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We consider need for sense-making a personal resource and propose that people differ in their levels of this need. We present results of five studies (N = 879) that tested Need for Sense-Making Scale (NSM). The scale is unidimensional, highly reliable, and has satisfactory construct and criterion validity. Need for sense-making was moderately positively related to extroversion, openness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, and sense of control, while negatively related to neuroticism. There was an inverted U-shaped relationship between the need for sense-making and well-being. When individuals were presented with a meaningful task, searching for and presence of meaning sequentially mediate the relationship between need for sense-making and task performance. Need for sense-making predicts work engagement through searching for and presence of meaningful work.

The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg’s Triangular Love Scale – STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were based on a sample of 7332 participants from 25 countries (from all inhabited continents). We tested configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance, all of which confirmed the cultural universality of the theoretical construct of love analyzed in our study. We also observed that levels of love components differ depending on relationship duration, following the dynamics suggested in the Triangular Theory of Love. Supplementary files with all our data, including results on love intensity across different countries along with STLS versions adapted in a few dozen languages, will further enable more extensive research on the Triangular Theory of Love. This article will not be available due to copyright restrictions © 2020 by The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

We review past and recent literature on how egocentrism shapes moral judgements. We focus on mechanisms by which egocentric evaluations appear to people as objective, impartial and morally right. We also show that people seem to be unaware of these biases and suggest that understanding how egocentrism impacts moral judgements demands studying morality embedded in a specific social context rather than the social void created in a laboratory. Finally, we argue that egocentric biases in moral judgements are not easily overcome and persist even if people deliberately try to omit attitudes in their judgements or if morally relevant information is present. We conclude that egocentric evaluations triggered by such factors as personal and group interests or attitudes may lay at the core of moral judgements of others because they help maintain a strategic social and personal relationships.

When individuals engage in job crafting by decreasing their job demands, the workload of their teammates rises. Pursuing self-interest at the expense of others requires holding a belief about the antagonistic nature of human relations. The present research demonstrates how belief in life as a zero-sum game (BZSG) shapes workplace behaviors. Our two studies—one cross-sectional and one time-lagged—support our predictions that a strong BZSG weakens proactivity and increases the tendency to decrease one’s job demands at the expense of others. We also observed a suppression effect: workload triggers a reduction in job demands indirectly by activating BZSG, while the direct link between workload and reducing hindering job demands is negative. The results are important for both theory and practice because they delineate the conditions that prompt the avoidance of job demands by the employees.

Author(s): Frankowska, Natalia; Parzuchowski, Michal; Wojciszke, Bogdan; Olszanowski, Michal; Winkielman, Piotr

This article introduces the Perspectives Questionnaire (PQ), a self-rated measure of propensities to take agent and recipient perspectives in social cognition. Each social interaction involves two separate perspectives – that of an agent (a person who performs an action) and that of a recipient (a person at whom the action is directed and who experiences its effects). Studies with six samples (N = 2037) showed that PQ has a stable, two-factorial structure in two languages (English and Polish) and consists of the agent and recipient subscales. Present studies show both convergent and discriminant validity of PQ. The agent perspective is positively related to agentic orientation and values, the promotion focus and acting for self-interest, as well as with personality traits conducive to action, like conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience. The recipient perspective is related to communal orientation and values and it correlates with personality traits conducive to experiencing, like neuroticism, empathic concern and distress. A Polish national sample data showed that high scores in the agent scale are accompanied by higher life achievements both objective (income, prestige, education) and subjective (life-satisfaction, feelings of success, self-esteem, feelings of control).

Previous research found evidence for a liking bias in moral character judgments because judgments of liked people are higher than those of disliked or neutral ones. This article sought conditions moderating this effect. In Study 1 ( N = 792), the impact of the liking bias on moral character judgments was strongly attenuated when participants were educated that attitudes bias moral judgments. In Study 2 ( N = 376), the influence of liking on moral character attributions was eliminated when participants were accountable for the justification of their moral judgments. Overall, these results suggest that although liking biases moral character attributions, this bias might be reduced or eliminated when deeper information processing is required to generate judgments of others’ moral character.

Young children display strong aversion toward antisocial individuals, but also feel responsible for joint activities and express a strong sense of group loyalty. This paper aims to understand how beneficial cooperation with an antisocial partner shapes preschoolers' attitudes, preferences, and moral judgments concerning antisocial individuals. We argue that although young children display a strong aversion to antisocial characters, children may overcome this aversion when they stand to personally benefit. In Study 1a (N = 62), beneficial cooperation with an antisocial partner resulted in the children's later preference for the antisocial partner over the neutral partner. Study 1b (N = 91) replicated this effect with discrete measurement of liking (resource distribution) and showed that children rewarded more and punished less the antisocial partner in the beneficial cooperation setting. In Study 2, (N = 58), children's aversion to an antisocial in-group member decreased when the cooperation benefited other in-group members. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 62), when children passively observed the antisocial individual, personal benefits from the antisocial behavior did not change their negative attitude toward the antisocial individual. Overall, beneficial cooperation with the antisocial partner increased the children's liking and preference for the antisocial partner, but did not affect the children's moral judgments. Presented evidence suggests that by the age of 4, children develop a strong obligation to collaborate with partners who help them to acquire resources-even when these partners harm third parties, which children recognize as immoral.

The current research focused on individual difference – propensity to take the agent perspective, in order to test if it moderates the well-established relationship between agency and self-esteem. We present three correlational studies examining if propensity to take the agent perspective is related to valuing agentic traits (Preliminary Study, N = 119, mean age = 22.18, 78% female) and if self-ascribed agentic traits are more related to self-esteem among those who highly identify with being agents in the social world compared to those with a lower level of this propensity (meta-analysis of Study 1 and 2, N = 290, mean age = 27.76, 79% female). The meta-analysis of the results supported the moderating effect of propensity to take the agent perspective on the relations between self-ascribed agentic traits and self-esteem. The present studies add an individual differences perspective to the discussion on culture as a moderator of agency based self-esteem. However, considering the small effect size, our research also indicates how universal (not only on cross-cultural but also on the individual level) the association between agency and self-esteem is.

Not much is known about the cognitive consequences of success and failure, and there is no comprehensive theory explaining their aftermath. Building on a dual-perspective model of social cognition, we offer such a preliminary theory that assumes that experiencing success induces an agentic perspective, whereas experiencing failure induces a recipient perspective. We present two field studies of persons failing or succeeding at their naturally occurring goals. The studies found that the experience of success was accompanied by heightened accessibility and use of agentic content. The experience of failure resulted in lowered mood and self-esteem.

Many studies have explored the evaluative effects of vertical (up/down) or horizontal (left/right) spatial locations. However, little is known about the role of information that comes from the front and back. Based on multiple theoretical considerations, we propose that spatial location of sounds is a cue for message valence, such that a message coming from behind is interpreted as more negative than a message presented in front of a listener. Here we show across a variety of manipulations and dependent measures that this effect occurs in the domain of social information. Our data are most compatible with theoretical accounts which propose that social information presented from behind is associated with uncertainty and lack of control, which is amplified in conditions of self-relevance.

In this article, we examine how group identity and protection of group interests shape morality judgments. We argue that actions serving ingroup interests are more likely to be judged as moral (or less immoral) than the same actions that do not serve ingroup interests. However, this group-interest bias should be especially strong among those high in collective narcissism—a defensive belief in ingroup greatness that is not appreciated by others. In Studies 1 (N = 185, Polish and British participants) and 2 (N = 404, British participants), participants judged actions favouring interests of outgroup members as less moral than similar actions favouring interests of their ingroup. However, this effect was only present for those high in national collective narcissism. In Study 3 (N = 400, American participants), moral judgments of the US Senate's decision about Brett Kavanaugh's nomination depended on partisanship, but this effect was strengthened by partisan collective narcissism. Finally, in Study 4 (N = 711, American participants), the association between national collective narcissism and morality judgments of President Trump's decision to remain an ally of Saudi Arabia was especially strong when national interest was salient (vs. not). None of the studies observed similar moderating effects of conventional ingroup identification. Overall, these results suggest that ingroup interests shape moral judgments, but this bias is most prevalent among those who are defensive about their group identity.

In most individualistic cultures, pride is regarded as a positive emotion that follows a positive evaluation of one’s competence or effort when achieving a goal. Fredrickson (2001) suggests that pride may expand individuals’ scope of attention and broaden their action repertoires by driving them toward greater achievements in the future. In the present study, we show that proud individuals may search for greater achievements by stronger willingness to cooperate with agentic though immoral individuals. We demonstrate that proud participants in comparison to participants in the control condition rely to a higher degree on information on agency and respect, and less on information on morality and liking of their potential partners of cooperation.

There is a growing debate about the relationship between self-perceived agency-communion and self-esteem. One viewpoint for this debate is offered by the Dual Perspective Model, a novel theoretical framework that introduces the agent and the recipient as two fundamental perspectives in social perception. Building on this model, we expected higher importance of self-ascribed agency for self-esteem in the agent perspective than in the recipient perspective and a higher importance of self-ascribed communion for self-esteem in the recipient than in the agent perspective. However, the meta-analysis of six experiments (N = 659, 68% females) showed no interaction of the perspectives and self-ascribed agency and communion in predicting self-esteem. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between agency-communion and self-esteem seems to be fairly independent of one's temporary mindset.

What are the ultimate motives that instigate individuals’ behaviors? Is it power? Is it love? What are the aims of social perception? Does social perception aim at recognizing likeable others or does it aim at detecting dangerous others? How can an individual’s behavior be described both from the perspective of the actor and from the perspective of an observer? These are very basic questions that can be addressed with the here proposed agency-communion framework. Agency (competence, assertiveness) refers to existence of an organism as an individual, to “getting ahead” and to individual goal-pursuit; communion (warmth, morality) refers to participation of an individual in a larger organism, to “getting along” and to forming bonds. The introductory chapter shows how this agency-communion framework helps to answer research questions in motivation, personality, social cognition, self-perception, and stereotypes. It is an overarching framework integrating a number of theories and also placing weight on content instead of processes only.

People believe that their moral judgments are well-justified and as objective as scientific facts. Still, dual-process models of judgment provide strong theoretical reasons to expect that in reality moral judgments are substantially influenced by highly subjective factors such as attitudes. In four experiments (N = 645) we provide evidence that similarity-dissimilarity of beliefs, mere exposure, and facial mimicry influence judgments of moral character measured in various ways. These influences are mediated by changes in liking of the judged persons, suggesting that attitudinal influences lay at the core of moral character perceptions. Changes in mood do not play such a role. This is the first line of studies showing that attitudes influence moral judgments in addition to frequently studied discrete emotions. It is also the first research evidencing the affective influences on judgments of moral character.

A substantial amount of research showed that agency (concerning goal attainment) and communion (concerning relationships maintenance) are two basic dimensions of content in social cognition. Based on the well-supported idea that people typically think about themselves and close others in agentic rather than communal terms, we tested the hypothesis that agentic (but not communal) thinking about unknown others makes them subjectively closer. This hypothesis was confirmed in four experiments differently priming agentic versus communal thinking on others. As predicted, increases in closeness resulting from the agentic thinking about others were constrained to cognitive load conditions where participants were occupied with a parallel task. We conclude that the agentic content of thoughts about others serves as an intuitive, heuristic cue of their psychological closeness.

Moral psychology is booming and recent years brought a large body of research on moral judgments and impressions. We review up to date results about this important constituent of human morality focusing mainly on: (1) how deontology vs. utilitarianism drives moral judgments, (2) what is the role of intuition and deliberation in moral judgments, (3) how and why morality influences impressions of persons, and (4) how people perceive moral character. We also highlight some limitations of previous research and show how these limitations are being overcome recently.

This article introduces a novel concept, Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG), proposed as another belief dimension in the family of social axioms. We conceptualize BZSG as a belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations—that one person’s gain is possible only at the expense of other persons. It appears on a level of personal convictions and as a cultural worldview ideology. We found that persons or nations who believe in a zero-sum game engage in win-lose social exchanges over limited resources. Psychometric evidence for the universality of the BZSG scale in a large pancultural project of 37 nations is presented, where individual and cultural-level predictors of BZSG were tested, followed by their multilevel analyses. BZSG, which shows a conceptual and empirical affinity with societal cynicism, is moderated by previously described cultural dimensions and by objective socio-economic indices.

The effect of free mate choice on the relative magnitude of fitness benefits has been examined among various species. The majority of the data show significant fitness benefits of mating with partners of an individual’s own choice, highlighting elevated behavioral compatibility between partners with free mate choice. Similarities between humans and other species that benefit from free mate choice led us to hypothesize that it also confers reproductive benefits in Homo sapiens. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a study among three indigenous societies—the Tsimane’, Yali, and Bhotiya—who employ natural birth control. In all three samples, we compared the marriages arranged by parents with the non-arranged ones in terms of number of offspring. Here, we show that there were no significant relationships between type of marriage and the total number of alive children and number of dead children among the three sampled groups. The presented study is the first to date to examine the fitness benefits of free mate choice in humans. In discussion we present limitations of our research and discuss the possibility of love having a beneficial influence in terms of the number of offspring.

The dual perspective model of agency and communion predicts that observers tend to interpret a target’s behavior more in terms of communion than agency, whereas actors interpret their behavior more in terms of agency. The present research for the first time tests this model in real interactions. Previously unacquainted participants had a short conversation and afterwards rated their own behavior (actor perspective) and their interaction partner’s behavior (observer perspective) in terms of agency(self-confident, assertive) and communion(trustworthy, empathic). Supporting the dual perspective model, observers rated the actor’s behavior higher on communion than on agency, and higher on communion than actors themselves did. Findings for actors were more complex: Actors rated their own behavior as more agentic than observers did. However, they also rated their behavior high on communion. We discuss implications for the dual perspective model as well as for (mis)understandings in social interactions.

Two hypotheses concerning the relative importance of agentic versus communal traits as predictors of selfesteem were tested. The perspective hypothesis assumed that self-esteem is dominated by agency over communion because self-perceptions are formed from the agent (versus recipient) perspective. The culture hypothesis assumed that self-esteem is dominated by communal concerns in collectivistic cultures and by agentic concerns in individualistic cultures (echoed by individual differences in self-construal). Study 1 involving three samples from collectivistic countries and three from individualistic ones found that self-esteem was better predicted from self-ratings of agentic than communal traits, with the exception of collectivistic women for whom the two predictors were equal. Study 2 primed the interdependent or independent self and found self-ratings of agency to be better predictors of self-esteem than self-ratings of communion, with the exception of interdependence priming,where the two predictors were equal in strength.

Previous studies (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014) showed that self-interest biases moral perception of others’ unethical actions. Moreover, affective changes in attitudinal responses towards the perpetrator of an immoral act drives the bias. In the present studies, we attempted to answer the question whether people are aware of the self-interest bias in their judgments of others’ behavior. We conducted two experiments showing that moral judgments of verbally described and imagined actions were dominated by norms rather than self-interest (Study 1) and that people were not aware that self-interest distorted their moral judgment (Study 2). The unawareness of the self-interest bias among the participants was attributable to omission of their own emotional responses when forecasting their moral judgments. We discuss the importance of emotions presence in studies on moral judgments as well as contribution of the present research to the intuitionist approach to moral judgment.

Based on Heider’s (1958) balance theory we hypothesize that emotional responses to other persons’ outcomes depend on attitudes toward these persons. Positive attitudes toward others lead to empathic responses to their outcomes – joy after a success and sorrow after a failure. Negative attitudes result in paradoxical responses – negative to a success (resentment) and positive to a failure (schadenfreude). These emotions function as responses restoring balance within cognitive units consisting of the perceiver, other persons, and their outcomes. Three studies supported these hypotheses and showed that deservingness considerations play a weaker role in shaping emotional responses of joy and sorrow to others’ outcomes when strong interpersonal attitudes are involved. However, deservingness plays an independent role in shaping the emotional response of resentment.

The automatic and affective nature of moral judgments leads to the expectation that these judgments are biased by an observer’s own interests. Although the idea of self-interest bias is old, it has never been directly tested with respect to the moral judgments of other individuals’ behaviors. The participants of three experiments observed other individuals’ counternormative behavior (breaking a rule or cheating for gain), which was judged as immoral. However, this judgment became much more lenient when the observers gained from the observed behavior. All three studies showed that the influence of self-interest on moral judgments was completely mediated by the observer’s increased liking for the perpetrator of the immoral acts but not by changes in mood. When the participants were induced to dislike the perpetrator (in a moderation-of-process design), the self-interest bias disappeared. Implications for the intuitionist approach to moral judgment are discussed.

Morality is a prominent guide of both action and perception. We argue that non-emotional gestures can prime the abstract concept of honesty. Four studies demonstrated that the emblematic gesture associated with honesty (putting a hand on one's heart) increased the level of honesty perceived by others, and increased the honesty shown in one's own behavior. Target persons performing this gesture were described in terms associated with honesty, and appeared more trustworthy to others than when the same targets were photographed with a control gesture. Persons performing the hand-over-heart gesture provided more honest assessments of others' attractiveness, and refrained from cheating, as compared to persons performing neutral gestures. These findings suggest that bodily experience associated with abstract concepts can influence both one's perceptions of others, and one's own complex actions. Further, our findings suggest that this influence is not mediated by changes in affective states.

Research on culture-related violence has typically focused on honor cultures and their justification of certain forms of aggression as reactions to provocation. In contrast, amusement and humor as the preferred reactions to provocation remain understudied phenomena, especially in a cross-cultural context. In an attempt to remedy this, participants from an honor culture (Poland), dignity culture (Canada), and face culture (China) were asked how they would react and how they would like to react to a series of provocative scenarios. Results confirmed that aggression may be the preferred reaction to provocation in honor cultures, while the preferred reaction to provocation in dignity cultures may be based on humor and amusement. The third kind of provocation reaction, withdrawal, turned out to be more complex but was most popular in dignity and face cultures. Furthermore, results confirmed that the way individuals think they would behave is more culturally diversified than the way individuals would like to behave.

The double perspective model (DPM) assumes that every social interaction involves two perspectives – that of the agent (a person who performs an action) and that of the recipient (a person toward whom the action is directed). Agency and communion constitute two basic dimensions of social cognition because they denote these two perspectives. In effect, interpersonal evaluations (made from the recipient perspective) are dominated by communal over agentic content. The present study experimentally showed that self-evaluations (made from the agentic perspective) are dominated by agentic over communal content. Participants were primed with negative or positive information involving agency or communion of the self or another person. Whereas the global evaluation of others was influenced by both agentic and communal primes, the global evaluation of self (self-esteem) was influenced by agentic but not communal primes. These findings are discussed as an evidence for DPM.

We present a Double Perspective Model (DPM) explaining why agency (competence) and communion (warmth) constitute two basic content dimensions of social cognition. Every social action involves two perspectives: of the agent (a person who performs an action) and of the recipient (a person at whom the action is directed). Immediate cognitive goals of the agent and recipient differ, which results in heightened accessibility and weight of content referring either to agency (from the agent’s perspective) or to communion (from the recipient’s perspective). DPM explains why evaluations of other persons are dominated by communal over agentic considerations and allows a novel hypothesis that self-esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. We present several studies supporting this hypothesis. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this paper we build on the distinction of agency (competence) and communion (warmth) as the fundamental dimensions of social cognition. We present a Double Perspective Model (DPM) offering a new account of why agency and communion constitute the two basic dimensions. We also present a novel hypothesis resulting from the model— that self-esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. We begin by shortly reviewing the idea of agency and communion as basic dimensions of social cognition, then present DPM as an explanation of this duality and discuss two main derivations of our model. First, perceptions and evaluations of other persons are dominated by communal over agentic information. As this is a well-established fact now, we only summarize the confirming empirical evidence. Second, the self-cognition (including self-esteem) is dominated by agentic over communal information. As this is a novel prediction, we discuss it in some detail and present a series of supporting studies.

Liking and respect are proposed as two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes. Whereas liking–disliking reflects personal preferences, respect–disrespect reflects deference. Four studies involving a variety of samples and target persons showed that: (1) liking is more strongly influenced by communal than agentic qualities of the target, (2) respect is more strongly influenced by agentic than communal qualities of the target, (3) influence of communal information on liking is mediated by the perceived benevolence of the target, (4) influence of agentic information on respect is mediated by the inferred status potential of the target person. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Agentic qualities are associated with self-interests of the trait possessor and communal qualities are associated with interests of other people (with whom the trait possessor interacts with). Based on this idea we hypothesized that information on behavior serving self-interests leads to inferences of agency while information on identical actions performed in the service of others' interests leads to inferences of communion. These hypotheses were supported in a study where participants perceived a politician who acted for or against his own interest and (orthogonally) acted for or against interests of other people. Additionally, actions serving other-interest influenced attitudes toward the politician to a higher degree than actions serving his self-interest. The other-interest influence on attitudes was mediated by inferences of communal qualities of the politician while the self-interest influence on attitudes was mediated by inferences of agentic qualities of the politician. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Agency (A) and communion (C) are basic dimensions of social judgment and C is typically more important than A. Building on the two-interest account of bidimensionality of social cognition, we hypothesized that this ‘‘C over A’’ pattern is typical for judging distant persons but is attenuated or even reversed when people judge the self or interdependent persons. In Study 1 we found that the construal of events leading to changes in a target’s evaluation was different in dependence on perspective. There was a ‘‘C over A’’ pattern in case of distant others, but an ‘‘A over C’’ pattern in case of close friends or the self. In Study 2 we found that the degree of dependence on one’s supervisor determined the ‘‘C over A’’ pattern, as well. C was more important for the supervisor’s overall evaluation if there was no dependence, and conversely A was more important in case of dependence. The studies underline the theoretical significance of a social interaction perspective in social judgment, and particularly in judgments on the two basic dimensions. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Agency is—besides communion—a basic dimension of traits. It can be specifically linked to behavioral outcomes, to status, mastery, self-esteem and to success. The present paper analyzes the situational malleability of agency. Two studies tested whether an individual's agency (but not communion) is situationally influenced by the experience of success versus failure at a task, as well as whether this effect is the same for men and women. Supporting our hypotheses, the induction of success versus failure experiences led to changes in agency that were independent of actual performance, independent of type of task (memorizing vs. face recognition), independent of induction methodology (easy vs. difficult task vs. manipulated performance feedback), and independent of self-esteem, initial level of agency and of the participants' gender. Communion was not influenced by this kind of experience. Implications for both the basic dimension of agency and for theories on gender and gender stereotypes are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

On the basis of previous research, the authors hypothesize that (a) person descriptive terms can be organized into the broad dimensions of agency and communion of which communion is the primary one; (b) the main distinction between these dimensions pertains to their profitability for the self (agency) vs. for other persons (communion); hence, agency is more desirable and important in the self-perspective, and communion is more desirable and important in the other-perspective; (c) self-other outcome dependency increases importance of another person's agency. Study 1 showed that a large number of trait names can be reduced to these broad dimensions, that communion comprises more item variance, and that agency is predicted by self-profitability and communion by other-profitability. Studies 2 and 3 showed that agency is more relevant and desired for self, and communion is more relevant and desired for others. Study 4 showed that agency is more important in a close friend than an unrelated peer, and this difference is completely mediated by the perceived outcome dependency.

Morality and competence are posited to constitute two basic kinds of content in person- and self-perception. Moral content dominates person-perception because it typically has a direct and unconditional bearing on the well-being of other people surrounding the person who is described by the trait (including the perceiver). Competence dominates self-perception because it has a direct bearing on the well-being of the perceiver. A comprehensive research programme is reviewed showing that morality of others matters to the perceiver to a much higher degree than his/her competence. When forming global evaluations of others, the perceiver is more interested in their moral than competence qualities, construes their behaviour in moral terms, and his or her impressions and emotional responses are more strongly based on morality than competence considerations. Just the opposite is true for self-perception and self-attitudes. Own behaviours are construed more readily in competence than moral terms, and own competence...

Abstract. A research program on the affective concomitants of information on morality (M) and competence (C) is reviewed. The program originated from the assumption that M and C are the most important categories of behavior construal and that both categories can be, and are, used in interpretation of the same behavioral acts. Whereas in the observer perspective (when interpreting the behavior of others) M is more relevant than C, in the actor perspective (when interpreting one's own behavior) C is more relevant than M. Based on these theses it was predicted and found that: (1) M-related acts of others (moral acts and transgressions) instigated stronger affective responses than C-related acts (successes and failures), (2) the opposite was true for the participant's own acts, (3) attitudes toward other persons were more strongly influenced by the M than C-related information, and (4) attitudes toward the self (self-esteem) were more strongly influenced by the C than M-related information. The findings were discussed in terms of M and C being differently relevant for social inclusion-exclusion processes.

In this article, it is proposed that a culture of com plaining thrives in Poland. The building blocks of this culture in clude: (1) the norm of negativity of one's own emotional states, (2) the norm of negativity of the social world, and (3) the behav ioral scripts of complaining (rituals of expressing dissatisfaction). Various results of both experimental and correlational research are presented showing that complaining is widespread among Poles and has several important correlates. Specifically, it has been shown that complaining leads to or is accompanied by: (1) lowered moods and increased negative emotions, (2) decreased life satisfaction and optimism, (3) belief in the negativity of the social world, espe cially if addressed in a general rather than specific way, and (4) belief in an unjust social world. Emotional and cognitive concomi tants of complaining are discussed as constituents of a negativity trap, which is detrimental to social adaptation because it leads to emotional and motivational deficits (at the individual level) and

Although status and wealth are related facets of social stratification, their association is only moderate. In this article, we\ud demonstrate that justification of wealth versus status can be independent processes. To this end, we introduce a novel, nondeclarative\ud measure of system justification. The measure is based on within-individual correlations between the judgments of how\ud a group ‘‘is doing’’ and how it ‘‘should be doing.’’ Two studies demonstrated that the between-group differentiation in terms of\ud material wealth was delegitimized—the more a group was perceived as wealthy, the less it was desired to be wealthy. However,\ud the between-group differentiation in terms of status was generally legitimized—the more a group was perceived as influential, the\ud more it was desired to be influential. We conclude by discussing the role of sociopolitical context in active legitimization and\ud delegitimization of different aspects of the system.

Based on the balance theory (Heider, 1958), we hypothesized that emotions (i.e., schadenfreude, resentment, joy and sorrow) induced by other person’s outcomes function as responses restoring balance within cognitive units consisting of the perceiver, other persons and their outcomes. As a consequence, emotional reactions towards others’ outcomes depend on the perceiver’s attitudes in such a way that outcomes of a well-liked person rise congruous responses (sorrow after failure and joy after success), while outcomes of a disliked other lead to incongruous responses (schadenfreude after failure and resentment after success). Our participants recalled a situation from their past in which somebody they liked or disliked had succeed or failed. Additionally, we manipulated whether the outcome referred to a domain where participants’ self-interest was involved or not. We analyzed the participants’ average emotional state as well as specific emotions induced by the recalled events. Consistently with expectations we found that balancing principles played a major role in shaping emotional responses to successes and failures of person who were well-liked or disliked.

Based on the notion that approach-avoidance underlies impression formation processes and that approach-avoidance is more directly based on appraisals of others' morality (M) than competence (C), we hypothesized that M-related information played a more important role at various phases of global impression formation than C-related information on target persons. In four studies (N = 342 university students), we predicted and found that (a) M traits showed a higher chronic accessibility than C traits; (b) when gathering information to formulate a global impression, perceivers were more interested in M traits than C traits; (c) global impressions of real persons were better predicted from M trait ascriptions than C trait ascriptions, and (d) positivity-negativity of impressions of fictitious persons was decided mainly by the M content of their behavior, whereas C information served as a weak modifier of impression intensity. The dominance of M traits over C traits was more pronounced for female perceivers than for male perceivers.