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In social life, people spontaneously form stable trustworthiness impressions from faces. However, the precise role of extracting trustworthiness information remains unclear. This study aims to elucidate whether discerning facial trustworthiness influences social interactions. Specifically, it explores the gaze cueing effect (GCE), wherein individuals exhibit quicker responses to targets appearing in the direction of gaze compared to other locations. Given conflicting perspectives in existing literature regarding the potential modulation of trustworthiness on the GCE, two plausible hypotheses are proposed to explain divergent result patterns. The reflexive hypothesis posits that the GCE operates automatically. In contrast, the flexible hypothesis underscores the potential modulatory role of trustworthiness in the GCE. To provide a comprehensive understanding of whether trustworthiness modulates the GCE, we employed face stimuli incorporating trustworthiness information within Posner' s cue-target task. The findings of Experiment 1 revealed that the perception of trustworthiness indeed influenced the GCE. Specifically, when facial stimuli were perceived as trustworthy, they elicited a more pronounced GCE compared to untrustworthy stimuli. This modulation effect was replicated using a different stimulus set in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, we employed the same stimuli as in Experiment 2, setting the trustworthiness information to baseline as a control experiment. The results demonstrated that the trustworthiness modulation effect disappeared, indicating its specificity to the trustworthiness attribute of the stimuli rather than other characteristics. Collectively, these findings lend support to the flexible hypothesis, highlighting that the extraction of trustworthiness information plays a pivotal role in modulating the GCE, consequently influencing social interactions., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Group, which involves collective actions for achieving shared goals, can be conceptually understood as an important source of agency and control. The current research investigated whether group identity salience can enhance sense of agency within the individual. Specifically, we examined whether an activated cultural group identity, through presenting different types of cultural photographs in a predictable way, would facilitate people's sense of agency by using an implicit method, namely, intentional binding effect paradigm. Experiment 1a found that an activated cultural group identity enhanced the sense of agency. Next, Experiment 1b replicated the findings by recruiting a different ethnic group in the same society. Experiment 2 explored what may affect the intensity of induced sense of agency and found that perceived representativeness of the presented cultural stimuli was positively correlated with the intensity of induced sense of agency. Finally, Experiment 3 explored whether ethnic minority and majority groups would demonstrate different intensity of agency when their cultural identity was activated. The results showed that the sense of agency induced by the mainstream cultural stimuli was greater than that induced by the foreign cultural photographs. These patterns were not different between the two ethnic groups. Taken together, these findings reflected the dynamic nature of cultural identity construction in a multicultural society., (© 2019 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

We examined whether the broadened attentional scope would affect people's sad or depressed mood with two experiments, enlightened by the meaning of "seeing the big picture" and the broaden-and-build model. Experiment 1 (n = 164) is a laboratory-based experiment, in which we manipulated the attentional scope by showing participants zoomed-out or zoomed-in scenes. In Experiment 2 (n = 44), we studied how depressed mood and positive and negative emotions were affected when participants watched distant versus proximal scenes for eight weeks in real life. Healthy participants in Experiment 1, who were induced to feel sad, could return to the baseline mood after having the broadened attention task but not after having the narrowed attention task, which indicated that immediate attention broadening manipulation could function as antidotes for the lingering effects of induced negative emotions. Participants with depressed mood in Experiment 2 showed reduced depressed mood, increased positive affect, and decreased negative affect after receiving attention broadening training compared to those receiving attention narrowing training. Our findings suggest a robust role of broadened attentional scope in relieving negative emotions and even mildly depressed mood in the long run., (© 2017 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

A fundamental question in reading research concerns whether attention is allocated strictly serially, supporting lexical processing of one word at a time, or in parallel, supporting concurrent lexical processing of two or more words (Reichle, Liversedge, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 2009). The origins of this debate are reviewed. We then report three simulations to address this question using artificial reading agents (Liu & Reichle, 2010; Reichle & Laurent, 2006) that learn to dynamically allocate attention to 1-4 words to "read" as efficiently as possible. These simulation results indicate that the agents strongly preferred serial word processing, although they occasionally attended to more than one word concurrently. The reason for this preference is discussed, along with implications for the debate about how humans allocate attention during reading., (Copyright © 2013 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.)

Four studies tested whether nostalgia can counteract reductions in perceived social support caused by loneliness. Loneliness reduced perceptions of social support but increased nostalgia. Nostalgia, in turn, increased perceptions of social support. Thus, loneliness affected perceived social support in two distinct ways. Whereas the direct effect of loneliness was to reduce perceived social support, the indirect effect of loneliness was to increase perceived social support via nostalgia. This restorative function of nostalgia was particularly apparent among resilient persons. Nostalgia is a psychological resource that protects and fosters mental health.