Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Teper, Rimma; Tullett, Alexa M.; Page-Gould, Elizabeth; Inzlicht, Michael

doi: 10.1177/0146167215583848pmid: 25900823

Research in moral decision making has shown that there may not be a one-to-one relationship between peoples’ moral forecasts and behaviors. Although past work suggests that physiological arousal may account for part of the behavior-forecasting discrepancy, whether or not perceptions of affect play an important determinant remains unclear. Here, we investigate whether this discrepancy may arise because people fail to anticipate how they will feel in morally significant situations. In Study 1, forecasters predicted cheating significantly more on a test than participants in a behavior condition actually cheated. Importantly, forecasters who received false somatic feedback, indicative of high arousal, produced forecasts that aligned more closely with behaviors. In Study 2, forecasters who misattributed their arousal to an extraneous source forecasted cheating significantly more. In Study 3, higher dispositional emotional awareness was related to less forecasted cheating. These findings suggest that perceptions of affect play a key role in the behavior-forecasting dissociation.

Carlson, Erika N.; DesJardins, Nicole M. Lawless

doi: 10.1177/0146167215581712pmid: 25888681

Narcissists crave respect and admiration. Do they attain the status and popularity they crave, or do they just think that they do? In two studies (Ns = 133 and 94), participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, described themselves on core personality traits (e.g., extraversion), and were described by an informant on those traits. Participants also provided self- and peer ratings of status and liking in small groups after an initial meeting and over the course of 4 months (Study 2). Relative to people lower, people higher in narcissism initially attained, but eventually lost status; yet, they were aware that they tended to lose status. Narcissists were not especially popular, although they tended to think they were more popular. These patterns differed among narcissism facets, providing further support for the idea that the mixed adaptiveness of narcissism may be due to the heterogeneity of the construct.

Bollich, Kathryn L.; Rogers, Katherine H.; Vazire, Simine

doi: 10.1177/0146167215583993pmid: 25922229

There is no question that biases exist in self-perceptions of personality. To what extent do people have insight into their positive and negative self-biases? In two samples (total N = 130), people with positive biases (i.e., self-perceptions that are more positive than a reputation-based criterion measure) accurately described themselves as positively biased, and people with negative biases accurately described themselves as negatively biased. Furthermore, people were able to distinguish which traits they were more or less biased about. These findings suggest that people may know more about themselves than they initially admit. Implications for the use of self-reports and the study of self-knowledge are discussed.

Meltzer, Andrea L.; McNulty, James K.; Miller, Saul L.; Baker, Levi R.

doi: 10.1177/0146167215585726pmid: 25979634

Three studies demonstrated that conception risk was associated with increased motivations to manage weight. Consistent with the rationale that this association is due to ovulatory processes, Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that it was moderated by hormonal contraceptive (HC) use. Consistent with the rationale that this interactive effect should emerge when modern appearance-related concerns regarding weight are salient, Study 3 used a 14-day diary to demonstrate that the interactive effects of conception risk and HC use on daily motivations to restrict eating were further moderated by daily motivations to manage body attractiveness. Finally, providing evidence that this interactive effect has implications for real behavior, daily fluctuations in the desire to restrict eating predicted daily changes in women’s self-reported eating behavior. These findings may help reconcile prior inconsistencies regarding the implications of ovulatory processes by illustrating that such implications can depend on the salience of broader social norms.

Sczesny, Sabine; Moser, Franziska; Wood, Wendy

doi: 10.1177/0146167215585727pmid: 26015331

When people use generic masculine language instead of more gender-inclusive forms, they communicate gender stereotypes and sometimes exclusion of women from certain social roles. Past research related gender-inclusive language use to sexist beliefs and attitudes. Given that this aspect of language use may be transparent to users, it is unclear whether people explicitly act on these beliefs when using gender-exclusive language forms or whether these are more implicit, habitual patterns. In two studies with German-speaking participants, we showed that spontaneous use of gender-inclusive personal nouns is guided by explicitly favorable intentions as well as habitual processes involving past use of such language. Further indicating the joint influence of deliberate and habitual processes, Study 2 revealed that language-use intentions are embedded in explicit sexist ideologies. As anticipated in our decision-making model, the effects of sexist beliefs on language emerged through deliberate mechanisms involving attitudes and intentions.

Bouvet, Romain; Bonnefon, Jean-François

doi: 10.1177/0146167215585728pmid: 25948700

For unknown reasons, individuals who are confident in their intuitions are more likely to hold supernatural beliefs. How does an intuitive cognitive style lead one to believe in faith healing, astrology, or extrasensory perception (ESP)? We hypothesize that cognitive style is critically important after one experiences an uncanny event that seems to invite a supernatural explanation. In three studies, we show that irrespective of their prior beliefs in the supernatural, non-reflective thinkers are more likely than reflective thinkers to accept supernatural causation after an uncanny encounter with astrology and ESP. This is the first time that controlled experiments demonstrate the negative dynamics of reflection and supernatural causality attribution. We consider the possible generalization of our findings to religious beliefs and their implications for the social vulnerability of non-reflective individuals.

Sheldon, Oliver J.; Fishbach, Ayelet

doi: 10.1177/0146167215586196pmid: 26001580

Ethical dilemmas pose a self-control conflict between pursuing immediate benefits through behaving dishonestly and pursuing long-term benefits through acts of honesty. Therefore, factors that facilitate self-control for other types of goals (e.g., health and financial) should also promote ethical behavior. Across four studies, we find support for this possibility. Specifically, we find that only under conditions that facilitate conflict identification—including the consideration of several decisions simultaneously (i.e., a broad decision frame) and perceived high connectedness to the future self—does anticipating a temptation to behave dishonestly in advance promote honesty. We demonstrate these interaction patterns between conflict identification and temptation anticipation in negotiation situations (Study 1), lab tasks (Study 2), and ethical dilemmas in the workplace (Studies 3-4). We conclude that identifying a self-control conflict and anticipating a temptation are two necessary preconditions for ethical decision making.

Fernández, Saulo; Saguy, Tamar; Halperin, Eran

doi: 10.1177/0146167215586195pmid: 25987554

Despite growing attention the study of humiliation is receiving, there is little consensus as to how humiliation differs from other related emotions. We here argue that humiliation shares central characteristics with anger, shame, and embarrassment, but also differs from these emotions in meaningful ways. In Study 1, participants read about a professor who demeaned a student’s work. We manipulated key appraisals of this scenario and measured humiliation, shame, anger, and embarrassment, as well as the tendencies for approach and avoidance. Results indicated that humiliation arises from accepting a devaluation of the self, which, simultaneously, is appraised as unjust. Moreover, humiliation is associated with tendencies for approach and avoidance simultaneously. We replicated these results in Study 2 in which participants referred to actual experiences in their lives during which they felt humiliated, ashamed, or angry. Taken together, results provide evidence of the unique nature of humiliation as a distinct, self-conscious emotion.

Thai, Sabrina; Lockwood, Penelope

doi: 10.1177/0146167215588094pmid: 26034204

We examine whether individuals respond to comparisons involving romantic partners as they would to comparisons involving the self. Four studies (N = 2,210) using recalled (Studies 1-3) and actual (Study 4) comparisons about attractiveness (Study 1) and relationship skills (Studies 2-4) demonstrated that individuals high in self-other overlap decrease domain relevance following upward but not downward comparisons to protect their positive partner perceptions. This strategy was absent among those low in self-other overlap. Study 2 demonstrated that this effect extends to best friends, but not casual friends, due to the degree of self-other overlap. Furthermore, when reminded of their partner’s inferiority in a domain, high overlap participants maintained positive global partner perceptions, whereas low overlap participants’ global perceptions were negatively affected (Study 3). These results suggest that individuals do experience partner-other comparisons as if they were directly involved, but only if their partner is incorporated into their self-identity.

Lemay, Edward P.; Lin, Jonathan L.; Muir, Heather J.

doi: 10.1177/0146167215588756pmid: 26023077

The current research examined accuracy and bias in daily forecasts within romantic relationships. Results of an extensive daily report study involving 200 romantic dyads and 4,822 daily observations suggested that predictions regarding affect and partner behavior that will occur tomorrow are somewhat accurate, predicted by actual experiences tomorrow, but are largely biased by current experiences. Participants appeared to project the current state of their relationship into the future, a temporal projection bias. This bias predicted forecasters’ pro-relationship motivation and behavior. Forecasters were less likely to exhibit the temporal projection bias when they were high in relationship commitment, and they were more likely to exhibit the bias when they were high in need for cognitive closure, suggesting that motivation can constrain or amplify tendencies to project the present into the future. Implications for interpersonal relationships are discussed.