Psychological Science最新文献

Gender diversity signals inclusivity, but meta-analyses suggest that it does not boost individual or group performance. This research examined whether a social-psychological intervention can unlock the benefits of gender diversity on college physics students' social and academic outcomes. Analyses of 124 introductory physics classrooms at a large research institution in the eastern United States (N = 3,605) indicated that in classrooms doing "business as usual," cross-gender collaboration was infrequent, there was a substantial gender gap in physics classroom belonging, and classroom gender diversity had no effect on performance. The ecological-belonging intervention aimed to establish classroom norms that adversity in the course is normal and surmountable. In classrooms receiving the intervention, cross-gender interaction increased 51%, the gender gap in belonging was reduced by 47%, and higher classroom diversity was associated with higher course grades and 1-year grade point average for both men and women. Addressing contextual belongingness norms may help to unlock the benefits of diversity.

Excessively criticizing a perceived unfair decision is considered to be common behavior among people seeking to restore fairness. However, the effectiveness of this strategy remains unclear. Using an ecological environment where excessive criticism is rampant-Major League Baseball-we assess the impact of verbal aggression on subsequent home-plate umpire decision making during the 2010 to 2019 seasons (N = 153,255 pitches). Results suggest a two-sided benefit of resorting to verbal abuse. After being excessively criticized, home-plate umpires (N = 110 adults, employed in the United States) were less likely to call strikes to batters from the complaining team and more prone to call strikes to batters on the opposing team. A series of additional analyses lead us to reject an alternative hypothesis, namely that umpires, after ejecting the aggressor, seek to compensate for the negative consequences brought on by the loss of a teammate. Rather, our findings support the hypothesis that, under certain conditions, verbal aggression may offer an advantage to complainants.

Fundamental frequency ( f_o) is the most perceptually salient vocal acoustic parameter, yet little is known about how its perceptual influence varies across societies. We examined how f_o affects key social perceptions and how socioecological variables modulate these effects in 2,647 adult listeners sampled from 44 locations across 22 nations. Low male f_o increased men's perceptions of formidability and prestige, especially in societies with higher homicide rates and greater relational mobility in which male intrasexual competition may be more intense and rapid identification of high-status competitors may be exigent. High female f_o increased women's perceptions of flirtatiousness where relational mobility was lower and threats to mating relationships may be greater. These results indicate that the influence of f_o on social perceptions depends on socioecological variables, including those related to competition for status and mates.

What makes faces seem trustworthy? We investigated how racial prejudice predicts the extent to which perceivers employ racially prototypical cues to infer trustworthiness from faces. We constructed participant-level computational models of trustworthiness and White-to-Black prototypicality from U.S. college students' judgments of White (Study 1, N = 206) and Black-White morphed (Study 3, N = 386) synthetic faces. Although the average relationships between models differed across stimuli, both studies revealed that as participants' anti-Black prejudice increased and/or intergroup contact decreased, so too did participants' tendency to conflate White prototypical features with trustworthiness and Black prototypical features with untrustworthiness. Study 2 (N = 324) and Study 4 (N = 397) corroborated that untrustworthy faces constructed from participants with pro-White preferences appeared more Black prototypical to naive U.S. adults, relative to untrustworthy faces modeled from other participants. This work highlights the important role of racial biases in shaping impressions of facial trustworthiness.

After an eyewitness completes a lineup, officers are advised to ask witnesses how confident they are in their identification. Although researchers in the lab typically study eyewitness confidence numerically, confidence in the field is primarily gathered verbally. In the current study, we used a natural language-processing approach to develop an automated model to classify verbal eyewitness confidence statements. Across a variety of stimulus materials and witnessing conditions, our model correctly classified adult witnesses' (N = 4,541) level of confidence (i.e., high, medium, or low) 71% of the time. Confidence-accuracy calibration curves demonstrate that the model's confidence classification performs similarly in predicting eyewitness accuracy compared to witnesses' self-reported numeric confidence. Our model also furnishes a new metric, confidence entropy, that measures the vagueness of witnesses' confidence statements and provides independent information about eyewitness accuracy. These results have implications for how empirical scientists collect confidence data and how police interpret eyewitness confidence statements.

People who conceal their stigmatized identities often experience worse physical health. One possibility for why is that concealment may render certain health-seeking behaviors more difficult. We tested this possibility during the 2022 global mpox outbreak, a public-health emergency that disproportionately affected sexual-minority men. We recruited adult sexual-minority men from Prolific at two time points near the outbreak's peak and attenuation (n = 864 and n = 685, respectively). We found that men who concealed their minority sexual orientations were less likely to (a) receive a vaccine to protect against mpox, (b) receive an mpox test, and (c) report having received an mpox vaccine. The relationship between concealment and vaccine receipt was serially mediated by reduced community connectedness and reduced knowledge of mpox resources. We call for thoughtful consideration of how to reach stigmatized groups with public-health resources, inclusive of those who conceal.

Working memory has been comprehensively studied in sensory domains, like vision, but little attention has been paid to how motor information (e.g., kinematics of recent movements) is maintained and manipulated in working memory. "Motor working memory" (MWM) is important for short-term behavioral control and skill learning. Here, we employed tasks that required participants to encode and recall reaching movements over short timescales. We conducted three experiments (N = 65 undergraduates) to examine MWM under varying cognitive loads, delays, and degrees of interference. The results support a model of MWM that includes an abstract code that flexibly transfers across effectors, and an effector-specific code vulnerable to interfering movements, even when interfering movements are irrelevant to the task. Neither code was disrupted by increasing visuospatial working memory load. These results echo distinctions between representational formats in other domains, suggesting that MWM shares a basic computational structure with other working memory subsystems.

To estimate object properties such as mass or friction, our brain relies on visual information to efficiently compute approximations. The role of sensorimotor feedback, however, is not well understood. Here we tested healthy adults (N = 79) in an inclined-plane problem, that is, how much a plane can be tilted before an object starts to slide, and contrasted the interaction group with observation groups who accessed involved forces by watching objects being manipulated. We created objects of different masses and levels of friction and asked participants to estimate the critical tilt angle after pushing an object, lifting it, or both. Estimates correlated with applied forces and were biased toward object mass, with higher estimates for heavier objects. Our findings highlight that inferences about physical object properties are tightly linked to the human sensorimotor system and that humans integrate sensorimotor information even at the risk of nonveridical perceptual estimates.

Abortion policy is conventionally viewed as a political matter with religious overtones. This article offers a different view. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, abortion at a young age can represent prioritization of long-term development over immediate reproduction, a pattern established in other animal species as resulting from stable ecologies with low mortality risk. We examine whether laws and moral beliefs about abortions are linked to local mortality rates. Data from 50 U.S. states, 202 world societies, 2,596 adult individuals in 363 U.S. counties, and 147,260 respondents across the globe suggest that lower levels of mortality risk are associated with more permissive laws and attitudes toward abortion. Those associations were observed when we controlled for religiosity, political ideology, wealth, education, and industrialization. Integrating evolutionary and cultural perspectives offers an explanation as to why moral beliefs and legal norms about reproduction may be sensitive to levels of ecological adversity.

Despite the persistence of anti-Black racism, White Americans report feeling worse off than Black Americans. We suggest that some White Americans may report low well-being despite high group-level status because of perceptions that they are falling behind their in-group. Using census-based quota sampling, we measured status comparisons and health among Black (N = 452, Wave 1) and White (N = 439, Wave 1) American adults over a period of 6 to 7 weeks. We found that Black and White Americans tended to make status comparisons within their own racial groups and that most Black participants felt better off than their racial group, whereas most White participants felt worse off than their racial group. Moreover, we found that White Americans' perceptions of falling behind "most White people" predicted fewer positive emotions at a subsequent time, which predicted worse sleep quality and depressive symptoms in the future. Subjective within-group status did not have the same consequences among Black participants.