Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Dawson, Chris

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672231209400pmid: 37947133

It is a puzzle why humans tend toward unrealistic optimism, as it can lead to excessively risky behavior and a failure to take precautionary action. Using data from a large nationally representative U.K. sample (N=36,312), our claim is that optimism bias is partly a consequence of low cognition—as measured by a broad range of cognitive skills, including memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning. We operationalize unrealistic optimism as the difference between a person’s financial expectation and the financial realization that follows, measured annually over a decade. All else being equal, those highest on cognitive ability experience a 22% (53.2%) increase in the probability of realism (pessimism) and a 34.8% reduction in optimism compared with those lowest on cognitive ability. This suggests that the negative consequences of an excessively optimistic mindset may, in part, be a side product of the true driver, low cognitive ability.

Paruzel-Czachura, Mariola; Maier, Maximilian; Warmuz, Roksana; Wilks, Matti; Caviola, Lucius

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672231219391pmid: 38193435

Recent psychological research finds that U.S. American children have a weaker tendency than U.S. American adults to value humans more than animals. We aimed to conceptually replicate and extend this finding in a preregistered study (N = 412). We investigated whether 6- to 9-year-old Polish children (Study 1a) are less likely to prioritize humans over animals than Polish adults are (Studies 1b and 1c). We presented participants with moral dilemmas where they had to prioritize either humans or animals (dogs or chimpanzees) in situations that involved harming (i.e., a trolley problem) or benefiting (i.e., giving a snack). We found that Polish children prioritized humans over animals less than Polish adults did. This was the case both in dilemmas that involved preventing harm and in dilemmas that involved providing snacks. Both children and adults prioritized humans over chimpanzees more than humans over dogs.

Joel, Samantha; Machia, Laura

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672231224351pmid: 38323619

Investment—the feeling that one has put considerable resources into a relationship—is theorized to play a key role in relationship persistence. Yet, the development of investment is not well-understood. We recruited 256 individuals in new dating relationships and surveyed them each week for up to 25 weeks. This design allows us to test underlying theoretical assumptions about how people become invested in new dating partners. Some assumptions, such as the idea that investment increases over time, were confirmed. Other assumptions were not supported: Feelings of investment were quite high after only a few weeks of dating and were not strongly shaped by concrete relationship milestones. Rather, feelings of investment were strongly linked to other subjective indicators of relationship development, such as feeling attached to the partner and believing that the relationship had a good future. We discuss the implications of these findings for existing models of investment.

Gauvin, Stéphanie E. M.; Maxwell, Jessica A.; Impett, Emily A.; MacDonald, Geoff

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672241258391pmid: 39066668

Empathic accuracy—the ability to decipher others’ thoughts and feelings—promotes relationship satisfaction. Those high in attachment avoidance tend to be less empathically accurate; however, past research has been limited to relatively negative or neutral contexts. We extend work on attachment and empathic accuracy to the positive context of love. To do so, we combined data from three dyadic studies (N = 303 dyads) in which couple members shared a time of love and rated each other’s positive emotions. Using the Truth and Bias Model of Judgment, we found that individuals higher (vs. lower) in attachment avoidance were less accurate in inferring their partners’ positive emotions during the conversation, but did not systematically over- or under-perceive their partners’ positive emotions. Our results suggest that avoidant individuals may be less sensitive to positive cues in their relationships, potentially reducing relational intimacy.

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672241276870pmid: 39215530

Yao, Elvin; Siegel, Jason T.

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672241238132pmid: 38622777

Seven preregistered experimental studies investigated a potential mediator (self-blame) and moderator (the perceived responsibility of the helper for the help recipient’s behavior) of Weiner’s attribution-emotion-action model. When participants considered a nonchild close other experiencing depression, higher perceived controllability was related to lower sympathy, which correlated with less willingness to provide support; however, among parents considering their child experiencing depression, perceived controllability was either positively associated with sympathy (study 1) or did not influence sympathy (study 2). Offering an explanation, studies 3a/3b indicated a significantly weaker relationship between controllability and responsibility attributions when the target of help was the participant’s child. Study 4 investigated the underlying mechanism. Parents experienced self-blame when the cause was controllable, which lowered the association between controllability and responsibility attributions. Studies 5 and 6 revealed this pattern was not specific to the parent–child relationship but occurred whenever the potential helper felt responsible for the help recipient’s behavior.

Jiang, Huiping; Zheng, Ya

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672231218746pmid: 38178589

Previous studies have found that exerting effort can lead people to engage in risk-taking behaviors. While effort can be either cognitive or physical, risk-taking can take place in either a risky context with known outcome probabilities or an ambiguous context with unknown outcome probabilities. The goal of the current research is to investigate how effort type and decision context influence risk-taking after effort exertion. Across three experiments, we find evidence that investing effort increases risk-taking at a short timescale. Importantly, this effect is particularly noticeable when the chance of winning is low, rather than when it is uncertain. Furthermore, the increase in risk-taking happens regardless of whether the effort is cognitive or physical. These findings suggest the existence of a cost-invariant but decision context-variant mechanism for the risk-taking after-effect of effort expenditure, which helps to bring the negative emotions caused by effort exertion back to a state of emotional homeostasis.

Kyle, Kalista M.; Ford, Brett Q.; Willroth, Emily C.

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672241228624pmid: 38388368

The current research examined three related questions in a 21-month longitudinal study of a diverse sample of U.S. participants (N = 504): (a) How did Big Five traits change during the COVID-19 pandemic? (b) What factors were associated with individual differences in trait change? and (c) How was Big Five trait change associated with downstream well-being, mental health, and physical health? On average, across the 21-month study period, conscientiousness increased slightly, and extraversion decreased slightly. Individual trajectories varied around these average trajectories, and although few factors predicted these individual differences, greater increases in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, and greater decreases in neuroticism were associated better well-being and fewer mental and physical health symptoms. The present research provides evidence that traits can change in the context of a major global stressor and that socially desirable patterns of trait change are associated with better health.

Rivera, Grace N.; Kim, Jinhyung; Kelley, Nicholas J.; Hicks, Joshua; Schlegel, Rebecca J.

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672231218758pmid: 38193399

We conducted three studies involving small group interactions (N = 622) that examined whether Big Five personality states, affect, and/or liking predict judgments of others’ authenticity. Study 1 (n = 119) revealed that neither self-rated personality states nor affect predicted other-rated authenticity. Instead, other-rated liking was the only predictor of other-rated authenticity. Study 2 (n = 281) revealed that other-rated personality states and affect were significant predictors of other-rated authenticity, but other-rated liking was a more important factor in predicting other-rated authenticity than specific behaviors or affect. Based on these results, Study 3 (n = 222) examined whether experimental manipulation of likability had a causal effect on other-ratings of authenticity. Likable actors were indeed judged as more authentic. Together, this suggests that we judge people we like as more authentic and that likability may be more important than the “objective” content of behavior.

Long, Feiteng; Ye, Zi; Liu, Guohua

2024 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

doi: 10.1177/01461672241235381pmid: 38519871

It is well-documented that economic inequality can harm political stability and social cohesion. In six experiments (total N = 1,907) conducted in China and the United Kingdom, we tested our primary hypothesis that high (vs. low) economic inequality leads to voters’ reduced preferences for competent political leaders. Across studies, this prediction was consistently supported by experimental evidence, regardless of the voter’s social status. We also found that high (vs. low) economic inequality indirectly diminished preferences for competent political leaders through heightened perceptions that politicians were less inclined to care about the populace in a highly (vs. lowly) unequal societal context. In essence, our findings underscore the idea that economic inequality curtails voters’ preferences for competent political leaders by amplifying their concerns about politicians’ indifference to the populace. It also stresses the need for policies and practices to address economic inequality and maintain the vitality of democracy.