Social Psychological and Personality Science

How do the very wealthy spend their time, and how does time use relate to well-being? In two studies in the Netherlands, the affluent (N = 863; N = 690) and the general population (N = 1,232; N = 306) spent time in surprisingly similar ways such as by spending the same amount of time working. Yet the nature of their time use differed in critical ways that are related to life satisfaction. In Study 1, millionaires spent more time engaged in active leisure (e.g., exercising and volunteering) rather than passive leisure (e.g., watching television and relaxing). In Study 2, millionaires spent more time engaged in tasks at work over which they had more control. The affluent sample belongs to the top of the income and wealth distribution, representing a significantly wealthier sample than in previous studies. These results further our understanding of when and how wealth may translate into greater well-being. All materials for this article are available at https://osf.io/vndmt/

Rejection experiences are likely to influence individuals’ subsequent feelings about others and their behavior in social interactions. The present study specifically examined whether stigma-based rejection leads to decreased trust in others, compared to rejections that are not stigma based. Trust was assessed behaviorally with an online task where the interaction partner was preprogrammed. Participants showed less trust after stigma-based rejection than after a nonstigma-based rejection. This research provides the first experimental evidence that stigma-based rejection uniquely influences trust in others.

We report three studies exploring the relationship between disgust and trust. Study 1a measured emotions using face-reading technology while participants played a repeated trust game. We observed a negative correlation between trust and disgust. Study 1b employed self-reports along with the face reader. The self-report procedure adversely affected participants’ emotional state and eliminated the correlation between trust and other emotions. Study 2 induced incidental disgust or sadness using virtual reality and manipulated participants’ awareness of the source of their emotions. Disgusted participants judged others as less trustworthy and sent less in a trust game than sad or control participants. An interaction indicated that awareness of the source of emotions eliminated the effect. Our data are consistent with the association between disgust and harsher moral judgments and suggest that disgust is antithetical to the building of trust. However, the association disappears if individuals are aware that their disgust is unrelated to the setting.

Recent research suggests that experimentally inducing an abstract (vs. a concrete) mind-set enhances political sophistication by increasing the consistency in political attitudes; it also enhances individualizing moral foundations and decreases binding moral foundations. However, the evidence is mixed regarding whether abstract mind-set increases or decreases the strength of moral convictions in general. In this context, the aim of this study was 2-fold. In two preregistered studies on U.S. American and Turkish samples (aggregate N = 694), we tested (1) whether abstract mind-set increases the consistency in moral convictions, similar to the case of political attitudes, and (2) whether inducing an abstract mind-set increases individualizing and decreases binding foundations. The results did not provide support for any of the hypotheses and the past findings were not reproduced. Potential implications of these findings for construal level theory literature are discussed.

Four studies investigate whether gay Asian Americans are stereotyped as more American than Asian Americans who are presumed straight. Gay Asian American men (Study 1) and women (Study 2) were rated as more American than their counterparts whose sexual orientation was unspecified. However, sexual orientation did not influence judgments of Whites’ American identity. The relationship between Asian Americans’ sexual orientation and perceptions of their American identity was mediated by a belief that American culture is relatively more accepting of gay people than Asian culture (Studies 3 and 4). Manipulating how accepting of gay people a target’s country of origin is relative to the United States altered ratings of American identity for gay but not straight targets (Study 4). Using an intersectional approach, these studies demonstrate that sexual orientation information comes together with race to influence who is likely to be perceived as American.

What factors increase racial prejudice? Across the United States, increased exposure to Black Americans has been hypothesized to increase White Americans’ prejudicial attitudes toward Black Americans. Here we test an alternative explanation: People living in regions with higher infectious disease rates have a greater tendency to avoid out-groups because such avoidance reduces their perceived likelihood of contracting illnesses. Consistent with this parasite-stress hypothesis, we show that both White and Black individuals (N > 77,000) living in U.S. states in which disease rates are higher display increased implicit (automatic) and explicit (conscious) racial prejudice. These results survived the inclusion of several individual- and state-level controls previously used to explain variability in prejudice. Furthermore, showing disease-related primes to White individuals with strong germ aversion increased their explicit, but not implicit, anti-Black/pro-White prejudice. Domestic out-groups, not just foreigners, may therefore experience increased overt forms of prejudice when disease rates are high.

People often vote against the political establishment, as underscored by “Brexit” and the Trump election. The current contribution proposes that overclaiming one’s own knowledge predicts anti-establishment voting. We tested this idea in the context of a Dutch referendum on a European Union treaty with a clear pro- versus anti-establishment voting option. In a first wave (6 weeks before the referendum), Dutch citizens indicated their self-perceived understanding of the treaty, after which we tested their actual knowledge. We also measured participants’ general tendency to overclaim knowledge by assessing their familiarity with nonexisting stimuli. In a second wave shortly after the referendum, we asked participants what they had voted. Results revealed that increased self-perceived understanding yet decreased actual knowledge of the treaty, and general knowledge overclaiming, predicted an anti-establishment vote. Furthermore, these effects were most pronounced among right-wing extremists. We conclude that knowledge overclaiming predicts anti-establishment voting, particularly at the radical right.

This study investigated the formation of criminal stereotypes about novel groups. Over 2 days, 316 participants from Prolific Academic read either equal or unequal proportions of crime reports about fictitious groups, Laapians and Niffians. On the second day, additional crime statistics indicating equal crime rates among both groups or control statistics were presented. Unequal crime reporting resulted in explicit (d = .44, p < .001) and implicit (d = .23, p = .001) stereotypes assessed with an Implicit Association Test, while equal reporting did not. On the second day, only explicit stereotypes increased in the unequal crime reporting condition (d = .25, p = .025). Contrary to predictions of the associative-propositional evaluation model, but congruent with De Houwer’s single-process propositional model, crime statistics contradicting the learned regularities reduced both explicit (d = −.43, p = .010) and implicit stereotypes (d = −.20, p = .003).

Moral foundations theory (MFT) has been a useful framework for understanding moral judgment and its relationship to political leaning. However, some have argued that MFT omits key domains of moral reasoning. We explored the utility of two candidate foundations (Proportionality and Equity) with a national sample of U.S. adults recruited through Nielsen’s Harris Panel, randomly split into calibration (n = 1,499) and replication samples (n = 1,499). We find that Proportionality and Equity are conceptually distinct from the original foundations (as measured in the Moral Foundations Questionnaire [MFQ]) but relate to them in predictable ways. Equity consistently predicted political leaning above and beyond covariates and the original foundations, but Proportionality only distinguished conservatives from liberals in the calibration sample, which suggests Proportionality may be highly relevant to moral judgments regardless of political ideology. Our findings also indicate potential bias when using one of the MFQ’s screener items to filter out unengaged participants.

The paradox of modern dating is that online platforms provide more opportunities to find a romantic partner than ever before, but people are nevertheless more likely to be single. We hypothesized the existence of a rejection mind-set: The continued access to virtually unlimited potential partners makes people more pessimistic and rejecting. Across three studies, participants immediately started to reject more hypothetical and actual partners when dating online, cumulating on average in a decrease of 27% in chance on acceptance from the first to the last partner option. This was explained by an overall decline in satisfaction with pictures and perceived dating success. For women, the rejection mind-set also resulted in a decreasing likelihood of having romantic matches. Our findings suggest that people gradually “close off” from mating opportunities when online dating.

In this research, we test the central hypothesis that perceptions of Asian Americans as a high-status “model minority” lead to overestimates of the extent of wealth equality between Asian and White Americans. We test this hypothesis across three studies that manipulate the salience of high- or low-status Asian American exemplars before soliciting estimates of Asian-White wealth equality. A meta-analysis of the results revealed that participants significantly overestimated Asian-White wealth equality and that making low- versus high-status Asian American exemplars salient decreased this tendency. These data suggest that activation of high-status Asian American exemplars elicits greater overestimates of Asian-White wealth equality, obscuring existing wealth disparities relative to White Americans and significantly downplaying the economic inequality that burdens a subset of Asian Americans from less prototypical ethnic backgrounds. The findings echo recent calls by sociologists and political scientists for a more nuanced understanding of the diversity and economic inequality among Asian American communities.

Beyond indicating that one does not eat meat, the decision to identify as vegetarian signals social identity. Yet many people limit their meat intake without giving up meat entirely: These people are called flexitarians (a term combining the words, “flexible” and “vegetarian”). Some flexitarians, despite eating meat, consider themselves to be vegetarian. Through a preregistered study (N = 837), we investigated how flexitarians express social identity around their diets—namely, how they self-identify on a continuous scale ranging from meat-eater (i.e., omnivorous) to vegetarian. Over and above actual eating behavior, two psychosocial variables emerged as significant predictors of flexitarians’ levels of vegetarian identification: the centrality of meat-reduced dieting to their identity and their beliefs about carnism (the ideology of eating animals). These results suggest that greater consideration of meat-reduced eating behaviors offers promise for elucidating the intersections of social identity and moral judgment.

The current research dealt with the stereotype that only children are more narcissistic than people with siblings. We first investigated the prevalence of this stereotype. In an online study (Study 1, N = 556), laypeople rated a typical only child and a typical person with siblings on narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry, the two subdimensions of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire. They ascribed both higher admiration and higher rivalry to the only child. We then tested the accuracy of this stereotype by analyzing data from a large and representative panel study (Study 2, N = 1,810). The scores of only children on the two narcissism dimensions did not exceed those of people with siblings, and this result held when major potentially confounding covariates were controlled for. Taken together, the results indicate that the stereotype that only children are narcissistic is prevalent but inaccurate.

A foodie call occurs when a person, despite a lack of romantic attraction to a suitor, chooses to go on a date to receive a free meal. The present study examines predictors of a deceptive form of the foodie call in the context of male–female dates: when a woman purposefully misrepresents her romantic interest in a man to dine at his expense. In two studies, we surveyed women regarding their foodie call behavior, dark triad personality traits, traditional gender role beliefs, and online dating history. We found 23–33% of women surveyed had engaged in a foodie call. In Study 1, dark triad and traditional gender role beliefs significantly predicted previous foodie call behavior and its perceived acceptability. Study 2 employed fuller measures and suggested again that dark triad traits predicted foodie calls and their perceived acceptability.