Journal of Experimental Social Psychology最新文献

The same moral violation can give rise to different emotional and behavioral responses in different individuals. The mechanisms that give rise to such differences – and the functions that those mechanisms serve – are unclear. Previous work suggests that people experience greater anger toward violations that target themselves or kin than those that target others, whereas they experience greater disgust toward violations that target others than those that target themselves or kin. In turn, anger has a stronger relation with direct aggression than indirect aggression, and disgust a stronger relation with indirect aggression than direct aggression. The current study tests whether these patterns depend on the value observers place on the targets of moral violations, even within folk relationship categories. In two studies, we asked participants to think of a person they know and to imagine that person being targeted by a moral violation described in a vignette. We assessed the value that participants placed on the target using a financial tradeoff task, their emotional reaction to the violation, and their desires to aggress toward the perpetrator. Results revealed that: (1) interpersonal value relates more strongly to anger than disgust toward the moral violation; (2) interpersonal value relates more strongly to direct than indirect aggression motives; and (3) anger relates to both direct and indirect aggression motives, whereas disgust relates only to indirect aggression motives. These results suggest that the value one places on the victims of moral violations influences emotional and behavioral reactions to those violations.

In negotiations, first offers serve as potent anchors. After receiving a first offer, although people clearly have a choice about what amount to counteroffer, they often fail to adjust away from the first offer. We identify a simple nudge, a reminder that people have a choice, that can reduce the anchoring bias. We argue that a choice nudge leads people to think of more potential counteroffers that they can make, which reduces the extent to which they are anchored to the first offer. Seven studies conducted with US residents recruited from online research platforms tested this hypothesis. We found that merely reminding buyers that they have a choice led them to anchor away from sellers' first offers in a painting buying task (Studies 1 and 2) and a used car negotiation (Study 3). A choice reminder nudged people to consider more counteroffers (Study 4a) and asking people to consider more counteroffers reduced the anchoring bias (Study 4b). Consistent with the idea that thinking of counteroffers requires cognitive resources, we found that the effect of a choice nudge is attenuated under high cognitive load (Study 5). Study 6 ruled out an alternative motivational account for the choice nudge effect. This research contributes to the choice mindset literature by showing that highlighting the semantic concept of choice can help correct a pervasive decision-making bias, and to the anchoring literature by showing that thinking of more counteroffers can reduce the anchoring bias, at least in contexts in which the direction of adjustment from the anchor is known.

Are people self-serving when moralizing personality traits? Past research has used cross sectional methods incapable of establishing causality, but the present research used experimental methods to test this. Indeed, two experiments (N = 669) show that people self-servingly inflate the moral value of randomly assigned personality traits they believe they possess, and even judge other people who share those same traits as more moral, warm, and competent than those who do not. We explain various methodological challenges overcome in conducting this research, and discuss implications for both psychology and philosophy.

According to the regulatory model of nostalgia, the emotion is triggered by adverse psychological and physical experiences. Nostalgia, in turn, serves to counter those negative states. We extend this model to encompass spatial anxiety, that is, apprehension and disorientation during environmental navigation. In Experiment 1, we induced spatial anxiety by training participants to navigate a route in a virtual maze and then surreptitiously changing part of the previously learned route (spatial-anxiety condition) or leaving the route unchanged (neutral condition). Consistent with the regulatory model, spatial anxiety (compared to the neutral condition) triggered nostalgia. In Experiments 2–3, we displayed nostalgic (nostalgia condition) or matched control (control condition) pictures on the walls of a virtual maze. Participants navigated the maze passively (video clip, Experiment 2) or actively (computer-based task, Experiment 3) and then reported their spatial anxiety. Supporting the regulatory model, nostalgia (compared to control) reduced spatial anxiety (Experiments 2–3) and this, in turn, predicted higher goal setting (Experiment 3). Nostalgia assuages spatial anxiety during environmental navigation.

Prescriptive stereotypes based on, respectively, agency and communality reflect how people expect men and women to behave. Deviating from such prescriptions limits opportunities for men and women in ways that reinforce traditional gender roles. In the current work, we examine whether people have expectations of gendered facial features based on agentic and communal descriptions of targets and if these expectations extend to who people think is best suited for workplace tasks. Across five experiments, people expected more facial masculinity for targets paired with agentic relative to communal traits (Experiments 1, 2a-b) and workplace behaviors (Experiments 3a-b). This expectation effect emerged when gendered facial features (e.g., more masculinized and feminized versions of face identities) were manipulated across (Experiment 1) and within (Experiments 2a-b, 3a-b) gender, regardless of whether traits were explicitly stated (Experiments 1, 2a-b, 3a) or inferred (Experiment 3b), and regardless of trait valence. When people made decisions about two same-gender faces, the gender of those faces accentuated trait effects. More masculine male (relative to female) faces were consistently expected more for agentic traits and workplace tasks, but consistently expected less for communal traits and workplace tasks (Experiments 2a, 3a-b). We then conceptually replicated expectation effects by showing that mental representations of agentic and communal faces appear correspondingly gendered (Experiment 4). Finally, we provide exploratory analyses showing that expectation effects may differentially vary by perceiver gender across contexts. These findings illustrate a non-verbal route by which people make decisions based on gender stereotypes that have wide-ranging implications for workplace behavior.

Are people with lower socioeconomic status (SES) better than those with higher SES at empathic accuracy, or recognizing others' thoughts and feelings? Two psychological approaches to the study of SES say they are, but emphasize different reasons. The rank approach argues that because individuals with lower SES experience low rank, they feel less in control and more threatened by others, so it is more valuable for them to understand others' mental states. The cultural approach argues that because lower SES cultures foster more interdependent values, people steeped in those cultures focus more on others, leading them to better understand others' mental states. Previous tests of the basic hypothesis these two approaches share have yielded mixed evidence. This registered report uses a large-scale, nationally representative sample to accomplish two goals. First, it tests the basic shared hypothesis, finding that lower subjective rank, social class cultural group, and income—but not education—all predict better empathic accuracy. Second, it explores additional research questions, finding that subjective rank more strongly predicts empathic accuracy compared to SES cultural group (consistent with the rank approach), but childhood SES more strongly predicts empathic accuracy than adulthood SES (consistent with the cultural approach). Results regarding the moderating role of the valence of the mental state being recognized were not consistent. We conclude there is indeed a negative association between social class and empathic accuracy, and discuss the degree to which this is due to the psychology of rank and childhood cultural socialization.

A basic idea in cognitive science is that practicing a response can lead to the automatic activation of the response. Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) tested that idea on the automatic activation of attitudes. In the experiment that Fazio et al. conducted, participants (N = 18) repeatedly categorized eight nouns as good/bad and eight nouns (the control words) as having one syllable or more. The measure of automatic activation of attitudes was evaluative priming: Participants categorized target adjectives as good/bad faster if their valence matched the valence of a prime noun that appeared before them. This priming effect was stronger for repeatedly evaluated words than for control words. Many have cited this article as evidence that practice automatizes evaluation, but the published research that followed focused on the evaluative priming effect, providing only one incidental and unsuccessful replication for the effect of practice on automatic evaluation. In light of the importance of this finding on the one hand, and the lack of a solid evidential basis for it on the other hand, we conducted three experiments that tested the effect of practice on evaluative priming effect. We attempted to directly replicate the original procedure in Experiments 1a and 1b (N = 108, 102, respectively), with Experiment 1b fixing an unintended prime-target contingency in Experiment 1a. Experiment 2 (N = 172) provided a conceptual replication with modified procedures. Practice in evaluation increased priming only in Experiment 1a. The inconsistent results prevent strong conclusions that practicing an evaluative response automates it, necessitating further research.

Throughout history, powerlessness has been associated with phenomena such as heightened conspiracy beliefs and perceived ingroup homogeneity and commitment, as well as increased conviction about one's own opinions and worldview. The goals of the present research were to examine whether such links are causal and to gain an understanding of the underlying mechanism. We hypothesized that the experience of powerlessness activates the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and that the aforementioned phenomena emerge as threat defenses aimed at lowering BIS activation. To test these hypotheses, one correlational and three experimental studies were conducted. Meta-analytic results across these four studies indicate an indirect but not a direct link between powerlessness and the increased use of threat defenses via heightened BIS activation. These findings provide new insights into the potential negative social, affective, and cognitive consequences of feeling powerless. They can furthermore be used to design interventions that aim to prevent such consequences.

Prior research has shown that power is associated with cheating. In the present research, we showcase that higher power can increase but also decrease cheating, depending on the thoughts validated by the feelings of power. In two experiments, participants were first asked to generate either positive or negative thoughts about cheating. Following this manipulation of thought direction, participants were placed in either high or low power conditions. After the two inductions, cheating was measured using different paradigms – assessing cheating intentions in relationships (Study 1) and over reporting performance for monetary gain (Study 2). Relative to powerless participants, those induced to feel powerful showed more reliance on the initial thoughts induced. Consequently, the effect of the direction of the thoughts on cheating was greater for participants with high (vs. low) power. Specifically, high power increased cheating only when initial thoughts about cheating were already favorable but decreased cheating when it validated unfavorable cheating relevant thoughts.

In the last decade, the ambiguity and difficulty of responsibility attribution to AI and human stakeholders (i.e., responsibility gaps) has been increasingly relevant and discussed in extreme cases (e.g., autonomous weapons). On top of related philosophical debates, the current research provides empirical evidence on the importance of bridging responsibility gaps from a psychological and motivational perspective. In three pre-registered studies (N = 1259), we examined moral judgments in hybrid moral situations, where both a human and an AI were involved as moral actors and arguably responsible for a moral consequence. We found that people consistently showed a self-interest bias in the evaluation of hybrid transgressions, such that they judged the human actors more leniently when they were depicted as themselves (vs. others; Studies 1 and 2) and ingroup (vs. outgroup; Study 3) members. Moreover, this bias did not necessarily emerge when moral actors caused positive (instead of negative) moral consequences (Study 2), and could be accounted for by the flexible responsibility attribution to AI (i.e., ascribing more responsibility to AI when judging the self rather than others; Studies 1 and 2). The findings suggest that people may dynamically exploit the “moral wiggle room” in hybrid moral situations and reason about AI's responsibility to serve their self-interest.