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Mass marketing scams (MMSs) impact millions of people with financial losses in the billions. Understanding what types of MMSs work is key to reducing the compliance rate. Inspired by Simon's work, we designed an experiment to examine how four different types of MMSs impact interest in and intention to respond to solicitations. We first conducted a cluster analysis on 215 actual MMS solicitations. The analysis revealed four distinct types of solicitations: negative-cold, one-reward letters, high emotionality, high scarcity letters where the prize is mentioned often, very colorful multi-prize letters, and low emotionality, low scarcity cold letters. In a second experiment, 281 participants (recruited on MTurk) were randomly assigned to read one of the four types of solicitations. Our data revealed differences in intention to respond by sending money. Furthermore, younger (vs. older) individuals indicated a higher interest in the solicitation and higher intention to send in money and rated the solicitations as significantly more beneficial and less risky. Finally, perceptions of risks and benefits were the main driving force behind compliance beyond interest and intention to comply. In line with Simon's ideas, our study highlights the need to examine both the environment (the types of solicitations) and the decision-maker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing empathy for others has been linked to worsening others' feelings against their wishes. These paternalistic empathic goals have been theorised to happen at the dyad level when an agent aims to worsen a target's emotional state. They may also operate at a broader level when agents are third-party observers of COVID-19 lockdown rule violations. In these instances, agents can impact transgressors' affect engaging in Coronashaming. In three studies, we measured British people's (Ntotal = 767) vulnerability (Study 1), age (Studies 2 and 3), and empathy towards COVID-19 victims and presented them with different scenarios depicting a breach of lockdown rules to assess the emotions participants wanted to inflict in transgressor, the strategies used, and whether they wanted stricter rules to be enforced. Results confirmed shame as the emotion preferred to induce in violators, with this preference linked to higher use of engagement strategies (i.e. to make transgressors understand what they did wrong). Finally, empathy was positively linked to higher affect worsening and wanting stricter rules to be enforced. This suggests that empathy towards potential victims of COVID-19 rules violations can motivate people to worsen the feelings of transgressors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans create many risks, ranging from those that are relatively negligible and easily managed to those that are far less wieldy and pose a threat to the existence of humanity, the lives of numerous other species and/or the functionality of local and global ecosystems. The literature on the process of anthropogenic risk creation is limited and piecemeal, and there has been far greater emphasis on using reactive approaches to deal with anthropogenic risks (e.g. risk management) rather than on employing proactive approaches to avert further risk creation (e.g. responsible innovation). An obvious starting point for averting or reducing future anthropogenic risk creation is to understand better the generic features of the risk creation process and to identify points at which the creation process might be better controlled or averted. To this end, this paper presents a simplified conceptual Model of Anthropogenic Risk Creation (MARC) that provides a broad descriptive overview of the sequential stages that appear to have been evident in several historic and contemporary instances of anthropogenic risk creation. By explicating the stages in the risk creation process, MARC highlights the key points at which more attention could be given (e.g. by innovators, policymaker, regulators) to implementing or encouraging greater risk prevention or limitation. Moreover, MARC can help to stimulate critical debate about the extent to which humanity inadvertently creates adverse conditions, such as those that inhibit human prosperity and sustainability, and the extent to which anthropogenic risk creation is adequately understood, researched and managed. This paper also critically reflects upon related issues, such as risk creation as a learning process and the relative merits of initiatives to promote greater responsibility in research and innovation. Important areas for future research on the anthropogenic risk creation process are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Mass marketing scams threaten financial and personal well‐being. Grounded in fuzzy‐trace theory, we examined whether verbatim and gist‐based risk processing predicts susceptibility to scams and whether such processing can be altered. Methods: Seven hundred and one participants read a solicitation letter online and indicated willingness to call an "activation number" to claim an alleged $500,000 sweepstakes prize. Participants focused on the solicitation's verbatim details (hypothesized to increase risk‐taking) or its broad gist (hypothesized to decrease risk‐taking). Results: As expected, measures of verbatim‐based processing positively predicted contact intentions, whereas measures of gist‐based processing negatively predicted contact intentions. Contrary to hypotheses, experimental conditions did not influence intentions (43% across conditions). Contact intentions were associated with perceptions of low risk, high benefit, and the offer's apparent genuineness, as well as self‐reported decision regret, subjective vulnerability to scams, and prior experience falling for scams. Conclusions: Overall, message perceptions and prior susceptibility, rather than experimental manipulations, mattered in predicting scam susceptibility. Seven hundred and one participants read a solicitation letter online and indicated willingness to call an "activation number" to claim an alleged $500,000 sweepstakes prize. Participants focused on the solicitation's verbatim details (hypothesized to increase risk‐taking) or its broad gist (hypothesized to decrease risk‐taking). Experimental conditions did not influence contact intentions (43% across conditions); instead, intentions were associated with perceptions of low risk, high benefit, and the offer's apparent genuineness, as well as self‐reported decision regret, subjective vulnerability to scams, and prior experience falling for scams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures. In a preregistered cross-cultural study (N = 3,960, 19 countries), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed associations between the use of seven emotion regulation strategies (situation selection, distraction, rumination, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, expressive suppression, and emotional support seeking) and four indices of psychological health (life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and loneliness). Model comparisons based on Bayesian information criteria provided support for cultural differences in 36% of associations, with very strong support for differences in 18% of associations. Strategies that were linked to worse psychological health in individualist countries (e.g., rumination, expressive suppression) were unrelated or linked to better psychological health in collectivist countries. Cultural differences in associations with psychological health were most prominent for expressive suppression and rumination and also found for distraction and acceptance. In addition, we found evidence for cultural similarities in 46% of associations between strategies and psychological health, but none of this evidence was very strong. Cultural similarities were most prominent in associations of psychological health with emotional support seeking. These findings highlight the importance of considering the cultural context to understand how individuals from diverse backgrounds manage unpleasant emotions. Public Significance Statement: This study assessed links between multiple emotion regulation strategies and indices of psychological health in diverse countries around the world as people coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of these links were similar across countries, but some were different, such that strategies that were positively related to psychological health in some countries were unrelated or negatively related to psychological health in other countries. These findings highlight the importance of a culturally sensitive approach to emotion regulation and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion regulation is linked to adaptive psychological outcomes. To engage in such regulation, people must be motivated to do it. Given that people in different countries vary in how they think about unpleasant emotions, we expected motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions to differ across countries. Furthermore, given that emotion regulation strategies operate in the service of motivation, we expected people who are less motivated to decrease unpleasant emotions to use emotion regulation strategies less across countries. To test these predictions, we conducted two studies during the COVID-19 pandemic: Study 1 in 2020 ( N = 1,329) and Study 2 in 2021 ( N = 1,279). We assessed the motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions and the use of emotion regulation strategies among members of East Asian countries (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and China) and Western countries (i.e., United States, United Kingdom, and Germany). Because we found substantial variation within these two broader cultural categories, we examined motivation and overall strategy use in emotion regulation at the country level. In both studies, motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions was the lowest in Japan and relatively high in the United States. As expected, across countries, weaker motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions was associated with using emotion regulation strategies less. We discuss implications of our findings for understanding cultural differences in motivated emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).