COVID-19 is an unprecedented threat and an effective response requires a collective effort: engagement in preventive health behaviors, even from people at low risk. Previous research demonstrates that belongingness to social groups can promote prosocial, preventive health behaviors. The current research tests the effects of belongingness to two types of groups, intimate (family) and social category

When dominant groups are accused of discrimination against non-dominant groups, they often seek to portray themselves as the victims of discrimination instead. Sometimes, however, members of dominant groups counter accusations of discrimination by invoking victimhood on a new dimension of harm, changing the topic being discussed. Across three studies (N = 3081), we examine two examples of this digressive

Liberals and conservatives currently struggle to reach political agreement on policy proposals. While political polarization is closely associated with this phenomenon, the precise psychological mechanisms via which polarization works to affect political compromise remain to be fully explored. Across five studies (N = 1236; 2126 total individual observations), we uncover one such mechanism by exploring

A rich body of research points to racial biases in so-called police officer dilemma tasks: participants are generally faster and less error-prone to “shoot” (vs. not “shoot”) Black (vs. White) targets. In three experimental (and two supplemental) studies (total N = 914), we aimed at examining the cognitive processes underlying these findings under fully standardized conditions. To be able to dissect

The sense of self is a hallmark of the human experience, but it is also unstable. Even simulating another person – thinking about their traits or experiences – can shift how one thinks about their own traits or experiences. Simulating a target shifts self-knowledge such that it becomes more similar to the target; in six studies, we explore how extensively these changes occur. In all studies, participants

Classic and contemporary perspectives link meaning in life to the pursuit of a significant purpose, free from incoherence. The typical assumption is that these meaningful purposes are prosocial, or at least benign. Here, we tested whether hate might also bolster meaning in life, via motivational states underlying significant purpose and coherence. In two studies (N = 847; Study 2 pre-registered), describing

Allyship is a growing phenomenon in many organizational contexts, and the involvement of advantaged group allies in identity-oriented social movements (e.g., men in the feminist movement) is ubiquitous. However, the impression that these advantaged group allies make on their intended beneficiaries is unclear. Over the course of four studies, we explore disadvantaged group activists' attitudes toward

People are able to quickly and automatically evaluate faces on different traits, such as trustworthiness. There is a growing literature demonstrating that factors such as learning and experience play a role in shaping these judgments. In the current work, we assess the malleability of our trait evaluations by associating arbitrary facial features with trustworthy or untrustworthy behaviors. Across

Processing information on the negative consequences of climate change can have unrelated side-effects such as increased outgroup derogation. Previous research suggests differing theoretical explanations for these “generalization” effects such as buffering existential anxiety. Across two pre-registered experiments (N = 1031; USA & UK), we examine whether ingroup identification and social dominance orientation

Christian Americans are on track to become a minority of the U.S. population by mid-century. Research on racial demographic shifts shows majority-group members experience status threat when reminded of similar demographic changes. Public debate about religious freedom and the role of Christianity in America suggest that fast-changing religious demographics similarly elicit threat, and trigger defensive

Guided by Weiner's attribution theory of help-giving, two experimental studies assessed whether emphasizing the temporary nature of postpartum depression (PPD; i.e., stability), the uncontrollable development of the ailment (i.e., onset controllability), and whether it appears someone is making an effort to overcome PPD—a form of offset controllability—would result in changes in anger, sympathy, and

Is it better to save 4500 lives out of 11,000 or 4500 lives out of 250,000? Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997) showed that people prefer the former: to save lives if they are a higher proportion of the total, a phenomenon they termed “psychophysical numbing”. We attempted to replicate Studies 1 and 2 of Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997) (5 data collections, total N = 4799, MTurk and Prolific, USA and UK), and

Are judgments of praise for moral behavior modulated by knowledge of an agent's past suffering at the hands of others, and if so, in what direction? Drawing on multiple lines of research in experimental social psychology, we identify three hypotheses about the psychology of praise — typecasting, handicapping, and non-historicism — each of which supports a different answer to the question above. Typecasting

Across six studies (N = 2646), we demonstrate the role that perceptions of predictability play in judgments of moral character, finding that people demonstrate a moral preference for more predictable immoral actors. Participants judged agents performing an immoral action (e.g., assault) for an unintelligible reason as less predictable and less moral than agents performing the same immoral action, along

Revealing potentially damaging information about oneself before others reveal the same information is known as “stealing thunder”. The goal of this tactic is to elicit favorable evaluations from others, thus mitigating the damage that might otherwise occur if others were to reveal this negative information first. Although prior research has shown evaluative advantages to stealing thunder, research

Engagement in leisure offers a host of benefits for mental and physical health, yet many people view leisure as wasteful and unproductive. Four studies (n = 1310) demonstrate that believing leisure is wasteful undermines enjoyment of enacted leisure activities. Studies 1 and 2 document that people with a general tendency to find leisure wasteful report lower enjoyment of leisure activities on average

What happens when entire populations are exposed to news of impending existential threats? In the current study, we address this question by investigating the association between existential threats and the certitude of societal discourse. According to appraisal theory, threats give rise to anxiety and perceptions of uncertainty; as such, it predicts that exposure to life-threatening events will increase

Previous research suggests that the influence of facial trustworthiness is irresistible in the process of making judgments even when relevant behavioral information is available. This leaves the possibility that people's evaluations of others, especially implicit evaluations, might be determined by facial appearances alone, despite the lack of evidence showing the accuracy of inferences made from faces

There is broad theoretical consensus that one way to promote climate-friendly behavior is to increase people's belief that their actions can make a difference (individual response efficacy). However, attempts to increase individual efficacy beliefs about climate change through explicit instruction have generally failed. In the current paper, two experiments tested an intervention designed to convince

Previous studies have obtained mixed results regarding whether competence or morality predominates in self-esteem. The present research aimed to make sense of the inconsistent results by examining the role of system-justifying motives in determining the relative importance of competence and morality in self-esteem. Studies 1 and 2 correlationally and causally, respectively, examined the strength of

The heightened belief that others intend to harm you (paranoia) is often accompanied by social withdrawal, avoidance and isolation. We investigated whether paranoia is related to betrayal aversion: the tendency to avoid potential harm caused by other people over and above an equivalent harm caused by a non-social mechanism. Across three large-N (Ntotal = 2433) pre-registered online studies, we employed

Within the emotions and beliefs upon which attitudes are based, people can hold simultaneously positive and negative reactions. In addition, independent from the emotions and beliefs in their attitude structure, people hold subjective perceptions about their affective and cognitive attitudinal bases (i.e., meta-bases), which reflect interest in processing emotions or beliefs, respectively. We tested

Drawing from a large dataset of responses to implicit and explicit attitude measures and social judgments of others' preferences (N = 97,176) across 95 distinct attitude domains, this Registered Report utilized a componential analysis of judgment accuracy to examine whether implicit attitudes affected the accuracy of social judgment. I found evidence that judgments of the population's preferences were

We examined how people's emotional experience in the wake of past donation decisions affect their future decisions. Building upon emotion-as-information theories we hypothesized and found that past affective reactions serve as a feedback system in predicting future donation decisions. In five studies, by manipulating or measuring participants' affective reaction in the wake of past decisions to donate

Charities often express altruistic acts as a series of periodic payments (“donate $10 per month”) as opposed to aggregating them over a longer period (“donate $120 per year”). Five experiments (three preregistered, N = 1479) test whether the framing of an altruistic act affects observers' moral judgment of the act and the actor. Observers perceive a donation as less moral (Experiment 1) and the donor

Black people engage in a variety of behaviors to avoid stereotyping and promote a professional image in the workplace. Racial codeswitching is one impression management strategy where Black people adjust their self-presentation to receive desirable outcomes (e.g., perceived professionalism) through mirroring the norms, behaviors, and attributes of the dominant group (i.e., White people) in specific

Across six studies (N = 1988 US residents and 81 traditional people of Papua), participants judged agents acting in sacrificial moral dilemmas. Utilitarian agents, described as opting to sacrifice a single individual for the greater good, were perceived as less predictable and less moral than deontological agents whose inaction resulted in five people being harmed. These effects generalize to a non-Western

Three experiments (N = 1083) explored whether masculinity threats (vs. assurances) led to emotions that have been linked to well-being, social connection, and the expression of aggression, including (a) increases in feelings of shame and guilt (Experiment 1) and (b) decreases in perspective-taking and empathy (Experiment 2). In addition, we explored whether masculinity assurances (vs. threats) had

Asians are monolithically categorized under one broad racial label despite their diverse compositions (e.g., with national origins from South, East, Southeast, or West Asia). Some Asian subgroups are perceived to be more prototypically Asian than others and cultural contexts may further shape such perception. With historically longstanding presence of East Asians in the United States and South Asians

Sexual and gender minorities face unwelcoming organizational environments, and may avoid workplace settings that fail to signal their support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) employees. Exposure to an identity-safety cue, or a signal that an organizational environment values LGBTQ+ employees, may attract sexual and gender minorities to organizational settings. Here, we report

Previous research on social preferences has found that reciprocal behavior is an automatic response, which requires less cognitive control than self-interested behavior. However, research on unethicality has demonstrated that cognitive control is required to resist the temptation to benefit from engaging in an unethical act, thus suggesting that self-interested behaviors are automatic. By manipulating

Research suggests that evaluative responses to an object can be jointly influenced by the mere co-occurrence of the object with a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus (e.g., mere co-occurrence of object A with unpleasant event B) and the qualitative relation of the object to that stimulus (e.g., object A starts vs. stops unpleasant event B). Expanding on these findings, the current research investigated

We examined the spontaneous use and effectiveness of financial self-control strategies in individuals' everyday spending. In Study 1 (N = 377), participants who listed the strategies they personally already use at intake and several times throughout a month spent an average $228 less that month than participants in a control group. In contrast, participants who were provided with strategies that have

Social judgments are often influenced by comparison to some standard in the environment, either moving the judgment closer (assimilating) to or away (contrasting) from this standard. Which direction this effect will take depends heavily on the relative standing of these standards on the judgment dimension compared to the target of the judgment. In previous research, items and comparison standards were

Disclosing a concealable stigma has the potential for both positive outcomes, such as receipt of social support, and negative outcomes, such as being the target of prejudice. Identifying a disclosure strategy that minimizes prejudice while increasing the likelihood of social support can build theory regarding the underpinnings of stigma and provide guidance to those with concealable stigmas. Across

Researchers from marginalized groups often make important social scientific discoveries about prejudice, particularly when they are members of the group under investigation (e.g., women studying sexism, Black Americans studying racism). But is the scientific integrity and validity of their work perceived differently by virtue of their membership in the marginalized group? Across three survey experiments

Guilt has often been conceptualized as a moral emotion because it stimulates transgressors to restore a damaged relationship. However, not much has been investigated about when the guilt-induced relational-promoting goal conflicts with certain moral norms (for instance, honesty). In this paper, we demonstrate that guilt increases the transgressors' lying intentions in situations where honesty is anticipated

At a time when pseudoscience threatens the survival of communities, understanding this vulnerability, and how to reduce it, is paramount. Four preregistered experiments (N = 532, N = 472, N = 605, N = 382) with online U.S. samples introduced false claims concerning a (fictional) virus created as a bioweapon, mirroring conspiracy theories about COVID-19, and carcinogenic effects of GMOs (Genetically

Evil supernatural beings are often depicted as responding to unintended requests, whereas this may be less common in representations of good supernatural beings. This asymmetry suggests that people may expect good and evil agents to differ in their sensitivity to other people's intentions. We investigated this proposal across five experiments on 2231 adult US residents. In Experiments 1 to 4, participants

The COVID-19 pandemic allowed for a naturalistic, longitudinal investigation of the relationship between faith and science mindsets and concern about COVID-19. Our goal was to examine two possible directional relationships: (Model 1) COVID-19 concern ➔ disease avoidance and self-protection motivations ➔ science and faith mindsets versus (Model 2) science and faith mindsets ➔ COVID-19 concern. We surveyed

Prior work suggests that high-status group members are favored for hierarchy-maintaining roles, while low-status group members are favored for hierarchy-attenuating ones—but the mechanisms driving this phenomenon are largely unknown. The current work examines this phenomenon in the domain of race, testing three potential mechanisms: role status, representativeness, and hierarchy profiling. According

Compared to loose cultures, tight cultures are characterized by stronger norm adherence and sanctioning of norm deviant behavior. In the current research, we proposed that culture tightness (vs. looseness) triggers a desire for physical formidability (being big and muscular), and interpersonal dominance. Fives studies converged to support our hypotheses. Through the analysis of archival data of over

Although recent research has highlighted that social relationships influence moral judgment, many questions remain. Across two pre-registered experiments (total N = 1310), we investigated one social relationship and its link to morality: kinship and its obligations. Experiment 1 varied genetic relatedness between helpers and beneficiaries (i.e., strangers, cousins, siblings), investigating differences

Economic inequality in the United States has reached historic highs. Although one may intuit that rising inequality would predict increased support for inequality-reduction strategies, the relationship between economic inequality and attitudes toward redistribution remains unclear. The current research sought to better understand the impacts of economic inequality and socioeconomic rank on attitudes

What causes people to change their beliefs about right and wrong? Coherence-based interventions can change people's moral beliefs about abstract moral principles (Holyoak & Powell, 2016), but it is unclear whether these interventions would be similarly effective for everyday moral beliefs that can impact routine behavior. In the present research, we examined whether coherence-based “memes” highlighting

Although researchers strive to optimize support exchanges, support providers' experiences have largely been overlooked. To identify optimal support from the perspective of the support provider, the current research compared support providers' perceptions of touch and verbal support provision. In Experiment 1, participants were less stressed when they imagined their spouses requesting touch support

People of all genders regularly pursue both personal and professional objectives. To the latter, research has documented substantial barriers for women, especially when they make mistakes. As articulated by role congruity theory, their stereotypically communal nature appears at odds with the agentic objectives frequently seen as inherent to the workplace. To the former, though, how are women (versus

The last decade has seen a rush to address the causes and consequences of bias in applied contexts across the world. When and why might these initiatives promote attitudes and behavior that align with egalitarian goals? A common assumption is that increasing awareness of bias can motivate control over prejudiced responding. However, learning that one's actions are biased is threatening, and often motivates

When forming impressions of groups, people's impressions tend to reflect the average rating of the group members. However, group impressions have also been found to depart from an unweighted average of member ratings. For example, in the recently reported group attractiveness effect, groups were found to be more attractive than would be expected based on the average rating of the group members. In

This research examines attitudes towards androgyny using a novel Implicit Association Test (IAT) that assesses implicit evaluations of gender conforming people (i.e., those who look stereotypically male or female) vs. androgynous people (i.e., those whose appearance includes a combination of masculine and feminine traits). Over 6 studies (N > 6000), we develop a gender expression IAT and present evidence

Organizations—especially small businesses—are vulnerable to social and economic upheaval. When misfortune befalls organizations, how much do we empathize with them? Here we present a framework for understanding the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of empathy for organizations. One key cause of empathy is framing: Although any organization is comprised of its constituent members, six studies find

Men appear to be more sceptical towards climate change and less pro-environmental than women. On the other hand, priming certain values (e.g., wealth) undermines support for pro-environmental behaviours. Based on these findings, we explored whether situational materialism may amplify the differences between women and men in scepticism towards climate change. In three experiments we presented participants

Effect sizes are an important outcome of quantitative research, but few guidelines exist that explain how researchers can determine which effect sizes are meaningful. Psychologists often want to study effects that are large enough to make a difference to people's subjective experience. Thus, subjective experience is one way to gauge the meaningfulness of an effect. We propose and illustrate one method

Aggressive behaviors occur when one person, a perpetrator, intentionally harms another person, a victim (e.g., Parrott & Giancola, 2007). When reporting their judgments, victims often report the aggressive behaviors as being more harmful than perpetrators—a so-called victim-perpetrator asymmetry. This asymmetry is well-established (Baumeister et al., 1990; Elshout et al., 2017; Ent & Parton, 2019;

‘Crowd wisdom’ refers to the surprising accuracy that can be attained by averaging judgments from independent individuals. However, independence is unusual; people often discuss and collaborate in groups. When does group interaction improve vs. degrade judgment accuracy relative to averaging the group's initial, independent answers? Two large laboratory studies explored the effects of 969 face-to-face

Bicultural individuals often must select between different responses to a task implied by their dual identities. When one identity has been situationally primed, one strategy is to assimilate to the situational demand. However, another strategy is contrastive, to express their other identity. This second strategy has been called ethnic affirmation (Yang & Bond, 1980) and cultural contrast (Mok & Morris

A plethora of theories on human motives proposes that people have a fundamental need for control and an intrinsic desire to avoid submission to others. The current paper investigated an important exception to this general claim. Five experiments show that self-control failure leads people to strategically prioritize more social submission. In Experiments 1 to 3, salience of self-control failure increased

In a series of studies, we ask whether and to what extent the base rate of a behavior influences associated moral judgment. Previous research aimed at answering different but related questions are suggestive of such an effect. However, these other investigations involve injunctive norms and special reference groups which are inappropriate for an examination of the effects of base rates per se. Across

Help offered by a member of a high status group to a member of a low status group is often resented because it may be perceived as motivated by a desire to reinforce status relations between the groups. The present research explored how trust in a high status group by members of a low status group can ameliorate these negative consequences. Study 1 examined how the trust of Israeli-Jews among Israeli-Arabs

Laws govern society, regulating people's behavior to create social harmony. Yet recent research indicates that when laws are broken by people we know and love, we consistently fail to report their crimes. Here we identify an expectancy-based cognitive mechanism that underlies this phenomenon and illustrate how it interacts with people's motivations to predict their intentions to report crimes. Using