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Social Connection Seeking

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Definition

“Social connection seeking” is the motivated behavior of pursuing close relationships. Individual differences in social connection seeking predict which people, and to what extent, will pursue close relationships with others.

Introduction

People seek social connection. They are motivated to form and maintain a minimum number of close, positive relationships throughout their lives (Baumeister and Leary 1995). When relationships inevitably end, either through death or dissolution, people often pursue new relationships. Indeed, the desire to connect with others, either in-person or online, is a pervasive human need with clear, evolutionary benefits for individuals and societies (Baumeister and Leary 1995). In addition, there are individual differences in the degree to which people seek social connection. For instance, some people strongly desire social support and emotional validation and thus are more likely to seek social connection than others. The current encyclopedia...

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Correspondence to Brian Collisson .

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Collisson, B., Saludes, C., Crosier, B.S. (2018). Social Connection Seeking. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1829-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1829-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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