Recent research into Person × Environment interaction has supported the view that sensitivity to environmental influences is a susceptibility factor rather than a vulnerability factor. Given this perspective, this study examined the role of the adolescent’s sensory‐processing sensitivity in the context of weekly life events and weekly socioemotional well‐being. In the study, 114 adolescents repeatedly

Studies found that subliminal primes can be associated with specific tasks to facilitate task performance, and such learning is highly adaptive and generalizable. Meanwhile, conditioning studies suggest that aversive/reward learning and generalization actually occur at the semantic level. The current study shows that prime–task associations can also be generalized to novel word/neighbour primes from

Vecchione et al. (Br J Psychol, 106, 2015, 84) demonstrated the effects of four higher‐order values on political participation across 20 European countries. In their Study 1, they found that political participation was related to three higher‐order basic values and that these associations were stronger in more democratic countries. The present study attempted a replication using a more rigorous modelling

Unfamiliar simultaneous face matching is error prone. Reducing incorrect identification decisions will positively benefit forensic and security contexts. The absence of view‐independent information in static images likely contributes to the difficulty of unfamiliar face matching. We tested whether a novel interactive viewing procedure that provides the user with 3D structural information as they rotate

The cheerleader effect occurs when the same face is rated to be more attractive when it is seen in a group compared to when seen alone. We investigated whether this phenomenon also occurs for trustworthiness judgements, and examined how these effects are influenced by the characteristics of the individual being evaluated and those of the group they are seen in. Across three experiments, we reliably

Theories of autobiographical memory distinguish between involuntary and voluntary memories. While involuntary memories are retrieved with no conscious intention and are therefore unexpected, voluntary memories are both intended and expected. Recent research has shown that participants sometimes classify their memories as either involuntary or voluntary based on retrieval effort instead of intention

Understanding the factors associated with vaccine scepticism is challenging because of the ‘small‐pockets’ problem: The number of highly vaccine‐sceptical people is low, and small subsamples such as these can be missed using traditional regression approaches. To overcome this problem, the current study (N = 5,200) used latent profile analysis to uncover six profiles, including two micro‐communities

Personality psychology has long focused on structural trait models, but it can also offer a rich understanding of the dynamics, processes, mechanisms, and functioning of individual differences or entire persons. The field of personality dynamics, which works towards such an understanding, has experienced a renaissance in the last two decades. This review article seeks to act as a primer of that field

Social distance regulations have been widely adopted during the global COVID‐19 pandemic. From an evolutionary perspective, social connection and money are interchangeable subsistence resources for human survival. The substitutability principle of human motivation posits that scarcity in one domain (e.g., social connection) could motivate people to acquire or maintain resources in another domain (e

Tolerating or condoning practices that one finds objectionable is typically considered a positive way to negotiate intergroup differences. However, being the target of tolerance might harm well‐being, which we examined in three studies (a survey and two experiments) among a total of 1,054 members of various racial/ethnic minority groups in the United States. In Study 1, we found that perceiving oneself

People often expect antibiotics when they are clinically inappropriate (e.g., for viral infections). This contributes significantly to physicians’ decisions to prescribe antibiotics when they are clinically inappropriate, causing harm to the individual and to society. In two pre‐registered studies employing UK general population samples (n1 = 402; n2 = 190), we evaluated the relationship between knowledge

Research has examined the nature of visual imagery in normally sighted and blind subjects, but not in those with low vision. Findings with normally sighted subjects suggest that imagery involves primary visual areas of the brain. Since the plasticity of visual cortex appears to be limited in adulthood, we might expect imagery of those with adult‐onset low vision to be relatively unaffected by these

Why do we adopt new rules, such as social distancing? Although human sciences research stresses the key role of social influence in behaviour change, most COVID‐19 campaigns emphasize the disease’s medical threat. In a global data set (n = 6,674), we investigated how social influences predict people’s adherence to distancing rules during the pandemic. Bayesian regression analyses controlling for stringency

In two experiments, we investigated the correspondences between off‐line word segmentation and on‐line segmentation processing during Chinese reading. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to read sentences which contained critical four‐character strings, and then, they were required to segment the same sentences into words in a later off‐line word segmentation task. For each item, participants

Family socio‐economic status (SES) is significantly related to disparities in children’s executive function. Children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds perform worse on executive function tasks than their peers from high‐SES families. The protective factors in the relationship between SES and executive function have not been sufficiently investigated, especially from the perspective of parents’

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of a pretend play‐based training designed to promote the development of socio‐emotional competences. 79 children aged 5 to 6 years were evaluated before and after a pretend play‐based training. The experimental group (39 children) received this programme on emotion comprehension, negative emotion regulation, and prosocial behaviour one hour a

The investigation of self‐prioritization via a simple matching paradigm represents a new way of enhancing our knowledge about the processing of self‐relevant content and also increases our understanding of the self‐concept itself. By associating formerly neutral material with the self, and assessing the resulting prioritization of these newly formed self‐associations, conclusions can be drawn concerning

The own‐age bias (OAB) has been proposed to be caused by perceptual expertise and/or social‐cognitive mechanisms. Investigations into the role of social cognition have, however, yielded mixed results. One reason for this might be the tendency for research to focus on the OAB in young adults, between young and older adult faces where other‐age individuation experience is low. To explore whether social‐cognitive

It has long been known that premature birth and/or low birthweight can lead to general difficulties in cognitive and emotional functioning throughout childhood. However, the influence of these factors on more specific processes has seldom been addressed, despite their potential to account for wide individual differences in performance that often appear innate. Here, we examined the influence of gestation

Information associated with the self is prioritized relative to information associated with others and is therefore processed more quickly and accurately. Across three experiments, we examined whether a new externally‐generated voice could become associated with the self and thus be prioritized in perception. In the first experiment, participants learned associations between three unfamiliar voices

Although the bystander intervention model provides a useful account of how people help others, no previous study has applied it to a global emergency. This research aims to develop a scale for measuring global bystander intervention and investigate its potential antecedents in the Syrian refugee emergency. In Study 1 (N = 80) and Study 2 (N = 205), a 12‐item scale was established through a substantive‐validity

The gaze‐cueing effect is a robust phenomenon which illustrates how attention can be shaped by social factors. In four experiments, the present study explored the interaction between the ethnic membership of the participant and that of the face providing the gaze cue. Firstly, we aimed to further investigate the differential impact of White, Black, and Asian faces on the gaze‐cueing effect in White

When a romantic partner behaves in an annoying way – for example, by leaving a mess – we might respond with frustration or understanding. Responses may vary with contextual factors, including whether the partner could be mentally fatigued or depleted. We hypothesized that limited willpower theorists – who believe self‐control diminishes with use – might be especially likely to consider their partner’s

Popular theorizing about happiness pursuit emphasizes universal paths to happiness, but other theorizing acknowledges different people achieve happiness in different ways (i.e., subjective well‐being, SWB). The present work extended this latter perspective by examining how antagonistic pursuit of a grandiose identity (‘narcissistic antagonism’) – generally thought to reduce narcissistic people’s SWB

Multiple facial cues such as facial expression and face gender simultaneously influence facial trustworthiness judgement in adults. The current work was to examine the effect of multiple facial cues on trustworthiness judgement across age groups. Eight‐, 10‐year‐olds, and adults detect trustworthiness from happy and neutral adult faces (female and male faces) in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 included

Although conspiracy theories are ubiquitous across times and cultures, research has not investigated how cultural dimensions may predict conspiracy beliefs. The present research examined intergroup conspiracy beliefs in United States and Chinese samples at the peak of the trade war. In two studies (one pre‐registered; total N = 1,092), we asked US participants to what extent they believed Chinese institutions

Orthographic processing is characterized by location‐invariant and location‐specific processing (Grainger, 2018): (1) strings of letters are more vulnerable to transposition effects than the strings of symbols in same‐different tasks (location‐invariant processing); and (2) strings of letters, but not strings of symbols, show an initial position advantage in target‐in‐string identification tasks (location‐specific

In response to Ruisch et al., 2020, British Journal of Psychology, we propose that the assessment of domain‐general ideological differences requires systematic stimulus sampling. We argue that there is currently no evidence that the ‘neutral’ BeanFest assesses domain‐general ideological differences and that Ruisch et al., 2020, British Journal of Psychology findings do not address the mechanism(s)

Research on visuospatial memory has shown that egocentric (subject‐to‐object) and allocentric (object‐to‐object) reference frames are connected to categorical (non‐metric) and coordinate (metric) spatial relations, and that motor resources are recruited especially when processing spatial information in peripersonal (within arm reaching) than extrapersonal (outside arm reaching) space. In order to perform

Two studies investigated (1) how people react to research describing a sex difference, depending on whether that difference favours males or females, and (2) how accurately people can predict how the average man and woman will react. In Study 1, Western participants (N = 492) viewed a fictional popular‐science article describing either a male‐favouring or a female‐favouring sex difference (i.e., men/women

This paper uses a multi‐methods approach to explore the social psychological construction of stigma towards the unemployed. Study 1a uses thematic analysis to explore frames used by political elites in speeches at U.K. national party conferences between 1996 and 2016 (n = 43); in study 1b, we track the usage of these frames in six national newspapers (n = 167,723 articles) over the same period showing

This study experimentally investigated how empathy moderated the influence of external emotional stimuli on preschoolers’ subsequent sharing behaviour. Children aged 4–6 (N = 218) were randomly presented with one of the video clips that elicited sad, happy, or neutral emotion, and were then asked to play a dictator game with puppet partners. Results revealed that compared to the neutral condition,

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) that has caused the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic represents the greatest international biopsychosocial emergency the world has faced for a century, and psychological science has an integral role to offer in helping societies recover. The aim of this paper is to set out the shorter‐ and longer‐term priorities for research

Depth perception is essential for effective interaction with the environment. Although the accuracy of depth perception has been studied extensively, it is unclear how accurate the depth information is stored in working memory. In this study, we investigated the accuracy and systematic biases of depth representation by a delayed estimation task. The memory array consisted of items presented at various

In a longitudinal sample from Britain, we tested if attending private, fee‐charging schools rather than non‐selective state schools benefitted children’s social–emotional development. State (N = 2,413) and private school children (N = 269) showed no differences in well‐being across adolescence, but private school children reported fewer behaviour problems and greater peer victimisation over time than

The ability to recognize identity despite within‐person variability in appearance is likely a face‐specific skill and shaped by experience. Ensemble coding – the automatic extraction of the average of a stimulus array – has been proposed as a mechanism underlying face learning (allowing one to recognize novel instances of a newly learned face). We investigated whether ensemble encoding, like face learning

Neuroticism is associated with heightened reactivity to social stressors. However, little is known about the micro‐processes through which neuroticism shapes – and is shaped by – affective experiences in close relationships. We examine the extent to which momentary affect is coupled with one’s relationship partner, whether the strength of this coupling differs depending on levels of neuroticism, and

Fiagbenu et al. (2019, British Journal of Psychology) questioned the nature and extent of ideological differences in learning and behaviour documented by Shook and Fazio (2009, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 995). We correct a mischaracterization in their depiction of Shook & Fazio’s research, and in doing so, we outline why the original findings represent domain‐general ideological

People show a robust tendency to gaze at other human beings when viewing images or videos, but were also found to relatively avoid gaze at others in several real‐world situations. This discrepancy, along with theoretical considerations, spawned doubts about the appropriateness of classical laboratory‐based experimental paradigms in social attention research. Several researchers instead suggested the

In today's globalized world, we frequently encounter unfamiliar events that we may have difficulty comprehending – and in turn remembering – due to a lack of appropriate schemata. This research investigated schema effects in a situation where participants established a complex new schema for an unfamiliar type of story through exposure to four variations. We found that immediate recall increased across

Thin and muscular have been characterized as ideals for women and men, respectively. Little research has investigated whether men and women have accurate perceptions of opposite‐sex preferences of thinness and muscularity. Further, no study has explored whether opposite‐sex perceptions of thinness and muscularity preferences differ for short‐term and long‐term relationships. The present study set out

From only a single spoken word, listeners can form a wealth of first impressions of a person’s character traits and personality based on their voice. However, due to the substantial within‐person variability in voices, these trait judgements are likely to be highly stimulus‐dependent for unfamiliar voices: The same person may sound very trustworthy in one recording but less trustworthy in another.

Research suggests that the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath were associated with an increase in mental health problems, but there has been little research into potential protective factors. Ecological social capital is a plausible candidate given evidence of its protective status following natural disasters. Pre‐crisis area‐level estimates of generalized trust and sense of belonging were

The present study aimed to integrate the social identity approach to health and well‐being with social network analysis. Previous research on the effects of social network centrality on stress has yielded mixed results. Building on the social identity approach, we argued that these mixed results can be explained, in part, by taking into account the degree to which individuals identify with the social

The aim of the study was to examine whether parents' increased postnatal depressive symptoms predicted children's academic attainment over time and whether the parent-child relationship, children's prior academic attainment, and mental health mediated this association. We conducted secondary analyses on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children data (12,607 mothers, 9,456 fathers). Each parent

This research experimentally examined the effects of exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories on prejudice and discrimination. Study 1 (N = 166) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories concerning immigrants to Britain from the European Union (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) exacerbated prejudice towards this group. Study 2 (N = 173) found the same effect in a different intergroup

Fact-checking has become an important feature of the modern media landscape. However, it is unclear what the most effective format of fact-checks is. Some have argued that simple retractions that repeat a false claim and tag it as false may backfire because they boost the claim's familiarity. More detailed refutations may provide a more promising approach, but may not be feasible under the severe space

Recent theorizing has implicated affect regulation as central to the experience of homesickness. Conceptualized as grief due to losing social connections with close others when relocating, homesickness is associated with poor emotional and social adjustment. The present study examined how mood regulation and relationship quality - at home and in college - predict homesickness and negative affect among

Visuo-spatial abilities have an important role in environment learning. The aim of the present study was to explore whether these abilities relate to spatial recall after learning an environment from a map or a video, and irrespective of the learner's age (from youth to old age). The study involved 431 participants from 25 to 84 years old, who were assessed for their visuo-spatial working memory, object-based

We know from previous research that unfamiliar face matching (determining whether two simultaneously presented images show the same person or not) is very error-prone. A small number of studies in laboratory settings have shown that the use of multiple images or a face average, rather than a single image, can improve face matching performance. Here, we tested 1,999 participants using four-image arrays

In filled-duration illusion, a continuous (long) tone or an auditory sequence with multiple clicks is typically perceived as longer than the same physical duration (i.e., empty interval) enclosed by two auditory clicks. The auditory sequence is composed of multiple empty intervals. However, the individual empty interval in an auditory sequence, compared with the empty interval presented alone, could

While most people are aware of the importance of sleep for their health, well-being, and performance, bedtime procrastination is a pervasive phenomenon that can be conceptualized as a case of self-control failure (Kroese et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 2014, 1). Two daily diary studies (N1 = 185, N2 = 137) investigated beliefs about willpower and stress as interactive predictors of bedtime procrastination

So‐called insight problems are widely studied because they tap into the creative thinking that is crucial for solving real problems. However, insight problems are typically presented in static formats (on paper, computer) that allow no physical interaction with the problem elements, whereas such an interaction might in fact reduce the load on limited cognitive resources, such as working memory (WM)

We respond to some of Myszkowski and colleagues’ (2020, Br. J. Psychology) critical comments on our recent work on aesthetic sensitivity (Corradi, Chuquichambi, Barrada, Clemente, & Nadal, 2020, Br. J. Psychology). We show that these comments stem mostly from factual inaccuracies.

Causal illusion has been proposed as a cognitive mediator of pseudoscientific beliefs. However, previous studies have only tested the association between this cognitive bias and a closely related but different type of unwarranted beliefs, those related to superstition and paranormal phenomena. Participants (n = 225) responded to a novel questionnaire of pseudoscientific beliefs designed for this study

Corradi et al. (British Journal of Psychology, 2019) argue that their new conception of visual aesthetic sensitivity (as responsiveness to aesthetic features in one’s preferences) presents several advantages in comparison with the current ability view of aesthetic sensitivity, usually defined as the ability to judge aesthetic stimuli in accordance with standards (The Journal of Psychology, 1964, 57

Self‐reported experiences are often poor indicators of outward expressions. Here we examine social power as a variable that may impact the relationship between self‐reported affect and facial expressions. Earlier studies addressing this issue were limited by focusing on a single facial expression (smiling) and by using different, less sensitive methods that yielded mostly null results. Sampling, for

Body image disturbance – a cause of distress amongst the general population and those diagnosed with various disorders – is often attributed to the media’s unrealistic depiction of ideal bodies. These ideals are strongly gendered, leading to pronounced fat concern amongst females, and a male preoccupation with muscularity. Recent research suggests that visual aftereffects may be fundamental to the

Extensive research efforts have been devoted to understanding the nature of Conscientiousness, the only Big Five personality trait that has been robustly linked to professional achievement and longevity. We proposed that Conscientiousness is associated with Personal Belief in a Just World (PBJW), that is, the extent to which an individual believes that her or his efforts will be rewarded. To investigate