Powerful people feel less fear of negative evaluation: The mediating role of personal control belief.
To directly examine why an individual ’s capacity to influence others by providing valued resources (i.e., power) could decrease the concerns about negative evaluation from others (i.e., the fear of negative evaluation, FNE) in daily life, two studies were conducted. Results found that perceived power (Study 1) was associated with low er FNE, and manipulating power levels (Study 2) caused less FNE. Furthermore, results indicate that personal control belief mediated this link. These findings provide empirical evidence of the underlying mechanism of the effect of power on reducing FNE. The current research contributes sign...
Source: Social Psychology - May 4, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Cai, Wei; Wu, Song Source Type: research
Differential risk profiles for reactive and proactive aggression: A longitudinal latent profile analysis.
This two-wave longitudinal study identified configurations of social rejection, affiliation with aggressive peers, and academic failure and examined their predictivity for reactive and proactive aggression in a sample of 1,479 children and adolescents aged between 9 and 19 years. Latent profile analysis yielded three configurations of risk factors, made up of a non-risk group, a risk group scoring high on measures of social rejection (SR), and a risk group scoring high on measures of affiliation with aggressive peers and academic failure (APAF). Latent path analysis revealed that, as predicted, only membership in the SR gr...
Source: Social Psychology - May 4, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jung, Janis; Krah é, Barbara; Busching, Robert Source Type: research
The effect of senders ’ perceived ability to control emotion on raters’ deception judgments.
The present studies aimed to examine whether the raters ’ impressions of the senders’ ability to control emotion could influence the raters’ judgments of deceit and to explore the underlying mechanism. It was proposed that perceived emotional control ability would influence individuals’ deception judgments either by itself or by interacting with actual lie-related behaviors. Two experiments were conducted to examine our hypotheses. The results revealed that if participants were informed that the sender had a higher emotional control ability, they would judge the sender as less truthful in an actual deception judgme...
Source: Social Psychology - May 4, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Wu, Song; Cai, Wei; Zou, Hong; Jin, Shenghua Source Type: research
Glucose increases risky behavior and attitudes in people low in self-control: A pilot study.
People low in self-control have a strong proclivity toward risk-taking. Risk-taking behavior provides an opportunity to obtain some form of reward. Glucose, on the other hand, seems to facilitate reward and goal-directed behavior. In a pilot study executed in the laboratory, we investigated whether consuming a glucose drink would increase risky behavior and attitudes in people low in self-control. Our findings revealed that a dose of glucose compared to placebo increased risk-taking on a behavioral and cognitive level in participants low in self-control but not in participants high in self-control. The findings may shed so...
Source: Social Psychology - March 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Pfundmair, Michaela; Lermer, Eva; Frey, Dieter Source Type: research
Stepping in the shoes of leaders of populist right-wing parties: Promoting anti-immigrant views in times of economic prosperity.
What narrative is deemed most compelling to justify anti-immigrant sentiments when a country ’s economy is not a cause for concern? We predicted that flourishing economies constrain the viability of realistic threat arguments. We found support for this prediction in an experiment in which participants were asked to take on the role of speechwriter for a leader with an anti-immigrant messa ge (N = 75). As predicted, a greater percentage of realistic threat arguments and fewer symbolic threat arguments were generated in a condition in which the economy was expected to decline than when it was expected to grow or a baseline...
Source: Social Psychology - March 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jetten, Jolanda; Ryan, Rachel; Mols, Frank Source Type: research
Stressing the advantages of female leadership can place women at a disadvantage.
Women are still underrepresented in management and men hold the majority of higher positions. Nonetheless, one often-heard claim in popular media is that female people-centered leadership skills (empathy, communication, etc.) are a better match for the business world – especially in the future. Furthermore, a related idea is that women may use this advantage to take over men’s dominant position in leadership. Four studies show that such claims paradoxically maintain gender inequality, by undermining support for affirmative action to reduce female underrepres entation in leadership. Where earlier research shows that pos...
Source: Social Psychology - March 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Lammers, Joris; Gast, Anne Source Type: research
Relational utility affects self-punishment in direct and indirect reciprocity situations.
Previous studies of self-punishment focused on negative emotions and information transmission between wrongdoers and victims. We propose that self-punishment can be moderated by relational utility and can work not only in direct but also indirect reciprocity. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were more inclined to punish themselves when the victim could benefit the participants in future interactions than when the victim could not. In Study 3, participants were more inclined to punish themselves when the bystander could potentially offer lots of benefits to them in the future compared to when the bystander could only offer ...
Source: Social Psychology - March 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Zhu, Ruida; Jin, Tao; Shen, Xueyi; Zhang, Shen; Mai, Xiaoqin; Liu, Chao Source Type: research
The malleability of stereotype effects on spontaneous trait inferences: The moderating role of perceivers ’ power.
Past research has demonstrated that perceivers are more likely to draw spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) from stereotype-consistent behaviors than from stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. Four studies were conducted to examine the moderating role of power in stereotype effects on STIs. Priming power using the scrambled sentence task, Study 1 found that high-power participants drew STIs from elderly stereotype-consistent but not from elderly stereotype-inconsistent sentences, while low-power participants did not draw STIs from elderly stereotype-consistent or stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. Study 2 replicated the findin...
Source: Social Psychology - March 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Wang, Meifang; Yang, Feng Source Type: research
Towards a replicable and relevant social psychology.
In this editorial, the author addresses the issue of being known as a "replication journal." There are still many uncertainties on how to deal with various factors that make social psychological research challenging. On the one hand, there are concerns about the replicability of findings in social psychology. Those attract considerable attention in traditional and social media. On the other hand, researchers in many countries are faced with a changing academic environment that asks for research that has actual societal impact. This factor is rarely debated outside of the academic environment despite its direct influence on...
Source: Social Psychology - March 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Epstude, Kai Source Type: research
Projection of visceral needs: Satisfaction of the need and similarity of the target person as moderators.
People ’s immediate needs influence how they perceive other’s needs – people project their needs onto others. Two studies sought to replicate and extend previous research by identifying moderators of need projection: need satisfaction and a global sense of similarity. Projection increased when a stro ng need to quench one’s thirst was induced and not satisfied (Study 1). Projection of the need to quench one’s thirst increased when existing thirst and the global sense of similarity with the target person were high, but again only when the need was not satisfied (Study 2). Visceral needs influ ence judgments about ...
Source: Social Psychology - October 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ahn, Janet N.; Oettingen, Gabriele; Gollwitzer, Peter M. Source Type: research
Rejection via video: The impact of observed group and individual rejection.
This study introduces an easy-to-implement, controlled, vivid, and functional rejection paradigm. Participants empathized with the protagonist of a video who was rejected or accepted individually or as part of a group. In the rejection condition, more perceived exclusion and lower basic need fulfillment were reported. The paradigm also induced nuance in situational factors: Observing somebody being rejected as part of a group led to less pronounced reactions than individual rejection. The video-based rejection paradigm taps into the less studied area of group rejection and offers a new method to test established and novel ...
Source: Social Psychology - October 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Graupmann, Verena; Pfundmair, Michaela; Matsoukas, Peter; Erber, Ralph Source Type: research
Singing promotes cooperation in a diverse group of children.
Previous research involving preschool children and adults suggests that moving in synchrony with others can foster cooperation. Song provides a rich oscillatory framework that supports synchronous movement and may thus be considered a powerful agent of positive social relations. In the current study, we assessed this hypothesis in a group of primary-school aged children with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Children participated in one of three activity conditions: group singing, group art, or competitive games. They were then asked to play a prisoner ’s dilemma game as a measure of cooperation. Results show...
Source: Social Psychology - October 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Good, Arla; Russo, Frank A. Source Type: research
Social perception of self-enhancement bias and error.
How do social observers perceive and judge individuals who self-enhance (vs. not)? Using a decision-theoretic framework, we distinguish between self-enhancement bias and error, where the former comprises both correct and incorrect self-perceptions of being better than average. The latter occurs when a claim to be better than others is found to be false. In two studies, we find that when judging people ’s competence, observers are sensitive to the accuracy of self-perception. When judging their morality, however, they tend to respond negatively to any claims of being better than average. These findings are further modulat...
Source: Social Psychology - October 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Heck, Patrick R.; Krueger, Joachim I. Source Type: research
Comparison of the effects of individual and group-level perspective taking on intergroup reconciliation.
We investigated the effects of different perspective taking instructions on emotional variables in the context of intergroup reconciliation. In three experiments we found that individual-level and group-level perspective taking increased willingness to compensate an outgroup for historical transgressions of the ingroup. The data suggests that the two forms of perspective taking trigger different psychological processes. Individual-level perspective taking was more strongly linked to feelings of empathy. Group-level perspective taking increased feelings of collective guilt. Collective guilt mediated the positive effect of g...
Source: Social Psychology - October 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Barth, Markus; St ürmer, Stefan Source Type: research
An introduction to the Moral Agency Scale: Individual differences in moral agency and their relationship to related moral constructs, free will, and blame attribution.
The purpose of this research was to develop a psychometric measure of moral agency and explore its relationship with related moral constructs. Although our legal system, daily interactions with others, and most theories about moral psychology assume moral agency, few researchers have studied it, and there is no instrument devised to specifically measure it. Here, we present the Moral Agency Scale (MAS), a self-report instrument designed to assess the extent to which participants feel control over their moral choices. In Study 1, the MAS demonstrated strict factorial invariance; validity is further supported by its relation...
Source: Social Psychology - October 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Black, Jessica E. Source Type: research
