A PhD in love? Relationship advice from McGill psychologists

Lydon Lab highlights the importance of meta-perceptions and shared realities

Ella Paulin Science & Technology Editor

Valentine’s Day may be about celebrating love, but it’s also a chance to celebrate the science that helps us understand love and other intimate interpersonal relationships. //The McGill Tribune// spoke to Catalina Enestrom, a graduate student working at McGill’s Lydon Lab, about the latest research on the psychology of relationships.

Assessing personality is tricky

We all know that first impressions matter, so how do you make a good one? And on the flip side, how do you know if you are judging somebody else accurately? To answer questions like these, researchers at the Lydon Lab conduct speed-dating studies, where participants are asked to rate others on a variety of factors such as attractiveness and personality.

In an article published in the European Journal of Personality, researchers found that participants positively rated the personalities of people they found more attractive. The results also showed that if someone was rated as less attractive on average but as more attractive by an individual, then the individual who found the person attractive was actually worse at accurately assessing their personality.

The authors hypothesized that perhaps those judged as less attractive by the group were harder to ‘read’ personality-wise. If this were true, it would mean that even though the person who found them more attractive was paying close attention, they still weren’t able to form an accurate opinion.

Are you a good judge of how others see you?

I don’t know about you, but this speeding-dating study makes me wonder: Am I good at gauging how other people perceive my personality? Thinking about what other people think of you is called meta-perception, and it’s an important aspect of our social behaviour.

“So for example, I might be thinking right now like, do you see me as someone who is intelligent? Do you see me as warm?” Enestrom said in an interview with the Tribune Being accurate about these perceptions helps you “course-correct” if necessary.

“If I see that maybe you’re finding me a bit rude or off-putting, or like maybe I am talking too fast, [...] then because of that I can make adjustments to it,” Enestrom said.

In an article published in The Journal of Psychology, Lydon Lab researchers found that the accuracy of partners’ meta-perceptions do in fact correlate with their relationship’s wellbeing, especially regarding emotional and personal connections.

Shared beliefs can act as anchors in stressful situations

Meta-perceptions hint at another important aspect of interpersonal relationships: The differences and similarities between partners’ beliefs. The overlaps are referred to as shared reality.

“It can be something as simple as the sort of small things that make up shared reality, like, ‘I saw this movie, and I saw it in the same way,’” Enestrom explained. “But it can be bigger things like ‘I see my work environment in the same way’.”

Having a sense of shared reality strengthens a relationship for many reasons, including making people confident in their experiences and fostering a sense of belonging.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Enestrom looked specifically at health-care workers who had nonhealth-care partners, and examined what effects shared reality had on their experiences. She followed couples through both the first and second waves of the pandemic, when they were experiencing unprecedented levels of instability and uncertainty, both in their jobs and their lives.

“What we explored specifically in that paper [is] how does shared reality actually benefit the relationship despite having all this stress in this big, uncertain, unprecedented context,” Enestrom said. “One of the things that we really found was that perceived support stems from shared reality.”

In a stressful situation like a pandemic, this shared reality and the resulting sense of support and stability was likely critical for health-care workers.

Another stressful situation, for some couples at least, is Valentine’s Day itself. Enestrom sees a potential for different views of the holiday to fracture a couple’s sense of shared reality.

“One partner might be like, ‘Oh, this is just like a capitalist [construct], they’re just trying to make us spend all this money, it’s consumerist, et cetera,’” said Enestrom, “whereas another partner might see Valentine’s Day as [...] a way to show that you care.”

Into Evolving Opportunities In Pharmaceutical Industry

McGill PCSN and ABTiP host panel as part of Black History Month

Ali Baghirov Contributor

The “Black in Pharma” panel, organized by the McGill Pharmaceutical Career Student Network (PCSN) and Advancing Black Talent in Pharma (ABTiP) on Feb. 9, was a candid talk about advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in pharmacology. Panellists included Corinne Buchanan-Russell, ABTiP president, Abraham Oniku, a senior manager in Medical Liaisons at Amgen Canada, and Jackie Hardwick, an associate of strategy and operations at Eli Lilly Canada.

Panellists started off by discussing their experience with EDI and the changes they have observed in pharma. Buchanan-Russell noted that the shared experiences of people of colour in the industry have united them and helped to create a culture of belonging. She referenced her own experience of waiting over 20 years to ultimately find such a platform that uplifts Black talent in the field.

“When we got together, we started with activities and initiatives that brought people together. And I remember our very first significant event, we were all at a Zoom meet- ing,” Buchanan-Russell said. “We asked everybody to turn on their cameras, and it was a very moving experience to see and be exposed to people who look like us.”

According to Oniku, there has been an increase in the number of Black people applying for roles in the pharmaceutical industry. A career in pharma is often associated with stiff competition, he explained, so there are some CV additions that young Black professionals should aim to have.

“One of the things that I’ve sometimes seen lacking in Black talent [are] things like internship, co-op, or volunteering—those things help a lot on your resume because people think that you’ve really done something beyond your regular school training,” Oniku said. “So I think, as a Black person, be aware that these are some of the things that employers and hiring managers are looking for.”

As per Hardwick, competent applicants may hesitate to submit their portfolios, as employers sometimes seek years of experience, even for entry-level positions. For Black applicants, having acquaintances and colleagues who can advise them on resumes and qualities prioritized by the hiring staff is an important competitive edge, which is why creating a more diverse and inclusive community is crucial.

“We could take back our organizations to say, ‘Hey, are we excluding great talent out there just by the virtue of how we’re articulating our job postings?’” Hardwick said.

Oniku believes that the protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 changed the way Canadian pharma companies approach EDI.

“I’ve personally been very encouraged by how the pharma industry in Canada responded, ever since the George Floyd issue, to really step up with the [EDI] initiatives,” Oniku said. “[In] my company, for instance, there are a lot of concerted efforts to really bring in some of the interns that we have into the company to be Black or [another] minority group.”

Diversifying the workforce of pharmaceutical companies is essential, as both employers and employees benefit from a stronger feeling of belonging. Customers of different backgrounds also feel more welcome in an inclusive environment, Buchanan-Russell explained. As ABTiP president, Buchanan-Russell—who also has over 30 years of experience working in pharmacology in the U.S., Germany, and Canada—has witnessed first-hand how companies have changed their EDI policies.

“I think that one of the things that the industry is getting right is that they’re open, they’re listening, and recognizing that there are things that need to be changed and improved in terms of increasing the diversity of their employees,” Buchanan-Russell said.

Harwick added that although the implementation of EDI practices has ramped up at some companies, others are only just beginning to understand the importance of racial di- versity in the workplace.

“We’ve got some variation within the industry, some companies are leading the way and making some great progress, others are probably in the earlier stages of their journey,” Hardwick said. “There is no end destination on this [since] the needs [and] the expectations continue to evolve. So we’ll have to be up for that challenge.”

As a lot of work still remains to be done, companies that develop lifesaving drugs must rethink their approaches in order to create a medical community that supports everyone’s needs.