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Theories of hate date back several thousand years, yet very few experiments have examined the psychological structure of hate. We investigated whether any differences in the psychological experience of hate and dislike were a matter of degree (i.e. hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or kind (i.e. hate is imbued with distinct cognitive, emotional, or motivational components that distinguish it from dislike). In a series of experiments, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures provided convergent evidence that hated attitude objects were not only more negative than disliked attitude objects but also more likely to be associated with moral beliefs and emotions (Study 1). Further, differences in kind (i.e., moral beliefs and emotions) held even after statistically adjusting for differences in degree (i.e., negativity). Subsequent research confirmed that hate not only differs from dislike but also from extreme dislike—providing a more stringent test of a difference in kind (Study 2)—and this difference was observed for both person and concept attitude objects (Study 3). A content analysis of online websites found that the language used on hate websites also differed in kind (i.e., moral content), but not degree (i.e., negativity), from complaint forums (Study 4). Thus, across quantitative and qualitative indices from the lab and the field, hated attitude objects were more likely to be associated with morality than disliked objects.

Contending with sexism is associated with negative affective outcomes, including increased anger, anxiety, and depression. Prior research demonstrates that the use of emotion-regulation strategies, such as self-distanced reappraisal, when contending with general negative interpersonal experiences, can help people manage their emotions, attenuating the associated negative affect. The present research considers whether the affective benefits of reappraisal extend to past experiences of discrimination. Specifically, we examine whether using self-distanced reappraisal (Studies 1 and 2) or positive reappraisal (Study 2) when contending with sexism yields more positive and less negative affective outcomes, relative to engaging in self-immersion. Contrary to previous research examining more general negative interpersonal experiences, we find limited evidence that self-distanced reappraisal is an effective emotion-regulation strategy for women contending with sexism (N = 1,236). The present work offers preliminary evidence, however, that positive reappraisal may be a promising emotion-regulation strategy that reduces the negative affective consequences associated with reliving past instances of sexism, compared with either self-immersion or self-distanced reappraisal. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the efficacy of different emotion-regulation strategies in the context of discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) is a frequently-used laboratory measure of aggression. However, the flexibility inherent in its implementation and analysis can undermine its validity. To test whether the TAP is a valid aggression measure irrespective of this flexibility, we conducted two preregistered studies (Study 1 N = 177, Study 2 N = 167) of a standardized version of the TAP. Across both studies, TAP scores showed agreement with other laboratory aggression measures, were magnified by an experimental provocation manipulation, and were associated with traits typically linked to aggressive behavior. Mixed evidence was found for the external and discriminant validity of the task. Individual responses largely loaded onto a single component, suggesting that the aggregate scoring approach accurately represents the underlying data structure. These results provide preliminary support for the internal validity of this TAP approach and highlight the utility of preregistration in psychometric research.

Individualism appears to have increased over the past several decades, yet most research documenting this shift has been limited to the study of a handful of highly-developed countries. Is the world becoming more individualistic as a whole? If so, why? To address these questions, here we examine 51 years of data on individualistic practices and values across 77 countries. Our findings suggest that individualism is indeed rising in most of societies we tested. Despite dramatic shifts towards greater individualism around the world, cultural differences remain sizeable. Moreover, cultural differences are primarily linked to changes in socioeconomic development, and to a lesser extent to shifts in pathogen prevalence, disaster frequency, and climatic stress.

Greed is an important precursor to envy. It is unclear, however, whether this link reflects only malicious envy, which involves hostile motivation toward superior others, or whether greed also predicts benign envy, which involves improvement motivation. If this is the case, the two forms of envy might connect greed to diverging psychological outcomes, such as differences in life satisfaction. The current research provides initial support for this possibility. In Study 1, participants (N = 296) responded to measures of dispositional greed and dispositional benign and malicious envy. Furthermore, after three weeks, participants were confronted with an upward comparison standard to assess state benign and malicious envy. As hypothesized, greed predicted more benign and more malicious envy. Furthermore, greed via malicious envy predicted lower life satisfaction, whereas via benign envy, it was connected to higher life satisfaction. Study 2 (N = 793) confirmed this pattern in a preregistered replication. These results underline the value of a more nuanced view on the relationship of greed and envy.

Despite the important role that facial expressions play in interpersonal communication and our knowledge that interpersonal behavior is influenced by social context, no currently available facial expression database includes multiple interacting participants. The Sayette Group Formation Task (GFT) database addresses the need for well-annotated video of multiple participants during unscripted interactions. The database includes 172,800 video frames from 96 participants in 32 three-person groups. To aid in the development of automated facial expression analysis systems, GFT includes expert annotations of FACS occurrence and intensity, facial landmark tracking, and baseline results for linear SVM, deep learning, active patch learning, and personalized classification. Baseline performance is quantified and compared using identical partitioning and a variety of metrics (including means and confidence intervals). The highest performance scores were found for the deep learning and active patch learning methods. Learn more at http://osf.io/7wcyz.

Several studies have found that individuals are more altruistic towards potential mates than others, suggesting altruistic behavior may be a mating signal. Much of the literature focuses on financial altruism using economic games, however altruism can also comprise of non-financial acts, which this experiment examined in an attempt to replicate and refine these previous findings. A study was conducted with 199 participants, who viewed both high attractive and low attractive opposite-sex images, and were asked how likely they would be to altruistically share their research credits with the person in the image, whilst controlling for self-rated attractiveness. The findings suggest that both men and women were more altruistic towards pictures of high attractive than low attractive potential mating partners (Cohen’s d = 0.37). This study therefore partially replicates previous research exploring the role of mate choice effects when exploring non-financial altruism.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 115(6) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2018-63189-002). In the article, the original supplemental material has been revised to include a clarifying note to the Tests of model fit over larger sample (Samples C-G) section and post-peer review analyses added to the Post-peer review Factor Analytic Tests section. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Philosophers and behavioral scientists refer to wisdom as unbiased reasoning that guides one toward a balance of interests and promotes a good life. However, major instruments developed to test wisdom appear biased, and it is unclear whether they capture balance-related tendencies. We examined whether shifting from global, de-contextualized reports to state-level reports about concrete situations provides a less biased method to assess wise reasoning (e.g., intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty and change, consideration of the broader context at hand and perspectives of others, integration of these perspectives or compromise), which may be aligned with the notion of balancing interests. Results of a large-scale psychometric investigation (N = 4,463) revealed that the novel Situated WIse Reasoning Scale (SWIS) is reliable and appears independent of psychological biases (attribution bias, bias blind spot, self-deception, and impression management), whereas global wisdom reports are subject to such biases. Moreover, SWIS scores were positively related to indices of living well (e.g., adaptive emotion regulation, mindfulness), and balancing of cooperative and self-protective interests, goals (influence-vs.-adjustment), and causal inferences about conflict (attribution to the self-vs.-other party). In contrast, global wisdom reports were unrelated or negatively related to balance-related measures. Notably, people showed modest within-person consistency in wise reasoning across situations or over time, suggesting that a single-shot measurement may be insufficient for whole understanding of trait-level wisdom. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for research on wisdom, judgment and decision making, well-being, and prosociality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Intergroup bias — preference for one's in-group relative to out-groups — is one of the most robust phenomena in all of psychology. Here we investigate whether a positive bias that operates at the individual-level, belief in a good true self, may be leveraged to reduce intergroup bias. We find that even stereotypically threatening out-group agents are believed to have a good true self (Experiment 1). More importantly, consideration of an in-group and out-group members' true self reduces intergroup bias, both in the form of explicit evaluative judgments (Experiment 2) and actual donation behavior (Experiment 3). Across studies, the palliative effects of thinking of an individual's true self generalize to that individual's entire group. In sum, a simple intervention — thinking about another's true self — reduces the gap in how people evaluate and treat out-group relative to in-group members. We discuss implications of these findings for conflict reduction strategies.

Over the past three decades, researchers have increasingly examined the menstrual cycle as a potential source of day-to-day variation in women’s cognitions, motivations, and behavior. Within this literature, several lines of research have examined the impact of the menstrual cycle on women’s engagement in activities that could negatively affect their health, including sexual behavior and alcohol and tobacco consumption, as well as their ability to recognize and avoid potentially threatening people and situations. However, findings have been mixed, leaving it unclear whether women may expose themselves to more health-related risks during certain phases of the cycle. To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis of 23 published and 4 unpublished studies (N = 7,527). The meta-analysis revealed some shifts across the menstrual cycle in women’s sexual behavior and risk recognition and avoidance, whereas patterns were less clear for alcohol and cigarette consumption. These findings help to clarify the proximate physiological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying women’s health-related risk-taking and may inform new interventions.

The current research examined the interpersonal dynamics of emotion regulation in a stressful collaborative context. Little is known about how regulating one's own stress responses impacts teammates. In this article, we propose that individual efforts to regulate emotions can impact teammates for the better. We tested hypotheses arising from this claim using a dyadic experiment (N = 266) that assessed in vivo physiological stress responses during collaborative work (a face-to-face product design task) and then individual work (a product pitch to evaluators). Throughout the experiment, the manipulated teammate was randomly assigned to reappraise their stress arousal, suppress their emotional displays, or receive no instructions. The nonmanipulated teammate received no instructions in all experimental conditions. Stress reappraisal benefited both teammates, eliciting challenge-like physiological responses (higher cardiac output, lower total peripheral resistance) relative to the suppression and control conditions. These effects were observed during both collaborative and individual work. A mediation model suggested that face-to-face interpersonal effects of stress reappraisal fed forward to promote nonmanipulated teammates' improved stress responses during individual performance. Moreover, manipulated teammates' displays of positive and negative affect emerged as potential mechanisms for improvements in nonmanipulated teammates' stress responses in moderation analyses. Thus, participants benefited by interacting with a person who reappraised their stress as functional. This work has theoretical implications for the interpersonal dynamics of emotion regulation, and relevance for applied settings is also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Sleep quality is a critical component of successful human functioning. Poor sleep quality is associated with aggressive behavior, yet the psychological mechanisms that drive this effect are incompletely understood. We tested the prediction that the association between poor sleep quality and aggression would be explained, in part, by a magnified experience of positive affect during aggression. We conducted 2 cross-sectional studies (Study 1, N = 388; Study 2, N = 317) and a third preregistered study (N = 379), which tested for mediation across 2 waves that were separated by 14-42 days. Across all 3 studies, we replicated the positive association between poor sleep quality and aggression. However, we did not observe compelling or consistent evidence that poor sleep quality is linked to greater positive affect during aggression. Such aggressive pleasure was temporally stable and predicted subsequent increases in aggressive behavior. These findings support a reinforcement model of aggressive affect, in which the pleasure of aggression promotes greater aggression over time-perhaps explaining why some individuals are more dispositionally aggressive than others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The aim of the current study was to understand how people from different cultures react to accidents collectively. Findings showed that South Koreans reported stronger emotions, greater self-blame, higher perceived control, and higher perceived responsibility than Canadians. Furthermore, stronger emotional response and perceived control might have led Koreans to perceive stronger responsibility (than Canadians) for the accidents. Traditionally, it has been believed that East Asians have a diminished sense of control over life events compared to Westerners. The present findings are therefore intriguing. This aids our understanding of cross-cultural differences in experiences of loss and trauma.

Bio-medical HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is the use of an antiretroviral drug shown to drastically decrease the transmission of HIV between sexual partners. However, there are reports that peer evaluations are an important factor among men who have sex with men (MSM) who are considering or taking PrEP. We used a trait transference paradigm to characterize attitudes towards PrEP users, their sexual behavior, and transference effects on their social network. We recruited 339 men across nine cities in the U.S. from advertisements on a popular smart phone geospatial dating application to complete a survey. They read and judged vignettes about MSM and associated friends on their trustworthiness and responsibility, with the main character being described as having frequently changing partners (FCP) or monogamous, and taking PrEP or not. Our results mainly found PrEP praise within our U.S. sample, especially when evaluating responsibility, while FCP behavior was negatively evaluated. Lastly, we found minimal transference effects on the associated friends suggesting judgments arising from sex-related actions are anchored to the actor only. These insights identify contextual boundaries of associative cognition and can inform interventions hoping to improve PrEP acceptance and uptake.

Impressions of competence from faces predict important real-world outcomes, including electoral success and chief executive officer selection. Presumed competence is associated with social status. Here we show that subtle economic status cues in clothes affect perceived competence from faces. In nine studies, people rated the competence of faces presented in frontal headshots. Faces were shown with different upper-body clothing rated by independent judges as looking ‘richer’ or ‘poorer’, although not notably perceived as such when explicitly described. The same face when seen with ‘richer’ clothes was judged significantly more competent than with ‘poorer’ clothes. The effect persisted even when perceivers were exposed to the stimuli briefly (129 ms), warned that clothing cues are non-informative and instructed to ignore the clothes (in one study, with considerable incentives). These findings demonstrate the uncontrollable effect of economic status cues on person perception. They add yet another hurdle to the challenges faced by low-status individuals. Subtle economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces even when perceivers are warned that such cues are non-informative or are instructed and incentivized to ignore them. This bias puts low-income individuals at a disadvantage.

Third-party punishment occurs when a perpetrator of a transgression is punished by another person who was not directly affected by the transgression (i.e. a third-party). Given gratitude's demonstrated ability to enhance both cooperation and the value people place on future-rewards, its capacity to increase third-party punishment - a phenomenon theorised to increase future cooperative behaviour - was investigated. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to experience one of three emotional states (i.e. gratitude, happiness, or neutrality) prior to making decisions about how much of a previous financial endowment they would spend to punish a person who transgressed against another at differing degrees within the context of a dictator game. As expected, punishment expenditures decreased for all participants as a dictator's decision became fairer. Of primary interest, however, participants who felt grateful, as compared to those who felt neutral or happy, engaged in significantly more third-party punishment across dictator splits that were not altruistic in nature.

Right Wing Authoritarianism (i.e., RWA) is associated with enhanced conservatism and social prejudice. Because research linking RWA to attitudes is largely correlational (i.e., it provides control for neither RWA nor attitude learning), it is not clear how RWA relates to attitude learning dynamics. We addressed this question in 11 evaluative conditioning experiments that ensured rigorous control of the affective learning setting. Results from two integrative data analyses suggest that (i) individuals scoring higher in RWA show a stronger acquisition of positive attitudes, and that (ii) the residuals of this stronger acquisition remain even after exposure to counter-attitudinal information. Implications of these findings for research on RWA and its link to social prejudice are discussed.

Prior research attributes the positive effects of passion on professional success to intrapersonal characteristics. We propose that interpersonal processes are also critical because observers confer status on and support those who express passion. These interpersonal benefits of expressing passion are, however, contingent on several factors related to the expresser, perceiver, and context. Six studies, including entrepreneurial pitches from Dragons’ Den and two pre-registered experiments, establish three key findings. First, observers conferred status onto and increased their support for individuals who express passion; importantly, expressing passion affected how admired—but not how accepted—someone was. Second, these effects were weaker when passion was expressed in an inappropriate manner/context, and when observers disagreed with the target of expresser’s passion. Third, in competitive contexts, expressing passion became threatening and decreased the support individuals received from others. These results demonstrate that passion’s effects travel, in part, through the gravitational pull exerted by expressing passion.

Forensic science techniques are often used in criminal trials to infer the identity of theperpetrator of crime and jurors often find this evidence very persuasive. Unfortunately, two of the leading causes of wrongful convictions are forensic science testing errors and false or misleading forensic testimony (Saks & Koehler, 2005). Therefore, it is important to understand jurors pre- existing beliefs about forensic science, as these beliefs may impact how they evaluate forensic evidence in the courtroom. In this study, we examine people’s perceptions of the likelihood of error and human judgment involved at each stage of the forensic science process (i.e., collection, storage, testing, analysis, reporting, and presenting). In addition, we examine peoples’ perceptions of the accuracy of — and human judgment involved in — 16 different forensic techniques. We find that, in contrast to what would be expected by the CSI effect literature, participants believed that the process of forensic science involved considerable human judgment and was relatively error-prone. In addition, participants had wide-ranging beliefs about the accuracy of various forensic techniques, ranging from 65.18% (document analysis) up to 89.95% (DNA). For some forensic techniques, estimates were lower than that found in experimental proficiency studies, suggesting that our participants are more skeptical of certain forensic evidence than they need to be. Keywords: Forensic science, forensic evidence, accuracy, error rate, CSI effect.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is an assimilative change in liking of neutral conditioned stimuli (CS) following pairings with positive or negative stimuli (unconditioned stimulus, US). Dual-process theories postulate that, in addition to a controlled propositional process underlying conscious learning of CS-US contingencies, a second automatic and associative learning process exists that underlies EC effects. A central argument for dual-process theories is the dissociation between US expectancy and CS evaluation in extinction learning: When CSs are presented alone subsequent to CS-US pairings, participants cease to expect USs but continue to exhibit EC effects. This dissociation is typically interpreted as demonstration that EC is resistant to extinction, and consequently, that EC is driven by a distinct learning process. We tested an alternative single-process account, namely that expectancy-liking dissociations are caused by different judgment strategies afforded by the dependent measures rather than due to separable learning processes. According to this view, CS evaluations are by default integrative judgments---summaries of large portions of the learning history---whereas US expectancy reflects momentary judgments focusing on recent events. In a counterconditioning and two extinction experiments, we eliminate the expectancy-liking dissociations reported in the literature by inducing nondefault momentary evaluative judgments, and demonstrate a reversed dissociation when we additionally induced integrative expectancy judgments. Our findings corroborated a-priori predictions based on MINERVA 2, a formal single-process memory model. Hence, dissociations between US expectancy and conditioned CS liking reflect judgment properties and can be accounted for parsimoniously by a single learning process.

Previous theorizing and research has linked exposure to counter-stereotypical diversity (e.g., an Oxford-educated bricklayer) to enhanced cognitive performance and creativity. However, it is unclear whether people’s motivation to cognitively engage with the counter-stereotypical information (i.e., need for cognition [NFC]) influences this effect. Across three experiments ( N = 887) we found consistent support for the idea that exposure to counter-stereotypes (CSTs) promotes cognitive reflection for people low in NFC ( d+ = .34). In contrast, people high in NFC showed decreased cognitive reflection after being exposed to CSTs ( d+ = −.18), although the evidence for the latter effect was weak. These findings suggest that exposure to CSTs can promote cognitive reflection unless people have a strong desire to understand and predict outcomes and events, in which case exposure to CSTs may backfire. Taken together, we conclude that motivation to engage in cognitive activity may be an important consideration for research and interventions involving social and cultural diversity.

A growing body of work in social and affective neuroscience suggests that emotion plays an instrumental role in error monitoring processes, rather than only a moderating one. High-powered replications of studies that support this idea, however, are lacking. Here, we attempted a preregistered replication of our own study that had provided evidence for the functional role of emotions in error monitoring: that a neural signal of error monitoring—the error-related negativity—is reduced when participants undergo a misattribution of arousal procedure (Inzlicht & Al-Khindi, 2012). Like a previous replication attempt (Rodilla, Beauducel, & Leue, 2016), our misattribution procedure failed to reduce the amplitude of the ERN. However, it also failed its manipulation check to reduce state anxiety, limiting the conclusions we can draw. Nonetheless, these findings are consistent with the view that our original study may have been a false positive. We discuss these findings in the context of the replication crisis in psychology and of work on the emotional properties of the ERN.

The goals of this chapter are to first describe two common pitfalls of social psychological approaches to the study of ideological differences, specifically, a pre-occupation with explaining conservatives to the neglect of liberals and an over-reliance on positive test strategies. As guards against these potential pit falls, we recommend that researchers shift their orientation toward negative test strategies, something that can be facilitated by using a “grid” approach to hypothesis generation. The grid approach to hypothesis generation forces researchers to consider a set of competing explanations for liberal and conservative thoughts, feelings, and behavior, that vary in possible normative spin, which helps protect against possible researcher bias.

When people encounter others surpassing them in terms of an important quality, possession, or achievement, they often think about what might have happened differently so that they would have obtained a better outcome. Such upward counterfactual thoughts have been shown to contribute to the intensity of envy. We investigated whether specific counterfactual thoughts distinguish different forms of envy, namely benign envy, which entails upward motivation, and malicious envy-which entails hostility. A meta-analysis of 8 studies (1 preregistered, N = 1,264) of a first line of research supports that recalled episodes of benign versus malicious envy are characterized by more additive, self-focused counterfactuals or by more other-focused counterfactuals, respectively. Furthermore, a meta-analysis of 6 studies (1 preregistered, N = 1,299) of a second line of research supports that eliciting these counterfactuals promotes the corresponding form of envy. In line with functional accounts of counterfactual thinking and envy, the results highlight cognitive processes that underlie functionally diverging pathways of envious responding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. We present a fully characterized face stimulus database focusing on expressions of pain, surpassing previous sets in terms of size, quality, diversity, and characterization., Introduction: Facial expressions of pain serve an essential social function by communicating suffering and soliciting aid. Accurate visual perception of painful expressions is critical because the misperception of pain signals can have serious clinical and social consequences. Therefore, it is essential that researchers have access to high-quality, diverse databases of painful expressions to better understand accuracy and bias in pain perception. Objectives: This article describes the development of a large-scale face stimulus database focusing on expressions of pain. Methods: We collected and normed a database of images of models posing painful facial expressions. We also characterized these stimuli in terms of the presence of a series of pain-relevant facial action units. In addition to our primary database of posed expressions, we provide a separate database of computer-rendered expressions of pain that may be applied to any neutral face photograph. Results: The resulting database comprises 229 unique (and now publicly available) painful expressions. To the best of our knowledge, there are no existing databases of this size, quality, or diversity in terms of race, gender, and expression intensity. We provide evidence for the reliability of expressions and evaluations of pain within these stimuli, as well as a full characterization of this set along dimensions relevant to pain such as perceived status, strength, and dominance. Moreover, our second database complements the primary set in terms of experimental control and precision. Conclusion: These stimuli will facilitate reproducible research in both experimental and clinical domains into the mechanisms supporting accuracy and bias in pain perception and care.

Context frames such as describing a Prisoner's Dilemma as a “community” or a “stock exchange” game cause significant variation in cooperative behaviour. Here, we draw on recent advances in research on situation construal to propose that perceived conflict of interests is a mechanism underlying framing effects on cooperation in experimental games. Specifically, we argue that people readily think about situations in terms of conflicts of interests, and how people perceive the conflict of interests in different games predicts differences in cooperation across these games. In a formal model, we show that variation in perceived conflict of interests can affect cooperative decisions even when first-order beliefs and social preferences are static. We test this model across two studies (total N = 1615). In each study, we elicited situation perceptions and beliefs about others' behaviour in a framed game. The basic framing effect replicated in a dichotomous-choice Prisoner's Dilemma (study 1), but not in a continuous-choice Prisoner's Dilemma (study 2). Perceptions of conflict of interests mediated between framing and cooperative behaviour, whereas beliefs and preferences did not. Exploratorily, perceptions of conflict of interests had a causal effect on cooperative behaviour when induced orthogonally to the frame. This study provides evidence for perceptions of conflict of interests as a mechanism underlying framing effects and integrates framing effects with the wider literature on situation perception. Moreover, it supports a causal role of situation perception in social decision-making. However, the results also call into question the generalisability of framing effects.

In humans and other mammals, defensive responses to danger vary with threat imminence, but it is unknown how those responses affect decisions to help conspecifics. Here, we manipulated threat imminence to investigate the impact of different defensive states on human helping behaviour. Ninety-eight healthy adult participants made trial-by-trial decisions about whether to help a co-participant avoid an aversive shock, at the risk of receiving a shock themselves. Helping decisions were prompted under imminent or distal threat, based on temporal distance to the moment of shock administration to the co-participant. Results showed that, regardless of how likely participants were to also receive a shock, they helped the co-participant more under imminent than distal threat. Reaction times and cardiac changes during the task supported the efficacy of the threat imminence manipulation in eliciting dissociable defensive states, with faster responses and increased heart rate during imminent compared to distal threats. Individual differences in empathic concern were specifically correlated with helping during imminent threats. These results suggest that defensive states driving active escape from immediate danger may also facilitate decisions to help others, potentially by engaging neurocognitive systems implicated in caregiving across mammals.

The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that an individual’s facial expressions can influence their emotional experience (e.g., that smiling can make one feel happier). However, a reoccurring concern is that demand characteristics drive these effects. To examine this, we had university students pose happy, angry, and neutral expressions and self-report their emotions following a demand characteristics manipulation, wherein we either (a) told participants we hypothesized their poses would influence their emotions, (b) told participants we hypothesized their poses would not influence their emotions, or (c) did not tell participants a hypothesis. Results indicated that demand characteristics moderated the effects of facial poses on self-reported emotion. However, facial poses still influenced self-reported emotion when participants were told we hypothesized their poses would not influence emotion. These results highlight the role of demand characteristics in facial feedback research but indicate that demand characteristics do not fully account for observed facial feedback effects.

I replicated and extended Eadeh and Chang (2019; Study 2) who found that reading a story about pollution harming a child increased self-reported liberalism and increased support for environmental regulation policies through greater negative affect (i.e., anger and disgust). Online participants (n = 429) read a story about pollution, which increased liberal attitudes and collective action through disgust and anger (for more conservative individuals) and empathy (for more liberal individuals) and decreased liberal attitudes through fear (for more liberal–moderate individuals). Empathy also moderated negative affect, and system-level cognition and political orientation further mediated the effect of environmental threat on liberal responses. Unexpectedly, the direct effect of environmental threat increased conservative political orientation and failed to shift political attitudes; thus, we only partially replicated Eadeh and Chang (2019, Study 2). I discuss explanations for the inconsistent results and the role of affect and cognition in predicting political attitude shifts to perceived threat.

For many, there is little more rewarding than the feeling of curling up with a good book, wandering a famous art gallery, or listening to a favorite musician perform live in front of an audience. But do the arts, music, and literature actually make our lives happier, richer, and more meaningful? We suggest they do. In this chapter, we review empirical evidence for the psychological benefits of the humanities, including art, music, and literature, and find that across a wide variety of samples, exposure and engagement is consistently linked to greater well-being. In particular, we suggest that the humanities may increase well-being directly by providing people with enjoyable, rich, and meaningful experiences, as well as indirectly by fostering skills and abilities that contribute to psychological well-being in the long-term. These approaches map onto two mechanisms: 1) direct affective benefits that create enjoyable, rich, and interesting experiences, and 2) indirect cognitive benefits, including social abilities and motivations that promote subjective well-being via interpersonal connection and self- and emotion-regulation. Art, music, and literature may not only provide temporary nourishment for a good life, but teach people lasting skills they can capitalize on to increase long-term well-being.

Gender differences in emotion regulation (ER) have been postulated, yet their neural basis remains poorly understood. The goal of this study was to investigate this issue from a functional connectivity (FC) perspective. Utilizing a region of interest (ROI) analysis, we investigated whether men and women (N=48) differed in their FC pattern while viewing versus regulating negative emotion induced by highly salient pictures, and whether this pattern related to their self-reported negative affect and suppression success. Despite women reporting more negative affect, both genders had comparable suppression success. Moreover, differences emerged between men and women’s FC patterns. During the regulation of negative emotion, better suppression in women was associated with stronger FC within a cingulo-opercular network, while men exhibited stronger FC within posterior regions of the ventral attentional network. We conclude that due to their propensity for higher emotional reactivity, women may employ a frontal top-down control network to downregulate negative emotion, while men may redirect attention away from the aversive stimulus by using posterior regions of the ventral attention network. The findings may have significant implications for understanding women’s vulnerability for developing affective disorders and developing targeted individualized treatment.

The current study examines the association between attachment styles in romantic relations and love type preference, emotional expression, and life satisfaction. Two hundred twenty-six volunteers participated in the study. Results showed that participants who were securely attached to their romantic partners preferred Eros love type more, while participants who were insecurely attached to their romantic partners decided on Ludus, Pragma, and Mania love types. There was no difference between secure and insecure attachment styles in terms of Storge and Agape love types. Moreover, there was no difference between groups in terms of general emotional expression. Participants who were securely attached had higher life satisfaction than those who were insecure. It is argued that differentiation power on emotional expression and life satisfaction might be obtained with studies about attachment styles in the romantic relationship.

Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with discrepant (fragile: high explicit and low implicit, or damaged: high implicit and low explicit) self-esteem are more likely to engage in defensive mechanisms than individuals with consistent implicit and explicit self-esteem. With two studies, we investigated the relationship between implicit and explicit self-esteem, and three defensive strategies for the threat of failure: subjective overachievement, psychological disengagement, and retroactive excuses. In Study 1 (N = 176), fragile self-esteem was associated with subjective overachievement, and low implicit self-esteem was associated with psychological disengagement. In Study 2 (N = 101), damaged self-esteem was related to increased use of retroactive excuses as a form of self-serving bias. These results add to the growing body of evidence documenting the maladaptive nature of fragile and damaged self-esteem.

Stereotypes can influence social perception in undesirable ways. However, activated stereotypes are not always applied in judgments. The present research investigated how stereotype activation and application processes impact social judgments as a function of available resources for control over stereotypes. Specifically, we varied the time available to intervene in the stereotyping process and used multinomial modeling to independently estimate stereotype activation and application. As expected, social judgments were less stereotypic when participants had more time to intervene. In terms of mechanisms, stereotype application, and not stereotype activation, corresponded with reductions in stereotypic biases. With increasing time, stereotype application was reduced, reflecting the fact that controlling application is time-dependent. In contrast, stereotype activation increased with increasing time, apparently due to increased engagement with stereotypic material. Stereotype activation was highest when judgments were least stereotypical, and thus, reduced stereotyping may coincide with increased stereotype activation if stereotype application is simultaneously decreased.

Neuroimaging functional connectivity analyses have shown that the negative coupling between amygdala and cortical regions is linked to better emotion regulation (ER) in experimental task settings. However, less is known about the neural correlates of ER traits or dispositions. The present study aimed to (1) replicate the findings of differential cortico-limbic coupling during resting state depending on the dispositional use of ER strategies. Furthermore, the study aimed to (2) extend prior findings by examining whether differences in cortico-limbic coupling during resting state predict behavioral and neuronal emotion regulation success in a standard emotion regulation task. To this end, N=107 healthy adults completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), underwent an 8-min resting-state fMRI acquisition and completed a reappraisal task during fMRI. Functional connectivity maps of basolateral and centromedial amygdala nuclei were estimated with a seed-based approach regarding associations with regions of the prefrontal cortex, and were then correlated with ERQ scores as well as behavioral and neuronal ER success. All hypotheses and the analysis plan are preregistered at https://osf.io/8wsgu. Opposed to prior findings, we were not able to replicate a correlation of habitual ER strategy use with functional connectivity between amygdala and PFC regions (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). Furthermore, there was no association of behavioral and neuronal reappraisal success with functional connectivity between amygdala and insula as well as PFC (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). The present preregistered study calls into question the reported association between individual differences in resting state cortico-limbic connectivity and habitual use of ER strategies. However, ongoing advances in functional brain imaging and distributed network approaches may leverage the identification of reliable functional connectivity patterns that underlie successful emotion regulation.

Classic perspectives on mindfulness emphasize engagement with life’s challenges. In contrast, contemporary mainstream approaches to mindfulness in psychology chiefly focus on stress reduction. We contrast classic and contemporary approaches, outlining conceptual and methodological shortcomings of mindfulness research. Existing mindfulness measures fail to adequately capture engagement or relief aspects of the construct due to assessment primarily through negatively-worded items, discordant definitions, confusion of outcomes with processes, and a lack of contextual sensitivity. Empirical evidence shows that the dimensions of mindfulness are not only negatively correlated with each other, but also with variables they should be similarly linked to. Further, modern measures of mindfulness are positively related to outcomes that are antithetical to mindfulness-as-engagement (e.g., emotional suppression), suggesting that current measures may be biased towards relief rather than engagement outcomes. We outline several ways to overcome conceptual and methodological challenges, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of classic contemplative roots of mindfulness and a rigorous psychometric and culturally-sensitive analysis, in hopes to guide researchers towards capturing mindfulness as a regulatory process that involves actively working through life’s challenges.

Despite what some may believe, not all Aboriginal students in Canada receive free university education. Many applicants are denied this education opportunity because existing programs are chronically underfunded. The Post-Secondary Student Support Program (PSSSP) is one of such programs. It is financed by the Canadian government and aims to provide First Nations students with funding to access post-secondary education. Although there may be several reasons why this education problem persists, we examined one possibility – psychological barriers to support of Aboriginal education amongst the public. Specifically, we explored five factors: personal prejudice towards Aboriginal peoples, perceived social mobility, meritocratic beliefs, group-level zero-sum beliefs, and political conservatism. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that they would all negatively relate to support for the PSSSP. In a sample of Canadian adults, we found that only two of these factors (higher personal prejudice and political conservatism) uniquely explained less support for the program. Although correlational, this study provides insight into factors that may influence Canadians’ decisions about a potentially impactful opportunity for Aboriginal individuals, in this case, funding to attend university. We discuss the implications of these findings for continued PSSSP support as well as for other programs and policies targeted at marginalized groups.

The present experiment examined the extent to which appearance-focused accounts on Instagram (a photo-sharing social-media platform) negatively influence people’s moods and anxiety levels. Undergraduates at the University of Florida (N = 81, ages 18–30 years, M = 19.07, SD = 1.56) were randomly assigned to scroll through Instagram accounts with either image-conscious photos (fitness, model, and beauty-blogging accounts) or control photos (food, nature, home-decor accounts). Before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) the experimental manipulation, participants completed state-based mood and anxiety measures, and a one-time measure of trait anxiety. Controlling for Time-1 measures, regression results showed that viewing photos from image-conscious accounts related to decreased positive mood and increased negative mood and anxiety at Time 2. Exploratory analyses showed that people with lower trait anxiety were especially susceptible to feeling more state anxiety after viewing image-conscious photos. These findings advance theory by suggesting that state–trait anxiety dynamics are important to understanding how people react to viewing image-conscious Instagram accounts. Further, a social comparison theory of viewing image-conscious photos online should integrate information about people’s short-term reactions (states, moods) and long-term predispositions (traits, individual differences).

We aimed to explore the concept of coregulation in adulthood based on the analyses of vocal cues in conversations. Moderators which potentially affect vocal coordination between romantic partners were also examined. Twenty- four heterosexual dating couples (Mage = 21.25; SD = 1.03) from Cornell University were recruited for the Study. Participants communicated with their romantic and stranger partner in a balanced order. Their conversations were recorded and vocal features were extracted. Granger-causality analyses yielded that close partner conversations were bidirectional, signifying that female participants’ previous F0 responses caused male participants’ subsequent F0 responses and vice versa. In the stranger partner conversations, however, only female participants’ previous F0 responses caused male participants’ subsequent F0 responses, implying that there was unidirectional association between stranger partners. In sum, findings suggested that coregulation process can be observed at the vocal level using synchronous speech patterns. Implications for attachment-in-the-making between romantic partners and the literature on behavioral mimicry were discussed.

Identifying relative idiosyncratic and shared contributions to judgments is a fundamental challenge to the study of human behavior, yet there is no established method for estimating these contributions. Using edge cases of stimuli varying in intrarater reliability and interrater agreement-faces (high on both), objects (high on the former, low on the latter), and complex patterns (low on both)-we showed that variance component analyses (VCAs) accurately captured the psychometric properties of the data (Study 1). Simulations showed that the VCA generalizes to any arbitrary continuous rating and that both sample and stimulus set size affect estimate precision (Study 2). Generally, a minimum of 60 raters and 30 stimuli provided reasonable estimates within our simulations. Furthermore, VCA estimates stabilized given more than two repeated measures, consistent with the finding that both intrarater reliability and interrater agreement increased nonlinearly with repeated measures (Study 3). The VCA provides a rigorous examination of where variance lies in data, can be implemented using mixed models with crossed random effects, and is general enough to be useful in any judgment domain in which agreement and disagreement are important to quantify and in which multiple raters independently rate multiple stimuli.

The ability to automatically assess emotional responses via contact-free video recording taps into a rapidly growing market aimed at predicting consumer choices. If consumer attention and engagement are measurable in a reliable and accessible manner, relevant marketing decisions could be informed by objective data. Although significant advances have been made in automatic affect recognition, several practical and theoretical issues remain largely unresolved. These concern the lack of cross-system validation, a historical emphasis of posed over spontaneous expressions, as well as more fundamental issues regarding the weak association between subjective experience and facial expressions. To address these limitations, the present paper argues that extant commercial and free facial expression classifiers should be rigorously validated in cross-system research. Furthermore, academics and practitioners must better leverage fine-grained emotional response dynamics, with stronger emphasis on understanding naturally occurring spontaneous expressions. We posit that applied consumer research might be better situated to examine facial behavior in socio-emotional contexts rather than decontextualized, laboratory studies, and highlight how AHAA can be successfully employed in this context. Also, facial activity should be considered less as a single outcome variable, and more as promising input for two-step machine learning in combination with other (multimodal) features. We illustrate this point in a case study using facial activity as input features to predict crying behavior in response to sad movies. Implications of this approach and potential obstacles that need to be overcome are discussed within the context of consumer research.

Why people differ in their susceptibility to external events is essential to our understanding of personality, human development, and mental disorders. Genes explain a substantial portion of these differences. Specifically, genes influencing the serotonin system are hypothesized to be differential susceptibility factors, determining a person's reactivity to both positive and negative environments. We tested whether genetic variation in the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) is a differential susceptibility factor for daily events. Participants (N = 326, 77% female, mean age = 25, range = 17-36) completed smartphone questionnaires four times a day over four to five days, measuring stressors, uplifts, positive and negative affect. Affect was predicted from environment valence in the previous hour on a within-person level using three-level autoregressive linear mixed models. The 5-HTTLPR fulfilled all criteria of a differential susceptibility factor: Positive affect in carriers of the short allele (S) was less reactive to both uplifts and stressors, compared to homozygous carriers of the long allele (L/L). This pattern might reflect relative affective inflexibility in S-allele carriers. Our study provides insight into the serotonin system's general role in susceptibility and highlights the need to assess the whole spectrum of naturalistic experiences. (DIPF/Orig.)

Thermal comfort is a condition of mind, which expresses that one’s central body temperature is close to its optimal value. In addition to the purely physical aspect of temperature-regulation principles, we question here the existence of a social component to thermal comfort.Thirty-five adults performed first a scrambled-sentence test that included (or not) words suggesting social exclusion. Participants were then presented with a forced choice task for which they had to select a preferred color between two. Colors were selected as a function of three categories of thermal warmth. Results revealed that those individuals who were primed with social exclusion were more likely to choose warmer colors than those who had not received priming.These findings suggest that thermal comfort includes a social component that predicts our preferences for warmer environments, providing new guidelines for the social benefits of light-therapy and color interior design.

Can conspiracy theories be a source of social stigma? If it is true, it would follow that people may expect to be socially excluded when they express endorsement of conspiracy theories. This effect should be partially explained by the knowledge of the negative perceptions associated with conspiracy theories. In Study 1, inducing French internet users to write a text endorsing (vs. criticizing) conspiracy theories about the Charlie Hebdo shooting, led them to anticipate fear of social exclusion. This effect was mediated by anticipated negative evaluation of the self. In Study 2, inducing French internet users to imagine defending (vs. criticizing) conspiracy theories about the Charlie Hebdo shooting in front of an audience led them to anticipate fear of social exclusion. The effect was again mediated by anticipated negative evaluation of the self. To conclude, our findings demonstrate that conspiracy theories can be viewed as a source of social stigma., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

At present, the scientific community has not reached a consensus regarding whether or not people may be become addicted to or compulsive in use of pornography. Even so, a substantial number of people report feeling that their use of pornography is problematic or addictive in nature. Whereas prior works considered self-reported feelings of addiction dimensionally, the present work examined what might lead someone to specifically identify as a pornography addict. Consistent with prior research, pre-registered hypotheses predicted that religiousness, moral disapproval, and pornography use would emerge as consistent predictors of self-identification as a pornography addict. Three samples, involving adult pornography users (Sample 1, N=829, Mage = 33.3; SD = 9.4; Sample 2, N=424, Mage = 33.6; SD = 9.1) and undergraduates (Sample 3, N=231, Mage = 19.3; SD = 1.8), were collected. Across all three samples, male gender, moral incongruence, and pornography use behaviors consistently emerged as predictors of self-identification as a pornography addict. In contrast to prior literature indicating that moral incongruence and religiousness are the best predictors of self-reported feelings of addiction (measured dimensionally), results from all three samples indicated that male gender and pornography use behaviors were the most strongly associated with self-identification as a pornography addict.

The article proposes a view of evaluative conditioning (EC) as resulting from judgments based on learning instances stored in memory. It is based on the formal episodic memory model MINERVA 2. Additional assumptions specify how the information retrieved from memory is used to inform specific evaluative dependent measures. The present approach goes beyond previous accounts in that it uses a well-specified formal model of episodic memory; it is however more limited in scope as it aims to explain EC phenomena that do not involve reasoning processes. The article illustrates how the memory-based-judgment view accounts for several empirical findings in the EC literature that are often discussed as evidence for dual-process models of attitude learning. It sketches novel predictions, discusses limitations of the present approach, and identifies challenges and opportunities for its future development.

Online peer-to-peer markets, such as Airbnb, often include profile photos of sellers to reduce anonymity. Ert, Fleischer, and Magen (2016) found that more trustworthy-looking, but not more attractive-looking, Airbnb hosts from Stockholm charge higher prices for similar apartments. This suggests that people are willing to pay more for a night in an apartment if the host looks trustworthy. Here, we present a pre-registered replication testing how photo-based impressions of hosts’ attractiveness and trustworthiness influence rental prices. We extend previous investigations by (a) controlling for additional features related to price (e.g., the apartment’s location value), (b) testing for an influence of other host features, such as race and facial expression, and (c) analyzing a substantially larger sample of apartments. An analysis of 1,020 listings in New York City showed that more attractive-looking, but not more trustworthy-looking, hosts charge higher prices for their apartments. Compared to White hosts, Black (but not Asian) hosts charge lower prices for their apartments. Hosts who smile more intensely in their profile photo charge higher prices. Our results support the general conclusion that people rely on profile photos in online markets, though we find that attractiveness is more important than trustworthiness.Keywords: first impressions, peer-to-peer markets, trustworthiness, attractiveness

Many of society's most significant social decisions are made over sets of individuals: for example, evaluating a collection of job candidates when making a hiring decision. Rational theories of choice dictate that decision makers' preferences between any two options should remain the same irrespective of the number or quality of other options. Yet people's preferences for each option in a choice set shift in predictable ways as function of the available alternatives. These violations are well documented in consumer behavior contexts: for example, the decoy effect, in which introducing a third inferior product changes consumers' preferences for two original products. The current experiments test the efficacy of social decoys and harness insights from computational models of decision-making to examine whether choice set construction can be used to change preferences in a hiring context. Across seven experiments (N = 6312) we find that participants have systematically different preferences for the exact same candidate as a function of the other candidates in the choice set (Experiments 1a-1d, 2) and the salience of the candidate attributes under consideration (Experiments 2, 3a, 3b). Specifically, compromise and (often) asymmetric-dominance decoys increased relative preference for their yoked candidates when candidates were counterstereotypical (e.g., high warmth/low competence male candidate). More importantly, we demonstrate for the first time that we can mimic the effect of a decoy in the absence of a third candidate by manipulating participants' exposure to candidates' attributes: balanced exposure to candidates' warmth and competence information significantly reduced bias between the two candidates. (PsycINFO Database Record

In the present research, we investigated the relation between changes in students’ state self-control capacity and their motivational test-taking effort over the course of an achievement test. Thereby, we considered trait self-control as a major predictor of achievement-related behavior as a covariate. N = 1,840 apprentices repeatedly rated their state self-control capacity and the test-taking effort they invested while working on a 140-minute achievement test in mathematics and science. Using growth curve analyses, our results revealed correlated decreases in state self-control capacity and the test-taking effort invested over the course of the test. Furthermore, we found that trait self-control helped to keep state self-control capacity and test-taking effort at a higher level over the course of the test. Our results support the assumption of the process model of self-control that waning self-control capacity is reflected in reduced motivational effort. Furthermore, our findings provide evidence that self-control might play a crucial role in students’ test-taking behavior in large-scale assessment studies. By modeling changes in state self-control capacity and effort investment while considering trait self-control, we provide an alternative approach for investigating self-control-dependent processes and the underlying mechanisms of self-control in achievement situations.

Lab-based interventions have been ineffective in changing individuals’ implicit racial attitudes for more than brief durations, and exposure to high-status Black exemplars like Obama has proven ineffective in shifting societal-level racial attitudes. Antiracist social movements, however, offer a potential societal-level alternative for reducing racial bias. Racial attitudes were examined before and during Black Lives Matter (BLM) and its high points of struggle with 1,369,204 participants from 2009 to 2016. After controlling for changes in participant demographics, overall implicit attitudes were less pro-White during BLM than pre-BLM, became increasingly less pro-White across BLM, and were less pro-White during most periods of high BLM struggle. Considering changes in implicit attitudes by participant race, Whites became less implicitly pro-White during BLM, whereas Blacks showed little change. Regarding explicit attitudes, Whites became less pro-White and Blacks became less pro-Black during BLM, each moving toward an egalitarian “no preference” position.