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People have a strong preference for fairness. For many, fairness means equal reward and punishments for equal efforts and offences. However, this belief does not specify the units in which equality should be expressed. We show that people generally fail to take the interchangeability of units into account when judging and assigning fair punishments and reward. Therefore, judgments about and distributions of resources are strongly influenced by arbitrary decisions about which unit to express them in. For example, if points represent different monetary values for different recipients, people attempt to distribute money equally if money is salient but attempt to distribute points equally if points are salient. Because beliefs about fairness are a fundamental principle in many domains, the implications of these findings are broad. Essentially any distribution of outcomes can be made to appear more or less fair by changing the units these outcomes are expressed in. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Three pre-registered studies find that perpetrators who commit moral transgressions are judged less harshly when their transgressions impact individuals who have committed immoral actions (bad victims). In Studies 1 and 2, we used between- and within-participant comparisons to show that perpetrators, and the moral transgressions they committed, were judged less harshly when they impacted bad (vs. neutral) victims. In Study 3, contrary to predictions derived from both karma theory and dyadic morality, we did not find evidence that perpetrators who transgressed against highly moral individuals (good victims) were seen differently than those who transgressed against neutral victims. The increased leniency towards perpetrators who transgressed against bad victims occurred even though perpetrators in our studies did not know who their victims were, meaning this leniency did not result from the perception that perpetrators were intentionally punishing bad victims. Instead, consistent with research on dehumanization of immoral individuals, bad victims were seen as having less capacity for emotional experience (relative to both good and neutral victims). Thus, our findings suggest that moral transgressions against bad victims are viewed as less wrong because these transgressions are perceived to cause less harm to their victims.

Many opponents of genetically engineered (GE) food say that it ought to be prohibited regardless of the risks and benefits (Scott et al., 2016). If many people are truly unwilling to consider risks and benefits in evaluating GE technology, this poses serious problems for scientists and policy-makers. In a large demographically-representative German sample (N = 3,025), we investigate consequence-insensitive beliefs about GE crops among GE supporters and opponents, as well as whether these beliefs can be mitigated. We find that a large majority of opponents and a substantial minority of supporters are consequence-insensitive: They say that risks and benefits are irrelevant to their views. At the same time, the responses of consequence-insensitive participants to subsequent belief probes show substantial flexibility. Participants often gave responses inconsistent with the unconditional prohibition or permission of GE crops. These results suggest that professed con-sequence insensitivity should be taken as an expression of a strong moral belief rather than as literal endorsement of policy.

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychological and situational factors (for example, the intent of the agent or the presence of physical contact between the agent and the victim) can play an important role in moral dilemma judgements (for example, the trolley problem). Our knowledge is limited concerning both the universality of these effects outside the United States and the impact of culture on the situational and psychological factors affecting moral judgements. Thus, we empirically tested the universality of the effects of intent and personal force on moral dilemma judgements by replicating the experiments of Greene et al. in 45 countries from all inhabited continents. We found that personal force and its interaction with intention exert influence on moral judgements in the US and Western cultural clusters, replicating and expanding the original findings. Moreover, the personal force effect was present in all cultural clusters, suggesting it is culturally universal. The evidence for the cultural universality of the interaction effect was inconclusive in the Eastern and Southern cultural clusters (depending on exclusion criteria). We found no strong association between collectivism/individualism and moral dilemma judgements. Including participants from 45 countries, Bago et al. find that the situational factors that affect moral reasoning are shared across countries, with diminished observed cultural variation., Comunidad de Madrid [2016-T1/SOC-1395, 2020-5A/SOC-19723]; AEI [PSI2017-85159-P]; UE/FEDER; National Science Centre, Poland [2017/01/X/HS6/01332, 2015/19/D/HS6/00641, 2019/35/B/HS6/00528]; Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF) [AUFF-E-2019-9-4]; ANR [ANR-17-EURE-0010]; ANR Labex IAST; Australian Research Council [DP180102384]; CAPES [88887.364180/2019-00]; Carlsberg Foundation [CF16-0444]; Independent Research Fund Denmark [7024-00057B]; Germany's Excellence Strategy [EXC 2126/1-390838866]; FONDECYT, CONICYT [11190980]; German Research Foundation [FOR-2150, LA 3566/1-2]; JSPS [18K03010]; JSPS KAKENHI [16H03079, 17H00875, 18K12015, 20H04581, 17H06342, 20K03479, 20KK0054, 20J21976]; Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [31530032]; Key Technological Projects of Guangdong Province [2018B030335001]; National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [DGE-1839285]; Polish National Science Center; DFG Beethoven [2016/23/G/HS6/01775]; Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology [SFRH/BD/126304/2016, UID/PSI/03125/2019]; PRIN 2017 (Italian Ministry of Education and Research) [20178293XT]; PSA 006 BRA 008 Data Collection in Support of PSADM 001 Measurement Invariance Project; Foundation for Polish Science (START); National Science Centre [2020/36/T/HS6/00256, 2019/33/N/HS6/00054]; Slovak Research and Development Agency [APVV-18-0140, APVV-17-0418, PRIMUS/20/HUM/009, APVV-17-0596]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [950-224884]; Swedish Research Council [2016-06793]; Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province [2020SJA0017], M.A. Vadillo was supported by 2016-T1/SOC-1395 and 2020-5A/SOC-19723 from Comunidad de Madrid, PSI2017-85159-P from AEI and UE/FEDER. M.P.-C. was supported by 2017/01/X/HS6/01332 from the National Science Centre, Poland. P.M. was supported by Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF), starting grant: AUFF-E-2019-9-4. B. Bago was supported by ANR grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d'Avenir programme) and ANR Labex IAST. R.M.R. was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP180102384). N.B.D. was supported by CAPES grant no. 88887.364180/2019-00. C.S., K.A.. and I. Zettler were supported by the Carlsberg Foundation (CF16-0444) and the Independent Research Fund Denmark (7024-00057B). J.L. was supported by EXC 2126/1-390838866 under Germany's Excellence Strategy. K.B. was supported by the following grants from the National Science Centre, Poland: (1) while working on the data collection, no. 2015/19/D/HS6/00641, (2) while working on the final version of the paper, no. 2019/35/B/HS6/00528. A.W. was supported by FONDECYT 11190980, CONICYT. A. Fleischmann was supported by the German Research Foundation (research unit grant FOR-2150, LA 3566/1-2). H.Y. was supported by JSPS grant 18K03010. Y.Y. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (16H03079, 17H00875, 18K12015 and 20H04581). K.Q. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (17H06342, 20K03479 and 20KK0054). A. Ikeda was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (20J21976). K.M.K. was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant no. 31530032 and Key Technological Projects of Guangdong Province grant no. 2018B030335001. J.B.C. was supported by National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship grant no. DGE-1839285. M. Parzuchowski, K. Rybus and N.M.S. were supported by Polish National Science Center and DFG Beethoven grant 2016/23/G/HS6/01775. A.C.S. was supported by Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology grant no. SFRH/BD/126304/2016. L. Boncinelli was supported by PRIN 2017 grant no. 20178293XT (Italian Ministry of Education and Research). M.F.F.R. was supported by PSA 006 BRA 008 Data Collection in Support of PSADM 001 Measurement Invariance Project. M. Misiak was supported by a scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science (START) and by a scholarship from the National Science Centre (2020/36/T/HS6/00256). P.B. was supported by Slovak Research and Development Agency project no. APVV-18-0140. M.A. was supported by Slovak Research and Development Agency project no. APVV-17-0418 and project PRIMUS/20/HUM/009. A. Findor and M.H. were supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under contract no. APVV-17-0596. T.G. was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (no. 950-224884). P.P. was supported by the Swedish Research Council (2016-06793). Y.L. was supported by The Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (grant no. 2020SJA0017). M. Kowal was supported by a scholarship from the National Science Centre (2019/33/N/HS6/00054). P.A. was supported by UID/PSI/03125/2019 from the Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Previous research has shown that political attitudes are highly heritable, but the proximal physiological mechanisms that shape ideology remain largely unknown. Based on work suggesting possible ideological differences in genes related to low-level sensory processing, we predicted that taste (i.e., gustatory) sensitivity would be associated with political ideology. In 4 studies (combined N = 1,639) we test this hypothesis and find robust support for this association. In Studies 1-3, we find that sensitivity to the chemicals PROP and PTC-2 well established measures of taste sensitivity-are associated with greater political conservatism. In Study 4, we find that fungiform papilla density, a proxy for taste bud density, also predicts greater conservatism, and that this association is partially statistically mediated by disgust sensitivity. This work suggests that low-level physiological differences in sensory processing may shape an individual's political attitudes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceived intent is a pivotal factor in moral judgement: intentional moral violations are considered more morally wrong than accidental ones. However, a body of recent research argues that intent is less important for moral judgements of impure acts – that it, those acts that are condemned because they elicit disgust. But the literature supporting this claim is limited in multiple ways. We conducted a new test of the hypothesis that condemnation of purity violations operates independently from intent. In Study 1, participants judged the wrongness of moral violations that were either intentional or unintentional and were either harmful (e.g., stealing) or impure (e.g., public defecation). Results revealed a large effect of intent on moral wrongness ratings that did not vary across harmful and disgusting scenarios. In Study 2, a registered report, participants judged the wrongness of disgust-eliciting moral violations that were either mundane and dyadic (e.g., serving contaminated food) or abnormal and self-directed (e.g., consuming urine). Results revealed a large effect of intent on moral wrongness judgements that did not vary across mundane and abnormal scenarios. Findings challenge the claim that moral judgements about purity violations rely upon unique psychological mechanisms that are insensitive to information about the wrongdoer's mental state.

We examine the robustness of previous research finding increased diffusion of Twitter messages (“tweets”) containing moral rhetoric. We use a distributed language model to examine the moral language used by U.S. political elites in two corpora of tweets: one from 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and one from U.S. Members of Congress. Consistent with previous research, we find greater diffusion for tweets containing moral rhetoric, but this is qualified by moral language valence and elite ideology. For both presidential candidates and Members of Congress, negative moral language is associated with increased message diffusion. Positive moral language is not associated with diffusion for presidential candidates, and is negatively associated with diffusion for Members of Congress. In both datasets, the relationship between negative moral language and message diffusion is stronger for liberals than conservatives.

We used a distributed-language model to examine the moral language employed by U.S. political elites. In Study 1, we analyzed 687,360 Twitter messages (tweets) posted by accounts belonging to Democratic and Republican members of Congress from 2016 to 2018. In Study 2, we analyzed 2,630,688 speeches given on the floor of the House and Senate from 1981 to 2017. We found that partisan differences in moral-language use shifted over time as the parties gained or lost political power. Overall, lower political power was associated with greater use of moral language for both Democrats and Republicans. On Twitter, Democrats used more moral language in the period after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In Congressional transcripts, both Democrats and Republicans used more of most kinds of moral language when they were in the minority.

Data availability statement: The data associated with this research are available via the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/bax8r/). Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. Previous work has reported a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward various social groups, including gay men and lesbian women. It is currently unknown whether this association is present across cultures, or specific to North America. Analyses of survey data from adult heterosexuals (N = 11,200) from 31 countries showed a small relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity (an individual-difference measure of pathogen-avoidance motivations) and measures of antigay attitudes. Analyses also showed that pathogen disgust sensitivity relates not only to antipathy toward gay men and lesbians, but also to negativity toward other groups, in particular those associated with violations of traditional sexual norms (e.g., prostitutes). These results suggest that the association between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay attitudes is relatively stable across cultures and is a manifestation of a more general relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice towards groups associated with sexual norm violations. J.R.C. acknowledges funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) under Grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir program). J.M.T. was supported by Horizon 2020 European Research Council Grant StG-2015 680002-HBIS.

This article presents a mapping review of the available literature on the emotional well-being of journalists exposed to traumatic events. The review consists of three parts: (a) a summary of the results of trauma-related literature; (b) identification of the limitations of studies to date; and (c) suggestions for future research. The overview of the reviewed studies is provided as a table.

Clark and Winegard (this issue) argue that researchers’ (liberal) ideology is a threat to the validity of social-psychological research. They describe three ways in which researchers’ ideological c...

Comparisons can often be framed in different but equivalent ways. For example, "A is better than B," can also be expressed as "B is worse than A." In 7 studies (and 4 further studies in the Supplemental Materials available in the OSF) we find that logically equivalent comparison frames have divergent effects on judgments and choices for the items being compared as well as other members of the set from which those items were drawn. These effects are asymmetric, affecting inferior items more strongly than superior ones. We propose a "comparison framing" account that draws on theory in linguistics on the markedness of adjectives (Cruse, 1976; Lehrer, 1985) to explain these results. We show that this account fits the data better than 2 previous accounts of attribute framing: automatic valenced associations (Levin et al., 1998) and leakage of information (McKenzie & Nelson, 2003). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The emotion of disgust has been claimed to affect a diverse array of social judgments, including moral condemnation, inter-group prejudice, political ideology, and much more. We attempt to make sense of this large and varied literature by reviewing the theory and research on how and why disgust influences these judgments. We first describe two very different perspectives adopted by researchers on why disgust should affect social judgment. The first is the pathogen-avoidance account, which sees the relationship between disgust and judgment as resulting from disgust’s evolved function as a pathogen-avoidance mechanism. The second is the extended disgust account, which posits that disgust functions much more broadly to address a range of other threats and challenges. We then review the empirical evidence to assess how well it supports each of these perspectives, arguing that there is more support for the pathogen-avoidance account than the extended account. We conclude with some testable empirical predictions that can better distinguish between these two perspectives.

Correction to: Nature Human Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01319-5, published online 14 April 2022.

A large literature demonstrates that moral convictions guide many of our thoughts, behaviors, and social interactions. Yet, we know little about how these moral convictions come to exist. In the present research we explore moralization—the process by which something that was morally neutral takes on moral properties—examining what factors facilitate and deter it. In 3 longitudinal studies participants were presented with morally evocative stimuli about why eating meat should be viewed as a moral issue. Study 1 tracked students over a semester as they took a university course that highlighted the suffering animals endure because of human meat consumption. In Studies 2 and 3 participants took part in a mini-course we developed which presented evocative videos aimed at inducing moralization. In all 3 studies, we assessed participants’ beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and cognitions at multiple time points to track moral changes and potential factors responsible for such changes. A variety of factors, both cognitive and affective, predicted participants’ moralization or lack thereof. Model testing further pointed to two primary conduits of moralization: the experience of moral emotions (e.g., disgust, guilt) felt when contemplating the issue, and moral piggybacking (connecting the issue at hand with one’s existing fundamental moral principles). Moreover, we found individual differences, such as how much one holds their morality as central to their identity, also predicted the moralization process. We discuss the broad theoretical and applied implications of our results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

There is widespread agreement among scientists that genetically modified foods are safe to consume1,2 and have the potential to provide substantial benefits to humankind3. However, many people still harbour concerns about them or oppose their use4,5. In a nationally representative sample of US adults, we find that as extremity of opposition to and concern about genetically modified foods increases, objective knowledge about science and genetics decreases, but perceived understanding of genetically modified foods increases. Extreme opponents know the least, but think they know the most. Moreover, the relationship between self-assessed and objective knowledge shifts from positive to negative at high levels of opposition. Similar results were obtained in a parallel study with representative samples from the United States, France and Germany, and in a study testing attitudes about a medical application of genetic engineering technology (gene therapy). This pattern did not emerge, however, for attitudes and beliefs about climate change.

We use a distributed language model to examine the moral language used by U.S. political elites. In Study 1, we analyze 687,360 Twitter messages (“tweets”) posted by accounts belonging to Democratic and Republican members of Congress from 2016-2018. In Study 2, we analyze 2,630,688 speeches given on the floor of the House and Senate from 1981-2017. We find that partisan differences in moral language use shift over time as the parties gain or lose political power. Overall, lower political power was associated with greater use of moral language for both Democrats and Republicans. On Twitter, Democrats used more moral language in the period after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In Congressional transcripts, both Democrats and Republicans used more of most kinds of moral language when they were in the minority.

Food crops produced by new technologies such as genetic engineering are widely opposed (Gaskell, Bauer, Durant & Allum, 1999; Scott, Inbar, Wirz, Brossard & Rozin, 2018). Here, we examine one reason for this opposition: recency. More recently-developed crops are evaluated less favorably, whether they are produced by artificial selection (i.e., conventional breeding), natural or man-made irradiation, or genetic engineering. Negative effects of recency persist in a within-subjects design where people are able to explicitly compare crops developed at different times, and an internal meta-analysis shows that the negative effect of recency is robust across measures and stimuli. These results have implications for the evaluation of crops produced using new modification techniques, including the widespread opposition to genetic engineering.

The proliferation of software and firmware-based technologies has made it easier than ever for firms to modify existing products and sell these modified products at different prices. One such production method—downward quality discrimination—involves a firm disabling certain features of a product that they produce and selling that product with disabled features as a cheaper, standalone product. For example, the (less expensive) GoPro Hero 2018 consists of the same hardware as the (more expensive) GoPro Hero 5, but includes firmware that limits the quality of the camera. Seven experiments demonstrate that consumers find firms’ downward quality discrimination less acceptable than alternative production processes. Experiments 1-2 establish this effect, while also ruling out artifactual and competing theoretical explanations. Experiments 3a-3c provide complementary and convergent evidence—via mediation and moderation—that this effect is driven by the perception that firms’ downward quality discrimination represents an attempt to exploit consumers. Two final experiments offer practical insights for marketing managers: How consumers’ disapproval of downward quality discrimination can lead to (1) decreased willingness to pay in a real, incentive-compatible online market (Experiment 4), and (2) negative word-of-mouth (WOM) and public evaluations of a firm (Experiment 5).

Genetically engineered food has had its DNA, RNA, or proteins manipulated by intentional human intervention. We provide an overview of the importance and regulation of genetically engineered food and lay attitudes toward it. We first discuss the pronaturalness context in the United States and Europe that preceded the appearance of genetically engineered food. We then review the definition, prevalence, and regulation of this type of food. Genetically engineered food is widespread in some countries, but there is great controversy worldwide among individuals, governments, and other institutions about the advisability of growing and consuming it. In general, life scientists have a much more positive view of genetically engineered food than laypeople. We examine the bases of lay opposition to genetically engineered food and the evidence for how attitudes change. Laypeople tend to see genetically engineered food as dangerous and offering few benefits. We suggest that much of the lay opposition is morally based. One possibility is that, in some contexts, people view nature and naturalness as sacred and genetically engineered food as a violation of naturalness. We also suggest that for many people these perceptions of naturalness and attitudes toward genetically engineered food follow the sympathetic magical law of contagion, in which even minimal contact between a natural food and an unnatural entity, either a scientist or a piece of foreign DNA, pollutes or contaminates the natural entity and renders it unacceptable or even immoral to consume.

People have a strong preference for fairness. For many, fairness means equal rewards and punishments for equal efforts and offences. However, this belief does not specify the units in which equality should be expressed. We show that people generally fail to take the interchangeability of units into account when judging and assigning fair punishments and rewards. As a consequence, judgments about and distributions of resources are strongly influenced by arbitrary decisions about which unit to express them in. For example, if points represent different monetary values for different recipients, people attempt to distribute money equally if money is salient, but attempt to distribute points equally if points are salient. Because beliefs about fairness are a fundamental principle in many domains, the implications of these findings are broad. Essentially any distribution of outcomes can be made to appear more or less fair by changing the units these outcomes are expressed in.

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance (p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion (p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely highpowered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied. UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIP)

The emotion of disgust has been linked to more conservative social attitudes and to self-placement on the left–right political spectrum. This relationship seems to be robust and general: It has been observed by multiple labs, using diverse methods and measures, in a variety of countries and cultures. However, why disgust should be associated with social and political attitudes is still an open question. We first review the evidence for a link between disgust and political attitudes and then outline competing accounts of why there should be a relationship between the two in the first place.

Public opposition to genetic modification (GM) technology in the food domain is widespread (Frewer et al., 2013). In a survey of U.S. residents representative of the population on gender, age, and income, 64% opposed GM, and 71% of GM opponents (45% of the entire sample) were “absolutely” opposed—that is, they agreed that GM should be prohibited no matter the risks and benefits. “Absolutist” opponents were more disgust sensitive in general and more disgusted by the consumption of genetically modified food than were non-absolutist opponents or supporters. Furthermore, disgust predicted support for legal restrictions on genetically modified foods, even after controlling for explicit risk–benefit assessments. This research suggests that many opponents are evidence insensitive and will not be influenced by arguments about risks and benefits.

Previous evidence linking disease threat and social attitudes suggests that a highly salient society-wide pathogen threat should lead to more negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Using a sample of 248,922 Americans recruited via the Project Implicit website, we tested whether implicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbians shifted as a result of the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak. Regression discontinuity analyses, but not t-tests, showed evidence of a small shift in implicit (but not explicit) attitudes at the height of public concern over Ebola. These results could be interpreted as providing partial support for the effects of naturally occurring pathogen threats on social attitudes. Alternatively, given the large size of our sample, the mixed evidence and small effects may reflect a boundary condition for the operation of the behavioral immune system.

Two recent experiments found evidence for what we term the social category label (SCL) effect-that the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and prejudice against gay men and lesbians can be reduced or even eliminated when the target group is labeled "gay men and lesbians" rather than "homosexuals" (Rios, 2013). Although this appears a promising approach to reduce self-reported sexual prejudice, with both theoretical implications for the meaning of RWA itself and practical implications for question wording for assessing these attitudes, there are several reasons to further examine these findings, including (a) inconsistencies with extant evidence, (b) small sample sizes in the original 2 experiments, and (c) concerns with the RWA measures used in the 2 experiments. We tested the SCL hypothesis with a nationally representative sample (Study 1) and close and conceptual replications of Rios' (2013) 2 studies (Studies 2-5) using multiple measures of RWA and prejudice. Across 23 tests of the SCL hypothesis, we obtained 1 statistically significant and 1 marginally significant effect consistent with the hypothesis, 2 significant effects opposite the hypothesis, and 19 nonsignificant effects. A meta-analysis of evidence reported here and in Rios (2013) indicates that RWA strongly predicts antigay prejudice, with no significant variation by label. This confirms the typically robust association between RWA and antigay prejudice and confirms that the SCL effect is not robust. We discuss potential limitations of these studies, theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for our failures to replicate the original SCL studies, and future directions for examining social category label effects. (PsycINFO Database Record

We present four datasets from a project examining the role of politics in social psychological research. These include thousands of independent raters who coded scientific abstracts for political relevance and for whether conservatives or liberals were treated as targets of explanation and characterized in a negative light. Further included are predictions about the empirical results by scientists participating in a forecasting survey, and coded publication outcomes for unpublished research projects varying in political overtones. Future researchers can leverage this corpus to test further hypotheses regarding political values and scientific research, perceptions of political bias, publication histories, and forecasting accuracy.

Multiple recent studies report that measures of pathogen avoidance (e.g., disgust sensitivity) correlate with political ideology. This relationship has been interpreted as suggesting that certain political views (specifically, those views that are categorized as socially conservative) function to mitigate the pathogen threats posed either by intergroup interactions or by departures from traditional societal norms, which sometimes evolve culturally for anti-pathogen functions. We propose and test the alternative hypothesis that pathogen avoidance relates to conservatism indirectly via sexual strategies (e.g., relatively monogamous versus relatively promiscuous). Specifically, we argue that individuals who are more invested in avoiding pathogens follow a more monogamous mating strategy to mitigate against pathogens transmitted during sexual contact, and individuals following a more monogamous mating strategy adopt socially conservative political ideologies to support their reproductive interests. Results from three studies ( N 's=819, 238, and 248) using multiple measures of pathogen avoidance, sexual strategies, and ideology support this account, with sexual strategies fully mediating the relationship between measures of pathogen avoidance and conservatism in each study.

A popular view in philosophy of science contends that scientific reasoning is objective to the extent that the appraisal of scientific hypotheses is not influenced by moral, political, economic, or social values, but only by the available evidence. A large body of results in the psychology of motivated-reasoning has put pressure on the empirical adequacy of this view. The present study extends this body of results by providing direct evidence that the moral offensiveness of a scientific hypothesis biases explanatory judgment along several dimensions, even when prior credence in the hypothesis is controlled for. Furthermore, it is shown that this bias is insensitive to an economic incentive to be accurate in the evaluation of the evidence. These results contribute to call into question the attainability of the ideal of a value-free science.

Liberals and conservatives both express prejudice toward ideologically dissimilar others (Brandt et al., 2014). Previous work on ideological prejudice did not take advantage of evidence showing that ideology is multidimensional, with social and economic ideologies representing related but separable belief systems. In 5 studies (total N = 4912), we test 3 competing hypotheses of a multidimensional account of ideological prejudice. The dimension-specific symmetry hypothesis predicts that social and economic ideologies differentially predict prejudice against targets who are perceived to vary on the social and economic political dimensions, respectively. The social primacy hypothesis predicts that such ideological worldview conflict is experienced more strongly along the social than economic dimension. The social-specific asymmetry hypothesis predicts that social conservatives will be more prejudiced than social liberals, with no specific hypotheses for the economic dimension. Using multiple target groups, multiple prejudice measures (e.g., global evaluations, behavior), and multiple social and economic ideology measures (self-placement, issue positions), we found relatively consistent support for the dimension-specific symmetry and social primacy hypotheses, and no support for the social-specific asymmetry hypothesis. These results suggest that worldview conflict and negative intergroup attitudes and behaviors are dimension-specific, but that the social dimension appears to inspire more political conflict than the economic dimension. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individual differences in disgust sensitivity have been linked to social attitudes and ideology, but the generalizability of this effect and the nature of the political issues implicated remain unclear. In two studies using large Dutch samples, we find that disgust sensitivity predicts political attitudes for issues in several domains related to physical/spiritual purity and pathogen risk. Sensitivity to disgust was significantly associated with attitudes for a general ‘physical and spiritual purity’ factor, as well as specific issue factors regarding sex and sexual minorities, immigration, and foreign outgroups. Additionally, disgust sensitivity was associated with greater likelihood of voting for the socially conservative “Freedom Party” (Partij Voor de Vrijheid). These results suggest that the tendency to experience disgust influences a specific subset of social and political attitudes across cultures. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Previous research has linked disgust sensitivity to negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians. We extend this existing research by examining the extent to which disgust sensitivity predicts attitudes more generally toward groups that threaten or uphold traditional sexual morality. In a sample of American adults (N = 236), disgust sensitivity (and particularly contamination disgust) predicted negative attitudes toward groups that threaten traditional sexual morality (e.g., pro-choice activists), and positive attitudes toward groups that uphold traditional sexual morality (e.g., Evangelical Christians). Further, disgust sensitivity was a weaker predictor of attitudes toward left-aligned and right-aligned groups whose objectives are unrelated to traditional sexual morality (e.g., gun-control/gun-rights activists). Together, these findings are consistent with a sexual conservatism account for understanding the relationship between disgust sensitivity and intergroup attitudes.Keywords: Disgust sensitivity, Prejudice, Intergroup attitudes, Sex

In 4 experiments, we investigate how the “fit” of an item with a set of similar items affects choice. We find that people have a notion of a set that “fits” together—one where all items are the same, or all items differ, on salient attributes. One consequence of this notion is that in addition to preferences over the set’s individual items, choice reflects set-fit. This leads to predictable shifts in preferences, sometimes even resulting in people choosing normatively inferior options over superior ones.Keywords: sets, choice, gestalt, preferences

STCO criticize our analytic strategy onmultiple fronts. First, they object to ourmodeling of error covariances between endogenous ideology variables in path analyses. Failing to model error covariances assumes that conservatism measures are completely uncorrelated, except to the extent to which they are related to model predictors. As STCO demonstrate, models of this assumption fit the data poorly. The fit of such models is irrelevant to the theory being tested in our article or STCO's response, though—it merely demonstrates that, say, social conservatism correlates with agreement with the Republican Party. Second, after previously objecting to usingmeasures that blend economic and social conservatism (Terrizzi, Shook, & McDaniel, 2013), STCO curiously criticize us for not blending our diverse conservatism measures into a single latent variable. STCO's proposalwill be difficult to evaluate empirically if it can neither be tested by treating social and economic conservatism separately nor by averaging across social and economic conservatism. Finally, STCO object to our use of the routine practice of interpreting model fit statistics for theory testing; this criticism is especially peculiar given STCO later employee these same fit statistics in their analyses. On the whole, STCO's statistical critiques do not warrant change to our conclusions. Nevertheless, to satisfy STCO's concerns regarding path models, we reanalyzed every relationship reported in our paper using the simplest mediation model possible. Using SPSS's PROCESS macro, we tested direct and indirect effects of pathogen avoidance on conservatism, mediated by sexual strategies. Across every measure in all three studies, we observe no direct relationship between pathogen avoidance and conservatism, though pathogen avoidance does consistently relate to conservatism indirectly via sexual strategies (see Table 1 for effects for “social” conservatism variables). Since publishing our paper, we have included the TDDS and the item “Howwould you describe your political orientation when it comes to social issues” in two studies (N's = 347 and 490) using Mechanical Turk participants, the same group sampled in our manuscript and in STCO's commentary. In both data sets, we observe an indirect relationship of pathogen disgust on social conservatism via sexual disgust, but no direct relationship between pathogen disgust and social conservatism (see Table 1). In sum, across five large samples, we find that sexual disgust fully mediates any relationship between pathogen disgust and social conservatism. Even so, do thesemeasures offer a fair test of the theories we and STCO describe?

Do people sometimes seek to atone for their transgressions by harming themselves physically? The current results suggest that they do. People who wrote about a past guilt-inducing event inflicted more intense electric shocks on themselves than did those who wrote about feeling sad or about a neutral event. Moreover, the stronger the shocks that guilty participants administered to themselves, the more their feelings of guilt were alleviated. We discuss how this method of atonement relates to other methods examined in previous research.

We present the data from a crowdsourced project seeking to replicate findings in independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. In this Pre-Publication Independent Replication (PPIR) initiative, 25 research groups attempted to replicate 10 moral judgment effects from a single laboratory’s research pipeline of unpublished findings. The 10 effects were investigated using online/lab surveys containing psychological manipulations (vignettes) followed by questionnaires. Results revealed a mix of reliable, unreliable, and culturally moderated findings. Unlike any previous replication project, this dataset includes the data from not only the replications but also from the original studies, creating a unique corpus that researchers can use to better understand reproducibility and irreproducibility in science.

This crowdsourced project introduces a collaborative approach to improving the reproducibility of scientific research, in which findings are replicated in qualified independent laboratories before (rather than after) they are published. Our goal is to establish a non-adversarial replication process with highly informative final results. To illustrate the Pre-Publication Independent Replication (PPIR) approach, 25 research groups conducted replications of all ten moral judgment effects which the last author and his collaborators had 'in the pipeline' as of August 2014. Six findings replicated according to all replication criteria, one finding replicated but with a significantly smaller effect size than the original, one finding replicated consistently in the original culture but not outside of it, and two findings failed to find support. In total, 40% of the original findings failed at least one major replication criterion. Potential ways to implement and incentivize pre-publication independent replication on a large scale are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

The Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P) attempted to replicate 100 cognitive and social-personality psychology studies (1). Van Bavel et al. (2) report an association (r = −0.23, P = 0.024) between a study’s rated “contextual dependence” and whether the study was successfully replicated by the RP:P. However, this association is entirely the result of an omitted third variable: whether the study was in cognitive or social-personality psychology. Within each subdiscipline there is no relationship between context dependence and replicability: r = −0.08, P = 0.54 for social-personality psychology; r = −0.04, P = 0.79 for cognitive psychology (point-biserial correlations).

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for the relationship between pathogens and politics. The first, which is an intragroup, traditional norms account, holds that these relationships are based on motivations to adhere to local norms, which are sometimes shaped by cultural evolution to have pathogen neutralizing properties. The second, which is an intergroup, outgroup-avoidance account, holds that relationships between pathogen avoidance and ideology are based on motivations to avoid contact with outgroups (who might pose greater infectious disease threats than ingroup members). Results from a study surveying 11,501 participants across 30 nations are more consistent with the traditional norms account than with the outgroup-avoidance account. National parasite stress relates to traditionalism (an aspect of conservatism especially related to adherence to group norms) but not to social dominance orientation (an aspect of conservatism especially related to endorsements of intergroup barriers and negativity toward ethnic and racial outgroups). Further, individual differences in pathogen-avoidance motives (i.e., disgust sensitivity) relate more strongly to traditionalism than to social dominance orientation within the 30 nations.

In two large samples (combined N = 31,045), we found a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and political conservatism. This relationship held when controlling for a number of demographic variables as well as the “Big Five” personality traits. Disgust sensitivity was also associated with more conservative voting in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In Study 2, we replicated the disgust sensitivity–conservatism relationship in an international sample of respondents from 121 different countries. Across both samples, contamination disgust, which reflects a heightened concern with interpersonally transmitted disease and pathogens, was most strongly associated with conservatism.

When making decisions, people sometimes deviate from normative standards. While such deviations may appear to be alarmingly common, examining individual differences may reveal a more nuanced picture. Specifically, the personality factor of need for cognition (i.e., the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) may moderate decision makers’ susceptibility to bias, as could personality factors associated with being a leader. As part of a large-scale assessment of high-level leaders, participants completed a battery of decision-making competence and personality scales. Leaders who scored higher on need for cognition performed better on two of four components of a decision-making competence measure: framing and honoring sunk costs. In addition, the leader sample performed better than published controls. Thus, both individual differences in need for cognition and leadership experience moderate susceptibility to decision biases. Implications for broader theories of individual differences and bias are discussed.

We test a metacognitive account of why larger choice sets often lead to greater regret, proposing that people apply the lay theory that “a quick choice is a bad choice” when evaluating how well they have chosen. Because people often operate under time pressure, larger sets are likely to entail a more cursory selection process than smaller sets, generating a feeling of having rushed the evaluation of the alternatives and heightened regret. Four studies show that choice-set size does not influence participants' regret when they believe that they had enough time to choose, that the subjective feeling of being rushed accounts for greater regret when choosing from larger sets, and that changing people's lay theories about choosing quickly eliminates regret.