Incrimination through innuendo: A replication and extension.
Social Psychology, Vol 55(1), 2024, 51-61; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000540Research by Wegner et al. (1981) suggests that incriminating innuendo in questions can negatively affect attitudes and opinions. Two preregistered studies (N = 506) provide a close replication of Study 1 of Wegner et al., additionally testing whether question-innuendo effects are moderated by partisanship. Replicating the original findings of Wegner et al., questions insinuating something negative about a target person reduced favorable impressions of the target. Counter to the novel hypotheses that effects of incriminating questions would be reduced f...
Source: Social Psychology - March 21, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Democratic and authoritarian government preferences in times of crisis: An experimental investigation.
Social Psychology, Vol 55(1), 2024, 37-50; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000538Prior studies have linked societal threats to a surge in conservative attitudes. We conducted three studies (N = 1,021) to investigate whether hypothetical threat situations impact peoples’ attitudes toward democracy or alternative systems. Study 1 shows that individuals under threat devaluate representative and participatory government types and show relatively stronger endorsement of less democratic alternatives. Study 2 clarifies that extranational threats elicit a greater shift toward nondemocratic ‘solutions’ than intranational threats and t...
Source: Social Psychology - March 21, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The effects of social distance and gender on moral decisions and judgments: A reanalysis, replication, and extension of Singer et al. (2019).
Social Psychology, Vol 55(1), 2024, 25-36; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000537In morality, social distance should influence judgments and decisions. Singer et al.’s (2019) Everyday Moral Conflict Situations scale was created to assess altruistic versus egoistic choices in everyday moral contexts depending on social distance manipulated at the item level. Via a reanalysis of their data, we found an unreported interaction effect between social distance and gender on behavioral choices. We conducted a conceptual replication (Part 1) and extended previous research by empirically assessing the link between altruism and morality (Pa...
Source: Social Psychology - March 21, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Socioeconomic status and self-regard: Income predicts self-respect over time.
Social Psychology, Vol 55(1), 2024, 12-24; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000536Past research has shown that the socioeconomic status (e.g., income or education) is associated with people’s self-evaluation, such as global self-esteem. In the present research, we argue that socioeconomic status also affects people’s belief of possessing the same rights as others (i.e., self-respect). In a cross-sectional study (N = 298) and a longitudinal study (N = 379), we investigated the relationships between income and education with three forms of self-regard. The only consistent finding was that income was related to self-respect over ti...
Source: Social Psychology - March 21, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Working too hard or not hard enough? The interaction of effort and value on regret.
Social Psychology, Vol 55(1), 2024, 1-11; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000534Does working hard take the sting out of regret following failure or does working hard increase feelings of regret? The present research finds that neither of these views is correct. Rather, the results of both experiments found that regret was an interactive function of instrumental effort and goal value. In support of the consistency-fit model, large versus small amounts of effort produced more regret on a low-valued task, whereas small amounts of effort produced more regret on a high-valued task. Furthermore, supporting the consistency-fit model, rece...
Source: Social Psychology - March 21, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Seeing is believing: The presence and impact of ambient sexism toward collegiate women in STEM.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(6), 2023, 372-384; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000535We investigate how visual cues in universities discourage women from pursuing STEM. We extend research on ambient sexism (i.e., witnessing sexist mistreatment of others) to include environmental cues that women do not belong. Men were pictured in STEM buildings (Pilot Study 1) and described in university-sponsored STEM news articles (Pilot Study 2) twice as often as women. In an experiment, undergraduate women who read about male scientists reported less positive STEM attitudes relative to men who read about male scientists and women who read about f...
Source: Social Psychology - February 29, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Authoritarianism, trust in media, and tolerance among the youth: Two pathways.
This study tests several alternative pathways through which authoritarianism translates into intolerance. Besides perceived threat from immigration and political alienation, trust in alternative media, which often express anti-immigration sentiments, are considered as potential mediators. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze two-wave longitudinal questionnaire data from Czech adolescents and young adults (aged 15–25; N = 1,346). The results showed that authoritarianism longitudinally predicted perceived threat, which in turn mediated the negative effect of authoritarianism on tolerance. Authoritarianism also ...
Source: Social Psychology - February 29, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Reducing automatic intergroup bias through perspective taking? Effects on individuals do not generalize to the ethnic group.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(6), 2023, 348-359; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000532According to previous research, taking the perspective of an outgroup member reduces intergroup bias. These effects were demonstrated on explicit evaluations, explicit stereotyping, and automatic evaluations of the outgroup. We investigated whether perspective taking reduces automatic stereotyping and whether effects on automatic evaluation replicate with a novel paradigm of perspective taking. Across two studies, we found that perspective taking increased self-reported likeability of and perceived similarity to the target of perspective taking. More...
Source: Social Psychology - February 29, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Dishonesty when the game is unfair: Experimental evidence for the effect of economic inequality on tax evasion and cheating.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(6), 2023, 337-347; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000531Although the link between economic inequality and dishonest behavior is well-established in the literature, their causal relation is still unclear. Here we investigate the causal link between economic inequality and dishonest behavior in a simulated society with high or low economic inequality, while holding middle-class status of the participants constant across conditions. Study 1 (N = 479) focuses on tax evasion, showing that high (vs. low) economic inequality increases the tendency to not declare taxable income. Study 2 (N = 228) analyzes cheatin...
Source: Social Psychology - February 29, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Beyond the mere ownership and endowment effects: Over-valuing objects lost and found.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(6), 2023, 327-336; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000530Do owned objects become more valued if lost and found? In Experiment 1, Prolific participants (n = 128) imagined having lost a laptop. The results showed a preference for finding the laptop instead of replacing it with a new at no cost. The preference was even stronger if the laptop had been used longer (2 months instead of 2 days) and was certain to be found without any cost. Experiment 2 recruited additional Prolific participants to investigate the role of positive affect evoked by finding or expecting to find a lost object. In a Lost condition (n ...
Source: Social Psychology - November 2, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Refusing to pay taxes: Loneliness, conspiracy theorizing, and non-normative political action.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(5), 2023, 308-319; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000529Conspiracy theorizing can motivate non-normative intentions (e.g., tax evasion and violence). However, less is known about the contributors of these conspiracy-inspired intentions or if they translate into behaviors. Two studies (N = 1,155) found a positive correlation between loneliness and conspiracy theorizing, which in turn related to non-normative intentions. Study 3 (n = 234) provided further evidence of these relationships through serial mediations: participants who remembered a lonely experience (vs. control) reported feeling lonelier, which ...
Source: Social Psychology - October 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Cynical, but useful? A lay beliefs perspective on cynical leaders’ ability to prevent antisocial behavior at work.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(5), 2023, 294-307; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000528Cynicism – the belief that people are driven primarily by self-interest – has been predominantly associated with detrimental consequences for individuals and organizations. Less is known about its potentially positive implications. We investigated whether lay people consider cynicism helpful in preventing antisocial behavior and therefore see value in cynical leaders. We found that people viewed cynical (vs. trusting) leaders as better at detecting antisocial behavior and more punitive, and therefore, as better at preventing employees’ antisoci...
Source: Social Psychology - October 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Verbs are associated with agency: Evidence from word ratings and natural language use.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(5), 2023, 271-282; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000522Agency and communion comprise the big two of social perception, with agency in general denoting goal orientation and communion orientation toward others. Both dimensions can be coded and detected in language through agentic and communal words, however, only agency through lexical classes, namely verbs. This research examines whether the link between semantic and lexical agency occurs in natural language, as past research was limited to pseudowords or single words. Using existing databases, Study 1 found that people rated verbs as more agentic than no...
Source: Social Psychology - October 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
How emotions induce charitable giving: A psychophysiological study.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(5), 2023, 261-270; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000513Emotions play a pervasive role in determining advertising effectiveness. However, it is still a controversial question as to whether pleasant or unpleasant advertisements are more effective in attracting donations. We recorded self-reported valence and arousal, as well as physiological activity (skin conductance, heart rate, and facial electromyography), while 54 participants watched affective pictures of dogs and made decisions with regard to possible donations. More unpleasant pictures provoked larger donations. Corrugator EMG was the most closely ...
Source: Social Psychology - September 21, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Content, context, and complexity in personality trait perceptions: Judging self and others in social and academic/work settings.
Social Psychology, Vol 54(5), 2023, 283-293; doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000527We replicated and extended research on implicit simplicity: the tendency for personality judgments of acquaintances to be of lower dimensionality than those made for self or well-known others. Three hundred participants completed the Big Five Inventory for themselves, two well-known others, and two casual acquaintances, the latter four in a social and an academic/work setting. Correlations among the Big Five traits were higher for casual targets and close academic/work targets than for self or close social targets. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) anal...
Source: Social Psychology - August 17, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
