Psychological Science最新文献

What are the risky choices people face in our complex and fast-changing world? This article reports on a series of population surveys in Switzerland (N = 4,380) that collected those risky choices that are relevant in people's everyday lives. Using this empirical basis, we developed an inventory consisting of 100 unique real-life choices to address open questions regarding the structure, life domains, and stability of the current ecology of risk. Moreover, a follow-up study (N = 933) indicated some degree of generalizability of the construct of risk preference to the newly identified real-life choices. The five key insights that emerged from our analyses may be useful for researchers studying decision-making under risk and uncertainty (e.g., what criteria to use when developing novel measurement instruments) and policymaking in applied settings (e.g., addressing how swiftly the risks of modern life change).

Recent research suggests that failure undermines learning: People learn less from failure (vs. success) because failure is ego-threatening and causes people to tune out. I argue that the core paradigm (the Script Task) provides a confounded test of that claim. When people do not learn from test feedback, they may give internally consistent answers on a subsequent test. The Script Task's scoring guidelines mark consistent answers as correct following success but incorrect following failure. As a result, differences in performance between conditions may result from equivalent learning combined with consistent responding when people do not learn. A descriptive mathematical model shows that lower performance alone is insufficient to conclude that people learn less. An experiment with U.S. Amazon Mechanical Turk workers demonstrates that a retroactive manipulation without feedback replicates the effect. Because the effect of failure on performance is confounded with consistency, the Script Task is not diagnostic regarding whether people learn less from failure unless consistency is ruled out.

To navigate complex physical environments, animals keep track of the spatial relations among objects using various reference frames, both body-based (e.g., left/right) and environment-based (e.g., east/west), but how these spatial representations interact remains unresolved. Whereas neuroscientific findings show habitual integration across reference frames, psycholinguistic accounts suggest humans use one reference frame at a time, as in speech. This article examines whether people spontaneously use two reference frames in the same action. When placing a single object in a two-dimensional array, adult participants (N = 110) routinely used an environment-based frame to determine the object's left-right position while using a body-based frame to determine its front-back position at the same time. Such hybrid responses were prevalent among both Indigenous Tsimane' and educated U.S. participants, suggesting that people across cultures habitually construct compound cognitive maps to represent the multidimensional spatial relations that compose natural settings.

Recognition memory refers to the process of distinguishing between previously experienced and novel events. Apart from the objective quality of stored memories, recognition depends on the retrieval context produced by all items (foils) presented together with actually memorized targets and causing confusion. Memory models often conceptualize target-foil confusability via distances in psychological spaces where greater confusability originates from shorter interitem distances. We tested whether recognition spaces change when other foils are added to the retrieval context or when target memory strength is changed (N = 1,311 adults). Using signal-detection modeling, we found that separately measured distances, d 's, from each foil to the target provide a good linear prediction of those distances for all foils being presented together against that target. Those predictions stay accurate even when the absolute distances are scaled up or down because of a change in memory strength. This suggests strong metric invariance of spaces used for recognition decisions under variable retrieval contexts.

Assortative mating-the tendency to choose partners similar to oneself-is a ubiquitous phenomenon in mate choice. Despite numerous proposed explanations, a parsimonious mechanism has been overlooked: When individuals choose mates on the basis of heritable traits and preferences, offspring inherit a trait and the corresponding preference from each parent, creating genetic correlations that link having a trait to preferring that same trait. We evaluated this mechanism with an agent-based model simulating 100 generations in which agents, with traits and preferences each uniquely determined by 40 loci, chose reproductive partners based on preferences. Genetic correlations formed between preferences and preferred traits, as well as between partner traits (i.e., assortative mating), demonstrating that heritable variation in preferences and preferred traits is sufficient to drive assortative mating. We presented a toy model here, so we cannot speak to the robustness of such genetic correlations or to the relative explanatory power of this mechanism over others.

Research on interpersonal relationships frequently relies on accurate self-reporting across various relationship facets (e.g., conflict, trust, appreciation). Yet shared method biases-which may greatly inflate associations between measures-are rarely accounted for during measurement validation or hypothesis testing. To examine how method biases can affect relationship research, we embarked on the ironic exploration of a new construct-Pseudo-comprised of irrelevant relationship evaluations (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn"). Pseudo was moderately associated with common relationship measures (e.g., satisfaction, commitment) and predicted those measures 3 weeks later. Results of a dyadic longitudinal study suggested that Pseudo taps into method biases, particularly sentiment override (i.e., people's tendency to project their global relationship sentiments onto every relationship evaluation). We conclude that psychometric standards must be sufficiently rigorous to distinguish genuine constructs and associations from methodological artifacts that can otherwise pose a serious validity threat.

This study examined the sequence and timing of sexual identity development (SID) milestones among Generation Z LGBTQ+ Australians, focusing on variations across subgroups and their relationship with minority stressors. The study included 490 Australian LGBTQ+ individuals aged 16 to 26, predominantly White (n = 389) and assigned female at birth (n = 402), with a balanced distribution between cisgender and gender-diverse participants. Demographic differences in the timing and achievement of SID milestones were found for sexual and gender identity. Latent profile analysis identified four distinct profiles, highlighting identity-centered and sex-centered sequences. Differences in rejection sensitivity, emotion dysregulation, and self-acceptance of sexual identity were noted across these profiles, but not for internalized homonegativity. Our findings indicate that SID trajectories do not strictly conform to discrete sexual or gender identity categories. The cross-sectional design limits causality inference, and findings are not generalizable to all LGBTQ+ young people or Generation Z more broadly.

The idea that some people completely lack inner speech is of both scientific and popular interest. In a recent study, Nedergaard and Lupyan compared self-reporting high and low inner-speech-prevalence groups and found that participants in the low-prevalence group performed worse on a verbal working memory test and responded more slowly and less accurately during rhyme judgments. These results represent an original contribution to the study of inner speech. However, the authors go on to draw the unfounded conclusion that their findings, together with previous empirical and anecdotal data, show that some people have no inner speech at all. They have coined the term anendophasia for this trait. This commentary examines Nedergaard and Lupyan's claim of demonstrated anendophasia; I conclude they present no compelling evidence that some individuals lack inner speech.

Valuing the welfare of others is a fundamental aspect of empathy and prosocial behavior. How do people develop this valuation? Theories of associative learning suggest that people can associate social cues, such as smiles, with personal reward, thus feeling good when others thrive. Yet people often display generalized concern for others' welfare, regardless of the specific cues present. We propose that Pavlovian conditioning allows people to associate reward directly with others' abstract mental states, learning that another's happiness predicts their own reward. In four online experiments with 1,500 U.S.-based adults recruited from CloudResearch, participants' monetary outcomes were congruently or incongruently predicted by a target's mental states. Participants who experienced congruent learning reported more empathic feelings toward the target in novel situations. The values attached to mental states further influenced participants' prosocial choices. These results demonstrate how associative learning of abstract mental states can give rise to generalizable empathy and influence moral behavior.

Overconfidence is thought to be a fundamental cognitive bias, but it is typically studied in environments where people lack accurate information about their abilities. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment and replication to learn whether overconfidence persists among tournament chess players who receive objective, precise, and public feedback about their skill. Our combined sample comprised 3,388 rated players aged 5 to 88 years from 22 countries with an average of 18.8 years of tournament experience. On average, participants asserted that their ability was 89 Elo rating points higher than their observed ratings indicated-expecting to outscore an equally rated opponent by nearly 2 to 1. One year later, only 11.3% of overconfident players achieved their asserted ability rating. Low-rated players overestimated their skill the most, and top-rated players were calibrated. Patterns consistent with overconfidence emerged in every sociodemographic subgroup we studied. We conclude that overconfidence persists in tournament chess, a real-world information environment that should be inhospitable to it.