Search

Do people of different socioeconomic status (SES) differ in how they see themselves on the Big Two self-concept dimensions of agency and communion? Existent research relevant to this theoretically and socially important question has generally been indirect: It has relied on distant proxies for agentic and communal self-concepts, narrow operationalizations of SES, comparatively small samples, and data from few nations/world regions. By contrast, the present research directly examines the associations between SES and agentic and communal self-concepts, relies on well-validated measures of agency and communion, examines three complementary measures of SES, and uses data from 6 million people (years of age: M = 26.12, SD = 11.50) across 133 nations. Overall, people of higher status saw themselves as somewhat more agentic and as slightly less (or negligibly less) communal. Crucially, those associations varied considerably across nations. We sought to explain that variation with 11 national characteristics and found only three of them to be robustly relevant: National religiosity and pathogen load curbed status differences in agentic self-concepts, and income inequality amplified status differences in communal self-concepts. Our discussion develops theory to explain the importance of national religiosity, pathogen load, and income inequality for socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts and it also describes the substantial societal implications of those differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Do changes in religiosity beget changes in personality, or do changes in personality precede changes in religiosity? Existing evidence supports longitudinal associations between personality and religiosity at the between-person level, such that individual differences in personality predict subsequent individual differences in change in religiosity. However, no research to date has examined whether within-person changes in personality lead to subsequent changes in religiosity. Using random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM), we investigated between- and within-person associations between the Big Five personality traits and three aspects of religiosity-belief in God, service attendance, and prayer-in a sample of over 12,000 Dutch individuals across 11 annual assessments. We found between-person associations between all Big Five traits and religiosity, yet within-person associations only between agreeableness as well as extraversion and belief in God. Specifically, individuals who increased in agreeableness or extraversion reported subsequent increases in their belief in God and, in addition, individuals who increased in their belief in God showed subsequent increases in agreeableness. We further identified significant moderating effects of gender, religious upbringing, and religious affiliation. Overall, the present findings suggest that the associations between personality traits and religiosity primarily occur at the between-person level. However, the evidence for intraindividual associations between agreeableness, extraversion, and religious belief highlights the importance of distinguishing between-person from within-person effects to broaden the understanding of the temporal dynamics between variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed stark regional variation in the spread of the virus. While previous research has highlighted the impact of regional differences in sociodemographic and economic factors, we argue that regional differences in social and compliance behaviors-the very behaviors through which the virus is transmitted-are critical drivers of the spread of COVID-19, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic. Combining self-reported personality data that capture individual differences in these behaviors (3.5 million people) with COVID-19 prevalence and mortality rates as well as behavioral mobility observations (29 million people) in the United States and Germany, we show that regional personality differences can help explain the early transmission of COVID-19; this is true even after controlling for a wide array of important sociodemographic, economic, and pandemic-related factors. We use specification curve analyses to test the effects of regional personality in a robust and unbiased way. The results indicate that in the early stages of COVID-19, Openness to experience acted as a risk factor, while Neuroticism acted as a protective factor. The findings also highlight the complexity of the pandemic by showing that the effects of regional personality can differ (a) across countries (Extraversion), (b) over time (Openness), and (c) from those previously observed at the individual level (Agreeableness and Conscientiousness). Taken together, our findings support the importance of regional personality differences in the early spread of COVID-19, but they also caution against oversimplified answers to phenomena as complex as a global pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Big Five predict numerous preferences, decisions, and behaviors-but why? To help answer this key question, the present research develops the sociocultural norm perspective (SNP) on Big Five prediction-a critical revision and extension of the sociocultural motives perspective. The SNP states: Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness predict outcomes positively if those outcomes are socioculturally normative. Openness, by contrast, predicts outcomes negatively if they are socioculturally normative. Moreover, the SNP specifies unique mechanisms that underlie those predictions. Two mechanisms are social (social trust for Agreeableness, social attention for Extraversion) and two are cognitive (rational thought for Conscientiousness, independent thought for Openness). The present research develops the SNP by means of three large-scale experiments (Ntotal = 7,404), which used a new, tailor-made experimental paradigm-the minimal norm paradigm. Overall, the SNP provides norm-based, culture-focused, and mechanism-attentive explanations for why the Big Five predict their outcomes. The SNP also has broader relevance: It helps explain why Big Five effects vary across cultures and, thus, dispels the view that such variation threatens the validity of the Big Five. It suggests that the psychology of norms would benefit from attention to the Big Five. Finally, it helps bridge personality, social, and cross-cultural psychology by integrating their key concepts-the Big Five, conformity, and sociocultural norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The articulatory in-out effect describes the preference for stimuli with an inward-wandering consonant order (e.g., BODIKA) as opposed to an outward-wandering consonant order (e.g., KODIBA). Originally, the in-out effect has been explained in terms of articulation trajectories, with inward trajectories being preferred over outward trajectories. However, recent research by Maschmann et al. (2020) raised doubts on this explanation of articulation trajectory preferences and offered a parsimonious alternative explanation for the in-out effect based on consonant preferences instead. As we show in the present article, stimulus materials in Maschmann et al. (2020) diverged from materials used in previous research and might have prevented the experience of articulation trajectories. Here, we present a conceptual replication of Maschmann et al. (2020), using stimulus materials more likely to elicit articulation trajectory preferences. In a preregistered, high-powered experiment ( N = 349), we find strong support for the original idea of trajectory preferences but no evidence for the consonant preference account. Our research shows that preferences for articulation trajectories are robust and cannot be explained by mere consonant preferences. We discuss further implications of these findings for future research on the processes involved in the empirical in-out effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Interactionist theories are considered to have resolved the classic person-situation debate by demonstrating that human behavior is most accurately described as a function of both personal characteristics as well as environmental cues. According to these theories, personality traits form part of the personal characteristics that drive behavior. We suggest that psychological theory stands to gain from also considering personality traits as an important environmental characteristic that shapes sociocultural norms and institutions, and, in turn, behavior. Building on research in geographical psychology, we support this proposition by presenting evidence on the relationship of individual and regional personality with spending behavior. Analyzing the spending records of 111,336 participants (31,915,942 unique transactions) across 374 Local Authority Districts (LAD) in the United Kingdom, we first show that geographic regions with higher aggregate scores on a given personality trait collectively spend more money on categories associated with that trait. Shifting the focus to individual level spending as our behavioral outcome ( N = 1,716), we further demonstrate that regional personality of a participant's home LAD predicts individual spending above and beyond individual personality. That is, a person's spending reflects both their own personality traits as well as the personality traits of the people around them. We use conditional random forest predictions to highlight the robustness of these findings in the presence of a comprehensive set of individual and regional control variables. Taken together, our findings empirically support the proposition that spending behaviors reflect personality traits as both personal and environmental characteristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How relevant are the Big Five in predicting religiosity? Existing evidence suggests that the Big Five domains account for only a small amount of variance in religiosity. Some researchers have claimed that the Big Five domains are too broad and not sufficiently specific to explain much religiosity variance. Accordingly, they speculated that the more specific Big Five facets should predict religiosity better. Yet, such research has generally been sparse, monocultural, descriptive, process-inattentive, and somewhat contradictory in its results. Therefore, we conducted three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive studies. Study 1 (N = 2,277,240) used self-reports across 96 countries, Study 2 (N = 555,235) used informant-reports across 57 countries, and Study 3 (N = 1,413,982) used self-reports across 2,176 cities, 279 states, and 29 countries. Our results were highly consistent across studies. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the Big Five facets did not explain substantially more variance in religiosity than the Big Five domains. Moreover, culture was much more important than previously assumed. More specifically, the Big Five facets collectively explained little variance in religiosity in the least religious cultural contexts (4.2%) but explained substantial variance in religiosity in the most religious cultural contexts (19.5%). In conclusion, the Big Five facets are major predictors of religiosity, but only in religious cultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Religious people live longer than nonreligious people, according to a staple of social science research. Yet, are those longevity benefits an inherent feature of religiosity? To find out, we coded gravestone inscriptions and imagery to assess the religiosity and longevity of 6,400 deceased people from religious and nonreligious U.S. counties. We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did nonreligious people. In nonreligious cultural contexts, however, religiosity conferred no such longevity benefits. Evidently, a longer life is not an inherent feature of religiosity. Instead, religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts where religiosity is valued. Our study answers a fundamental question on the nature of religiosity and showcases the scientific potential of gravestone analyses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Grandiose narcissism and prosociality are important topics in personality and social psychology, but research on their interplay is lacking. We present a first large-scale, systematic, and multimethod investigation linking the two. In 2 studies (N1 = 688, N2 = 336), we assessed grandiose narcissism comprehensively (i.e., agentic and communal narcissism) and examined its relations with instantiations of prosociality, namely, objective prosociality (actual behavior in Study 1; round-robin informant-reports in a real-life setting in Study 2) and subjective prosociality (self-perceptions in Studies 1 and 2). We obtained a consistent set of results. Agentic narcissism was related to lower objective prosociality and lower subjective prosociality. Communal narcissism, by contrast, was unrelated to objective prosociality, but was related to higher subjective prosociality. Additionally, we tested for prosociality self-enhancement among agentic and communal narcissists. Agentic narcissists evinced the same (and modest) level of prosociality self-enhancement as their non-narcissistic counterparts. Communal narcissists, by contrast, evinced substantial levels of prosociality self-enhancement, whereas their non-narcissistic counterparts did not enhance their prosociality at all. We discuss implications of the findings for the literature on narcissism and antisociality, and for the concept of prosocial personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Confessing romantic feelings, asking for help, or taking responsibility for a mistake constitute just a few examples of situations that require showing one's vulnerability. Out of fear, many individuals decide against it. To explore whether these fears are reflected in the evaluation of others, we investigate self-other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability. Drawing on construal level theory, we hypothesize that the mental representations of individuals who find themselves in a vulnerable situation are rather concrete, shifting the focus on the negative aspects of making oneself vulnerable and resulting in a relatively negative evaluation of showing vulnerability. By contrast, when depicting others in a vulnerable situation, individuals are expected to represent it more abstractly, focus more on the positive aspects of showing vulnerability, and, therefore, evaluate it more positively. A total of seven studies demonstrate the predicted self-other differences in the evaluation of showing vulnerability in various situations, such as confessing love, revealing imperfections of one's body, or asking for help, including evidence on the generalizability of the effect in a real-life situation. Moreover, we report empirical evidence on the crucial role of level of construal in the emergence of the observed self-other differences. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

People overestimate themselves in domains that are central to their self-concept. Critically, the psychological status of this "self-centrality principle" remains unclear. One view regards the principle as an inextricable part of human nature and, thus, as universal and resistant to normative pressure. A contrasting view regards the principle as liable to pressure (and subsequent modification) from self-effacement norms, thus questioning its universality. Advocates of the latter view point to Christianity's robust self-effacement norms, which they consider particularly effective in curbing self-enhancement, and ascribe Christianity an ego-quieting function. Three sets of studies examined the self-centrality principle among Christians. Studies 1A and 1B (N = 2,118) operationalized self-enhancement as better-than-average perceptions on the domains of commandments of faith (self-centrality: Christians ≫ nonbelievers) and commandments of communion (self-centrality: Christians > nonbelievers). Studies 2A-2H (N = 1,779) operationalized self-enhancement as knowledge overclaiming on the domains of Christianity (self-centrality: Christians ≫ nonbelievers), communion (self-centrality: Christians > nonbelievers), and agency (self-centrality: Christians ≈ nonbelievers). Studies 3A-3J (N = 1,956) operationalized self-enhancement as grandiose narcissism on the domains of communion (self-centrality: Christians > nonbelievers) and agency (self-centrality: Christians ≈ nonbelievers). The results converged across studies, yielding consistent evidence for Christian self-enhancement. Relative to nonbelievers, Christians self-enhanced strongly in domains central to the Christian self-concept. The results also generalized across countries with differing levels of religiosity. Christianity does not quiet the ego. The self-centrality principle is resistant to normative pressure, universal, and rooted in human nature. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Are religious people psychologically better or worse adjusted than their nonreligious counterparts? Hundreds of studies have reported a positive relation between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Recently, however, a comparatively small number of cross-cultural studies has questioned this staple of religiosity research. The latter studies find that religious adjustment benefits are restricted to religious cultures. Gebauer, Sedikides, and Neberich (2012) suggested the religiosity as social value hypothesis (RASV) as one explanation for those cross-cultural differences. RASV states that, in religious cultures, religiosity possesses much social value, and, as such, religious people will feel particularly good about themselves. In secular cultures, however, religiosity possesses limited social value, and, as such, religious people will feel less good about themselves, if at all. Yet, previous evidence has been inconclusive regarding RASV and regarding cross-cultural differences in religious adjustment benefits more generally. To clarify matters, we conducted 3 replication studies. We examined the relation between religiosity and self-esteem (the most direct and appropriate adjustment indicator, according to RASV) in a self-report study across 65 countries (N = 2,195,301), an informant-report study across 36 countries (N = 560,264), and another self-report study across 1,932 urban areas from 243 federal states in 18 countries (N = 1,188,536). Moreover, we scrutinized our results against 7, previously untested, alternative explanations. Our results fully and firmly replicated and extended prior evidence for cross-cultural differences in religious adjustment benefits. These cross-cultural differences were best explained by RASV. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Research and theorizing on gender and age differences in self-esteem have played a prominent role in psychology over the past 20 years. However, virtually all empirical research has been undertaken in the United States or other Western industrialized countries, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. To broaden the empirical base, the present research uses a large Internet sample (N = 985,937) to provide the first large-scale systematic cross-cultural examination of gender and age differences in self-esteem. Across 48 nations, and consistent with previous research, we found age-related increases in self-esteem from late adolescence to middle adulthood and significant gender gaps, with males consistently reporting higher self-esteem than females. Despite these broad cross-cultural similarities, the cultures differed significantly in the magnitude of gender, age, and Gender × Age effects on self-esteem. These differences were associated with cultural differences in socioeconomic, sociodemographic, gender-equality, and cultural value indicators. Discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of cross-cultural research on self-esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

The capacity to identify cheaters is essential for maintaining balanced social relationships, yet humans have been shown to be generally poor deception detectors. In fact, a plethora of empirical findings holds that individuals are only slightly better than chance when discerning lies from truths. Here, we report 5 experiments showing that judges' ability to detect deception greatly increases after periods of unconscious processing. Specifically, judges who were kept from consciously deliberating outperformed judges who were encouraged to do so or who made a decision immediately; moreover, unconscious thinkers' detection accuracy was significantly above chance level. The reported experiments further show that this improvement comes about because unconscious thinking processes allow for integrating the particularly rich information basis necessary for accurate lie detection. These findings suggest that the human mind is not unfit to distinguish between truth and deception but that this ability resides in previously overlooked processes., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.)

In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the influence of situational familiarity with the judgmental context on the process of lie detection. They predicted that high familiarity with a situation leads to a more pronounced use of content cues when making judgments of veracity. Therefore, they expected higher classification accuracy of truths and lies under high familiarity. Under low situational familiarity, they expected that people achieve lower accuracy rates because they use more nonverbal cues for their veracity judgments. In all 4 experiments, participants with high situational familiarity achieved higher accuracy rates in classifying both truthful and deceptive messages than participants with low situational familiarity. Moreover, mediational analyses demonstrated that higher classification accuracy in the high-familiarity condition was associated with more use of verbal content cues and less use of nonverbal cues., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.)

We investigated the impact of uncertainty on leadership preferences and propose that the conjunction of self-esteem level and stability is an important moderator in this regard. Self-threatening uncertainty is aversive and activates the motivation to regain control. People with high and stable self-esteem should be confident of achieving this goal by self-determined amelioration of the situation and should therefore show a stronger preference for democratic leadership under conditions of uncertainty. By contrast, people with low and unstable self-esteem should place their trust and hope in the abilities of powerful others, resulting in a preference for autocratic leadership. Studies 1a and 1b validate explicit and implicit leadership measures and demonstrate a general prodemocratic default attitude under conditions of certainty. Studies 2 and 3 reveal a democratic reaction for individuals with stable high self-esteem and a submissive reaction for individuals with unstable low self-esteem under conditions of uncertainty. In Study 4, this pattern is cancelled out when individuals evaluate leadership styles from a leader instead of a follower perspective., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.)

In the present article, the authors analyze how performance expectancies are generated and how they affect actual performance. The authors predicted that task difficulty would affect performance expectancies only when cognitive motivation (i.e., need for cognition [NFC]) and cognitive capacity are high. This should be the case because analyzing task difficulty is a process requiring cognitive capacity as well as cognitive motivation. The findings supported the expected NFC x Difficulty interaction for the formation of performance expectancies (Study 1, Study 2), but only when cognitive capacity was high (Study 2). The authors also predicted that expectancies would affect actual performance only if the task is difficult and if task difficulty is taken into account when the expectancy is generated. This hypothesis was supported: Significant relations between performance expectancies and actual performance were found only for difficult tasks and for participants higher in NFC. Studies 5 and 6 showed clear evidence that the NFC x Difficulty interaction could not be explained by differences in the use of task-specific self-concepts. The findings were robust across academic, social, and physical tasks., (Copyright (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.)

Three studies analyzed the biological component of psychological essentialism (laypeople's belief that social categories have an underlying nature/natural foundation) as it pertains to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. A new scale assessing the belief in genetic determinism is introduced as a measure of the biological component of essentialism. Results speak to the reliability and validity of the scale and show that essentialist beliefs are associated with basic social-cognitive motives and are also related to processes of stereotyping and prejudice. An experimental study found that rendering essentialist information salient elicits increased levels of prejudice and in-group bias, particularly in persons holding chronic essentialist beliefs., (Copyright 2005 APA.)

Four studies investigate the relationship between individuals' mood and their reliance on the ease retrieval heuristic. Happy participants were consistently more likely to rely on the ease of retrieval heuristic, whereas sad participants were more likely to rely on the activated content. Additional analyses indicate that this pattern is not due to a differential recall (Experiment 2) and that happy participants ceased to rely on the ease of retrieval when the diagnosticity of this information was called into question (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 shows that reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic resulted in faster judgments than reliance on content, with the former but not the latter being a function of the amount of activated information.