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A growing literature demonstrates reluctant giving: Many people who voluntarily give to charity no longer do so when they have an excuse not to give. The mechanisms of reluctance, however, remain unclear. Consistent with this literature, we found that injecting attributional ambiguity into a real charitable decision significantly reduces donations. Participants in our studies (N = 2147) faced a binary choice between options for distributing money between themselves and a charity, with one option giving more to a charity and the other leaving more for themselves. Borrowing from a classic attributional ambiguity paradigm, we manipulated whether the charity involved was the same for both options or different, giving participants the possible excuse of keeping more money due to preferring one charity over another. Participants indeed kept more for themselves when there were two different charities, regardless of which charity was associated with the more self-beneficial option, ostensibly revealing a hidden preference for selfishness. Using incentive compatible elications, we found no evidence that participants used the excuse of preferring one charity to another to justify their choices. Instead, we find that attributional ambiguity weakened perceptions that there is a norm against keeping more money in the task, both among decision makers and disinterested third parties. We conclude that attributional ambiguity lowers donations by relieving internalized social pressure to give. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People take longer to categorize racially ambiguous individuals, but does this perceptual complexity also affect social interactions? In Study 1, White participants interacted with a racially ambiguous confederate who was either labeled as biracial Black/White, monoracial Black, or given no racial label. White participants in the biracial condition were significantly less cognitively depleted, less essentialist in their thoughts about race, and exhibited more accurate face memory for their partners than when partner race remained unspecified or was labeled as monoracial Black. Confederate reports and nonverbal behavior in the biracial condition were also more positive. In Study 2, White participants perceived more similarity with a biracial Black/White labeled interaction partner compared to a Black-specified or race-unspecified partner, highlighting for the first time how racial ambiguity and racial labeling affect behavioral outcomes in social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent discussions have focused on the role of replication in psychological science. In this article, we examine three key issues in evaluating the conclusions that follow from results of studies at least partly aimed at replicating previous results: the evaluation and status of exact versus conceptual replications, the statistical evaluation of replications, and the robustness of research findings to potential existing or future “non-replications.” In the first section of the article, we discuss the sources of ambiguity in evaluating failures to replicate in exact as well as conceptual replications. In addressing these ambiguities, we emphasize the key role of psychometric invariance of the independent and dependent variables in evaluations of replications. In the second section of the article, we use a meta-analytic framework to discuss the statistical status of replication attempts. We emphasize meta-analytic tools that have been used too sparingly, especially in evaluation of sets of studies within a single article or focused program of research. In the final section of the article, we extend many of these meta-analytic tools to the evaluation of the robustness of a body of research to potential existing or future failures to replicate previous statistically significant results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social group identity plays a central role in political polarization and inter-party conflict. Here, we use ambiguously valenced faces to measure bias in the processing of political ingroup and outgroup faces, while also accounting for inter-party differences in judgments of emotion at baseline. Participants identifying as Democrats and Republicans judged happy, angry, and surprised faces as positive or negative. Whereas happy and angry faces convey positive and negative valence respectively, surprised faces are ambiguous in that they readily convey positive and negative valence. Thus, surprise is a useful tool for characterizing valence bias (i.e., the tendency to judge ambiguous stimuli as negative). Face stimuli were assigned to the participants' political ingroup or outgroup, or a third group with an unspecified affiliation (baseline). We found a significant interaction of facial expression and group membership, such that outgroup faces were judged more negatively than ingroup and baseline, but only for surprise. There was also an interaction of facial expression and political affiliation, with Republicans judging surprise more negatively than Democrats across all group conditions. However, we did not find evidence for party differences in outgroup negativity. Our findings demonstrate the utility of judgments of surprised faces as a measure of intergroup bias, and reinforce the importance of outgroup negativity (relative to ingroup positivity) for explaining inter-party biases. • Republicans and Democrats viewed emotional faces of ingroup and outgroup members. • Emotional ambiguity was associated with a bias towards outgroup negativity. • There was no evidence of ingroup positivity. • Parties differed in their overall tendency to judge surprise as negative (R > D). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites' positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites' positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat. Three studies examined how suspicion of motives relates to ethnic minorities' responses to receiving positive feedback from a White peer or same-ethnicity peer (Experiment 1), to receiving feedback from a White peer that was positive or negative (Experiment 2), and to receiving positive feedback from a White peer who did or did not know their ethnicity (Experiment 3). As predicted, the more suspicious Latinas were of Whites' motives for behaving positively toward minorities in general, the more they regarded positive feedback from a White peer who knew their ethnicity as disingenuous and the more they reacted with cardiovascular reactivity characteristic of threat/avoidance, increased feelings of stress, heightened uncertainty, and decreased self-esteem. We discuss the implications for intergroup interactions of perceptions of Whites' motives for nonprejudiced behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of prevalent pressure to inhibit prejudice, racial minorities may wonder whether White people's nonprejudiced behavior is primarily motivated by personal commitments to egalitarianism (i.e., internal motivation) or superficial efforts to appear nonprejudiced (i.e., external motivation). The present work investigated whether minority group members chronically suspicious of White people's motives (i.e., those who believe White people are more externally than internally motivated), are more accurate than those who are less suspicious in detecting the motives behind White individuals' pleasant behavior toward minorities. Minority participants viewed four videos of White targets engaging in dyadic interracial interactions with a Black peer and evaluated the White targets' motivations. Compared to those low in suspicion, those high in suspicion were more accurate at assessing White targets' actual levels of external motivation. Hence, suspicion seems to carry some functional benefit as it attunes minority-group members to Whites' externally motivated positivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research centers the underexamined perspective of Black Americans regarding allyship behaviors and investigates their perceptions and experience of a White ally who confronts a White perpetrator of prejudice. In two experimental studies (N = 1176), we found that Black participants reported higher levels of self-esteem after a White ally confronted a White perpetrator of racial prejudice compared to no confrontation. Additionally, we found that White ally confrontations that signaled intrinsic motivations (i.e., driven by personal values) were perceived as less suspicious in motive than those that signaled extrinsic motivations (i.e., driven by image concerns), which related to more target self-esteem. We discuss implications for research on allyship and confrontation as well as practical considerations. Our results strongly suggest that advantaged group members cannot allow overt prejudice to stand unchecked and should consider the motivations they convey in their actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do people view others as good or evil? Although people generally cooperate with others and view others' "true selves" as intrinsically good, we suggest that they are likely to assume that the actions of others are evil—at least when they are ambiguous. Nine experiments provide support for promiscuous condemnation : the general tendency to assume that ambiguous actions are immoral. Both cognitive and functional arguments support the idea of promiscuous condemnation. Cognitively, dyadic completion suggests that when the mind perceives some elements of immorality (or harm), it cannot help but perceive other elements of immorality. Functionally, assuming that ambiguous actions are immoral helps people quickly identify potential harm and provide aid to others. In the first seven experiments, participants often judged neutral nonsense actions (e.g., "John pelled") as immoral, especially when the context surrounding these nonsense actions included elements of immorality (e.g., intentionality and suffering). In the last two experiments, participants showed greater promiscuous condemnation under time pressure, suggesting an automatic tendency to assume immorality that people must effortfully control. • Mixed evidence exists for whether people generally view others as good or evil. • People generally view others' "true selves" as good. • However, people may show promiscuous condemnation and often judge ambiguous acts as immoral. • Nine experiments using ambiguous acts support promiscuous condemnation. • We consider cognitive and functional reasons for promiscuous condemnation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]