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Objective: We investigated the relationship between personal relative deprivation (PRD)-resentment from the belief that one is worse off than people who are similar to oneself-and locus of control., Background: Research has yet to comprehensively investigate whether PRD is associated with a tendency to favor external (vs. internal) explanations for self- and other-relevant outcomes., Method: Eight studies (N total  = 6729) employed cross-sectional, experimental, and (micro)longitudinal designs and used established trait and state measures of PRD and loci of control., Results: Participants higher in PRD adopted more external (vs. internal) explanations for others' outcomes while controlling for socio-demographics (e.g., socioeconomic status; Studies 1-4). This relationship was mediated by a lowered sense of personal control (Study 1) and evident in a cross-national sample of participants in Asia (Study 2). PRD is more robustly associated with external than internal explanations for self and other-relevant outcomes (Studies 5-8), and within-person changes in PRD are positively associated with within-person changes in external explanations (month-to-month and day-to-day; Studies 7-8)., Conclusions: PRD is positively associated with external locus of control independent of socioeconomic status, within and between people, and across cultures. This research highlights the implications of PRD for people's construal of the causal forces that govern their lives., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Personality published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Lay Abstract: It is often suggested that supporting autistic people to identify and use their strengths will lead to positive outcomes. However, little research has explored if this is true. To date, no research has explored whether autistic people already have knowledge of and use their strengths, nor whether increased strengths knowledge and use is linked to good outcomes, such as a better quality of life, well-being and improved mental health. Comparing large samples of autistic and non-autistic people, this study tested these unanswered questions. We found that autistic and non-autistic people reported similar strengths, but autistic people reported less knowledge and use of their strengths compared to non-autistic people. Importantly however, autistic people who reported using their strengths often had better quality of life, well-being and mental health than autistic people who reported using their strengths less frequently. We, therefore, propose that supporting autistic people to use their strengths more often may be a valuable way to boost well-being in this population.

Autism and anxiety are thought to be related to extreme demand avoidance (EDA), which is characterised by intense avoidance of everyday demands. However, the relative importance of autism and anxiety to EDA has yet to be investigated, and little is known about EDA in adulthood. We conducted two online survey studies (Ns = 267 and 549) with adults in the general population to establish the relative importance of autistic traits and anxiety as predictors of demand avoidance, using dominance analysis. Both autistic traits and anxiety were unique and equally important predictors of demand avoidance. These findings suggest EDA is linked to autism and are consistent with the theory that demand avoidance behaviours are potentially anxiety-driven in adults., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Individual differences in Theory of Mind (ToM)-the ability to understand the mental states of others-are theorised to be predicted by socio-demographic and political factors. However, inconsistent findings on the relationships between various socio-demographic predictors and ToM, as well as a paucity of research on political predictors of ToM, have left a gap in the literature. Using a recently validated self-report measure of ToM in a large sample (N = 4202) we investigated the unique contributions of age, sex, socio-economic status, and political beliefs to ToM in adults. Except for age, all variables were correlated with ToM, but when accounting for the variance of other predictors in statistical analyses, political beliefs was no longer associated with ToM. Dominance analysis revealed that participant sex was the most important predictor of ToM. These findings help to address theoretical discrepancies in the existing literature and inform future methods and directions in social cognition research., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Clutterbuck et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Lay Abstract: Anthropomorphism is the tendency to attribute human-like qualities (e.g. thoughts and feelings) to non-human entities (e.g. objects and weather systems). Research by White and Remington (2019) suggested that anthropomorphism is more common in autistic compared to neurotypical adults, which is interesting given that autistic individuals sometimes misunderstand the thoughts and feelings of other people. In this article, we re-examined the link between autism and anthropomorphism in a large sample of adults with varying degrees of autistic traits, with several important methodological advances on previous research. Across two studies, we found that individuals with more autistic traits reported greater anthropomorphic tendencies. As part of these analyses, we had to develop a new, refined measure of anthropomorphism, which showed better reliability and validity than the original measure. This measure will be useful in future autism-related research. Overall, advancing White and Remington's study, these findings help us to better understand individual differences in socially relevant processes, including those that may be enhanced in autism (e.g. anthropomorphism).

Following the popularity of dual process models in social and cognitive psychology, there is major interest in the possibility that autism is associated with impaired "fast" intuitive thinking but enhanced "slow" or "rational" deliberative thinking. If correct, this has great potential to help understand various strengths and difficulties characteristic of autism. Previous empirical investigations of this phenomenon, however, are marred by concerns about the measurement of intuitive and deliberative processing, as well as broader problems in clinical psychological science (e.g., small underpowered studies, lack of replication). Making a step change, we conducted four large-scale studies to examine dual processing in autism, including a preregistered comparison of 200 autistic and nonautistic adults. Participants completed contemporary cognitive and self-report measures of intuitive and deliberative processing, as well as a psychometrically robust measure of general cognitive ability. Except for lower self-reported intuitive thinking, we found no unique contributions of autism to intuitive or deliberative thinking across all four studies, as evidenced by frequentist and Bayesian analyses. Overall, these studies indicate that intuitive and deliberative thinking is neither enhanced nor particularly impaired in relation to autism. We deliberate on the implications of these findings for theories of autism and future investigation of strengths and difficulties in autistic people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Personal relative deprivation (PRD; the belief that one is worse off than other people who are similar to oneself) is associated with a reduced willingness to delay gratification, lower prosociality, and increased materialism. These results suggest that PRD may play a role in shaping people's willingness to act to protect the natural environment. We report 3 studies that investigate a possible link between PRD and pro-environmental intentions (ENV). Study 1 was an exploratory study using a US sample; Studies 2 and 3 were pre-registered replications using UK and US samples, respectively. In each study, participants self-reported PRD and ENV; they also indicated their subjective social status (where they come on a national "ladder" of social class) and reported their income, education, age, and gender/sex. All three studies found a negative correlation between PRD and ENV. However, multiple regression analyses in which ENV was regressed on PRD and all other variables simultaneously indicated that the unique effect of PRD was small and, for Studies 2 and 3, the 95% confidence intervals included zero. No other variable emerged as a clear unique predictor across all three studies. The data suggest that PRD may be associated with reduced intention to act pro-environmentally, but the causal status of this association, and its relationship to other demographic and social-status variables, remains a topic for further research., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Mentalising, also known as "Theory of Mind", is the ability to understand and infer the cognitions of others, such as their perceptions, intentions, and beliefs. Although several tools have been designed to measure mentalising in adults, there exist methodological and practical limitations. Many of the existing measures conflate mentalising with similar constructs (e.g., empathy), and most are lengthy measures that are unsuitable for large population-based studies and clinical practice. These issues are currently hampering clinical and non-clinical investigations into mentalising and related social-cognitive abilities. Drawing on questionnaire measures of social cognition, we conceived a self-report mentalising scale, the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI; Studies 1a and b). The FIMI was developed through a series of studies examining its factor structure and reliability (Studies 2a and b) and by testing its construct validity against a cognitive mentalising task, autistic traits, and comparing scores in autistic and non-autistic people (Studies 3a and b). Together, we demonstrate that the FIMI is a conceptually and methodologically robust tool for measuring mentalising ability in the general population, including autistic and non-autistic people. Future research directions and practical (clinical) applications of the scale are discussed, with a focus on improving understanding and management of (a)typical mentalising ability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Lay Abstract: The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is responsible for the functioning of the heart, bladder, pupils and several other bodily functions. Therefore, when the ANS functions abnormally, individuals can experience a number of physical symptoms, including dizziness, abnormal sweating and digestive difficulties. Currently, it is unclear if autistic adults experience ANS dysfunction. Therefore, in this study, we investigated whether autistic adults report more ANS-related physical symptoms, indicating greater ANS dysfunction, and whether this may be related to autism, or rather anxiety, depression, or stress. The findings suggest that ANS dysfunction, where found in autism, is due to co-occurring stress and anxiety. We therefore propose that treating stress and anxiety may be an effective way to ameliorate ANS-related health problems in autistic adults.

Research during the 1960s found that observers could be moved enough by an innocent victim's suffering to derogate their character. However, recent research has produced inconsistent evidence for this effect. We conducted the first meta-analysis ( k = 55) of the experimental literature on the victim derogation effect to test the hypothesis that it varies as a function of the emotional impactfulness of the context for observers. We found that studies which employed more impactful contexts (e.g., that were real and vivid) reported larger derogation effects. Emotional impact was, however, confounded by year of appearance, such that older studies reported larger effects and were more impactful. To disentangle the role of emotional impact, in two primary experiments we found that more impactful contexts increased the derogation of an innocent victim. Overall, the findings advance our theoretical understanding of the contexts in which observers are more likely to derogate an innocent victim.

It has been proposed that atypical empathy in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is due to co-occurring alexithymia. However, difficulties measuring empathy and statistical issues in previous research raise questions about the role of alexithymia in empathic processing in ASD. Addressing these issues, we compared the associations of trait alexithymia and autism with empathy in large samples from the general population. Multiple regression analyses showed that both trait autism and alexithymia were uniquely associated with atypical empathy, but dominance analysis found that trait autism, compared to alexithymia, was a more important predictor of atypical cognitive, affective, and overall empathy. Together, these findings indicate that atypical empathy in ASD is not simply due to co-occurring alexithymia.

We examined the causal order of relationships between rape myth acceptance (RMA), victim blaming, and memory reconstruction. In Study 1, RMA-congruent memory (or alternatively, victim blaming) mediated the relationship between RMA and victim blaming (memory reconstruction). In Study 2, similar relationships emerged between RMA, victim blaming, and memory reconstruction. Although no mediation of RMA occurred in Study 2 independently, a mini meta-analysis of Studies 1 and 2 data replicated both patterns of mediation observed in Study 1. In Study 3, memory accuracy for neutral details of a rape scenario was unrelated to RMA. Manipulating memory to be more (vs. less) RMA congruent had no effect on victim blaming (Study 4), although manipulating perceived victim blameworthiness (Studies 5 and 6) produced RMA-congruent memory reconstruction when the victim was more (vs. less) blameworthy. The results suggest that, via victim blaming, RMA motivates a memory reconstruction process that explains and justifies victim blaming after the fact.

The current research developed and validated a Korean-translated version of the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale (PRDS). The PRDS measures individual differences in people's tendencies to feel resentful about what they have compared to what other people like them have. Across 2 studies, Exploratory Factor Analyses revealed that the two reverse-worded items from the original PRDS did not load onto the primary factor for the Korean-translated PRDS. A reduced 3-item Korean PRDS, however, showed good convergent validity. Replicating previous findings using Western samples, greater tendencies to make social comparisons of abilities (but not opinions) were associated with higher PRDS (Studies 1 and 2), and participants scoring higher on the 3-item Korean PRDS were more materialistic (Studies 1 and 2), reported worse physical health (Study 1), had lower self-esteem (Study 2) and experienced higher stress (Study 2).

The extent to which an individual believes in free will is associated with a number of positive life outcomes, including their own subjective well-being. However, it is not known whether the belief that one has free will per se is uniquely associated with subjective well-being over and above potential confounding variables. We examined a sense of personal control as one such confound-specifically, whether the association between free will belief (FWB) and subjective well-being is based, in part, on the degree to which an individual feels a sense of personal control over their life. In Study, 1 trait-level belief in personal control significantly uniquely predicted satisfaction with life and stress, over and above the contribution of FWB. In Study 2, within-person daily fluctuations in stress and depression were not significantly predicted by daily changes in FWB over and above the contribution of personal control/choice. The findings provide new insight into the relationship between FWB and subjective well-being.

Drawing on just-world theory and research into the suppression and justification of prejudice, we propose that the use of relative compared with absolute measures of an innocent victim's character enables observers to derogate the victim without transparently violating social norms or values proscribing derogation. In Study 1, we found that positive feelings expressed toward victims mirrored social norms proscribing negative reactions toward them. In Studies 2a, 2b, and 3, innocent victims were evaluated more negatively when ratings were made using relative (i.e., compared with evaluations of the average student or the self) versus absolute scales. In Study 4, this effect of scale type on derogation was stronger for people higher in the motivation to avoid prejudiced reactions to victims. Relative judgments seem to allow individuals to enact their counternormative motivation to derogate the victim under the cover of ambiguity and ostensibly rationally motivated social comparison processes.

We propose that personal relative deprivation (PRD)-the belief that one is worse off than similar others-plays a key role in the link between social class and prosociality. Across multiple samples and measures (total N = 2,233), people higher in PRD were less inclined to help others. When considered in isolation, neither objective nor subjective socioeconomic status (SES) was meaningfully associated with prosociality. However, because people who believe themselves to be at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy are typically low in PRD, these variables act as mutual suppressors-the predictive validity of both is enhanced when they are considered simultaneously, revealing that both higher subjective SES and higher PRD are associated with lower prosociality. These results cast new light on the complex connections between relative social status and people's willingness to act for the benefit of others., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

First impressions based on facial appearance predict many important social outcomes. We investigated whether such impressions also influence the communication of scientific findings to lay audiences, a process that shapes public beliefs, opinion, and policy. First, we investigated the traits that engender interest in a scientist's work, and those that create the impression of a "good scientist" who does high-quality research. Apparent competence and morality were positively related to both interest and quality judgments, whereas attractiveness boosted interest but decreased perceived quality. Next, we had members of the public choose real science news stories to read or watch and found that people were more likely to choose items that were paired with "interesting-looking" scientists, especially when selecting video-based communications. Finally, we had people read real science news items and found that the research was judged to be of higher quality when paired with researchers who look like "good scientists." Our findings offer insights into the social psychology of science, and indicate a source of bias in the dissemination of scientific findings to broader society., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Across five studies, we found consistent evidence for the idea that personal relative deprivation (PRD), which refers to resentment stemming from the belief that one is deprived of deserved outcomes compared to others, uniquely contributes to materialism. In Study 1, self-reports of PRD positively predicted materialistic values over and above socioeconomic status, personal power, self-esteem, and emotional uncertainty. The experience of PRD starts with social comparison, and Studies 2 and 3 found that PRD mediated the positive relation between a tendency to make social comparisons of abilities and materialism. In Study 4, participants who learned that they had less (vs. similar) discretionary income than people like them reported a stronger desire for more money relative to donating more to charity. In Study 5, during a windfall-spending task, participants higher in PRD spent more on things they wanted relative to other spending categories (e.g., paying off debts)., (© 2016 The Authors. British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.)

Temporal binding refers to the compression of the perceived time interval between voluntary actions and their sensory consequences. Research suggests that the emotional content of an action outcome can modulate the effects of temporal binding. We attempted to conceptually replicate these findings using a time interval estimation task and different emotionally-valenced action outcomes (Experiments 1 and 2) than used in previous research. Contrary to previous findings, we found no evidence that temporal binding was affected by the emotional valence of action outcomes. After validating our stimuli for equivalence of perceived emotional valence and arousal (Experiment 3), in Experiment 4 we directly replicated Yoshie and Haggard's (2013) original experiment using sound vocalizations as action outcomes and failed to detect a significant effect of emotion on temporal binding. These studies suggest that the emotional valence of action outcomes exerts little influence on temporal binding. The potential implications of these findings are discussed., (Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Lower subjective socioeconomic status (SSS) and higher personal relative deprivation (PRD) relate to poorer health. Both constructs concern people's perceived relative social position, but they differ in their emphasis on the reference groups people use to determine their comparative disadvantage (national population vs. similar others) and the importance of resentment that may arise from such adverse comparisons. We investigated the relative utility of SSS and PRD as predictors of self-rated physical and mental health (e.g., self-rated health, stress, health complaints). Across six studies, self-rated physical and mental health were on the whole better predicted by measures of PRD than by SSS while controlling for objective socioeconomic status (SES), with SSS rarely contributing unique variance over and above PRD and SES. Studies 4-6 discount the possibility that the superiority of PRD over SSS in predicting health is due to psychometric differences (e.g., reliability) or response biases between the measures.

One psychosocial factor that has been identified to motivate gambling is personal relative deprivation (PRD), which refers to resentment stemming from the belief that one is deprived of a desired and deserved outcome compared to some referent. Although several lines of evidence point to a positive association between PRD and the urge to gamble, the factors that might moderate this relation have yet to be investigated. Through a quantitative research synthesis, we sought to test (a) the overall relation between PRD and gambling urges among people reporting recent gambling experience, and (b) whether this relation is moderated by problem gambling severity. Meta-analysis revealed that, overall, higher self-reported PRD was associated with stronger urges to gamble (r=.26). A meta-regression revealed that, across studies, the strength of this relation depended on problem gambling severity, such that the relation between PRD and gambling urges was stronger among samples higher in average problem gambling severity. This pattern was corroborated by an analysis of the aggregated individual participant data (N=857), such that PRD predicted gambling urges only among participants higher in problem gambling severity. The potential practical implications and limitations of these results are discussed., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

People can perceive misfortunes as caused by previous bad deeds (immanent justice reasoning) or resulting in ultimate compensation (ultimate justice reasoning). Across two studies, we investigated the relation between these types of justice reasoning and identified the processes (perceptions of deservingness) that underlie them for both others (Study 1) and the self (Study 2). Study 1 demonstrated that observers engaged in more ultimate (vs. immanent) justice reasoning for a "good" victim and greater immanent (vs. ultimate) justice reasoning for a "bad" victim. In Study 2, participants' construals of their bad breaks varied as a function of their self-worth, with greater ultimate (immanent) justice reasoning for participants with higher (lower) self-esteem. Across both studies, perceived deservingness of bad breaks or perceived deservingness of ultimate compensation mediated immanent and ultimate justice reasoning respectively.

Drawing on theorizing and research suggesting that people are motivated to view their world as an orderly and predictable place in which people get what they deserve, the authors proposed that (a) random and uncontrollable bad outcomes will lower self-esteem and (b) this, in turn, will lead to the adoption of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. Four experiments demonstrated that participants who experienced or recalled bad (vs. good) breaks devalued their self-esteem (Studies 1a and 1b), and that decrements in self-esteem (whether arrived at through misfortune or failure experience) increase beliefs about deserving bad outcomes (Studies 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b). Five studies (Studies 3-7) extended these findings by showing that this, in turn, can engender a wide array of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors, including claimed self-handicapping ahead of an ability test (Study 3), the preference for others to view the self less favorably (Studies 4-5), chronic self-handicapping and thoughts of physical self-harm (Study 6), and choosing to receive negative feedback during an ability test (Study 7). The current findings highlight the important role that concerns about deservingness play in the link between lower self-esteem and patterns of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Previous research suggests that individuals from countries that adopt an adversarial legal system, such as Canada or United Kingdom, mentally associate "law" more strongly with concepts related to competition than concepts related to cooperation. We examined whether people from a country with a non-adversarial legal system show similar mental associations. Participants from Spain and the UK completed a Single-Category Implicit Association Test. Spanish participants mentally associated the law with competition less strongly than participants from the UK (the average D-score was significantly greater than zero in the predicted direction, t(189) = 8.16, p < .001; d=1.18). Exploratory analysis also suggested that this difference between the countries was stronger among participants who believed that the method of legal practice in their own country was more adversarial. Moreover, perceiving the legal system as adversarial predicted automatic associations between law and competition for UK but not for Spanish participants. These findings suggest that legal system plays a relevant role in shaping not only individuals' actions, but their cognitive processes.

Immanent justice reasoning involves causally attributing a negative event to someone's prior moral failings, even when such a causal connection is physically implausible. This study examined the degree to which immanent justice represents a form of motivated reasoning in the service of satisfying the need to believe in a just world. Drawing on a manipulation that has been shown to activate justice motivation, participants causally attributed a freak accident to a man's prior immoral (vs. moral) behaviour to a greater extent when they first focused on their long-term (vs. short-term) goals. These findings highlight the important function believing in a just world plays in self-regulatory processes by implicating the self in immanent justice reasoning about fluke events in the lives of others., (© 2013 The British Psychological Society.)

When confronted with bad things happening to good people, observers often engage reactive strategies, such as victim derogation, to maintain a belief in a just world. Although such reasoning is usually made retrospectively, we investigated the extent to which knowledge of another person's good or bad behavior can also bias people's online expectations for subsequent good or bad outcomes. Using a fully crossed design, participants listened to auditory scenarios that varied in terms of whether the characters engaged in morally good or bad behavior while their eye movements were tracked around concurrent visual scenes depicting good and bad outcomes. We found that the good (bad) behavior of the characters influenced gaze preferences for good (bad) outcomes just prior to the actual outcomes being revealed. These findings suggest that beliefs about a person's moral worth encourage observers to foresee a preferred deserved outcome as the event unfolds. We include evidence to show that this effect cannot be explained in terms of affective priming or matching strategies., (2013 APA, all rights reserved)

Several lines of research have provided evidence for a relation between personal relative deprivation and gambling. Despite this knowledge, little is known about possible psychological mechanisms through which personal relative deprivation exerts its influence on gambling. The authors of this research sought to examine one such mechanism: the desire for immediate rewards. Using complementary approaches to studying psychological mechanisms, they tested in four studies the general hypothesis that personal relative deprivation translates into gambling urges and behavior in part via increased desires for immediate, even if smaller, rewards. Study 1 showed that an experimental manipulation of personal relative deprivation increased participants' preferences for smaller-sooner over larger-later rewards during a delay-discounting task. Studies 2 and 3 showed that a decreased willingness to delay gratification led to increased gambling behavior. Study 4 showed that preferences for smaller-sooner over larger-later rewards statistically mediated the relation between self-reported personal relative deprivation and gambling urges among a community sample of gamblers. The implications and potential applications of these findings are discussed.

The present article explores the hypothesis that gambling might serve a justice-seeking function for some people, as gambling might offer a means to pursuing desirable outcomes that people feel they deserve but might be unable or unwilling to attain through conventional means. In Study 1, across two separate samples, self-reports of personal relative deprivation predict problem gambling and gambling urges over and above relevant control variables. In Study 2, the authors manipulate personal relative deprivation by informing participants that they have either less or more discretionary income than "similar others." They then give participants $20 and the opportunity to gamble. The results show that a greater percentage of participants who are "relatively deprived" (vs. "not relatively deprived") opt to gamble. Two manipulation validation studies demonstrate that the "relatively deprived" participants are preoccupied with justice during a modified Stroop task and feel resentful. Implications for understanding why people gamble are discussed.

The authors propose that the high levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and the defense of external systems, including increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God (Studies 1 and 2) and defense of the overarching socio-political system (Study 4). A 4th experiment (Study 5) showed the converse to be true: A challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. In addition, a cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control (across 67 nations; Study 3). Each study identified theoretically consistent moderators and mediators of these effects. The implications of these results for understanding why a high percentage of the population believes in the existence of God, and why people so often endorse and justify their socio-political systems, are discussed.

Deciding that negative experiences are punishment for prior misdeeds, even when plausible causal links are missing, is immanent justice (IJ) reasoning (Piaget, 1932/1965). Three studies examined a just world theory analysis of IJ reasoning in adults (Lerner, 1980). Studies 1 and 2 varied the valence of a target person's behavior prior to them experiencing an unrelated negative (car accident, Study 1) or positive (lottery win, Study 2) outcome. Participants viewed the outcomes as the result of prior behavior most when they fit deservingness expectations (good person won the lottery, bad person injured in automobile accident), suggesting that just world concerns influenced IJ reasoning. The lottery-winning finding (Study 2) also extends IJ reasoning to positive experiences. A third study found that a manipulation of just world threat in one context (prolonged or ended suffering of an HIV victim) influenced IJ responses in a subsequent unrelated context (automobile accident scenario).