Social Psychological and Personality Science

Previous research suggests that people draw inferences about their attitudes and preferences based on their own thoughtfulness. The current research explores how observing other individuals make decisions more or less thoughtfully can shape perceptions of those individuals and their decisions and ultimately impact observers’ willingness to be influenced by them. Three studies suggest that observing others make more (vs. less) thoughtful decisions generates more positive reactions when a choice is difficult but more negative reactions when a choice is easy. In essence, people perceive the quality of others’ decisions to be greater when other individuals engage in the right amount of thinking for the situation. These assessments then affect observers’ own decisions and openness to influence.

Performance on implicit attitude measures is influenced both by the nature of activated evaluative associations and by people’s ability to regulate those associations as they respond. One consequence is that identical implicit attitude scores may conceal different underlying processes. This study demonstrated this phenomenon and also shed light on the nature of age differences in antiaging bias on implicit attitude measures. Although younger and older participants demonstrated equivalent levels of antiaging bias on an Implicit Association Test (IAT), application of the Quad model showed that antiold associations were less activated among older than younger adults, but that older adults were less able to overcome these associations in performing the task. Thus, the lack of age differences in IAT performance concealed differences in both underlying evaluative associations and the ability to control those associations. These findings have important implications for the measurement and interpretation of implicit attitudes.

Negative gut reactions to harmless-but-offensive transgressions can be driven by inferences about the moral character of the agent more so than condemnation of the act itself. Dissociations between moral judgments of acts and persons emerged, such that participants viewed a harmless-but-offensive transgression to be a less immoral act than a harmful act, yet more indicative of poor moral character. Participants were more likely to become “morally dumbfounded” when asked to justify their judgments of a harmless-but-offensive act relative to a harmful act. However, they were significantly less likely to become morally dumbfounded when asked to justify character judgments of persons who engaged in the harmless-but-offensive transgression, an effect based in part on the information-rich nature of such behaviors. Distinguishing between evaluations of acts and persons helps account for both moral outrage over harmless transgressions and when individuals are (and are not) at a loss to explain their own judgments.

How do individuals who switch between opposing sides develop a sense of commitment to their new groups? Study 1 examined these dynamics in a live-action tag game known as Humans versus Zombies, in which players transitioned from being Human to being Zombie, thus turning against their former fellow Humans. Study 2 examined data from professional basketball players in the National Basketball Association who moved to a new team and had to play against their former team. Aggressive acts against former group members in these competitive settings determined commitment to the new group above and beyond other factors. Aggressive acts against former teammates, such as simulated killing (Study 1) and blocked shots (Study 2), promoted more positive self-reported attitudes toward the new group (Study 1) and more collaboration with new group members in the form of assists (Study 2).

Recent work demonstrates that harboring secrets influences perceptual judgments and actions. Individuals carrying secrets make judgments consistent with the experience of being weighed down, such as judging a hill as steeper and judging distances to be farther. In the present article, two studies examined whether revealing a secret would relieve the burden of secrecy. Relative to a control condition, thinking about a secret led to the judgments of increased hill slant, whereas revealing a secret eliminated that effect (Study 1). Additionally, relative to a control condition, thinking about a secret led to judgments of increased distance, and again, revealing a secret eliminated that effect (Study 2). Sharing secrets with others might relieve the perceived physical burden from secrecy.

We experimentally tested whether negative stereotypes linked to lower socioeconomic status (SES), in addition to impairing academic performance (Croizet & Claire, 1998), instigate inflammation processes that are implicated in numerous disease processes. In Study 1, verbal test performance and activation of inflammation processes (measured by levels of an inflammatory protein, Interleukin-6 [IL-6]) varied as a function of SES and test framing (i.e., diagnostic vs. nondiagnostic of intellectual ability), with low SES students underperforming and exhibiting greater IL-6 production in the “diagnostic” condition. In Study 2, students expected their verbal exam performance to be compared to peers of higher or lower SES. Low SES students in the upward comparison condition displayed the greatest inflammatory response and worst test performance. Across both studies, different facets of SES predicted vulnerability to negative outcomes, such that low early life SES predicted heightened inflammation responses, while low current SES predicted impaired academic performance.

Based on Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development, we predicted that adolescents’ values, behaviors, and self-assessments would become more collectivistic and less individualistic during the Great Recession (2008–2010) compared to the prerecession period (2004-2006), thereby reversing long-term trends from the 1970s. Data came from Monitoring the Future, a nationally representative yearly survey of 12th graders. Concern for others and environmentalism increased from the prerecession period to recession, reversing long-term declines. Long-term trends toward increasing materialism partially reversed: Wanting a job making lots of money continued to increase, the increase in the importance of money leveled off, and the increase in desiring to own expensive material items reversed. Long-term trends toward increasingly positive self-views continued. Correlations with economic indicators (median income, employment rate) over the entire time period (1976–2010) showed that collectivism was high and individualism was low during times of economic deprivation, consistent with Greenfield’s theory.

In three web-based experiments, we show that both actual poverty and experimentally induced (imagined) poverty create a preference for greater inequality. Study 1, a cross-national comparison between Americans and Swedes, showed that respondents who were actually poor and those who were experimentally induced to imagine that they were poor tended to express a heightened preference for greater inequality, and for a higher proportion of poor citizens. Study 2 replicated the effects using different procedures. Study 3 showed that imagining oneself being poor increases preferences for a greater proportion of poor people, but imagining oneself being rich does not increase preferences for a greater proportion of rich people. This poverty prefers company effect might affect support for policies aiming at reducing the number of poor people.

Do people have biased perceptions of their political orientation? Based on the link between political conservatism and in-group loyalty, we predicted that people would underestimate their liberalism and that this effect would be more pronounced among political conservatives. Young adults indicated their self-perceived political orientation and completed an objective measure of political orientation, which placed them along a liberal-conservative continuum by comparing their attitudes on 12 core issues (e.g., gay marriage, welfare) to population norms. Participants showed a significant bias toward perceiving themselves as more conservative than they actually were, and this effect was more pronounced among independents and conservatives than liberals. Further, biased self-perceptions of political orientation predicted voting behavior in the 2012 Presidential Election after controlling for objective political orientation scores. Discussion highlights theoretical implications for self-knowledge research and practical implications for American politics more broadly.

Three studies demonstrated that the moral judgments of religious individuals and political conservatives are highly insensitive to consequentialist (i.e., outcome-based) considerations. In Study 1, both religiosity and political conservatism predicted a resistance toward consequentialist thinking concerning a range of transgressive acts, independent of other relevant dispositional factors (e.g., disgust sensitivity). Study 2 ruled out differences in welfare sensitivity as an explanation for these findings. In Study 3, religiosity and political conservatism predicted a commitment to judging “harmless” taboo violations morally impermissible, rather than discretionary, despite the lack of negative consequences rising from the act. Furthermore, non-consequentialist thinking style was shown to mediate the relationship religiosity/conservatism had with impermissibility judgments, while intuitive thinking style did not. These data provide further evidence for the influence of religious and political commitments in motivating divergent moral judgments, while highlighting a new dispositional factor, non-consequentialist thinking style, as a mediator of these effects.

This research focuses on the attentional processes that underlie buying impulsiveness. It was hypothesized that impulsive buyers are more likely than nonimpulsive buyers to get distracted by products that are unrelated to their shopping goal. The study applied a 2 (buying impulsiveness low vs. high) × 2 (shopping vs. nonshopping context) × 2 (product vs. nonsemantic distractors) mixed design. Participants’ attention allocation was measured via eye tracking during a visual distraction paradigm. The results support the distraction hypothesis. Impulsive buyers allocated less attention to a focal product than nonimpulsive buyers. The effect was context-specific and emerged only when the task was framed as a shopping situation. The results show that distraction is not limited to attractive products and suggest that it is driven by a general attentional openness for products in shopping situations.

When negative events occur (e.g., a mass shooting, product failure, breakup), individuals naturally ask themselves why such things happen. Indeed, the search for explanations appears to be a fundamental aspect of humanity. The present research explores the role that more abstract, higher level construals play in individuals’ feelings of causal uncertainty. Specifically, we demonstrate that participants who were led to construe a negative event in a more abstract manner felt less uncertain about why that event happened (Experiments 1 and 2). Further, we demonstrate that participants who were led to construe a negative event more abstractly exhibited a more simplified understanding of the event (Experiment 3a) and that adopting a more simplified understanding of an event decreased participants’ causal uncertainty about the event (Experiment 3b). Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Although ethnic deviants are typically disliked, we argue that minority group members may strategically befriend them. In Study 1, Asian and White Australians (N = 536) read a Facebook profile of an Asian or White target who exhibited either stereotypically Asian or White Australian characteristics. Overall, Asian Australians liked in-group ethnic deviants less than normative in-group targets. However, among Asians who perceived high intergroup permeability, the effect reversed on measures of social acceptance: Ethnic deviants were more likely to be befriended than normative group members. This pattern was not observed among Asians who perceived low permeability or among White Australians. In Study 2, we show that Asians (N = 118) who perceive high intergroup permeability desire integration more and perceive ethnic deviance as useful in achieving it—they consequently prefer ethnically deviant White and Asian friends. We discuss minority group members’ preference for ethnic deviance in light of their social mobility motives.

The present experiment examined identity denial and reduced empathy for in-group (vs. out-group) targets as a function of the racial composition of their social networks. Black participants rated in-group (Black) targets as more weakly racially identified and expressed less empathy for in-group targets with cross-race close friends versus same-race close friends or no friends. Furthermore, the effect of social network composition on empathy was mediated by perceived racial identity. These findings were limited to the in-group target. Although the out-group (White) target was rated as more weakly identified when shown with cross-race close friends versus same-race close friends or no friends, neither social network composition nor perceived racial identity predicted empathy for the out-group target. These findings extend previous research on identity denial and suggest that, for Blacks, closely associating with Whites undermines the usually robust pattern of in-group empathy.