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Over 500 million people interact daily with Facebook. Yet, whether Facebook use influences subjective well-being over time is unknown. We addressed this issue using experience-sampling, the most reliable method for measuring in-vivo behavior and psychological experience. We text-messaged people five times per day for two-weeks to examine how Facebook use influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives. Our results indicate that Facebook use predicts negative shifts on both of these variables over time. The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes. They were also not moderated by the size of people's Facebook networks, their perceived supportiveness, motivation for using Facebook, gender, loneliness, self-esteem, or depression. On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present research provides novel insights into people''s automatic reactions to outgroup members. Specifically, three experiments examine the unpredictability tendencies that can arise from mere primes of outgroups and the circumstances that produce these tendencies. In Studies 1 and 2, participants reported stronger unpredictability tendencies (Study 1) and were rated by independent coders as more unpredictable (Study 2) after being subliminally primed with a racial outgroup than a racial ingroup, but only if they had a chronically high distrust of others. Study 3 replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 by using a different ingroup/outgroup context (university affiliation) and experimentally manipulating distrust. Together, these studies reveal that people''s unpredictability tendencies emerge upon being reminded of outgroup members and when distrust is high, which ironically may make understanding and trust between parties all the more difficult to achieve. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We propose that two psychological dimensions, one relevant to relationships and group life (communion, C) and the other to skill acquisition, talent, and accomplishment (agency, A), aid people in interpreting their social worlds. Moreover, our analysis demonstrates the privileged nature of the C dimension and its relative stability compared to the A dimension across contexts and cultures. In Study 1 we use a standard compilation of culturally universal practices and show that the C dimension accounts for the majority of these universals, implying that the meaning of A traits varies more across cultures than that of C traits. In Studies 2 and 3, we provide evidence for this proposal using different judgment paradigms and cultural groups. The findings indicate that there is greater similarity and consensus in how people make sense of and judge information from the C than A dimension. We discuss the findings in terms of the recurring challenges people face over time as a result of living in groups. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Based on social identity and intergroup threat theories, we argue that social dominance orientation (SDO) can increase as a result of realistic threat, or perceived obstacles to the ingroup’s position and general welfare. However, this effect should be strongest among highly-identified group members, who are particularly concerned with protecting their ingroup against threat. Study 1 found that among non-Asian Americans, racial group identification moderated the relationship between perceptions of realistic threat from Asian Americans and SDO. Study 2 replicated Study 1 using an experimental, rather than correlational, design. Using different social groups, Study 3 showed that non-science college majors who identified strongly with their field of study exhibited higher SDO after being made to feel threatened by science majors. The results from these studies have implications for research on the meaning and antecedents of SDO. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Two studies examined people's beliefs about the relative disconfirmability of out-group and in-group stereotypes. In Study 1 (n = 56), Hispanics and White non-Hispanics judged the in-group and out-group stereotypes in terms of the ease with which they could be disconfirmed. The results indicated that strongly, ethnically identified participants believed the out-group stereotype to be more difficult to disconfirm than the in-group stereotype. The second study with 73 White participants examined their beliefs about the disconfirmability of the White and African American stereotypes. The results indicated that participants higher in prejudice believed the African American stereotype is more difficult to disconfirm than the White stereotype to a greater degree than participants lower in prejudice. The results suggest that disconfirmability beliefs comprise a distinct construct that may contribute to the difficulty of changing out-group stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistent with the proposal that people rely on implicit causal theories that relate different types of attributions to behaviors that differ in valence, 3 studies showed that in addition to predicting more positive than negative behavior in the target, participants produced an attribution-prediction bias. This bias indicated that persons with a dispositional orientation predicted more negative and less positive behavior from the target than persons with a situational orientation. The authors produced these findings in Studies 1 and 2 by manipulating the perceived characteristic motives of a target (dispositional, situational). In Study 3 the authors used a cultural operationalization of attributional orientations by examining the responses of Western students (dispositionalists) and East Asian students (situationalists). Finally, in support of the underlying mechanism, Study 4 showed that activating dispositional or situational knowledge facilitated the encoding of negative and positive behaviors, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]