Psychological Science最新文献

Scholars have extolled the virtues of rationality for centuries while also debating what rationality is and who is rational. Advancing these debates, we used word embeddings trained on 840 billion words of internet text-and validated with Prolific workers in the United States-to uncover the representation, group stereotypes, and occupational correlates of rationality at scale in naturalistic language. Four results emerged. First, rather than being synonymous with competence, representations of rationality included both an analytic/logic component and an interpersonal/trust component. Second, irrationality was not merely the opposite of rationality but contained its own unique subcomponents (volatility and unfairness). Third, rationality was consistently ascribed to high-power targets across 66 social groups. Last, rationality (especially its analytic component) was consistently associated with both earnings and wage gaps across 101 occupations. Associations with demographic representation were less consistent. Complementing normative approaches, these descriptive findings advance canonical debates about rationality, extending understanding of its components, stereotypes, and correlates.

Effective learning involves not only the ability to quickly acquire knowledge and skills, but also the capacity to accurately monitor one's ongoing learning progress. The present research probed the relation between learning ability and monitoring accuracy. A meta-analysis (Study 1, N = 2,406) counterintuitively found that individuals with superior learning ability exhibited slightly poorer monitoring accuracy (measured as the resolution of judgments of learning). Study 2 reanalyzed the meta-analysis data and observed that expert learners remembered more items they erroneously believed they would not remember, and this underconfidence in expert learners led to a negative association between learning ability and monitoring accuracy. Studies 3 (N = 102, adults aged 18-23) and 4 (N = 481, adults aged 18-59) conceptually replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 in controlled experiments. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that good learners are also good monitors, suggesting instead that expert learners are actually the ones with monitoring deficits.

In seven studies, we investigated how reporting partial vote counts influences perceptions of election legitimacy. Beliefs in election fraud, as in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, may be fueled by the cumulative redundancy bias (CRB), which skews perceptions toward early leaders in partial vote counts. In line with this prediction, participants (Prolific adult participants from the United States and the United Kingdom) consistently rated early leaders more favorably and were more likely to suspect fraud when the eventual winner gained a late lead. This effect persisted across simulated elections (Studies 1-3) and real-world vote counts from the 2020 election in Georgia (Study 4). It is important to note that fraud suspicions already arose before the count was completed (Study 5) and persisted despite explanatory interventions (Study 6). Partisanship did not eliminate the CRB's influence on fraud beliefs (Study 7). Our findings suggest that the sequential reporting of vote counts may amplify false perceptions of election fraud and could be mitigated by revising how results are communicated.

Although over 8 million Native peoples live in the United States, American culture is infused with representations depicting them as people of the past (i.e., the Native-past stereotype). Four studies (total N = 38,009 non-Native American adults who voluntarily visited the Project Implicit website) examined the prevalence of the implicit Native-past stereotype among non-Native individuals and whether this stereotype predicted lower support for Native equity. We developed a Native-past Implicit Association Test to index the implicit Native-past stereotype and document the extent to which people associate Native peoples (vs. White Americans) with the past (vs. the present). Results showed that over two-thirds of non-Native participants demonstrated at least slight implicit Native-past associations (Cohen's ds > 0.41). Moreover, stronger Native-past associations predicted greater minimization of contemporary Native racism and, subsequently, lower support for policies designed to advance Native equity. This work suggests that the prevalent Native-past stereotype may harm many aspects of contemporary Native peoples' lived experiences.

Gender differences in occupational interests are often assumed to reflect sex differences in empathizing or systemizing preferences. Do such essentialized explanations lead people to provide gender-biased learning affordances that constrain women's career interests? In Study 1 (N = 292), North American STEM professionals endorsing a biologically essentialized (vs. sociocultural) explanation for gender differences in occupational interests provided women (men) with more empathizing (systemizing) learning affordances in a mock management task. Study 2 replicated these gendered affordances by experimentally manipulating essentialized explanations (N = 379; participants were North American men with management experience in male-dominated fields). In Study 3, North American undergraduate women (N = 300) who received gendered learning affordances reported greater interest in, and possible alignment with, empathizing work assignments, whereas those who received countergendered affordances reported greater interest in, and possible alignment with, systemizing assignments. These results reveal that gender-essentialist beliefs can foster self-fulfilling gender gaps in occupational interests.

Goal setting is only somewhat more common than the failure to follow through on one's goals. Recognizing the challenge of long-term behavior change, we asked what best predicts long-term goal adherence: extrinsic motivation (the extent to which goal pursuit is experienced as a means to an end) or intrinsic motivation (the extent to which the same goal pursuit is experienced as an end in itself). In a year-long longitudinal study, U.S. adults set extrinsic New Year's resolutions, but intrinsic motivation predicted adherence to these goals more than extrinsic motivation (Study 1). These findings emerged among adults in China (Study 2) and when measuring goal adherence objectively using the number of steps U.S. adults walked over 2 weeks (Study 3). Understanding how intrinsic motivation affects long-term persistence critically informs interventions that promote goal pursuit. Indeed, increasing intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivation increased U.S. adults' goal adherence (Study 4). Overall, intrinsic motivation both predicted and causally increased goal adherence.

In later older adulthood, individuals report increased depressive symptoms, whereas gender differences in depressive symptoms narrow. We evaluated whether terminal decline (i.e., accelerated worsening in proximity to death) explained these patterns. We examined the longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms in 2,411 participants (baseline age: 29-95 years) from the Interplay of Genes and Environments Across Multiple Studies consortium representing three countries (Sweden, Denmark, and Australia). Joint modeling revealed that individuals reporting larger annual increases in depressive symptoms after age 70 were at increased risk of death. Piecewise linear multilevel models with random changepoints revealed accelerated increases in depressive symptoms approximately 4 years before death. Co-twin control analyses with 98 twin pairs found that the deceased twin had significantly larger accelerations in depressive symptoms compared with the surviving twin. Men experienced more severe mortality-related increases compared with women. Terminal decline partially explains the increase in depressive symptoms in later older adulthood.

With more opportunities for diverse interactions, little is known about how social interactions involving people of different socioeconomic status (SES) may unfold. We investigated social-attunement patterns in dyadic interactions involving SES. Unacquainted adults recruited from a community in the United States interacted with similar-or-different-SES partners in the lab (N = 130 dyads). Attunement was assessed throughout the interaction by examining physiological linkage-how much a person's physiological change is predicted by another's physiological change over time. Overall, low-SES participants showed stronger physiological linkage-indicating greater attunement-to partners across SES. Participants also appeared more comfortable when interacting with low-SES partners. There were no SES differences in dominance during the conversation. After the interaction, participants reported liking similar-SES partners more than different-SES partners. These patterns suggest that during interactions, lower-SES individuals are more other-focused than high-SES individuals, and in-group preference prevails. We note limitations in the racial representation of our sample.

People often protect public goods by sanctioning free riders. This occurs in simple situations in which protecting the public good does not conflict with other moral considerations. How do people navigate situations in which protecting the public good comes at the expense of helping someone? We theorized that people would prioritize the needs of the public or another individual on the basis of the individual's group membership. To test this theory, we conducted a field experiment with male confederates approaching adult male travelers passing through check-in gates at Dutch train stations. The confederates requested to follow the travelers without checking in themselves. We observed whether travelers sanctioned the free rider by rejecting and disapproving of this request or helped by opening the gates. At three train stations, 801 travelers were approached by 10 different confederates. Group membership was varied by having five native-majority and five ethnic-minority confederates. Robust evidence was found for travelers being more likely to help native-majority free riders and to sanction ethnic-minority free riders.