Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin最新文献

Individuals tend to hold a dim view of for-profit corporations, believing that profit-seeking comes at the expense of ethicality. In the present research, we show that this belief is not universal; rather, people associate ethicality with an organization's size. Across nine experiments (N = 4,796), people stereotyped large companies as less ethical than small companies. This size-ethicality stereotype emerged spontaneously (Study 1), implicitly (Study 2), and across industries (Study 3). Moreover, we find this stereotype can be partly explained by perceptions of profit-seeking behavior (Supplementary Studies A and B), and that people construe profit-seeking and its relationship to ethicality differently when considering large and small companies (Study 4). People attribute greater profit-maximizing motives (relative to profit-satisficing motives) to large companies, and these attributions shape their subsequent judgments of ethicality (Study 5; Supplementary Studies C and D).

Although measures of implicit associations are influential in the prejudice literature, comparative tests of the predictive power of these measures are lacking. A large-scale (N > 100,000) analysis of four commonly used measures-the Implicit Association Test (IAT), Single-Category IAT (SC-IAT), evaluative priming task (EPT), and sorting paired features task (SPF)-across 10 intergroup domains and 250 outcomes found clear evidence for the superiority of the SC-IAT in predictive and incremental predictive validity. Follow-up analyses suggested that the SC-IAT benefited from an exclusive focus on associations toward stigmatized group members, as associations toward non-stigmatized group members diluted the predictive strength of relative measures like the IAT, SPF, and EPT. These results highlight how conclusions about predictive validity can vary drastically depending on the measure selected and reveal novel insights about the value of different measures when focusing on predictive than convergent validity.

Many measures have been developed to index intuitive versus analytic thinking. Yet it remains an open question whether people primarily vary along a single dimension or if there are genuinely different types of thinking styles. We distinguish between four distinct types of thinking styles: Actively Open-minded Thinking, Close-Minded Thinking, Preference for Intuitive Thinking, and Preference for Effortful Thinking. We discovered strong predictive validity across several outcome measures (e.g., epistemically suspect beliefs, bullshit receptivity, empathy, moral judgments), with some subscales having stronger predictive validity for some outcomes but not others. Furthermore, Actively Open-minded Thinking, in particular, strongly outperformed the Cognitive Reflection Test in predicting misperceptions about COVID-19 and the ability to discern between vaccination-related true and false news. Our results indicate that people do, in fact, differ along multiple dimensions of intuitive-analytic thinking styles and that these dimensions have consequences for understanding a wide range of beliefs and behaviors.

Social pain, defined as distress caused by negative interpersonal experiences (e.g., ostracism, mistreatment), is detrimental to health. Yet, it is unclear how social class might shape judgments of the social pains of low-socioeconomic status (SES) and high-SES individuals. Five studies tested competing toughness and empathy predictions for SES's effect on social pain judgments. Consistent with an empathy account, in all studies (N_cumulative = 1,046), low-SES White targets were judged more sensitive to social pain than high-SES White targets. Further, empathy mediated these effects, such that participants felt greater empathy and expected more social pain for low-SES targets relative to high-SES targets. Social pain judgments also informed judgments of social support needs, as low-SES targets were presumed to need more coping resources to manage hurtful events than high-SES targets. The current findings provide initial evidence that empathic concern for low-SES White individuals sensitizes social pain judgments and increases expected support needs for lower class White individuals.

Greed, the insatiable and excessive desire and striving for more even at the expense of others, may be directed toward various goods. In this article, we propose that greed may be conceptualized as a domain-specific construct. Based on a literature review and an expert survey, we identified 10 domains of greed which we operationalized with the DOmain-SPEcific Greed (DOSPEG) questionnaire. In Study 1 (N = 725), we found support for the proposed structure and convergent validity with related constructs. Bifactor-(S-1) models revealed that generic greed is differentially related to the greed domains, indicating that generic greed primarily captures a striving for money and material things. In the second study (N = 591), we found that greed domains had incremental validity beyond generic greed with regard to corresponding criteria assessed via self- and other-reports. We conclude that greed can be conceptualized as a domain-specific construct and propose an onion model reflecting this structure.

The amount of effort required to bring about a prosocial outcome can vary from low-handing a stranger the wallet she just dropped-to high-spending days tracking down the owner of a lost wallet. The goal of the current research is to characterize the relationship between prosocial effort and moral character judgments. Does more prosocial effort always lead to rosier moral character judgments? Across four studies (N = 1,658), we find that moral character judgments increase with prosocial effort to a point and then plateau. We find evidence that this pattern is produced, in part, by descriptive and prescriptive norms: exceeding descriptive norms increases moral character judgments, but exceeding prescriptive norms has the opposite effect, which leads to a tapering off of moral character judgments at higher levels of effort.

We test the hypothesis that the perception of stability in one's self-concept (i.e., future self-continuity) enables the experience of meaning in life because perceiving a stable sense of self confers a sense of certainty to the self-concept. Study 1 provided initial evidence of the influence of future self-continuity on feelings of meaning in life (MIL) in a nationally representative sample. In Studies 2a and 2b, we manipulated future self-continuity by varying the expectedness of one's future self, demonstrating the causal influence of future self-continuity on self-certainty and feelings of MIL. Study 3 again manipulated future self-continuity, finding an indirect effect on feelings of meaning in life via self-certainty. Our findings thus suggest the experience of meaning in life arises from the perception of a stable sense of self. We discuss the implications for the antecedents and conceptualization of MIL as well as the nature of the self-concept.

Face individuation involves sensitivity to physical characteristics that provide information about identity. We examined whether Black and White American faces differ in terms of individuating information, and whether Black and White perceivers differentially weight information when judging same-race and cross-race faces. Study 1 analyzed 20 structural metrics (e.g., eye width, nose length) of 158 Black and White faces to determine which differentiate faces within each group. High-utility metrics (e.g., nose length, eye height, chin length) differentiated faces of both groups, low-utility metrics (e.g., face width, eye width, face length) offered less individuating information. Study 2 (N = 4,510) explored Black and White participants' sensitivity to variation on structural metrics using similarity ratings. High-utility metrics affected perceived dissimilarity more than low-utility metrics. This relationship was non-significantly stronger for same-race faces rather than cross-race faces. Perceivers also relied more on features that were racially stereotypic of the faces they were rating.

We propose that awe has multifaceted relations with existential isolation, a feeling of separation between the self and others or the world. Three studies examined the relation between awe and existential isolation via feelings of small self (vastness, self-size, self-perspectives) and a sense of connectedness. Awe (vs. a control topic) was induced either using virtual reality (Study 1) or a recall task (Studies 2 and 3) and was indirectly associated with higher and lower levels of existential isolation through differing pathways. Awe was associated with lower feelings of existential isolation via an increased sense of vastness, which in turn predicted greater connectedness; whereas awe was associated with higher feelings of existential isolation via increased sense of feeling small, which in turn predicted lower connectedness. This work advances understanding of the complex nature of awe-revealing its competing effects on the self and the social connectedness pathways through which awe can influence existential isolation.

Producers and creators often receive assistance with work from other people. Increasingly, algorithms can provide similar assistance. When algorithms assist or augment producers, does this change individuals' willingness to assign credit to those producers? Across four studies spanning several domains (e.g., painting, construction, sports analytics, and entrepreneurship), we find evidence that producers receive more credit for work when they are assisted by algorithms, compared with humans. We also find that individuals assume algorithmic assistance requires more producer oversight than human assistance does, a mechanism that explains these higher attributions of credit (Studies 1-3). The greater credit individuals assign to producers assisted by algorithms (vs. other people) also manifests itself in increased support for those producers' entrepreneurial endeavors (Study 4). As algorithms proliferate, norms of credit and authorship are likely changing, precipitating a variety of economic and social consequences.