Search

Simulation has become an essential tool in psychological research, offering unique insights into statistical concepts, optimising research project planning and modelling human behaviour and cognition. This tutorial navigates simulations' diverse applications across various research stages. This tutorial begins by demonstrating simulations' impact on understanding statistical concepts. Amidst growing demands for effect size reporting and interpretation, simulations can help clarify the relationship between data and effect sizes, benefiting both educational purposes and advanced research. Simulations play a crucial role in planning psychological research. They provide flexible solutions for power, helping to determine necessary sample sizes and aiding in robust research planning, providing evidence of planned procedures. Simulations are pivotal in exploring human behaviour and cognition, as well as statistical method properties. By forcing researchers to translate verbal theory into formal models, simulation can help specify the assumptions. The paper also discusses improving simulation efficiency, such as using calculation clusters, optimising simulation practices and recognises simulations' limitations. This paper emphasises simulations' versatile role in psychological research. They enable deep insights into complex datasets, streamline project preparation and uncover subtleties in human behaviour, cognition and statistical methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the role that schools play in determining the status of the future occupations of their children (i.e., the selection function of education), high socioeconomic status (SES) parents may not always be supportive of interventions that would reduce the SES achievement gap. In four experiments, we measured the support of parents (Ntotal = 1966) for implementing an equalizing (and, in Experiments 2 and 3, an inequality‐maintaining) intervention. In Experiments 1 and 2, a negative association between subjective SES and support for the equalizing intervention was found when the selection function was made salient, an effect that was also observed in Experiment 4 but only for Right‐leaning participants. In Experiment 3, where the salience of selection was held constant, we found a negative association between subjective SES and support for the equalizing intervention, but not the inequality‐maintaining intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the Perceived Economic Scarcity Scale (PESS), a novel instrument measuring the subjective evaluation and experience of economic scarcity (the feeling of having insufficient financial resources to meet one's needs). We conducted three high‐powered preregistered studies (total N = 1900) to rigorously evaluate the PESS's psychometric properties. In Study 1, we generated a pool of items and used both Principal Component Analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis to select the most appropriate items. In Study 2, we examined the PESS's construct validity, demonstrating that it measures a distinct construct from related constructs such as subjective social class. In Study 3, we examined the PESS's predictive validity, demonstrating that it is a robust predictor of both affective outcomes (e.g. anxiety‐depressive symptoms) and cognitive outcomes (e.g. economic risk‐taking). Critically, we found that the PESS not only has incremental validity over and above income but also has greater predictive utility than income. We also found that the PESS score varies depending on the distance‐to‐pay and has excellent test–retest reliability. Overall, the PESS appears to be a valid and reliable instrument for assessing perceived economic scarcity, and we encourage researchers to use it to better understand the psychological consequences of 'not having enough'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research investigates economic insecurity as one potential determinant of citizens' compliance with restrictive policies implemented to combat the spread of the COVID‐19 virus. Two pre‐registered studies (NStudy 1 = 305; NStudy 2 = 175) were conducted in France during the second and the third wave of the pandemic to test correlational (Study 1) and causal (Study 2) links between economic insecurity, perceived constraints, and transgressions (self‐reported, Study 1; intended, Study 2). We hypothesized that the effect of economic insecurity is particularly strong for restrictions involving social affiliations (e.g., not meeting with friends and families). Results indicated that economic insecurity indeed increases perceived constraints and the tendency to transgress but for all types of restrictions (involving social affiliation or not). We propose that economic insecurity poses a threat to individuals' self‐agency, which triggers psychological reactance to any form of restrictions on individual freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]