Zero-sum beliefs reflect the perception that one party's gains are necessarily offset by another party's losses. Although zero-sum relationships are, from a strictly theoretical perspective, symmetrical, we find evidence for asymmetrical zero-sum beliefs: The belief that others gain at one's own expense, but not vice versa. Across various contexts (international relations, interpersonal negotiations, political partisanship, organizational hierarchies) and research designs (within- and between-participant), we find that people are more prone to believe that others' success comes at their own expense than they are to believe that their own success comes at others' expense. Moreover, we find that people exhibit asymmetric zero-sum beliefs only when thinking about how their own party relates to other parties but not when thinking about how other parties relate to each other. Finally, we find that this effect is moderated by how threatened people feel by others' success and that reassuring people about their party's strengths eliminates asymmetric zero-sum beliefs. We discuss the theoretical contributions of our findings to research on interpersonal and intergroup zero-sum beliefs and their implications for understanding when and why people view life as zero-sum. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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不对称零和信念的心理学。

零和信念反映了一方的收益必然会被另一方的损失所抵消的看法。尽管从严格的理论角度来看，零和关系是对称的，但我们发现了不对称零和信念的证据：相信他人自费获得收益，但反之则不然。在不同的背景下（国际关系、人际谈判、政治党派、组织等级）和研究设计（参与者内部和参与者之间），我们发现人们更倾向于相信他人的成功来自于他们自己而不是他们自己相信自己的成功是以牺牲他人为代价的。而且，我们发现，人们只有在考虑他们自己的政党与其他政党的关系时才会表现出不对称的零和信念，而不是在考虑其他政党之间的关系时。最后，我们发现这种影响受到人们对他人成功的威胁程度的缓和，并且让人们确信他们的政党的优势消除了不对称的零和信念。我们讨论了我们的研究结果对人际和群体间零和信念研究的理论贡献，以及它们对理解人们何时以及为什么将生活视为零和的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。s 的优势消除了不对称的零和信念。我们讨论了我们的研究结果对人际和群体间零和信念研究的理论贡献，以及它们对理解人们何时以及为什么将生活视为零和的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。s 的优势消除了不对称的零和信念。我们讨论了我们的研究结果对人际和群体间零和信念研究的理论贡献，以及它们对理解人们何时以及为什么将生活视为零和的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。