influence, we hypothesized that this would only happen when imagining how events might have turned out worse (i.e.…
What’s good for me depends on what I see in you
Past research has demonstrated that comfort with intimacy differentially affects the extent to which a person assimilates/contrasts to a close other. Specifically, individuals comfortable with intimacy benefit most from assimilating to those who embody positive aspects, whereas individuals uncomfortable with intimacy benefit most from contrasting to those who embody a mix of positive and negative aspects. Using a multi-method approach, the curren…
Let's stay home and watch TV
Sharing a social identity is a key component of interdependence in romantic relationships. In particular, sharing a social network of friends and family members with a romantic partner enhances relationship quality, but maintaining an integrated social network is not always possible. When people lack a shared circle of friends with their partners, sharing media like TV shows, books, and movies with partners may compensate for this deficit and res…
From Apprentice to President
Data suggest that the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election was a surprise to most people. We conducted a study to examine the role parasocial bonds formed with Trump due to his appearances on reality television played in his surprising victory. Results suggested that exposure to Trump though The Apprentice and through other media predicted the formation of parasocial bonds with Trump. These parasocial bonds with Trump predicted beli…
Social achievement goals and social media
Reflections on the 25th anniversary of Baumeister & Leary’s seminal paper on the need to belong
This special issue celebrates the impact of Baumeister and Leary’s paper on the need to belong on its 25th birthday. This seminal work identified the importance of social connections for humans, suggested that the human need to belong is analogous to our needs for food and water, and identified the invisible hand that guides much of the research in social psychology. The first three articles in this special issue provide examples of how the need …
From “love actually” to love, actually
Belongingness needs have generally been thought to be filled through traditional strategies, but recent research suggests that nontraditional strategies (e.g., parasocial relationship partners, TV shows) may work as well. No work has yet examined the comparative importance of these different social behaviors in contributing to social need fulfillment. The current work utilized a visual measure to assess frequency, variety, and degree of contribut…
Back where I belong
Psychology (31 works) · Social Psychology (28 works) · Media Influence and Health (14 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (12 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (10 works) · Developmental psychology (9 works) · Feeling (9 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (9 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (7 works)