Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin最新文献

People erroneously think that things they know little about improve over time. We propose that, due to salient cultural narratives, improvement is a highly accessible expectation that leads people to presume improvement in the absence of diagnostic information. Five studies investigated an improvement default: a general tendency to presume improvement even in self-irrelevant domains. Participants erroneously presumed improvement over esoteric historical time periods associated with decline (Study 1). Participants arranged a stranger's experiences to produce trends of improvement (Study 2). Participants presumed improvement for a fictional city when given no diagnostic information about it (Study 3). Finally, participants who perceived more past improvement were less supportive of policies that may precipitate further improvement (Study 4). Implications for consequences, such as complacency toward improving inequality, are discussed.

Since the onset of COVID-19, a rise in loneliness has raised concerns about the social impact of lockdowns and distancing mandates. Yet, to date, the effects of the pandemic on social networks have been studied only indirectly. To evaluate how the pandemic affected social networks, the current analyses analyzed five waves of detailed social network interviews conducted before and during the first 18 months of the pandemic in a sample especially vulnerable to contracting the virus: mostly non-White couples (243 husbands and 250 wives) recruited from lower income neighborhoods. Pre-COVID interviews asked spouses to name 24 individuals with whom they interact regularly. Post-COVID interviews indicated a nearly 50% decline in face-to-face interactions and a nearly 40% decline in virtual interactions, with little recovery over the first 18 months of the pandemic. Compared with less affluent couples, those with higher incomes maintained more of their network relationships, especially when virtual interactions were taken into account.

Do narcissists enjoy better or worse wellbeing than others? Psychological theories disagree. In an attempt to reconcile them, we conducted a comprehensive cross-cultural meta-analysis testing the core hypotheses that grandiose narcissism would be associated with better wellbeing and vulnerable narcissism with worse wellbeing. We also hypothesized that these associations would be explained by self-esteem and would be stronger in countries higher on individualism. First, as hypothesized, grandiose narcissism was associated with better wellbeing and vulnerable narcissism with worse wellbeing. Second, as hypothesized, both associations became nonsignificant after controlling for self-esteem, suggesting that they are explained by self-esteem. Third, partly as hypothesized, the association between grandiose-but not vulnerable-narcissism and wellbeing was stronger in more individualistic countries. Results held across wellbeing forms (hedonic, eudaimonic) and methods (cross-sectional, longitudinal). Advancing psychological theory, we demonstrated that only grandiose narcissists enjoy better wellbeing, especially in individualistic countries, a phenomenon accounted for by their higher self-esteem.

Replicating psychological research has become a central concern for psychologists. Although attention has been paid to the possibility of heterogeneous populations driving replication success/failure, the heterogeneous recruitment strategies researchers use to draw samples from those populations are often overlooked. Yet recruitment strategies may bias the participants who show up and shape replication results. We examine this idea through several unique paradigms (sampling North American university students, N_total = 1,009). First, subtle manipulations of recruitment strategies (i.e., mentioning cash, expedient credit, fun, or a study narrative) were differentially appealing to individuals varying on experiential versus reward-based motivations (Experiment 1). Second, employing different recruitment strategies biased the motivational styles of actual participant show-ups, and sometimes even shaped the success of several replication studies (Experiment 2-3). We conclude that recruitment strategies may sometimes alter the degree of successful replication.

Despite extensive research, the relationship between income inequality and life satisfaction remains unclear, with some countries experiencing negative consequences, while others show neutral or positive outcomes. Using data from the Gallup World Poll (2006-2022) with nearly two million respondents from more than 110 countries, we disentangle the distinct within-country and between-country effects of inequality. Our multilevel analyses reveal a significant within-country effect: Temporal increases in inequality are associated with decreases in life satisfaction. At the between-country level, power distance-a cultural dimension reflecting tolerance for social disparities-moderates the relationship. In low power distance countries, higher inequality strongly predicts lower life satisfaction, whereas in high power distance countries, the effect is nonsignificant. These findings are robust across two measures of income inequality and controls for wealth and individualism, offering a refined methodological and cultural interpretation to resolve inconsistencies in prior cross-national research.

While loneliness may motivate individuals to approach others, it may simultaneously increase their focus on self-preservation, resulting in egocentric behavior. Since the evidence linking loneliness and prosociality is inconclusive, the current meta-analysis aims to explore this relationship. Through a systematic search of databases, we identified 35 studies involving 44,764 participants. A small effect size for a negative correlation between loneliness and prosociality (r = -0.12, 95% CI: [-0.19, -0.05]) was found using the random effects model. The effect was not moderated by participants' sociodemographic characteristics or the WEIRDness of the sample but differed between types of measurement and forms of prosocial behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the processes perpetuating the link between loneliness and decreased prosociality, as this tendency may pose difficulties in restoring social connections, cooperating with others, or aiming for common goals.

We explore the relationship between self-concept clarity (SCC), scarcity perceptions, and the associated behavioral consequences. While scarcity perceptions are often linked to experiences and considerations of resource constraints, our research suggests that low SCC can induce such perceptions and decrease prosocial behavior. With six studies, we demonstrated that low SCC triggers scarcity perceptions (Studies 1A to 4B), which is mediated by increased social comparison orientation (Studies 2 to 4B). Furthermore, we found that the scarcity perceptions increased by low SCC further predict individuals' low inclination to engage in prosocial behaviors (Studies 3 to 4B). By establishing a link between SCC and scarcity perceptions, our research departs from the traditional focus on resource constraints, broadens the factors that induce scarcity perceptions, and extends our understanding of the societal implications of low SCC.

Is the certainty of saving a life today worth more than the less-certain possibility of saving 10 lives tomorrow? In six pre-registered studies with U.S. samples from Prolific (N = 5,095), we employed an intergenerational probability discounting task, discovering people discount the value of life as uncertainty and intergenerational distance from the present increase. Specifically, as uncertainty about impacting the future rises, individuals increasingly prioritize saving fewer present lives over more future lives, particularly for more distant future beneficiaries (Studies 1-2b). Experimental evidence (Studies 3a-4) suggests that certainty perceptions drive intergenerational concern, rather than the inverse. Drawing upon seminal research from cognitive science and behavioral economics, these findings address gaps in emerging social psychological inquiry into long-term intergenerational concern, shed light on mechanisms underlying debates on the ethical philosophy of longtermism, and highlight practical implications for decision-makers, stressing the need to increase certainty perceptions surrounding about pro-future actions to enhance intergenerational beneficence.

Understanding the factors that explain why some people are more likely to enlist in military service is an important endeavor for any nation that depends upon a voluntary military force. Three studies investigated the role of honor culture in military service. These studies assessed statewide differences in military enlistment rates (Study 1), individual differences in honor endorsement between military personnel and civilians (Study 2), and associations between honor endorsement and facets of military identification in a sample of active-duty Army personnel (Study 3). Results showed that honor was strongly and consistently associated with military service, independent of a wide range of potential confounds (e.g., economic precariousness, rurality, gender, age, and military rank). This research extends previous studies on the honor-military service link and has potentially important implications for military recruitment strategies and for our understanding of why military service might be a risk factor for subsequent mental health problems.

The second coming of the Ku Klux Klan popularized the Klan and its ideas in the early 1920s, terrorizing Black American, their allies, and others deemed un-American. This article investigates the extent to which the cultural legacy of racial hatred of the Klan has persisted over the years. We use data from large online databases, multiverse analyses, and spatial models to evaluate whether regions with more historical Klan activity show higher levels of modern-day racial bias, and more modern-day White Supremacist activity. We find that regions with more Ku Klux Klan activity in the 1920s show higher levels of modern White Supremacist activity but, unexpectedly, lower levels of modern implicit and explicit racial bias. We discuss the implications of these findings for models linking historical events with present-day attitudes and behavior, and for situational models of bias more broadly.