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1. Quantifying Intimacy in Language

   https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.emnlp-main.428  

   Pei, Jiaxin; Jurgens, David (January 2020, Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP))

   null (Ed.)

   Intimacy is a fundamental aspect of how we relate to others in social settings. Language encodes the social information of intimacy through both topics and other more subtle cues (such as linguistic hedging and swearing). Here, we introduce a new computational framework for studying expressions of the intimacy in language with an accompanying dataset and deep learning model for accurately predicting the intimacy level of questions (Pearson r = 0.87). Through analyzing a dataset of 80.5M questions across social media, books, and films, we show that individuals employ interpersonal pragmatic moves in their language to align their intimacy with social settings. Then, in three studies, we further demonstrate how individuals modulate their intimacy to match social norms around gender, social distance, and audience, each validating key findings from studies in social psychology. Our work demonstrates that intimacy is a pervasive and impactful social dimension of language. 

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2. SemEval-2023 Task 9: Multilingual Tweet Intimacy Analysis

   https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.semeval-1.309  

   Pei, Jiaxin; Silva, Vítor; Bos, Maarten; Liu, Yozen; Neves, Leonardo; Jurgens, David; Barbieri, Francesco (July 2023, Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2023))
3. On Shared Suffering: Judicial Intimacy in the Rural Northland

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12537  

   Statz, Michele (January 2021, Law society review)

   null (Ed.)
4. Self-esteem's impacts on intimacy-building: Pathways through self-disclosure and responsiveness

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101596  

   Forest, Amanda L.; Sigler, Kirby N.; Bain, Kaitlin S.; O'Brien, Emily R.; Wood, Joanne V. (August 2023, Current Opinion in Psychology)

   Reis, H.; Itzchakov, G. (Ed.)

   Building intimate relationships is rewarding but entails risking rejection. Trait self-esteem—a person's overall self-evaluation—has important implications for how people behave in socially risky situations. Integrating established models of responsiveness and intimacy with theory and research on self-esteem, we present a model that highlights the ways in which self-esteem impacts intimacy-building. A review of relevant research reveals that compared to people with high self-esteem, people with low self-esteem exhibit interpersonal perceptions and behaviors that can hinder intimacy development—for example, disclosing less openly, and eliciting and perceiving less responsiveness from others. We identify important directions for future research and consider methods for encouraging intimacy-promoting processes among people with low self-esteem. 

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5. Children's evaluations of interracial peer inclusion and exclusion: The role of intimacy

   https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14197  

   Luken_Raz, Kate; Kaufman, Elise_M; Killen, Melanie (February 2025, Child Development)

   Abstract The present study investigated how Black and White American children, ages 6 to 9.5 years and 9.5 to 12 years (N = 219, M  Age = 9.18 years, SDAge = 1.90; 51% female) evaluated vignettes in which peers included a same- or cross-race peer in a high-intimacy or low-intimacy context. These data were collected from 2021 to 2022. Children expected characters to be less likely to include cross-race peers in high- than low-intimacy contexts. They also evaluated cross-race exclusion more negatively in high- and low-intimacy contexts. Black participants evaluated cross-race exclusion more negatively than did White participants. Older participants were more likely to personally include a cross-race peer. This study is a first step toward understanding the role of intimacy in cross-race peer relationships. 

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