-
Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-04-13 Janis H. Zickfeld, Niels van de Ven, Olivia Pich, Thomas W. Schubert, Jana B. Berkessel, José J. Pizarro, Braj Bhushan, Nino Jose Mateo, Sergio Barbosa, Leah Sharman, Gyöngyi Kökönyei, Elke Schrover, Igor Kardum, John Jamir Benzon Aruta, Ljiljana B. Lazarevic, María Josefina Escobar, Marie Stadel, Patrícia Arriaga, Ad Vingerhoets
Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting
-
The ‘me’ in meat: Does affirming the self make eating animals seem more morally wrong? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Stefan Leach, Robbie M. Sutton, Karen M. Douglas, Kristof Dhont
People typically extend limited moral standing to animals reared for food. Prominent perspectives in the literature on animal-human relations characterize this phenomenon as an outcome of moral disengagement: in other words, a strategy that protects people from moral self-condemnation. To provide a direct test of this hypothesis, we exposed people to a self-affirmation manipulation, and hypothesized
-
Overcoming negative reactions to prosocial intergroup behaviors in post-conflict societies: The power of intergroup apology Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-04-01 Islam Borinca, Juan M. Falomir-Pichastor, Luca Andrighetto, Samer Halabi
In post-conflict societies, individuals often respond negatively to the prosocial behaviors of their former opponents. To identify forms of intergroup apology that facilitate positive reactions to offers of intergroup help, three experiments (N = 698) were conducted in the post-conflict context of Kosovo that involved offering help to participants following their exposure to different types of apologies
-
Sex differences in threat sensitivity: Evidence from two experimental paradigms Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-31 Michael D. Robinson, Robert J. Klein, Roberta L. Irvin
Sex differences in fear and pain suggest the possibility of sex differences in an underlying threat reactivity (or punishment sensitivity) system. This system would prime vigorous behavioral responses to threatening input and give rise to stronger, more quickly changing feelings within threatening contexts. Two studies sought to model such processes. Study 1 focused on emotion-primed losses of motor
-
Attending live theatre improves empathy, changes attitudes, and leads to pro-social behavior Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-31 Steve Rathje, Leor Hackel, Jamil Zaki
Can attending live theatre improve empathy by immersing audience members in the stories of others? We tested this question across three field studies (n = 1622), including a pre-registered replication. We randomly assigned audience members to complete surveys either before or after seeing plays, and measured the effects of the plays on empathy, attitudes, and pro-social behavior. After, as compared
-
Understanding mechanisms behind discrimination using diffusion decision modeling Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-31 Jordan R. Axt, David J. Johnson
Past research has documented where discrimination occurs or tested interventions that reduce discrimination. Less is known about how discriminatory behavior emerges and the mechanisms through which successful interventions work. Two studies (N > 4500) apply the Diffusion Decision Model (DDM) to the Judgment Bias Task, a measure of discrimination. In control conditions, participants gave preferential
-
Structuring local environments to avoid racial diversity: Anxiety drives Whites' geographical and institutional self-segregation preferences Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Eric M. Anicich, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Merrick R. Osborne, L. Taylor Phillips
The current research explores how local racial diversity affects Whites' efforts to structure their local communities to avoid incidental intergroup contact. In two experimental studies (N = 509; Studies 1a-b), we consider Whites' choices to structure a fictional, diverse city and find that Whites choose greater racial segregation around more (vs. less) self-relevant landmarks (e.g., their workplace
-
European Americans' intentions to confront racial bias: Considering who, what (kind), and why Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-18 Riana M. Brown, Maureen A. Craig, Evan P. Apfelbaum
Confrontation research has primarily focused on what drives individuals' intentions to confront strangers who express prejudicial attitudes (i.e., interpersonal bias; for reviews see Ashburn-Nardo & Karim, 2019; Kawakami, Karmali, & Vaccarino, 2019). However, bias manifests in multiple forms, including biased policies and institutional practices (i.e., structural bias) or bias perpetrated by close
-
Violent and non-violent virtual reality video games: Influences on affect, aggressive cognition, and aggressive behavior. Two pre-registered experiments Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-14 Aaron Drummond, James D. Sauer, Christopher J. Ferguson, Peter R. Cannon, Lauren C. Hall
Immersive Ambulatory Virtual Reality (IA-VR) video games are relatively new and highly immersive. Given speculation that immersion may increase psychological effects of playing games, we examined whether violent IA-VR (cf. flat-screen) games increase aggression. Here, we report the first experimental studies to assess the effects of violent and non-violent IA-VR (cf. flat-screen) games on affect, aggressive
-
Mix is different from nix: Mouse tracking differentiates ambivalence from neutrality Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-15 Iris K. Schneider, André Mattes
Ambivalence, the activation of both positive and negative thoughts and feelings regarding a single attitude object, plays a role in many domains in people's lives. For instance, people can be ambivalent about societal topics, health, politics, family, and even their partners. Recently, mouse tracking has been introduced as a novel and innovative way to examine ambivalence. Although initial findings
-
The social psychology of a selective national inferiority complex: Reconciling positive distinctiveness and system justification Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-10 Marcos Francisco dos Santos, Cicero Roberto Pereira
The national inferiority complex was described in 1958 by the Brazilian journalist Nelson Rodrigues as “how Brazilians voluntarily place themselves in a position of inferiority in comparison to the rest of the world.” In three experimental studies, we tested the hypothesis of a “national inferiority effect” on the behavior of Brazilian participants awarding compensation to a victim of police violence
-
When and how refusing to help decreases one's influence Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-06 Yidan Yin, Pamela K. Smith
When does saying no to a helping request hurt a person's influence? Across five studies, when someone was asked for help, saying no had two opposing effects on their actual and perceived influence by increasing their dominance, but decreasing their prestige. The cost of providing help moderated these effects. Overall, refusing to help decreased a person's influence when helping cost little time, effort
-
Social pain and the role of imagined social consequences: Why personal adverse experiences elicit social pain, with or without explicit relational devaluation Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-06 Taylor Hudd, David A. Moscovitch
When we experience damage to a social connection—in particular, perceiving that others have devalued our relationship with them—we experience “social pain.” Prior studies have typically examined social pain by creating explicit contexts to elicit experiences of relational devaluation. However, there may be other antecedents of social pain that do not involve direct threats to social belongingness.
-
Poverty and pain: Low-SES people are believed to be insensitive to pain Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-03-03 Kevin M. Summers, Jason C. Deska, Steven M. Almaraz, Kurt Hugenberg, E. Paige Lloyd
Across 10 experiments (N = 1584), we investigated biases in assumptions about pain sensitivity as an explanation for pain treatment disparities across socioeconomic status (SES). We find that lower-SES individuals are believed to feel less pain than higher-SES individuals (Studies 1a-1c), and this effect persists across target demographics including race (i.e., White individuals, Black individuals)
-
White and minority demographic shifts, intergroup threat, and right-wing extremism Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-02-24 Hui Bai, Christopher M. Federico
We present four studies (one correlational and three experimental) of American Whites that examine relationships between White and minority demographic shifts, intergroup threat, and support for extreme-right groups and actions. We focus in particular on the role of collective existential threat (i.e., a perception that the ingroup will cease to exist), along with three alternative/competing intergroup
-
Moral elevation increases support for humanitarian policies, but not political concessions, in intractable conflict Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-02-23 Deborah Shulman, Eran Halperin, Ziv Elron, Michal Reifen Tagar
Moral elevation is an emotional experience elicited after witnessing acts of exceptional moral goodness and involves feeling moved and inspired. Previous research has demonstrated that experiences of moral elevation can lead to increased altruism. We examined whether the benefits of moral elevation on prosocial intentions extend to the context of intractable intergroup conflict, by testing whether
-
Attention allocation is a possible mediator of cultural variations in spontaneous trait and situation inferences: Eye-tracking evidence Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-02-20 Yuki Shimizu, James S. Uleman
Two studies sought to replicate previous work on cultural differences in the co-occurrence of spontaneous trait (STI) and situation (SSI) inferences, and to examine possible mediators at the individual level. Both studies replicated previous findings of cultural differences. European Americans made more STIs relative to SSIs than did Asian American or Japanese participants. However Experiment 1 found
-
Not all egalitarianism is created equal: Claims of nonprejudice inadvertently communicate prejudice between ingroup members Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-02-15 Drew S. Jacoby-Senghor, Michael Rosenblum, N. Derek Brown
Caucasian-Americans' manner of expressing egalitarianism may inadvertently communicate racial prejudices to ingroup members. Despite most hypothesizing the contrary (Preliminary Study), Caucasian-American perceivers were able to infer ingroup targets' underlying racial attitudes using only targets' written claims of being egalitarian (Experiment 1; N = 256) and regardless of whether targets' had the
-
When my wrongs are worse than yours: Behavioral and neural asymmetries in first-person and third-person perspectives of accidental harms Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-02-02 Joshua Hirschfeld-Kroen, Kevin Jiang, Emily Wasserman, Stefano Anzellotti, Liane Young
Research on third-party moral judgments highlights two mechanisms as central to moral judgments of accidental harms: the inference of intent and the perception of harm. However, little is known about how these mechanisms are recruited when people evaluate themselves for harm that they have accidentally caused. Here we explore how a person's perspective — as either actor or observer — influences their
-
Are actions better than inactions? Positivity, outcome, and intentionality biases in judgments of action and inaction Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-01-29 Aashna Sunderrajan, Dolores Albarracín
Behavior varies along a continuum of activity, with effortful behaviors characterizing actions and restful states characterizing inactions. Despite the adaptive value of both action and inaction, we propose three biases that, in the absence of other information, increase the probability that people like, and want to pursue, action more than inaction: An action positivity bias, an action outcome bias
-
Large-scale field experiment shows null effects of team demographic diversity on outsiders' willingness to support the team Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-01-23 Edward H. Chang, Erika L. Kirgios, Rosanna K. Smith
Demographic diversity in the United States is rising, and increasingly, work is conducted in teams. These co-occurring phenomena suggest that it might be increasingly common for work to be conducted by demographically diverse teams. But to date, in spite of copious field experimental evidence documenting that individuals are treated differently based on their demographic identity, we have little evidence
-
Does observability amplify sensitivity to moral frames? Evaluating a reputation-based account of moral preferences Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-01-22 Valerio Capraro, Jillian J. Jordan, Ben M. Tappin
A growing body of work suggests that people are sensitive to moral framing in economic games involving prosociality, suggesting that people hold moral preferences for doing the “right thing”. What gives rise to these preferences? Here, we evaluate the explanatory power of a reputation-based account, which proposes that people respond to moral frames because they are motivated to look good in the eyes
-
Familiarity breeds overconfidence: Group membership and shared experience in the closeness-communication bias Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-01-19 Mija Van Der Wege, Jessi Jacobsen, Nicole Magats, Carl Bou Mansour, Jin Hong Park
Though both spouses and strangers understand a speaker equally well in a novel communication task, people overestimate their success of communication more with spouses than strangers (Savitsky, Keysar, Epley, Carter, & Swanson, 2011). This phenomenon, termed the closeness-communication bias, is presumed to occur because people anchor their common ground assessments egocentrically and only minimally
-
War exposure, altruism and the recalibration of welfare tradeoffs towards threatening social categories Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-01-17 Jonathan Hall, Dennis T. Kahn, Eric Skoog, Magnus Öberg
How does war shape human altruism? Some find warfare increases generosity within groups only. Others maintain that war's prosocial effects extend to outgroup members as well. To make sense of these disparate findings, we offer a theoretical framework that highlights the role of threat sensitivity in altruism. Refugees from Syria and Iraq (N = 1521) completed a welfare tradeoff task and threat perceptions
-
Computational and motivational mechanisms of human social decision making involving close others Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2021-01-07 João F. Guassi Moreira, Sarah M. Tashjian, Adriana Galván, Jennifer A. Silvers
Every day, human beings make decisions with social consequences. These social consequences matter most when they impact those closest to us. Recent research has shown that humans exhibit reliable preferences when deciding between conflicting outcomes involving close others – for example, prioritizing the interests of one's family member over one's friend. However, virtually nothing is known about the
-
Defending one's worldview under mortality salience: Testing the validity of an established idea Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-12-28 Simon Schindler, Nina Reinhardt, Marc-André Reinhard
Terror management theory (TMT) posits that mortality salience (MS) leads to more negative perceptions of persons who oppose one's worldview and to more positive perceptions of persons who confirm one's worldview. Recent failed replications of classic findings have thrown into question empirical validity for this established idea. We believe, that there are crucial methodological and theoretical aspects
-
Moral tribalism: Moral judgments of actions supporting ingroup interests depend on collective narcissism Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-12-30 Konrad Bocian, Aleksandra Cichocka, Bogdan Wojciszke
In this article, we examine how group identity and protection of group interests shape morality judgments. We argue that actions serving ingroup interests are more likely to be judged as moral (or less immoral) than the same actions that do not serve ingroup interests. However, this group-interest bias should be especially strong among those high in collective narcissism—a defensive belief in ingroup
-
Believing in hidden plots is associated with decreased behavioral trust: Conspiracy belief as greater sensitivity to social threat or insensitivity towards its absence? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-11-28 Marcel Meuer, Roland Imhoff
Past research has demonstrated that conspiracy belief is linked to a low level of self-reported general trust. In four experimental online studies (total N = 1105) we examined whether this relationship translated into actual behavior. Specifically, since the decision to trust relies on the ability to detect potential social threat, we tested whether conspiracy believers are better at detecting actual
-
Maximal positive controls: A method for estimating the largest plausible effect size Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-11-24 Joseph Hilgard
Effect sizes in social psychology are generally not large and are limited by error variance in manipulation and measurement. Effect sizes exceeding these limits are implausible and should be viewed with skepticism. Maximal positive controls, experimental conditions that should show an obvious and predictable effect, can provide estimates of the upper limits of plausible effect sizes on a measure. In
-
A creative destruction approach to replication: Implicit work and sex morality across cultures Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-12-03 Warren Tierney, Jay Hardy, Charles R. Ebersole, Domenico Viganola, Elena Giulia Clemente, Michael Gordon, Suzanne Hoogeveen, Julia Haaf, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Thomas Pfeiffer, Jason L. Huang, Leigh Ann Vaughn, Kenneth DeMarree, Eric R. Igou, Hanah Chapman, Ana Gantman, Matthew Vanaman, Eric Luis Uhlmann
How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design in addition to the original ones, to help determine
-
The influence of emotions on information processing and persuasion: A differential appraisals perspective Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-12-10 Maria Stavraki, Grigorios Lamprinakos, Pablo Briñol, Richard E. Petty, Kalipso Karantinou, Darío Díaz
The present research demonstrates for the first time that the very same emotion can influence information processing and persuasion depending on the appraisal of the emotion that is highlighted. Across studies, we predicted and found that anger, surprise, and awe can each lead to relatively higher or lower levels of information processing depending on whether it is the appraisal of pleasantness/unpleasantness
-
Different punishment systems in a public goods game with asymmetric endowments Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-12-11 Laila Nockur, Stefan Pfattheicher, Johannes Keller
Punishment has been shown to increase cooperation in public goods dilemmas when resources to contribute are distributed symmetrically. The present investigation examines which punishment system (peer punishment, democratic punishment, and central punishment) in comparison to a system without punishment fosters cooperation in a social dilemma when resources to contribute are distributed asymmetrically
-
Recognizing the Impact of COVID-19 on the Poor Alters Attitudes Towards Poverty and Inequality Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-11-14 Dylan Wiwad, Brett Mercier, Paul K. Piff, Azim Shariff, Lara B. Aknin
The novel Coronavirus that spread around the world in early 2020 triggered a global pandemic and economic downturn that affected nearly everyone. Yet the crisis had a disproportionate impact on the poor and revealed how easily working-class individuals' financial security can be destabilised by factors beyond personal control. In a pre-registered longitudinal study of Americans (N = 233) spanning April
-
Moralization of Covid-19 health response: Asymmetry in tolerance for human costs Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-12-04 Maja Graso, Fan Xuan Chen, Tania Reynolds
We hypothesized that because Covid-19 (C19) remains an urgent and visible threat, efforts to combat its negative health consequences have become moralized. This moralization of health-based efforts may generate asymmetries in judgement, whereby harmful by-products of those efforts (i.e., instrumental harm) are perceived as more acceptable than harm resulting from non-C19 efforts, such as prioritizing
-
A conflict of values: When perceived compassion decreases trust Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-10-05 Matthew J. Lupoli, Min Zhang, Yidan Yin, Christopher Oveis
Compassion benefits individuals, organizations, and society. As such, people may place greater trust in those who are perceived to be compassionate, believing that they will act with both benevolence and integrity. In some circumstances, however, acting with benevolence may seemingly require a sacrifice of integrity and vice versa. We propose that expectations of how compassionate people navigate these
-
When photos backfire: Truthiness and falsiness effects in comparative judgments Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-10-04 Lynn Zhang, Eryn J. Newman, Norbert Schwarz
Claims are more likely to be judged true when presented with a related nonprobative photo (Newman et al., 2012). According to a processing fluency account, related photos facilitate processing and easy processing fosters acceptance of the claim. Alternatively, according to an illusion-of-evidence account, related photos may increase acceptance of the claim because they are treated as tentative supportive
-
Are we at all liberal at heart? High-powered tests find no effect of intuitive thinking on moral foundations Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-09-18 Ozan Isler, Onurcan Yilmaz, Burak Doğruyol
Two opposing views define the debate on the moral principles underlying human behavior. One side argues a central role for five moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity), while the other argues that two of these (care, fairness) capture the essence of human moral concerns. In an experiment comparing these two views, Wright and Baril (2011) found that conservatives under cognitive
-
Advice-giving under conflict of interest: Context enhances self-serving behavior Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-09-14 Meir Barneron, Ilan Yaniv
Advisors face a conflict of interest when their interests and those of the recipients of their advice are misaligned. Conflicted advisors need to resolve the tension between two competing motives, the need to provide sincere advice that fulfills the recipient's goals and the temptation to give advice that caters to their self-interest. We theorized that the choice context should affect selfish advice-giving
-
The dark side of gratitude: Gratitude could lead to moral violation Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-09-09 Ruida Zhu, Zhenhua Xu, Honghong Tang, Huagen Wang, Sihui Zhang, Zhiqi Zhang, Xiaoqin Mai, Chao Liu
Past research has provided abundant evidence for the positive impacts of gratitude on individuals and society. However, based on the social function of gratitude, which is proposed to be personal relationship promotion, some negative effects of gratitude may exist, especially when the needs of personal relationship promotion and moral norm obedience are in conflict. The current studies investigated
-
Scientific skepticism and inequality: Political and ideological roots Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-09-08 Rebecca Ponce de Leon, Sara Wingrove, Aaron C. Kay
Despite the recent influx of studies suggesting the negative societal impact of inequality, many remain skeptical of these scientific findings. Across four studies, we explore how political affiliation and social dominance orientation (SDO) interactively shape attitudes toward the emerging science on the repercussions of social inequality. Acceptance of this science was consistently polarized based
-
Facial trustworthiness predicts ingroup inclusion decisions Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-09-07 Ryan E. Tracy, John Paul Wilson, Michael L. Slepian, Steven G. Young
Perceivers tend to be reluctant to admit new members into their ingroups—unless there is some potential for prospective group members to provide value to the group. In the present research, we examine the effect of facial trustworthiness on ingroup inclusion decisions. Five studies demonstrate that facial trustworthiness exerts a powerful bottom-up perceptual cue that conveys this necessary “positive
-
To build efficacy, eat the frog first: People misunderstand how the difficulty-ordering of tasks influences efficacy Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-09-02 Rachel Habbert, Juliana Schroeder
Achieving competency and autonomy in one's life—in other words, being efficacious—is a fundamental human need. A commonly endorsed strategy for building efficacy is summarized by a popular quote: “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing.” The current paper tests this “eat-the-frog-first” strategy, examining whether completing tasks in increasing-easiness order builds efficacy
-
Longing is in the memory of the beholder: Collective nostalgia content determines the method members will support to make their group great again Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-21 Michael J.A. Wohl, Anna Stefaniak, Anouk Smeekes
Across four studies, we tested whether the content of collective nostalgia has untapped utility for understanding intergroup relations. In Study 1a, we demonstrated variance in the content of the nostalgizing American Christians report—variance that influenced attitudes towards outgroups. Participants who reported longing for a more open society expressed less anti-immigration sentiments and less blatant
-
Reexamining the role of intent in moral judgements of purity violations Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-21 Tom R. Kupfer, Yoel Inbar, Joshua M. Tybur
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
-
Structured procedures promote placebo effects Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-12 Zhengyu Shen, Qian Xu, Liyin Jin
Placebo interventions have various beneficial effects on individuals' physical, mental and social well-being. We tested whether the structured procedures of placebo treatment could influence the magnitude of the placebo effects. Four studies show that a structured placebo treatment procedure can significantly enhance placebo outcomes in performance-based tasks. We attribute the enhanced placebo effects
-
Censoring political opposition online: Who does it and why. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-09 Ashwini Ashokkumar,Sanaz Talaifar,William T Fraser,Rodrigo Landabur,Michael Buhrmester,Ángel Gómez,Borja Paredes,William B Swann
As ordinary citizens increasingly moderate online forums, blogs, and their own social media feeds, a new type of censoring has emerged wherein people selectively remove opposing political viewpoints from online contexts. In three studies of behavior on putative online forums, supporters of a political cause (e.g., abortion or gun rights) preferentially censored comments that opposed their cause. The
-
Exposure to opposing reasons reduces negative impressions of ideological opponents Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-07 Matthew L. Stanley, Peter S. Whitehead, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Paul Seli
Americans have become increasingly likely to dislike, distrust, and derogate their ideological opponents on contemporary social and political issues. We hypothesized that a lack of exposure to compelling reasons, arguments, and evidence from ideological opponents might at least partly explain negative views of those opponents. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that participants assume their
-
Do you get us? A multi-experiment, meta-analytic test of the effect of felt understanding in intergroup relations Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-07 Andrew G. Livingstone, Stacey Windeatt, Laura Nesbitt, Judith Kerry, Sophia Accion Barr, Luke Ashman, Rebecca Ayers, Hannah Bibby, Emily Boswell, Jessica Brown, Man Chiu, Eleanor Cowie, Eleanor Doherr, Harry Douglas, Lara Durber, Max Ferguson, Megan Ferreira, Isabella Fisk, Jung-Ching Wu
Felt understanding is a key determinant of positive inter-personal relations, but its role and potential benefits in intergroup relations have been neglected. In the first multi-study, pre-registered test of its intergroup effects, we manipulated intergroup felt understanding (understood vs. misunderstood by an outgroup) in six studies (N = 1195) and meta-analyzed its effects. The results in most intergroup
-
Can high quality listening predict lower speakers' prejudiced attitudes? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-08-06 Guy Itzchakov,Netta Weinstein,Nicole Legate,Moty Amar
Theorizing from humanistic and motivational literatures suggests attitude change may occur because high quality listening facilitates the insight needed to explore and integrate potentially threatening information relevant to the self. By extension, self-insight may enable attitude change as a result of conversations about prejudice. We tested whether high quality listening would predict attitudes
-
Sensitivity to ingroup and outgroup norms in the association between commonality and morality Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-07-29 Megan R. Goldring, Larisa Heiphetz
Emerging research suggests that people infer that common behaviors are moral and vice versa. We investigated the role of group membership in these inferences regarding commonality and morality. In Study 1, participants expected a target character to infer that behaviors that were common among their ingroup were particularly moral. However, the extent to which behaviors were common among the target
-
The impact of classroom diversity philosophies on the STEM performance of undergraduate students of color Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-07-29 Jessica J. Good, Kimberly A. Bourne, R. Grace Drake
Using a large, nationally representative sample of first year undergraduate students we tested whether instructors' use of diversity philosophies could impact the learning of new math and science content among Students of Color and White students. Participants (N = 688) were randomly assigned to one of nine simulated online course environments using a 3 (diversity philosophy: Multicultural, Colorblind
-
Allocating moral responsibility to multiple agents Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-07-28 Ana P. Gantman, Anni Sternisko, Peter M. Gollwitzer, Gabriele Oettingen, Jay J. Van Bavel
Moral and immoral actions often involve multiple individuals who play different roles in bringing about the outcome. For example, one agent may deliberate and decide what to do while another may plan and implement that decision. We suggest that the Mindset Theory of Action Phases provides a useful lens through which to understand these cases and the implications that these different roles, which correspond
-
The role of holistic processing in simultaneous consumption Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-07-15 Robert W. Smith, Joseph P. Redden
People frequently consume multiple things simultaneously, such as listening to music while eating a snack. In this research, we show that the enjoyment of a simultaneous consumption experience depends on how one processes the multiple stimuli. Holistic processors focus more on how the multiple components come together as part of a coherent overall experience, while analytic processors focus more on
-
Adults and children implicitly associate brilliance with men more than women Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-07-04 Daniel Storage, Tessa E.S. Charlesworth, Mahzarin R. Banaji, Andrei Cimpian
Women are underrepresented in careers where success is perceived to depend on high levels of intellectual ability (e.g., brilliance, genius), including those in science and technology. This phenomenon may be due in part to a gender-brilliance stereotype that portrays men as more brilliant than women. Here, we offer the first investigation of whether people implicitly associate brilliance with men more
-
Negligible evidence that people desire partners who uniquely fit their ideals Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-06-29 Jehan Sparks, Christine Daly, Brian M. Wilkey, Daniel C. Molden, Eli J. Finkel, Paul W. Eastwick
Laypersons and scholars often presume that people positively evaluate partners who match their ideal partner preferences: If Faye prefers kindness in a partner and Sonia prefers ambition, Faye should be especially attracted to kind partners and Sonia should be especially attracted to ambitious ones. However, to date, most published tests of this idea are imprecise and permit multiple interpretations
-
Altruism does not always lead to a good reputation: A normative explanation Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-06-28 Yuta Kawamura, Takashi Kusumi
Individuals who engage in altruistic behaviors generally acquire a good reputation. However, recent studies have suggested that altruists are not always welcomed by others. We examined the possibility that norm-deviant altruism leads to unfavorable evaluations; distributing quite large amounts of one's resources could be less favored because the behavior deviates from social norms. In four studies
-
Can we reduce facial biases? Persistent effects of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-06-24 Bastian Jaeger, Alexander T. Todorov, Anthony M. Evans, Ilja van Beest
Trait impressions from faces influence many consequential decisions even in situations in which decisions should not be based on a person's appearance. Here, we test (a) whether people rely on trait impressions when making legal sentencing decisions and (b) whether two types of interventions—educating decision-makers and changing the accessibility of facial information—reduce the influence of facial
-
Whatever we negotiate is not what I like: How value-driven conflicts impact negotiation behaviors, outcomes, and subjective evaluations Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-06-24 Carolin Schuster, Johann M. Majer, Roman Trötschel
Value conflicts have been shown to impair negotiation behaviors and outcomes (Harinck & Ellemers, 2014). The present studies aim to replicate and extend this finding in a paradigm where the parties' values were different, but not opposed. We hypothesized that activating values, rather than utilities, as motives in a negotiation would not only impair negotiation behavior and outcomes, but also subjective
-
Is moral redemption possible? The effectiveness of public apologies for sexual misconduct Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-06-20 Karina Schumann, Anna Dragotta
Amidst an international movement against sexual violence in 2017, hundreds of high-profile men were accused of sexual misconduct, and people's news feeds were flooded with apologies issued by many of these men. In five studies (N = 1931), we examined people's reactions to these apologies, with a focus on how their perceived content (participants' evaluations of how comprehensive and non-defensive they
-
Perceiving economic inequality in everyday life decreases tolerance to inequality Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (IF 3.254) Pub Date : 2020-06-20 Juan Diego García-Castro, Rosa Rodríguez-Bailón, Guillermo B. Willis
Economic inequality is one of the main issues of modern societies, and one of the ways to reduce it is through decreasing inequality tolerance and increasing support for economic redistribution. However, there are no consistent results in previous research about the relationship between perceived economic inequality, tolerance to inequality, and support for redistributive policies. In this paper, we
Contents have been reproduced by permission of the publishers.