Current research in ecological and social psychology最新文献

The global SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic presents a pressing health challenge for all countries, including Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). As of early 2022, NZ public health measures have reduced impacts of the pandemic, but ongoing efforts to limit illness and fatalities will be significantly aided by widescale uptake of available vaccines including COVID-19 booster doses. Decades of research have established a broad range of demographic, social, cognitive, and behavioural factors which influence peoples’ uptake of vaccinations, including a large amount of research in the last two years focused on COVID-19 vaccination in particular. In this study, we surveyed people in New Zealand (N = 660) in May and June of 2021, at which point the vaccine had been made available to high-risk groups. We explored individual versus collective motivations, finding that people who were hesitant about COVID-19 vaccination scored lower on independent self-construals (how people define themselves) but higher on community identity, weaker but still positive perceived social norms, lower general risk of COVID-19 to New Zealanders and higher vaccine risk for both themselves and others, and lower response-efficacy both for personal and collective benefits. Overall, the findings suggest some benefit of collective over individual appeals, but that generally messaging to encourage vaccination should focus on conveying social norms, risk from COVID-19 broadly, and vaccine safety and efficacy.

Given that mask-wearing proved to be an important tool to slow the spread of infection during the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating the psychological and cultural factors that influence norms for mask wearing across cultures is exceptionally important. One factor that may influence mask wearing behavior is the degree to which people believe masks potentially impair emotion recognition. Based on previous research suggesting that there may be cultural differences in facial regions that people in Japan and the United States attend to when inferring a target's emotional state, we predicted that Americans would perceive masks (which cover the mouth) as more likely to impair emotion recognition, whereas Japanese would perceive facial coverings that conceal the eye region (sunglasses) to be more likely to impair emotion recognition. The results showed that Japanese participants reported wearing masks more than Americans. Americans also reported higher expected difficulty in interpreting emotions of individuals wearing masks (vs. sunglasses), while Japanese reported the reverse effect. Importantly, expectations about the negative impact of facial masks on emotion recognition explained cultural differences in mask-wearing behavior, even accounting for existing social norms

Virtual encounters are becoming increasingly frequent. These encounters have the dual potential for either posing a threat to existing relationships or promoting relationship stability. Three studies investigated whether interacting with a flirtatious virtual human would inoculate individuals against the allure of real alternative partners. In all studies, partnered participants conversed with a virtual bartender of the other gender who behaved either seductively or neutrally. Then, participants interacted with a real other-gender human being and rated their perceptions of both targets. In Study 1, an attractive confederate interviewed participants. In Study 2, a confederate sought participants’ help and recorded their helping behavior. In Study 3, participants interacted with their current partner. Results indicated that following the flirtatious virtual encounter, participants devalued the interviewer's attractiveness, invested less time in helping the confederate, and desired their partner more. This research is the first to show that interacting with a virtual agent promotes real-world relationships.

As collaborators on projects with epistemic foundations in the diverse everyday realities of different African settings, we respect and endorse the goal of the special issue (SI) to expand “psychological science to include the Middle East and Africa.” In this Short Communications article, we draw on a central insight of Africa-centering perspectives—namely, a healthy vigilance about the coloniality of knowledge in hegemonic whitestream science—to engage the goal of the SI via a critical reading of its call for papers around a contrast between imperialist and decolonial forms of inclusion. Although inclusion of research in African settings addresses issues of epistemic exclusion, imperialist forms of inclusion that assimilate African cases to whitestream science can reproduce forms of epistemic extractivism, epistemic imposition, and epistemological violence. In contrast, decolonial forms of inclusion draw on African epistemic resources to denaturalize accounts of the modern present that researchers represent, typically without reference to the coloniality that constitutes modernity, as something akin to natural facts. Rather than assimilate African cases to whitestream science, the goal of decolonial inclusion is an ecological and social psychology that takes African experience—and especially unflinching awareness of the coloniality of modernity—as an epistemic foundation for a global science.