Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Gamoran, Avi; Hadar, Britt; Gilead, Michael

doi: 10.1037/pspa0000424pmid: 39636595

Despite a large body of research concerning the effects of psychological distance, our understanding about how different dimensions of distance interact and influence cognition is still limited. In this study, we moved beyond first-order approximations of the effects of psychological distance, to map the effects of multidimensional events as they appear in the world. We developed a novel experimental idiographic paradigm in which participants were asked to generate narratives of events. We simultaneously manipulated the prompts to adjust the perceived proximity in three dimensions of psychological distance, according to what individuals consider to be close to (or far from) them. Additionally, we trained an algorithm to identify the distances depicted in these narratives. Consistent with construal level theory, the results of our large-sample, preregistered analyses revealed that an increase in distance, irrespective of its type, led to more abstract representations and that experimentally manipulating distance on one dimension led to increased distance on the other dimensions. This was true for both traditional measures of linguistic abstraction and memory semanticization measures that quantify the amount of episodic detail. Results show that the effect of distance on abstraction was consistent across its various dimensions, confirming a monotonic and additive (i.e., linear) relationship. This sheds light on the mechanisms whereby psychological distance affects our thought and paves the way for more refined, integrative models of how our minds construct possible futures and alternative realities.

Ingendahl, Moritz; Vogel, Tobias; Woitzel, Johanna; Bücker, Nike; Boers, Jule; Alves, Hans

doi: 10.1037/pspa0000401pmid: 39207436

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a key effect in attitude formation, leading to changes in the liking of neutral attitude objects due to their pairing with positive or negative stimuli. Despite EC’s significance, current theories and most empirical findings are limited to stimulus pairings with a single affective stimulus at a time. In contrast, social environments often involve more complex combinations of affective stimuli. In this article, we introduce a novel framework grounded in information integration research to understand how conditioned attitudes develop in the presence of multiple affective stimuli. Through 10 experiments with different designs, measures, materials, and pairing procedures, we find that individuals’ conditioned attitudes follow the average valence of all affective stimuli present with a stronger weighting of negative stimuli. This weighted averaging rule bears two implications for EC in more complex stimulus combinations. First, EC effects are nonmonotonous, such that additional stimuli of the same valence do not produce incremental EC effects. Second, EC effects are interdependent, such that the impact of one stimulus is weakest when accompanied by another negative stimulus and strongest when no other affective stimulus is present. We examine different cognitive processes underlying this weighted averaging rule, including potential differences in pairing memory or changes in the affective stimuli’s valence when other stimuli are present. Our findings present a novel theoretical perspective on EC and offer valuable insights into attitude change from stimulus co-occurrences in stimulus-rich environments.

Celniker, Jared B.; Ditto, Peter H.

doi: 10.1037/pspa0000417pmid: 39636596

Despite decades of research, it has been difficult to resolve debates about the existence and nature of partisan bias—the tendency to evaluate information more positively when it supports, rather than challenges, one’s political views. Whether partisans display partisan biases, and whether any such biases reflect motivated reasoning, remains contested. We conducted four studies (total N = 4,010) in which participants who made unblinded evaluations of politically relevant science were compared to participants who made blinded evaluations of the same study. The blinded evaluations—judgments of a study’s quality given before knowing whether its results were politically congenial—served as impartial benchmarks against which unblinded participants’ potentially biased evaluations were compared. We also modeled the influence of partisans’ preferences and prior beliefs to test accounts of partisan judgment more stringently than past research. Across our studies, we found evidence of politically motivated reasoning, as unblinded partisans’ preferences and prior beliefs independently biased their evaluations. We contend that conceptual confusion between descriptive and normative (e.g., Bayesian) models of political cognition has impeded the resolution of long-standing theoretical debates, and we discuss how our results may help advance more integrative theorizing. We also consider how the blinding paradigm can help researchers address further theoretical disputes (e.g., whether liberals and conservatives are similarly biased), and we discuss the implications of our results for addressing partisan biases within and beyond social science.

Slemp, Gavin R.; Field, James G.; Ryan, Richard M.; Forner, Vivien W.; Van den Broeck, Anja; Lewis, Kelsey J.

doi: 10.1037/pspi0000459pmid: 38635183

People’s motivational processes, well-being, and performance are likely to be facilitated through the support of others. Self-determination theory argues that interpersonal supports for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are crucial to achieve these outcomes. In the present study, we provide a comprehensive examination of this formulation based on a meta-analytic database consisting of 4,561 effect sizes from 881 independent samples (N = 443,556). Our results indicate that supports for autonomy, competence, and relatedness were strongly positively related with the satisfaction of these basic needs and strongly negatively related to their frustration. Interpersonal supports for basic needs were strongly positively related with subjective well-being and exhibited small to moderate positive associations with performance. Moderation analyses showed general stability of effects across cultures, although correlations of autonomy support to autonomous motivation weakened as a function of individualism. The opposite pattern was observed for the correlation between relatedness support and intrinsic motivation. Some effects also declined as a function of sample age and lag in measurements. We also find that competence- and relatedness-supportive behaviors explained incremental variance in basic need satisfaction even after controlling for the more established effects of autonomy support. In addition, lateral need supports explained incremental variance in basic need satisfaction after controlling for vertical sources of support. In sum, our results are consistent with the premise that to support optimal motivation, well-being, and performance, a broad set of behaviors that nurture all three basic needs, together with different sources of interpersonal support, should be considered to yield the most benefit.

Bai, Hui; Zhao, Xian

doi: 10.1037/pspi0000455pmid: 38990681

How different racial minorities experience racism differently remains underexplored in existing research. Here, we show that Asian and Black people are often dehumanized differently. Twelve studies spotlight a racial asymmetry in dehumanization using a wide array of methods (experimental, archival, and computational) and data sources (online samples, word embeddings, and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data): Whereas Black people are more often subjected to animalistic dehumanization, Asian people are predominantly subjected to mechanistic dehumanization. We demonstrate this asymmetry from the vantage point of victims (Studies 1a and 1b) and perpetrators (Studies 2a–2d). We further document the prevalence of this asymmetry across diverse domains, from everyday language (Study 3) to perceptions in the realms of romantic relationships (Study 4a), crime rates (Study 4b), and business skills (Study 4c). Finally, we demonstrate the asymmetry’s real-world consequences in labor market segregation (Studies 5 and 6). Our findings shed light on the distinct experiences of racism encountered by different racial groups and, more critically, introduce a framework that unifies and integrates scattered empirical observations on perceptions of Asian people.

Wright, Amanda J.; Jackson, Joshua J.

doi: 10.1037/pspp0000520pmid: 39172432

Changes in personality are often modeled linearly or curvilinearly. It is a simplifying—yet untested—assumption that the chosen sample-level model form accurately depicts all person-level trajectories within the sample. Given the complexity of personality development, it seems unlikely that imposing a single model form across all individuals is appropriate. Although typical growth models can estimate individual trajectories that deviate from the average via random effects, they do not explicitly test whether people differ in the forms of their trajectories. This heterogeneity is valuable to uncover, though, as it may imply that different processes are driving change. The present study uses data from four longitudinal data sets (N = 26,469; Mage = 47.55) to empirically test the degree that people vary in best-fitting model forms for their Big Five personality development. Across data sets, there was substantial heterogeneity in best-fitting forms. Moreover, the type of form someone had was directly associated with their net and total amount of change across time, and these changes were substantially misquantified when a worse-fitting form was used. Variables such as gender, age, trait levels, and number of waves were also associated with people’s types of forms. Lastly, comparisons of best-fitting forms from individual- and sample-level models indicated that consequential discrepancies arise from different levels of analysis (i.e., individual vs. sample) and alternative modeling choices (e.g., choice of time metric). Our findings highlight the importance of these individual differences for understanding personality change processes and suggest that a flexible, person-level approach to understanding personality development is necessary.

Wainio-Theberge, Soren; Armony, Jorge L.

doi: 10.1037/pspp0000515pmid: 39311863

In humans and animals, body posture is used in social and affective contexts to communicate social information, signal intentions, and prepare the individual for adaptive action. However, though stable individual differences in affect and social cognition are well studied, body posture continues to be typically studied in the context of state variation, and it remains unknown if trait-level differences in body posture exist and carry information about the individual. In our article, we show in a large sample (total N = 608 across five studies) that individual differences in body posture measured in a natural, baseline context are robustly associated with individual differences in personality. Through a series of studies, we characterize this relationship as reflecting individual differences in postural dominance and submission, which are associated with attitudes toward competition, power, and social hierarchy. We also validate our measure of natural posture by correlating it with physiological data from relevant musculature and showing its stability over a 1-month interval. Our work suggests that postural signaling of social rank occurs not just in brief displays in social contexts but exists as a stable individual trait with consequences for socioaffective processing.

Sosin, Anne; Neubauer, Andreas B.

doi: 10.1037/pspp0000522pmid: 39115902

Reasons for pursuing self-set goals have been linked to well-being. The present article examines the link between autonomous goal regulation (the why of goal pursuit) and well-being, considering the role of the basic psychological needs, effort, and goal progress. Three studies were conducted using experience sampling methods in which German-speaking participants (Study 1: N = 207, Study 2: N = 717, Study 3: N = 703) completed 1–4 daily questionnaires over 21 consecutive days. Multilevel structural equation models were used to capture the structure of autonomous goal regulation and need fulfillment on the within-person (moment-to-moment/day-to-day), the between-goal, and the between-person levels. Additionally, the links among the degree of relative autonomous goal regulation, need fulfillment, and well-being were investigated on all three levels. Relative autonomous goal regulation was consistently linked to need fulfillment, which in turn was associated with well-being on the within-person level. On the between-goal and between-person levels, results differed slightly between the three studies but overall suggested similar results as on the within-person level. These findings highlight the central role of the why of goal pursuit for individual’s daily well-being. Understanding the link between individual goals and well-being in everyday life may be an important step in helping individuals make better choices about their goals, which in turn could improve their overall well-being.