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We propose a behavioral-science approach to sexual assault on college campuses. In this framework, people commit assault when aspects of the immediate situation trigger certain psychological states. No set of mental processes or situational configurations is a precise predictor of assault. Instead, the interaction between mental processes and situational configurations predicts when sexual assault is more or less likely to occur. We begin with an illustrative story to show how a behavioral-science approach is relevant to sexual assault. Next, we map out a framework that suggests how behavioral theories of situations and mental processes have been or could be used to describe, predict, and develop ideas for the reduction of sexual assault. Relevant situational configurations include geographical configurations, local situational and informational cues, and situation-based power. Theories of mental processes include person perception, social norms, moral reasoning, and goals. Our framework can be used to demonstrate how "good" people can commit assault and how individuals can and will refrain from assault within institutions with a "bad" record. Compared with previous theories of sexual assault, a behavioral-science framework offers unique understanding and generative methods for addressing sexual assault on college campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that women in the care workforce face a wage penalty because care work is perceived as something that people, especially women, are meant to do out of love (and for free). We focus on care labor, which is aligned with stereotypes about women's natural abilities as caregivers, to show that low wages cannot be explained by counter-stereotypic behavior alone. Instead, low wages in care labor can be explained by a perceived love versus money tradeoff. This tradeoff exists not only because of intrinsic rewards and fears of commodifying care but because of the idea that trading love for money amounts to trading the sacred for the profane. In other words, care workers are underpaid because many people, either implicitly or explicitly, perceive the very act of making money as counter to care, a stereotypically-feminine form of work. This stereotypical association contributes to the gender pay gap more generally because it implies that the work women are suited for is work that should be done for free. We expand on this idea with future directions and practice implications, which include building communal spaces for care workers to facilitate communication and organizing around higher pay and better working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our social media newsfeeds are filled with a variety of content all battling for our limited attention. Across 3 studies, we investigated whether moral and emotional content captures our attention more than other content and if this may help explain why this content is more likely to go viral online. Using a combination of controlled lab experiments and nearly 50,000 political tweets, we found that moral and emotional content are prioritized in early visual attention more than neutral content, and that such attentional capture is associated with increased retweets during political conversations online. Furthermore, we found that the differences in attentional capture among moral and emotional stimuli could not be fully explained by differences in arousal. These studies suggest that attentional capture is 1 basic psychological process that helps explain the increased diffusion of moral and emotional content during political discourse on social media, and shed light on ways in which political leaders, disinformation profiteers, marketers, and activist organizations can spread moralized content by capitalizing on natural tendencies of our perceptual systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests that people have a lower threshold for the conscious awareness of moral words. Given the potential motivational relevance of moral concerns, the authors hypothesized and found that motivational relevance of moral stimuli enhanced the detection of moral words. People who saw a CrimeStoppers advertisement in which a majority (vs. minority) of wanted murderers had been brought to justice exhibited reduced detection of moral words (Experiment 1). Similarly, people who read that an assailant was arrested (vs. escaped punishment) exhibited reduced detection of moral words (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the effect of justice motives on moral word detection was specific to words presented near (vs. distant) to the threshold for perceptual awareness. These findings suggest that satiating (vs. activating) justice motives can reduce the frequency with which moral (vs. non-moral) words reach perceptual awareness. Implications for models of moral psychology, particularly the role of perception in morality, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce two propositions for understanding top-down effects on perception. First, perception is not a unitary construct but is composed of multiple components. Second, behavior is multiply determined by cognitive processes. We call for a process-oriented research approach to perception and use our own research on moral perception as a "case study of case studies" to examine these issues.