Communications Psychology最新文献

Many researchers and policymakers assume that interventions targeting trust in science will be key for promoting health-related behaviors, including in the context of curbing the spread of disease. One central finding from the past pandemic is that trust in science predicted health-related protection intentions and behaviors, such as social distancing and vaccination. Yet, it is unclear whether the observed correlation between trust in science and protection intentions does indeed imply causation. Across our studies (total N = 5311), we successfully replicated this correlation. However, when experimentally manipulating self-reported trust in science, we found no evidence for causal effects on protection intentions. This absence of meaningful effects was confirmed by equivalence tests, an internal meta-analysis (N = 3761), and a machine learning algorithm. These results question the causal importance of short-term changes in trust in science for protection intentions. Drawing the right lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic will be essential for effective future policy responses.

Older adults prioritize emotional well-being in their relationships, but communication of emotion may differ during in-person and phone contact. Older adults (N = 266, aged 65-90) completed ecological momentary assessments (EMA; n = 4,627) reporting their social encounters via different modes of social contact and positive and negative mood every 3 hours. Participants wore a device with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) app which recorded 30 seconds every 7 minutes (n = 104,746 sound files). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) extracted linguistic features reflecting verbal communication of emotion from the sound file transcriptions. Multilevel models revealed that in-person and phone contact were associated with communicating more positive emotions, and in-person contact was associated with communicating more negative emotions. There was no statistically significant evidence that the association between communicating positive emotions and more positive and less negative mood varied by form of communication. Participants who had less in-person contact on average experienced a greater increase in positive mood when they communicated positive emotions. This study emphasizes the emotional benefits of social contact, particularly for communicating positive feelings. Findings highlight the role of in-person contact in older adults' daily lives, allowing for the verbal communication of negative emotions.

Children incorporate items found in their environment into their play, transforming everyday objects and materials into an opportunity for exploration. Termed loose parts, these versatile, natural, or manufactured materials (e.g., cardboard, pipes, buttons, sticks) are widely recommended for supporting children's early STEM learning. Limited empirical work has documented children's indoor STEM behaviours with loose parts. Using a within-subjects experimental design, we examined children's early STEM behaviours and engagement (N = 60; 32 females, 28 males; Mage = 58.6 months, SD = 10.9) during unstructured solitary play with loose parts and toys that have limited function and affordance (e.g., toy percussion instruments; control). We conducted observations of children's STEM behaviours. Children's cognitive functioning, executive function, and home learning environment were also assessed via standardized measures and parent reports. Children demonstrated significantly more STEM behaviours with loose parts than in the control condition. There was no credible evidence that these behaviours differed by sex. Cognitive functioning predicted STEM Engagement Score with loose parts, with children's verbal comprehension being the strongest predictor in the control condition. Children's executive function and parents' attitudes regarding play and engagement in play activities at home predicted constructing structures, which were the most common STEM behaviours. This study thus demonstrates that loose parts may offer a powerful opportunity for STEM-related early learning; however, children's cognitive capacities and home experiences should be considered, rather than assuming uniform benefits.

Psychological variability is central to understanding behavioural interventions. Over the past 15 years, many behaviourally informed public policies have proven effective; however, they often yield highly heterogeneous outcomes, and the reasons for this variability remain unclear. We posit that these mixed results are due to researchers and policy makers designing interventions around behavioural strategies that perform well on average, overlooking how individuals differ in their responses. We review discoveries from the psychology of poverty to show how variations in traits such as conformism, present orientation, personal agency, and social vigilance correspond with levels of resource availability. We then demonstrate how these psychological differences systematically shape individual reactions to behavioural policy tools such as default options, self-regulation devices, information campaigns, social-belonging interventions, and social norms. Ultimately, we argue that an applied behavioural science of poverty is essential for crafting interventions that are both effective and equitable.

Acute stress triggers a cascade of physiological and psychological changes, including heightened perspiration, cortisol levels, and anxiety. Currently, little is known about the effects of acute stress on the quality of higher-order decision-making, with existing studies unable to disentangle decision-making capacity from subjective preferences. To address this gap, we conducted a within-participants laboratory experiment in which university students (n = 42) made objective decisions of varying complexity (computational hardness) under both acutely stressful and control conditions. We find that higher cortisol levels, induced via the Trier Social Stress Test, leads to lower decision quality and a higher incidence of experienced time pressure. Among cortisol responders, the deterioration in decision quality was independent of the level of computational hardness, whilst among the full sample it was concentrated among trials with higher levels of computational hardness. Post-hoc, we find that the most substantial deficits in decision quality occurred when acute stress was accompanied by time pressure, with gaze-tracking analyses offering tentative evidence that changes in attention allocation may be one mechanism for this effect. Our results demonstrate that acute stress impairs the capacity to decide correctly, and highlights the importance of computational hardness and time pressure as potential moderators of this effect.

A growing share of human interactions now occurs online, where the expression and perception of emotions are often amplified and distorted. Yet, the interplay between different emotions and the extent to which they are driven by external stimuli or social feedback remains poorly understood. We calibrate a multivariate Hawkes self-exciting point process to model the temporal expression of six basic emotions in YouTube Live chats. This framework captures both temporal and cross-emotional dependencies while allowing us to disentangle the influence of video content (exogenous) from peer interactions (endogenous). We find that emotional expressions are up to four times more strongly driven by peer interaction than by video content. Positivity is more contagious, spreading three times more readily, whereas negativity is more memorable, lingering nearly twice as long. Moreover, we observe asymmetric cross-excitation, with negative emotions frequently triggering positive ones, a pattern consistent with trolling dynamics, but not the reverse. These findings highlight the central role of social interaction in shaping emotional dynamics online and the risks of emotional manipulation as human-chatbot interactions become increasingly realistic.

Regulating amusement is crucial in social contexts where expressing amusement may be inappropriate or disruptive. Yet little research has directly compared the effectiveness of different strategies for laughter regulation. Across three experiments, we examined how distraction, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression affect laughter-related facial expressions and amusement ratings during exposure to jokes. Laughter regulation was operationalized by means of facial electromyography (fEMG) and subjective ratings of funniness as proxies for the expression and experience of amusement. In Experiments 1 and 2 (n = 40 each), distraction and expressive suppression most strongly reduced facial activity, whereas reappraisal produced smaller but consistent effects. However, only reappraisal reliably decreased funniness ratings, suggesting selective effects on the cognitive evaluation of humor. Experiment 3 (n = 41) introduced social laughter feedback and revealed that the presence of another's laughter impaired expression control and increased funniness ratings, indicating that social cues shape both emotional expression and experience. Together, these findings show how distinct emotion-regulation strategies modulate amusement and laughter expressions in response to humorous stimuli and highlight the contextual sensitivity of laughter regulation in socially dynamic settings.

Boredom is on the rise, indicating an urgent need to understand its nature and impact. While there is broad agreement on the negative affect associated with its experience, its typical level of arousal remains heavily contested. Therefore, we conducted a three-level random-effects meta-analysis on the boredom-arousal relation across multiple domains. This study was pre-registered via OSF on April 4th, 2024, and we provide the data, the coding manual, and the analysis code at https://osf.io/45zuh/ . The databases Web of Science, PsycInfo, PubMed, and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global were searched on the 27th of November, 2023. We included all quantitative correlational and experimental studies that targeted human, non-clinical participants and provided effect sizes on the boredom-arousal relation or information to calculate effect sizes. Overall, 214 effect sizes from 72 unique samples that comprised a total of 6570 participants fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Correlational evidence (i = 75 effect sizes) suggested that more intensely experienced boredom was related to reduced arousal, $\overline{r}$  = -.13, 95% CI [-.22, -.05]. Experimental evidence (i = 122 effect sizes) showed that boredom was associated with significantly lower arousal as compared to various control conditions; $\overline{d}$  = -0.40, 95% CI [-0.59, -0.22]. However, there was significant heterogeneity in effect sizes, and the relation between boredom and arousal was moderated by the type of boredom measure, the type of arousal measure, and the type of control group in experimental designs. Specifically, the relation was not significant when boredom measures included items that denoted mixed or high arousal, when arousal was assessed via heart rate variability, or when experimentally induced boredom was contrasted with a neutral control condition (e.g., waiting, doing nothing). The assessment of study quality, testing publication status as a moderator, as well as visually and quantitatively assessing funnel plot asymmetry indicated minor to no risk of bias. Implications for the theoretical conceptualization of boredom and future research are discussed. The authors received no external funding for this work.

Fairness is a fundamental social norm guiding human decision-making. Yet, much of our empirical understanding of fairness derives from controlled laboratory studies with homogeneous student samples, raising concerns about the ecological validity of experimental findings. Here, we tackle this challenge by introducing a citizen science, lab-in-the-field approach, embedding a classic fairness paradigm, the Ultimatum Game (UG), in a well-visited public space within a community: a museum. Over the course of 13 months, we recorded >18,672 decisions from a heterogeneous sample of volunteer members of the public. Each participant responded to four allocation offers from anonymous proposers (two generous, two selfish), with the option to view proposers' past behaviour (previously generous vs. selfish), before deciding whether to accept or reject each offer. Results closely replicated classic UG effects, with unfair offers frequently rejected, confirming the presence of inequality aversion beyond the laboratory. Notably, the majority of participants chose to sample proposer-history information, and those who did showed heightened sensitivity to fairness violations. Specifically, selfish offers from a proposer who had previously acted generously to others elicited the strongest rejection rates, demonstrating that judgements of unfairness are shaped by expectations which emerge from voluntary information sampling. Furthermore, the ecologically enriched design helped uncover temporal and demographic patterns, namely an association between time-of-day and information-seeking behaviour, and an increased willingness to accept unfairness across age. Methodologically, by situating a foundational experimental paradigm in a community venue, our approach aims to provide a scalable model for studying decision-making in ecologically enhanced contexts and a framework for research seeking to examine authentic behaviours beyond the laboratory, ultimately helping to deepen our understanding of the crucial norms that shape society.