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The Theory of Constructed Emotion: More Than a Feeling Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 Lisa Feldman Barrett, Shir Atzil, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Lorena Chanes, Maria Gendron, Katie Hoemann, Yuta Katsumi, Ian R. Kleckner, Kristen A. Lindquist, Karen S. Quigley, Ajay B. Satpute, Eli Sennesh, Clare Shaffer, Jordan E. Theriault, Michele Tugade, Christiana Westlin
A recently published article by van Heijst et al. attempted to reconcile two research approaches in the science of emotion—basic emotion theory and the theory of constructed emotion—by suggesting that the former explains emotions as bioregulatory states of the body whereas the latter explains feelings that arise from those state changes. This bifurcation of emotion into objective physical states and
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A New Chapter for Perspectives on Psychological Science Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 Arturo E. Hernandez
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Beyond Right and Wrong: Fostering Connection in Emotion Theory Debates Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-03-11 Karlijn van Heijst, Annemie Ploeger, Mariska E. Kret
Basic emotion theories (BETs) and the theory of constructed emotion (TCE) have both made significant contributions to the field of affective science despite a persistent divide between the two camps. We argue that focusing on which camp is right hampers possibly fruitful collaborations between affective researchers working within different theoretical frameworks. The TCE and BETs can complement each
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(Ir)rationality of Moral Judgment Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-03-04 Michel Regenwetter, Brittney Currie, Yu Huang, Bart Smeulders, Anna K. Carlson
Chaotic responses to COVID-19, political polarization, and pervasive misinformation raise the question of whether some or many individuals exercise irrational moral judgment. We provide the first mathematically correct test for transitivity of moral preferences. Transitivity is the most prominent rationality criterion of the behavioral, biological, and economic sciences. However, transitivity is conceptually
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Enriching Psychological Research by Exploring the Source and Nature of Noise Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-03-04 Joakim Sundh, Philip Millroth, August Collsiöö, Peter Juslin
In psychological research, noise is often considered a nuisance that obscures rather than contributes information. This simplification overlooks that noise can be informative and that by exploring the nature of the noise one can often draw additional conclusions concerning the underlying psychological processes. It is arguably only in recent years that the mainstream of researchers has taken this idea
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Disentangling Perceptual and Process-Related Sources of Behavioral Variability in Categorization Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-03-04 Florian I. Seitz, Jana B. Jarecki, Jörg Rieskamp, Bettina von Helversen
People often categorize the same object variably over time. Such intraindividual behavioral variability is difficult to identify because it can be confused with a bias and can originate in different categorization steps. The current work discusses possible sources of behavioral variability in categorization, focusing on perceptual and cognitive processes, and reports a simulation with a similarity-based
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Noise in Cognition: Bug or Feature? Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2025-03-04 Adam N. Sanborn, Jian-Qiao Zhu, Jake Spicer, Pablo León-Villagrá, Lucas Castillo, Johanna K. Falbén, Yun-Xiao Li, Aidan Tee, Nick Chater
Noise in behavior is often considered a nuisance: Although the mind aims for the best possible action, it is let down by unreliability in the sensory and response systems. Researchers often represent noise as additive, Gaussian, and independent. Yet a careful look at behavioral noise reveals a rich structure that defies easy explanation. First, in both perceptual and preferential judgments sensory
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Why DON'T We "Say Her Name"? An Intersectional Model of the Invisibility of Police Violence Against Black Women and Girls. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-10-09 Aerielle M Allen,Alexis Drain,Chardée A Galán,Azaadeh Goharzad,Irene Tung,Beza M Bekele,
Racialized police violence is a profound form of systemic oppression affecting Black Americans, yet the narratives surrounding police brutality have disproportionately centered on Black men and boys, overshadowing the victimization of Black women and girls. In 2014, the #SayHerName campaign emerged to bring attention to the often-overlooked instances of police brutality against Black women and girls
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The Cognitive Architecture of Infant Attachment Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-26 Yuyan Luo, Kristy vanMarle, Ashley M. Groh
Meta-analytic evidence indicates that the quality of the attachment relationship that infants establish with their primary caregiver has enduring significance for socioemotional and cognitive outcomes. However, the mechanisms by which early attachment experiences contribute to subsequent development remain underspecified. According to attachment theory, early attachment experiences become embodied
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What Happens When Payments End? Fostering Long-Term Behavior Change With Financial Incentives Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 Sophia Winkler-Schor, Markus Brauer
Financial incentives are widely used to get people to adopt desirable behaviors. Many small landholders in developing countries, for example, receive multiyear payments to engage in conservation behaviors, and the hope is that they will continue to engage in these behaviors after the program ends. Although effective in the short term, financial incentives rarely lead to long-term behavior change because
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Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-16 Cory J. Clark, Matias Fjeldmark, Louise Lu, Roy F. Baumeister, Stephen Ceci, Komi Frey, Geoffrey Miller, Wilfred Reilly, Dianne Tice, William von Hippel, Wendy M. Williams, Bo M. Winegard, Philip E. Tetlock
We identify points of conflict and consensus regarding (a) controversial empirical claims and (b) normative preferences for how controversial scholarship—and scholars—should be treated. In 2021, we conducted qualitative interviews ( n = 41) to generate a quantitative survey ( N = 470) of U.S. psychology professors’ beliefs and values. Professors strongly disagreed on the truth status of 10 candidate
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Diversity for Truth: Reply to Jussim, Stanovich, and Stroebe Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Bernhard Hommel
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Papers Involved in the December 2022 APS Vote of No Confidence in the Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives on Psychological Science Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Wendy Wood, Randi Martin, Alison Gopnik, Robert Gropp
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Toward a Psychology of Ideas Rather Than Demographics: Commentary on Hommel (2024) Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Keith E. Stanovich
The public will rightly not value a science that is more concerned with demographic population matching than with ideas. Taking further steps in the direction of identity politics will reduce public confidence in psychology’s conclusions and reduce trust and respect. If psychology embraces demographic quotas, there will be self-selection out of the discipline, and that self-selection will harm our
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Diversity Is Diverse: Social Justice Reparations and Science Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Lee Jussim
Because the term “diversity” has two related but different meanings, what authors mean when they use the term is inherently unclear. In its broad form, it refers to vast variety. In its narrow form, it refers to human demographic categories deemed deserving of special attention by social justice–oriented activists. In this article, I review Hommel’s critique of Roberts et al. (2020), which, I suggest
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Dealing With Diversity in Psychology: Science and Ideology Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Steven Othello Roberts
In the spirit of America’s Shakespeare, August Wilson (1997), I have written this article as a testimony to the conditions under which I, and too many others, engage in scholarly discourse. I hope to make clear from the beginning that although the ideas presented here are not entirely my own—as they have been inherited from the minority of scholars who dared and managed to bring the most necessary
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Dealing With Diversity in Psychology: Science or Ideology? Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Bernhard Hommel
The increasing use of political activist arguments and reasoning in scientific communication about diversity is criticized. Based on an article of Roberts et al. (2020) on “racial inequality in psychological research,” three hallmarks of the intrusion of activist thinking into science are described: blindness to the multidimensional nature of diversity, the failure to distinguish psychological mechanisms
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The Myth of the Need for Diversity Among Subjects in Theory-Testing Research: Comments on “Racial Inequality in Psychological Research” by Roberts et al. (2020) Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-23 Wolfgang Stroebe
Roberts and colleagues focus on two aspects of racial inequality in psychological research, namely an alleged underrepresentation of racial minorities and the effects attributed to this state of affairs. My comment focuses only on one aspect, namely the assumed consequences of the lack of diversity in subject populations. Representativeness of samples is essential in survey research or applied research
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The Burden for High-Quality Online Data Collection Lies With Researchers, Not Recruitment Platforms Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Christine Cuskley, Justin Sulik
A recent article in Perspectives on Psychological Science (Webb & Tangney, 2022) reported a study in which just 2.6% of participants recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) were deemed “valid.” The authors highlighted some well-established limitations of MTurk, but their central claims—that MTurk is “too good to be true” and that it captured “only 14 human beings . . . [out of] N = 529”—are radically
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New Insights on Expert Opinion About Eyewitness Memory Research Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Travis M. Seale-Carlisle, Adele Quigley-McBride, Jennifer E. F. Teitcher, William E. Crozier, Chad S. Dodson, Brandon L. Garrett
Experimental psychologists investigating eyewitness memory have periodically gathered their thoughts on a variety of eyewitness memory phenomena. Courts and other stakeholders of eyewitness research rely on the expert opinions reflected in these surveys to make informed decisions. However, the last survey of this sort was published more than 20 years ago, and the science of eyewitness memory has developed
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“When” Versus “Whether” Gender/Sex Differences: Insights From Psychological Research on Negotiation, Risk-Taking, and Leadership Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-18 Hannah R. Bowles, Jens Mazei, Heidi H. Liu
We present a conceptual framework of situational moderators of gender/sex effects in negotiation, risk-taking, and leadership—three masculine-stereotypic domains associated with gender/sex gaps in pay and authority. We propose that greater situational ambiguity and higher relevance and salience of gender/sex increase the likelihood of gender/sex-linked behaviors in these domains. We argue that greater
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Too Anecdotal to Be True? Mechanical Turk Is Not All Bots and Bad Data: Response to Webb and Tangney (2022) Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Melissa G. Keith, Alexander S. McKay
In response to Webb and Tangney (2022) we call into question the conclusion that data collected on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) was “at best—only 2.6% valid” (p. 1). We suggest that Webb and Tangney made certain choices during the study-design and data-collection process that adversely affected the quality of the data collected. As a result, the anecdotal experience of these authors provides weak
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A Novel, Network-Based Approach to Assessing Romantic-Relationship Quality. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-22
How should romantic-relationship quality be approached psychometrically? This is a complicated theoretical and methodological challenge that we begin to address through three studies. In Study 1a, we identified 25 distinct romantic-relationship categories among 754 items from 26 romantic-relationship-quality instruments with a weak Jaccard index (0.38), indicating that the scales' item content was
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Individual-Specific Animated Profiles of Mental Health Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Sigal Zilcha-Mano
How important is the timing of the pretreatment evaluation? If we consider mental health to be a relatively fixed condition, the specific timing (e.g., day, hour) of the evaluation is immaterial and often determined on the basis of technical considerations. Indeed, the fundamental assumption underlying the vast majority of psychotherapy research and practice is that mental health is a state that can
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The Psychological Science of Pandemics: Contributions to and Recommendations for Social, Educational, and Health Policy Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-20 Dolores Albarracin, Norbert Schwarz
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Happiness Maximization Is a WEIRD Way of Living Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Kuba Krys, Olga Kostoula, Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg, Oriana Mosca, J. Hannah Lee, Fridanna Maricchiolo, Aleksandra Kosiarczyk, Agata Kocimska-Bortnowska, Claudio Torres, Hidefumi Hitokoto, Kongmeng Liew, Michael H. Bond, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun, Vivian L. Vignoles, John M. Zelenski, Brian W. Haas, Joonha Park, Christin-Melanie Vauclair, Anna Kwiatkowska, Marta Roczniewska, Nina Witoszek, I.dil Işık, Natasza
Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of Western, educated
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How Genetic-Conflict Theory Can Inform Studies of Human Nature Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Jessica D. Ayers
Understanding how genetics influences human psychology is something that the evolutionary sciences emphasize. However, the functions of complex genetic influences on behavior have been overlooked in favor of perspectives that posit unitary influences of genes on behavior. One such example is the belief that human growth, development, and behavior are influenced uniformly by their genes even though
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Health Communication and Behavioral Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-06 Dolores Albarracin, Daphna Oyserman, Norbert Schwarz
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the public health system to respond to an emerging, difficult-to-understand pathogen through demanding behaviors, including staying at home, masking for long periods, and vaccinating multiple times. We discuss key challenges of the pandemic health communication efforts deployed in the United States from 2020 to 2022 and identify research priorities. One priority is
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Subjective Confidence as a Monitor of the Replicability of the Response Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-06 Asher Koriat
Confidence is commonly assumed to monitor the accuracy of responses. However, intriguing results, examined in the light of philosophical discussions of epistemic justification, suggest that confidence actually monitors the reliability of choices rather than (directly) their accuracy. The focus on reliability is consistent with the view that the construction of truth has much in common with the construction
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The Colonial History of Systemic Racism: Insights for Psychological Science Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Kevin R. Tarlow
The psychological study of systemic racism can benefit from the converging insights of “Black Marxism” and development economics, which illustrate how modern systemic racism is rooted in the political and economic institutions established during the historical period of European colonization. This article explores how these insights can be used to study systemic racism and challenge scientific racism
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Motivation Science Can Improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Trainings Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Nicole Legate, Netta Weinstein
Recent reviews of efforts to reduce prejudice and increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace have converged on the conclusion that prejudice is resistant to change and that merely raising awareness of the problem is not enough. There is growing recognition that DEI efforts may fall short because they do not effectively motivate attitudinal and behavioral change, especially the
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Metacognitive Feelings: A Predictive-Processing Perspective Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Pablo Fernández Velasco, Slawa Loev
Metacognitive feelings are affective experiences that concern the subject’s mental processes and capacities. Paradigmatic examples include the feeling of familiarity, the feeling of confidence, or the tip-of-the-tongue experience. In this article, we advance an account of metacognitive feelings based on the predictive-processing framework. The core tenet of predictive processing is that the brain is
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The Effect of Income and Wealth on Behavioral Strategies, Personality Traits, and Preferences Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Mélusine Boon-Falleur, Nicolas Baumard, Jean-Baptiste André
Individuals living in either harsh or favorable environments display well-documented psychological and behavioral differences. For example, people in favorable environments tend to be more future-oriented, trust strangers more, and have more explorative preferences. To account for such differences, psychologists have turned to evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, in particular, the literature
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Interparental Positivity Spillover Theory: How Parents’ Positive Relational Interactions Influence Children Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Brian P. Don, Jeffry A. Simpson, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Sara B. Algoe
Interparental interactions have an important influence on child well-being and development. Yet prior theory and research have primarily focused on interparental conflict as contributing to child maladjustment, which leaves out the critical question of how interparental positive interactions—such as expressed gratitude, capitalization, and shared laughter—may benefit child growth and development. In
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The Sound of Emotional Prosody: Nearly 3 Decades of Research and Future Directions Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, David Poeppel, Marc D. Pell
Emotional voices attract considerable attention. A search on any browser using “emotional prosody” as a key phrase leads to more than a million entries. Such interest is evident in the scientific literature as well; readers are reminded in the introductory paragraphs of countless articles of the great importance of prosody and that listeners easily infer the emotional state of speakers through acoustic
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A Systematic Review and New Analyses of the Gender-Equality Paradox Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Agneta Herlitz, Ida Hönig, Kåre Hedebrant, Martin Asperholm
Some studies show that living conditions, such as economy, gender equality, and education, are associated with the magnitude of psychological sex differences. We systematically and quantitatively reviewed 54 articles and conducted new analyses on 27 meta-analyses and large-scale studies to investigate the association between living conditions and psychological sex differences. We found that sex differences
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Editorial for the Special Issue on Algorithms in Our Lives. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Sudeep Bhatia,Mirta Galesic,Melanie Mitchell
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AI Psychometrics: Assessing the Psychological Profiles of Large Language Models Through Psychometric Inventories Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Max Pellert, Clemens M. Lechner, Claudia Wagner, Beatrice Rammstedt, Markus Strohmaier
We illustrate how standard psychometric inventories originally designed for assessing noncognitive human traits can be repurposed as diagnostic tools to evaluate analogous traits in large language models (LLMs). We start from the assumption that LLMs, inadvertently yet inevitably, acquire psychological traits (metaphorically speaking) from the vast text corpora on which they are trained. Such corpora
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The Emerging Science of Interacting Minds. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Thalia Wheatley,Mark A Thornton,Arjen Stolk,Luke J Chang
For over a century, psychology has focused on uncovering mental processes of a single individual. However, humans rarely navigate the world in isolation. The most important determinants of successful development, mental health, and our individual traits and preferences arise from interacting with other individuals. Social interaction underpins who we are, how we think, and how we behave. Here we discuss
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The Inversion Problem: Why Algorithms Should Infer Mental State and Not Just Predict Behavior. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Jon Kleinberg,Jens Ludwig,Sendhil Mullainathan,Manish Raghavan
More and more machine learning is applied to human behavior. Increasingly these algorithms suffer from a hidden-but serious-problem. It arises because they often predict one thing while hoping for another. Take a recommender system: It predicts clicks but hopes to identify preferences. Or take an algorithm that automates a radiologist: It predicts in-the-moment diagnoses while hoping to identify their
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New Forms of Collaboration Between the Social and Natural Sciences Could Become Necessary for Understanding Rapid Collective Transitions in Social Systems. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Stefan Thurner
Human societies are complex systems and as such have tipping points. They can rapidly transit from one mode of operation to another and thereby change the way they function as a whole. Such transitions appear as financial or economic crises, rapid swings in collective opinion, political regime shifts, or revolutions. In physics collective transitions are known as phase transitions; for example, water
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How Social Media Algorithms Shape Offline Civic Participation: A Framework of Social-Psychological Processes. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-07 Haesung Jung,Wenhao Dai,Dolores Albarracín
Even though social media platforms have created opportunities for more efficient and convenient civic participation, they are unlikely to bring about social change if the online actions do not propagate to offline civic participation. This article begins by reviewing the meta-analytic evidence on the relation between social media use and offline civic participation. Following this discussion, we present
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Do COVID-19 Vaccination Policies Backfire? The Effects of Mandates, Vaccination Passports, and Financial Incentives on COVID-19 Vaccination. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Bita Fayaz-Farkhad,Haesung Jung
Faced with the challenges of motivating people to vaccinate, many countries have introduced policy-level interventions to encourage vaccination against COVID-19. For example, mandates were widely imposed requiring individuals to vaccinate to work and attend school, and vaccination passports required individuals to show proof of vaccination to travel and access public spaces and events. Furthermore
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The Spread of Beliefs in Partially Modularized Communities. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Robert L Goldstone,Marina Dubova,Rachith Aiyappa,Andy Edinger
Many life-influencing social networks are characterized by considerable informational isolation. People within a community are far more likely to share beliefs than people who are part of different communities. The spread of useful information across communities is impeded by echo chambers (far greater connectivity within than between communities) and filter bubbles (more influence of beliefs by connected
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Individuals, Collectives, and Individuals in Collectives: The Ineliminable Role of Dependence. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Ulrike Hahn
Our beliefs are inextricably shaped through communication with others. Furthermore, even conversation we conduct in pairs may itself be taking place across a wider, connected social network. Our communications, and with that our thoughts, are consequently typically those of individuals in collectives. This has fundamental consequences with respect to how our beliefs are shaped. This article examines
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A Normative Framework for Assessing the Information Curation Algorithms of the Internet. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 David Lazer,Briony Swire-Thompson,Christo Wilson
It is critical to understand how algorithms structure the information people see and how those algorithms support or undermine society's core values. We offer a normative framework for the assessment of the information curation algorithms that determine much of what people see on the internet. The framework presents two levels of assessment: one for individual-level effects and another for systemic
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Toward a General Framework of Biased Reasoning: Coherence-Based Reasoning. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Dan Simon,Stephen J Read
A considerable amount of experimental research has been devoted to uncovering biased forms of reasoning. Notwithstanding the richness and overall empirical soundness of the bias research, the field can be described as disjointed, incomplete, and undertheorized. In this article, we seek to address this disconnect by offering "coherence-based reasoning" as a parsimonious theoretical framework that explains
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Learning Landscape in Gamification: The Need for a Methodological Protocol in Research Applications. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Matteo Orsoni,Adam Dubé,Catia Prandi,Sara Giovagnoli,Mariagrazia Benassi,Elvis Mazzoni,Martina Benvenuti
In education, the term "gamification" refers to of the use of game-design elements and gaming experiences in the learning processes to enhance learners' motivation and engagement. Despite researchers' efforts to evaluate the impact of gamification in educational settings, several methodological drawbacks are still present. Indeed, the number of studies with high methodological rigor is reduced and
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Repositioning Construct Validity Theory: From Nomological Networks to Pragmatic Theories and Their Evaluation by Explanatory Means. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-08 Brian D Haig
In this article, I argue for a number of important changes to the conceptual foundations of construct validity theory. I begin by suggesting that construct validity theorists should shift their attention from the validation of constructs to the process of evaluating scientific theories. This shift in focus is facilitated by distinguishing construct validation (understood as theory evaluation) from
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Toward an Integrative Approach to the Study of Positive-Affect-Related Aggression. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-08 Joyce Emma Quansah,Jean Gagnon
Research on aggression usually aims at gaining a better understanding of its more negative aspects, such as the role and effects of aversive social interactions, hostile cognitions, or negative affect. However, there are conditions under which an act of aggression can elicit a positive affective response, even among the most nonviolent of individuals. One might experience the "sweetness of revenge"
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Diminished State Space Theory of Human Aging. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Ben Eppinger,Alexa Ruel,Florian Bolenz
Many new technologies, such as smartphones, computers, or public-access systems (like ticket-vending machines), are a challenge for older adults. One feature that these technologies have in common is that they involve underlying, partially observable, structures (state spaces) that determine the actions that are necessary to reach a certain goal (e.g., to move from one menu to another, to change a
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Basic Emotions or Constructed Emotions: Insights From Taking an Evolutionary Perspective. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Karlijn van Heijst,Mariska E Kret,Annemie Ploeger
The ongoing debate between basic emotion theories (BETs) and the theory of constructed emotion (TCE) hampers progress in the field of emotion research. Providing a new perspective, here we aim to bring the theories closer together by dissecting them according to Tinbergen's four questions to clarify a focus on their evolutionary basis. On the basis of our review of the literature, we conclude that
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A Challenge to Orthodoxy in Psychology: Thomas Sowell and Social Justice. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-02 William O'Donohue,Nina C Silander,Craig L Frisby,Jane E Fisher
Psychologists address social-justice problems in their research and applied work, and their scholarly efforts have been influenced by assumptions, constructs, and hypotheses from the political left. Recently, some psychologists have called for increased intellectual and political diversity in psychology, particularly as such diversity may lead to improved problem-solving. As an attempt to increase
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Memory of Fictional Information: A Theoretical Framework. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Pierre Gander,Kata Szita,Andreas Falck,Robert Lowe
Much of the information people encounter in everyday life is not factual; it originates from fictional sources, such as movies, novels, and video games, and from direct experience such as pretense, role-playing, and everyday conversation. Despite the recent increase in research on fiction, there is no theoretical account of how memory of fictional information is related to other types of memory or
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Understanding Sensory-Motor Disorders in Autism Spectrum Disorders by Extending Hebbian Theory: Formation of a Rigid-Autonomous Phase Sequence. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Eiichi Nojiri,Kenkichi Takase
Autism spectrum disorder is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. The symptoms invariably appear in early childhood and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, and other important functions. Various abnormalities in the genetic, neurological
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Building Human-Like Artificial Agents: A General Cognitive Algorithm for Emulating Human Decision-Making in Dynamic Environments. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Cleotilde Gonzalez
One of the early goals of artificial intelligence (AI) was to create algorithms that exhibited behavior indistinguishable from human behavior (i.e., human-like behavior). Today, AI has diverged, often aiming to excel in tasks inspired by human capabilities and outperform humans, rather than replicating human cogntion and action. In this paper, I explore the overarching question of whether computational
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A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Wouter Wolf,Michael Tomasello
Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to having a conversation-whose common feature is the triadic sharing of experience. Current theories of social bonding have no explanation for why humans should have these unique bonding
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Experimental Therapeutics: Opportunities and Challenges Stemming From the National Institute of Mental Health Workshop on Novel Target Discovery and Psychosocial Intervention Development. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-24 Nancy L Zucker,Gregory P Strauss,Joshua M Smyth,K Suzanne Scherf,Melissa A Brotman,Rhonda C Boyd,Jimmy Choi,Maria Davila,Olusola A Ajilore,Faith Gunning,Julie B Schweitzer
There has been slow progress in the development of interventions that prevent and/or reduce mental-health morbidity and mortality. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) launched an experimental-therapeutics initiative with the goal of accelerating the development of effective interventions. The emphasis is on interventions designed to engage a target mechanism. A target mechanism is a process
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The State of Cognitive Control in Language Processing. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. (IF 10.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Tal Ness,Valerie J Langlois,Albert E Kim,Jared M Novick
Understanding language requires readers and listeners to cull meaning from fast-unfolding messages that often contain conflicting cues pointing to incompatible ways of interpreting the input (e.g., "The cat was chased by the mouse"). This article reviews mounting evidence from multiple methods demonstrating that cognitive control plays an essential role in resolving conflict during language comprehension