Journal of personality and social psychology最新文献

The present research identifies a psychological phenomenon that helps to explain how people who prefer the same option to the same degree (e.g., two people equally prefer Politician A over Politician B) can differ in their negativity toward the same undesired outcome (e.g., one person reacts more negatively toward Politician A's defeat). Across multiple domains and a variety of methodologies (e.g., archival, longitudinal, experimental; N = 12,830), we provide evidence for a prevalent phenomenon we label the opposer's loss effect. When people frame a preference in terms of opposition to the nonpreferred option ("I'm anti politician B") versus support for the preferred option ("I'm pro Politician A"), it does not change the extremity of their overall preference; however, opposers (vs. supporters) nonetheless report greater negativity to relevant, unwelcome news. As we show, this framing shifts secondary characteristics of the preference, namely, it decreases their feelings of ambivalence in their preference, which amplifies opposers' negativity when that preference is thwarted. Altogether, these findings advance the literature on framing effects, expand the known antecedents to felt ambivalence, and provide practical advice for forecasting negative, mass sentiment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

When interacting with others in unfamiliar sociocultural settings, people need to learn the norms guiding appropriate behavior. The present research investigates an individual difference that helps this kind of learning: stress reactivity. Interactions in an unfamiliar sociocultural setting are stressful, particularly when the actor fails to follow its rules. Although stress is typically considered a liability, more stress-reactive individuals may be more motivated to improve and, thus, quicker to learn these rules. Consistent with this idea, a pilot study found that people genetically inclined to stress reactivity, as computed by a genetic profile score across 59 single-nucleotide polymorphisms on 10 different genes, learned unfamiliar sociocultural norms from experiential feedback at a faster rate (i.e., exhibited a greater increase in accuracy across trials). Study 1 found that participants with higher acute cortisol reactivity in response to a physical stressor were faster at learning unfamiliar sociocultural norms. Study 2 conceptually replicated these results using a self-report measure of dispositional stress reactivity. Study 3 found that self-reported dispositional stress reactivity similarly predicted the rate of learning in a sociocultural task and a nonsocial task. Study 4 provided evidence for the underlying mechanism-participants higher on dispositional stress reactivity experienced more stress early in the sociocultural norm learning task, which predicted faster learning overall and lower stress later on in the task. These findings indicate that more stress-reactive individuals get more stressed out from the negative feedback that they receive in social interactions in unfamiliar settings, which motivates them to learn the relevant norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Prior work shows that people are often more sensitive to moral transgressions that target ingroup members than outgroup members. But does that depend on which groups are involved? We investigate how lifelong U.S. citizen participants make judgments about moral transgressions that target fellow lifelong citizens, compared with refugees or undocumented immigrants. Across five studies (N = 1,953), we find that participants overall judge moderate transgressions targeting refugees and undocumented immigrants to be more wrong than those targeting fellow lifelong citizens. This pattern emerges specifically for moderate-severity transgressions but occurs across physical harm, emotional harm, deception, fairness, and property violations. Responses are predicted by political orientation; more liberal participants show the pattern more than conservative participants. We find mediational and experimental evidence for perceived vulnerability/welfare and sympathy toward groups as partial mechanisms: People judge it to be worse to harm more victims they perceive to be more vulnerable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Typical nomothetic, dimensional conceptualizations of personality traits have demonstrated that traits show robust patterns of change across the lifespan. Yet, questions linger about both the mechanisms underlying trait change and the extent to which we can understand any individual using only dimensional approaches. Alternatively, a person-specific conceptualization of personality that emphasizes processes specific to one person may offer more insight into changes at the expense of generalizability. We argue that taking an idiographic, person-specific dynamic network approach to understanding a person provides an opportunity to bridge the nomothetic-idiographic gap and understand processes underlying trait change that may point to how personality changes across the lifespan. In this study, we examined whether the properties of idiographic personality networks were related to between-person personality trait changes in a sample of college students (N = 418). We used dynamic exploratory graph analysis to construct N = 1 personality networks and then included network parameters in multilevel growth models over a 2-year period using self- and informant-report data. We found that network parameters were largely unrelated to between-person change for self-reports but were related to some informant-reports. Discussion revolves around continuing to bridge the two approaches together to create a holistic picture of personality change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Structural racism has become a household term used in the media and in everyday conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Despite increased discussion of structural racism, people often struggle to understand how structural racism is perpetuated by individuals. We integrate research on moral psychology, social cognition, and intergroup relations to investigate whether structural explanations can lead to reduced perceptions of responsibility and punishment for managers who engage in discriminatory hiring decisions. A field study of health care system employees who perceived discriminatory hiring as originating from structural factors (vs. individual factors) were less likely to hold the hiring manager accountable (Study 1). Explaining discriminatory hiring to participants as due to structural factors (vs. a no-information control condition; Studies 2a, 2b, 2c, and 3) decreased desires to hold the hiring manager accountable. We found evidence that this lessened accountability was due to participants' simultaneous perceptions that the hiring manager was less responsible for the lack of diversity and did not intend to discriminate under a structural racism explanation. However, when the relationship between individual and structural racism was explained, participants were more likely to hold perpetrators of discrimination accountable while allowing for crucial discussions around structural racism (Study 4). This work suggests that Americans may lack a deep understanding of the complexities surrounding structural racism, and that the connections between individuals and structural racism must be explained in order to motivate people to hold perpetrators of discrimination accountable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Widespread narratives about leadership often emphasize the importance of exhibiting agentic traits like assertiveness, ambition, and confidence. Counter to this perspective, the present research suggests that when evaluating leaders, followers especially value communal traits, such as honesty, open-mindedness, and compassion-even at the expense of agentic traits. Eight preregistered studies (N = 3,682) support our theorizing. In Study 1, we find that people describe their ideal leader as more communal than the typical leader, representing a divide between preferred versus prototypical leaders. We then examine the preference for communality in leaders at the trait level (Studies 2 and 3) and in evaluations of candidates for leadership positions (Studies 4a-5). Further, we find that followers' preference for communal leaders is explained, in part, by the anticipation that a communal leader will create a more psychologically safe climate than an agentic leader (Study 6). Finally, we evince one reason communal leaders may not emerge-communality does not predict self-selection into leadership pathways (Study 7). Taken together, our findings suggest that prominent narratives about leadership have tended to downplay the importance and appeal of communal traits for followers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Why do people not perceive their close others accurately, although they have ample information about them? We propose that one reason for such errors may be bias based on personal values. Personal values may serve as schemas defining what people see as positive, and thus affect perceptions of others' behavior, values, and traits. We propose that, in close relationships, people see others as sharing their own values. Six studies (N = 2,225; four preregistered analyses and one preregistered study) tested this bias. Perceivers reported their personal values and the perceived values, behaviors, or traits of a close other (target), while the target also reported on the same values, behaviors, or traits. Personal values significantly and positively related to perception of close others' values and behaviors, while controlling for the real targets' value/behavior. Results were replicated for spouses, romantic partners, children, parents, and friends. Some evidence also supports the idea that the bias is stronger for relationships of better quality. Implications for relationship quality are discussed, as well as implications for the adaptive properties of this bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

People who are higher in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness and lower in neuroticism tend to live longer. The present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in middle and older adulthood would also be associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. Personality trait change may causally influence mortality risk through corresponding changes in health behaviors, social processes, and stress experience. Alternatively, personality trait change may be a marker of successful or unsuccessful adaptation to life circumstances, which in turn influences mortality risk, or shared risk factors may impact personality trait change and mortality risk. In the latter case, personality trait change may serve as a "psychosocial vital sign" pointing toward increased risk. In 11 samples of middle-aged and older adults (combined N = 32,348), we used multilevel growth curve models to estimate personality trait level and personality trait change across three to 11 measurement occasions spanning 6-43 years. Next, we used Cox proportional hazards models to test whether personality trait level and personality trait change were associated with mortality risk. Higher conscientiousness (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.83), extraversion (HR = 0.93), and agreeableness (HR = 0.88) were associated with longer survival while higher neuroticism was associated with shorter survival (HR = 1.22). In contrast to personality trait level, we found limited evidence for associations between personality trait change and mortality risk. We discuss conceptual and methodological implications of the present findings that may guide future research on associations between personality trait change, health, and mortality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Are people better at recognizing individuals of more relevant groups, such as ingroup compared to outgroup members or high-status compared to low-status individuals? Previous studies that associated faces with group information found a robust effect of group on face recognition but only tested it using the same images presented during the learning phase. They therefore cannot tell whether group information enhances encoding of the specific image presented during learning or encoding of the person who appears in it, which should generalize to other images of that person. In addition, the measures used in these studies do not sufficiently distinguish between sensitivity and response bias. In this article, we addressed these limitations and examined in three experiments the effect of group membership (Experiments 1 and 2) and social status (Experiment 3) on face recognition. In all experiments, we assessed recognition of both learned and unlearned views of the learned faces. Our results show improved recognition of ingroup members compared to outgroup members and of individuals of high-status groups compared to low-status groups for both learned and unlearned views. These effects emerged also when we used measures of memory accuracy that adequately control for response bias. These findings highlight the importance of group and status information in person recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Women are widely assumed to be more talkative than men. Challenging this assumption, Mehl et al. (2007) provided empirical evidence that men and women do not differ significantly in their daily word use, speaking about 16,000 words per day (WPD) each. However, concerns were raised that their sample was too small to yield generalizable estimates and too age and context homogeneous to permit inferences beyond college students. This registered report replicated and extended the previous study of binary gender differences in daily word use to address these concerns. Across 2,197 participants (more than five-fold the original sample size), pooled over 22 samples (631,030 ambient audio recordings), men spoke on average 11,950 WPD and women 13,349 WPD, with very large individual differences (< 100 to > 120,000 WPD). The estimated gender difference (1,073 WPD; d = 0.13; 95% CrI [316, 1,824]) was about twice as large as in the original study. Smaller differences emerged among adolescent (513 WPD), emerging adult (841 WPD), and older adult (-788 WPD) participants, but a substantially larger difference emerged for participants in early and middle adulthood (3,275 WPD; d = 0.32). Despite the considerable sample size(s), all estimates carried large statistical uncertainty and, except for the gender difference in early and middle adulthood, provide inconclusive evidence regarding whether the two genders ultimately speak a practically equivalent number of WPD, based on the preregistered ± 1,000 WPD regions of practical equivalence criterion. Experienced stress had no meaningful effect on the gender difference, and no clear pattern emerged as to whether the gender difference is accentuated for subjectively rated compared with objectively observed talkativeness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).