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Understanding how individual beliefs and societal values influence support for measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission is vital to developing and implementing effective prevention policies. Using both Just World Theory and Cultural Dimensions Theory, the present study considered how individual-level justice beliefs and country-level social values predict support for vaccination and quarantine policy mandates to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Data from an international survey of adults from 46 countries (N = 6424) were used to evaluate how individual-level beliefs about justice for self and others, as well as national values—that is, power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence—influence support for vaccination and quarantine behavioral mandates. Multilevel modeling revealed that support for vaccination and quarantine mandates were positively associated with individual-level beliefs about justice for self, and negatively associated with country-level uncertainty avoidance. Significant cross-level interactions revealed that beliefs about justice for self were associated more strongly with support for mandatory vaccination in countries high in individualism, whereas beliefs about justice for others were more strongly associated with support for vaccination and quarantine mandates in countries high in long-term orientation. Beliefs about justice and cultural values can independently and also interactively influence support for evidence-based practices to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, such as vaccination and quarantine. Understanding these multilevel influences may inform efforts to develop and implement effective prevention policies in varied national contexts.

This is a comment on Roberts et al. (2020), who complained about the lack of diversity in subject populations. While representativenes is essental in survey reearch or applied research that examines whether a particular intervention will work for a particular population, it is not required in theory testing research, where we establish laws of causality. Because theories typically apply to all of humanity, all members of humanity are suitable for assessing the valdiity of theoretical hypotheses. Admittedly, the assuption that a theory applies to all of humanity is also a hypothesis that can be tested. However, to test it we need specific hypothesis about specific moderating variables.

Early theories of overweight and obesity (psychosomatic theory, externality theory, and boundary model of eating) assume that individuals with obesity overeat because their ability to recognize internal hunger and satiation cues is impaired. According to the boundary model of eating, this reduced sensitivity is a consequence of their consistent attempts to control (i.e., restrain) their food intake to keep to their diet. As long as they can focus on their food intake, they can be successful in their eating restraint. However, if their control motivation or ability is compromised (e.g., by strong emotions), they overeat. According to the goal conflict model of eating, restrained eaters overeat, because they enjoy eating. However, because they also want to avoid weight gain, their eating enjoyment goal is in conflict with their goal to control their weight. Although weight control is their focal goal, extended exposure to palatable food stimuli increases the cognitive accessibility of their eating enjoyment goal, until it becomes the dominant motive resulting in overeating. This model cannot only account for all empirical findings of research conducted to test the boundary model (including findings inconsistent with that model), but makes also novel predictions that have been supported by empirical research using methods of cognitive psychology.

Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 (N = 34,526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine). We further tested whether cross-societal variation in institutions and ecologies theorized to impact cooperation were associated with prosocial COVID-19 responses, including institutional quality, religiosity, and historical prevalence of pathogens. We found substantial variation across societies in prosocial COVID-19 responses, stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations. However, we found no consistent evidence to support the idea that cross-societal variation in cooperation and trust among strangers is associated with these outcomes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These results were replicated with another independent cross-cultural COVID-19 dataset (N = 112,136), and in both snowball and representative samples. We discuss implications of our results, including challenging the assumption that managing the COVID-19 pandemic across societies is best modeled as a public goods dilemma.

BackgroundThe effective implementation of government policies and measures for controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic requires compliance from the public. This study aimed to examine cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of trust in government regarding COVID-19 control with the adoption of recommended health behaviours and prosocial behaviours, and potential determinants of trust in government during the pandemic.MethodsThis study analysed data from the PsyCorona Survey, an international project on COVID-19 that included 23 733 participants from 23 countries (representative in age and gender distributions by country) at baseline survey and 7785 participants who also completed follow-up surveys. Specification curve analysis was used to examine concurrent associations between trust in government and self-reported behaviours. We further used structural equation model to explore potential determinants of trust in government. Multilevel linear regressions were used to examine associations between baseline trust and longitudinal behavioural changes.ResultsHigher trust in government regarding COVID-19 control was significantly associated with higher adoption of health behaviours (handwashing, avoiding crowded space, self-quarantine) and prosocial behaviours in specification curve analyses (median standardised β = 0.173 and 0.229, p < 0.001). Government perceived as well organised, disseminating clear messages and knowledge on COVID-19, and perceived fairness were positively associated with trust in government (standardised β = 0.358, 0.230, 0.056, and 0.249, p < 0.01). Higher trust at baseline survey was significantly associated with lower rate of decline in health behaviours over time (p for interaction = 0.001).ConclusionsThese results highlighted the importance of trust in government in the control of COVID-19.

It is puzzling that a sizeable percentage of people refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. This study aimed to examine social psychological factors influencing their vaccine hesitancy. This longitudinal study traced a cohort of 2663 individuals in 25 countries from the time before COVID-19 vaccines became available (March 2020) to July 2021, when vaccination was widely available. Multilevel logistic regressions were used to examine determinants of actual COVID-19 vaccination behavior by July 2021, with country-level intercept as random effect. Of the 2663 participants, 2186 (82.1%) had been vaccinated by July 2021. Participants' attitude toward COVID-19 vaccines was the strongest predictor of both vaccination intention and subsequent vaccination behavior (p .001). Perceived risk of getting infected and perceived personal disturbance of infection were also associated with higher likelihood of getting vaccinated (p .001). However, religiosity, right-wing political orientation, conspiracy beliefs, and low trust in government regarding COVID-19 were negative predictors of vaccination intention and behavior (p .05). Our findings highlight the importance of attitude toward COVID-19 vaccines and also suggest that certain life-long held convictions that predate the pandemic make people distrustful of their government and likely to accept conspiracy beliefs and therefore less likely to adopt the vaccination behavior.

Why do so many people become overweight and obese and why do they find it so difficult to lose weight? In this second edition of his influential book on Dieting, Overweight and Obesity, Wolfgang Stroebe – who developed the goal conflict model of eating – explores the physiological, environmental and psychological influence on weight gain and examines how these processes are affected by genetic factors.Like the first edition, the book takes a social-cognitive approach to weight regulation and discusses how exposure to environmental cues can set-off overeating in chronic dieters. In addition to extensively revising and updating the chapters of the first edition, this second edition features three new chapters. The chapter on successful restrained eating reviews personality factors as well as recent experimental research on impulse control. The chapters on psychological treatment of obesity and on primary prevention describe and evaluate the various treatment and prevention approaches and the research conducted to assess their efficacy.This book is essential reading for students, researchers and clinicians interested in an up-to-date review of the field of eating research and a new theoretical approach to the study of overweight and obesity.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentiment of societal discontent, defined as generalized concern about the precarious state of society, has arisen. Literature shows that collectively experienced situations can motivate people to help each other. Since societal discontent is conceptualized as a collective phenomenon, we argue that it could influence intention to help others, particularly those who suffer from coronavirus. Thus, in the present study, we aimed (a) to explore the relationship between societal discontent and intention to help at the individual level and (b) to investigate a possible moderating effect of societal discontent at the country level on this relationship. To fulfil our purposes, we used data collected in 42 countries (N = 61,734) from the PsyCorona Survey, a cross-national longitudinal study. Results of multilevel analysis showed that, when societal discontent is experienced by the entire community, individuals dissatisfied with society are more prone to help others. Testing the model with longitudinal data (N = 3,817) confirmed our results. Implications for those findings are discussed in relation to crisis management. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. New York University Abu Dhabi

When thwarted goals increase endorsement of violence, it may not always reflect antisocial tendencies or some breakdown of self-regulation per se; such responses can also reflect an active process of self-regulation, whose purpose is to comply with the norms of one's social environment. In the present experiments (total N = 2,145), the causal link between thwarted goals and endorsement of violent means (guns and war) was found to be contingent on perceptions that violence is normatively valued. Experiments 1-3 establish that thwarted goals increase endorsement of violence primarily among U.S. adults of a lower educational background and/or men who endorse a masculine honor culture. Experiment 4 manipulates the perceived normative consensus of college educated Americans, and demonstrates that thwarted goals increase college educated Americans' endorsement of whatever norm is salient: prowar or antiwar. Generalizing the model beyond violent means, Experiment 5 demonstrates that goal-thwarted Europeans report increased willingness to volunteer for refugee support activities if they perceive strong social norms to volunteer. Altogether, these findings support a frustration-affirmation model rather than frustration-aggression, whereby thwarted goals increase compliance with perceived norms for behavior, which can increase endorsement of violent means such as guns and war, but also nonviolent charitable actions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) do not measure teaching effectiveness, and their widespread use by university administrators in decisions about faculty hiring, promotions, and merit increases encourages poor teaching and causes grade inflation. Students need to get good grades, and faculty members need to get good SETs. Therefore, SETs empower students to shape faculty behavior. This power can be used to reward lenient-grading instructors who require little work and to punish strict-grading instructors. This article reviews research that shows that students (a) reward teachers who grade leniently with positive SETs, (b) reward easy courses with positive SETs, and (c) choose courses that promise good grades. The study also shows that instructors want (and need) good SETs.

Objective: We developed and tested a gun-blame attribution model to explain why mass shootings do not change attitudes toward gun control among gun owners and/or conservatives. For a mass shooting to increase gun control support, individuals must attribute the shooting at least partly to gun availability. Such attributions are unlikely for individuals who believe that there would be less crime if more people had guns. Method: After two mass shootings, we assessed political orientation, gun ownership, the belief that widespread gun ownership reduces crime, causal attributions about the mass shootings, and attitudes toward gun control (Orlando, N = 1756; El Paso, N = 910). Data were analyzed using multiple regression (Study 1) and path analyses (Study 2). Demographic information is reported in the Supplemental Material. Results: Across both shootings, political conservatism and gun ownership positively predicted a belief that widespread gun ownership reduces crime, which subsequently predicted less blaming of gun availability for mass shootings and less support for stricter gun laws. Conclusions: Findings support our gun-blame attribution model. Mass shootings predict people’s attitude toward stricter gun laws if they attribute the mass shooting to gun availability. Such attributions are unlikely for U.S. gun owners and/or conservatives, who are more likely to believe that widespread gun ownership reduces crime. To the extent that this belief is ideological, persuasion-based psychological interventions are unlikely to be as effective as political intervention.

Between 2016 and 2017, Americans suffered 3 of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history by a lone gunman: the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Las Vegas strip shooting, and the Texas church shooting. We studied American gun owners in the wakes of these tragedies, theorizing that a byproduct of the salience of mass shootings is to increase the salience of guns as means of individual empowerment and significance. We hypothesized that this increase in salience would be especially relevant in the context of thwarted goals, because such individuals may be seeking a compensatory means to interact more effectively with their environment. In 4 studies of U.S. gun owners (N = 2,442), we tested whether mass shooting salience interacted with thwarted goals to predict justification to shoot suspected criminals, as well as ideas about armed vigilantism and perceptions that guns are means of empowerment. The thwarting of goals was either experimentally induced via failure on an achievement task (Study 1), or measured via perceptions of disempowerment in society (Studies 2-4). Mass shooting salience was measured via perceptions of mass shooting threat, as well as temporal proximity and social proximity to specific mass shooting events. Across studies, results indicated an interaction between thwarted goals and mass shooting salience; temporal proximity yielded mixed results. Altogether, thwarted goals motivate people to seek effectiveness and mattering, and guns are more likely to be perceived as means to such ends when mass shootings loom large in the mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Several hundred research groups attempted replications of published effects in so-called Many Labs studies involving thousands of research participants. Given this enormous investment, it seems timely to assess what has been learned and what can be learned from this type of project. My evaluation addresses four questions: First, do these replication studies inform us about the replicability of social psychological research? Second, can replications detect fraud? Third, does the failure to replicate a finding indicate that the original result was wrong? Finally, do these replications help to support or disprove any social psychological theories? Although evidence of replication failures resulted in important methodological changes, the 2015 Open Science Collaboration findings sufficed to make the point. To assess the state of social psychology, we have to evaluate theories rather than randomly selected research findings.

This study of male Canadian (n = 475) and U.S. (n = 425) handgun owners addresses 2 questions: (a) Are there differences in gun-related motivation and behaviour patterns; and (b) does the Model of Defensive Gun Ownership of Stroebe, Leander, and Kruglanski (2017) fit data of Canadian handgun gun owners? U.S. and Canadian gun cultures are supposed to be different: Unlike most U.S. gun owners, Canadian gun owners are not assumed to purchase guns for self-defense because they trust their government to protect them against crime. Although Canadian and U.S. handgun owners differed in their gun-related motivation and behaviour patterns, these differences were less substantial than expected: Mean levels of trust in law enforcement of Canadian and U.S. handgun owners did not differ. Furthermore, half of Canadian gun owners considered self-defense to be an important reason for gun ownership. Finally, a structural equation model that had fit the U.S. data of Stroebe et al. (2017) could also be applied to the Canadian data. Given that 30% of all Canadian handguns were purchased between 2012 and 2017, which is when shootings became more common in Canada’s large cities, we speculate that recent events may have reduced differences that might have existed between Canadian and American handgun owners.

The Psychology of Advertising offers a comprehensive exploration of theory and research in (consumer) psychology on how advertising impacts the thoughts, emotions and actions of consumers. It links psychological theories and empirical research findings to real-life industry examples, showing how scientific research can inform marketing practice.Advertising is a ubiquitous and powerful force, seducing us into buying wanted and sometimes unwanted products and services, donating to charitable causes, voting for political candidates and changing our health-related lifestyles for better or worse. This revised and fully updated third edition of The Psychology of Advertising offers a comprehensive and state-of-the art overview of psychological theorizing and research on the impact of online and offline advertising and discusses how the traces consumers leave on the Internet (their digital footprint) guides marketers in micro-targeting their advertisements. The new edition also includes new coverage of big data, privacy, personalization and materialism, and engages with the issue of the replication crisis in psychology, and what that means in relation to studies in the book.Including a glossary of key concepts, updated examples and illustrations, this is a unique and invaluable resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and instructors. Suitable for psychology, advertising, marketing and media courses. It is also a valuable guide for professionals working in advertising, public health, public services and political communication.

Previous studies suggested that public trust in government is vital for implementations of social policies that rely on public's behavioural responses. This study examined associations of trust in government regarding COVID-19 control with recommended health behaviours and prosocial behaviours. Data from an international survey with representative samples (N=23,733) of 23 countries were analysed. Specification curve analysis showed that higher trust in government was significantly associated with higher adoption of health and prosocial behaviours in all reasonable specifications of multilevel linear models (median standardised β=0.173 and 0.244, P