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For decades, researchers across the social sciences have sought to document and explain the worldwide variation in social group attitudes (evaluative representations, e.g., young–good/old–bad) and stereotypes (attribute representations, e.g., male–science/female–arts). Indeed, uncovering such country-level variation can provide key insights into questions ranging from how attitudes and stereotypes are clustered across places to why places vary in attitudes and stereotypes (including ecological and social correlates). Here, we introduce the Project Implicit:International (PI:International) dataset that has the potential to propel such research by offering the first cross-country dataset of both implicit (indirectly measured) and explicit (directly measured) attitudes and stereotypes across multiple topics and years. PI:International comprises 2.3 million tests for seven topics (race, sexual orientation, age, body weight, nationality, and skin-tone attitudes, as well as men/women–science/arts stereotypes) using both indirect (Implicit Association Test; IAT) and direct (self-report) measures collected continuously from 2009 to 2019 from 34 countries in each country's native language(s). We show that the IAT data from PI:International have adequate internal consistency (split-half reliability), convergent validity (implicit–explicit correlations), and known groups validity. Given such reliability and validity, we summarize basic descriptive statistics on the overall strength and variability of implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes around the world. The PI:International dataset, including both summary data and trial-level data from the IAT, is provided openly to facilitate wide access and novel discoveries on the global nature of implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative attitudes toward aging are pervasive in society and may be detrimental to people's health as they become older. Older people tend to report feeling significantly younger than their chronological age, often as a way of psychologically distancing themselves from the stigma of old age. However, attitudes and behaviors toward aging may differ across regional contexts. We examined associations among state‐level patterns of bias against older adults and state‐level health outcomes across the United States. Data from 803,009 respondents (ages: 15–94) across 50 U.S. states (and the District of Columbia) revealed geographic variation in implicit age bias. Higher state‐level implicit age bias was associated with poorer state‐level health outcomes among adults ages 65+. Older adults living in states high in implicit age bias showed greater age‐group dissociation compared to older adults living in states low in implicit age bias. Findings highlight potential consequences of implicit age bias and invite further research on the long‐term health implications of individual age‐group dissociation in response to regional age bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geographic distribution of psychological constructs has long been an area of focus for psychological researchers. Recently, however, there has been increased interest in investigations of the so-called subnational distribution of psychological variables, which focus on localized groupings of individuals within spatial units, such as counties or states. By estimating the subnational distribution of a given outcome (e.g., estimating its state- or county-level means), researchers have been able to address questions about the spatial variation of a variety of psychological constructs and investigate the regional association between psychological phenomena and real-world outcomes, such as health outcomes, prosocial behavior, and racial inequity. Unfortunately, however, there are many challenges to estimating a construct's subnational distribution, such as those raised by response biases and subnational sparsity. To help psychological researchers address these issues, we provide a comprehensive discussion of subnational estimation and introduce multilevel regression and poststratification (MrP), a method that is widely considered to be the gold standard for subnational estimation with random samples. As psychologists often do not have access to large, national random samples, we also report 3 studies evaluating MrP's performance under simulated and real-world conditions of sample biases. Ultimately, we find that MrP is likely to outperform the subnational estimation methods that psychological researchers currently use. Based on this, we suggest that psychologists interested in understanding how psychological phenomena vary below the nation level use MrP to conduct these investigations. To help facilitate this, we have made all code and data used for the reported studies publicly available. The geographic distribution of psychological constructs has attracted increasing interest among psychological researchers. Relying on these and other data, psychologists have been able to not only address novel questions about the spatial variation of psychological constructs but also investigate the regional association between psychological phenomena and real-world outcomes, such as outcomes associated with health, prosocial behavior, and racial inequity. Unfortunately, there are many challenges to estimating a construct's regional distribution—so-called subnational estimation—and these challenges are exacerbated by issues of nonrepresentativeness and geographic sparsity. In this work, we provide a comprehensive discussion of major obstacles for subnational estimation and introduce readers to state-of-the-art approaches that rely on multilevel regression and poststratification (MrP) to deal with these obstacles. We also present a novel evaluation of MrP and extensions of MrP under conditions of sample size and response bias via simulations (Study 1) and application to real-world data obtained from a large convenience sample (Study 2). Finally, we investigate how estimated associations between an estimated county-level outcome—racial bias—and a secondary outcome—Barack Obama's 2008 county-level Presidential vote share—vary depending on the method used for subnational estimation (Study 3). In addition to offering a comprehensive introduction to cutting-edge methods for subnational estimation, this work provides strong evidence for the necessity of incorporating more sophisticated techniques for subnational estimation into studies of the geographic distribution of psychological phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is 50 considered “old”? When do we stop being considered “young”? If individuals could choose to be any age, what would it be? In a sample of 502,548 internet respondents ranging in age from 10 to 89, we examined age differences in aging perceptions (e.g., how old do you feel?) and estimates of the timing of developmental transitions (e.g., when does someone become an older adult?). We found that older adults reported older perceptions of aging (e.g., choosing to be older, feeling older, being perceived as older), but that these perceptions were increasingly younger than their current age. The age to which individuals hope to live dramatically increased after age 40. We also found that older adults placed the age at which developmental transitions occurred later in the life course. This latter effect was stronger for transitions involving middle-age and older adulthood compared to transitions involving young adulthood. The current study constitutes the largest study to date of age differences in age perceptions and developmental timing estimates and yielded novel insights into how the aging process may affect judgments about the self and others.

Is 50 considered “old”? When do we stop being considered “young”? If individuals could choose to be any age, what would it be? In a sample of 502,548 internet respondents ranging in age from 10 to 89, we examined age differences in aging perceptions (e.g., how old do you feel?) and estimates of the timing of developmental transitions (e.g., when does someone become an older adult?). We found that older adults reported older perceptions of aging (e.g., choosing to be older, feeling older, being perceived as older), but that these perceptions were increasingly younger than their current age. The age to which individuals hope to live dramatically increased after age 40. We also found that older adults placed the age at which developmental transitions occurred later in the life course. This latter effect was stronger for transitions involving middle-age and older adulthood compared to transitions involving young adulthood. The current study constitutes the largest study to date of age differences in age perceptions and developmental timing estimates and yielded novel insights into how the aging process may affect judgments about the self and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose of the Study: Biased judgments about others can operate both within and outside of our conscious awareness. However, little attention has been paid to how implicit and explicit attitudes differ across the life span, particularly with respect to age bias. In the current study, we examined age differences in implicit and explicit attitudes towards older individuals. Design and Method: Participants (N = 704,151) ranging from age 15 to 94 completed the Implicit Association Test and explicit self-report measures of bias against older adults. The associations between age bias and several demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, education) were also examined. Results: A preference for younger people was found among participants of all ages; however, implicit and explicit attitudes showed divergent associations with age. Implicit preference for younger people was highest among older adults; explicit preference for younger people was lowest among older adults. Implications: Examining age differences in implicit and explicit attitudes sheds light into the development and complexities of aging perceptions in different age groups. The current study's findings are discussed in the context of applications to and implications of reducing prejudice toward older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2011, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) considered the topic 'Doing Good, Doing Bad, Doing Nothing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Human Behavior.' Plenary speakers discussed evolutionary, biological, and neurological roots of bad and good behavior (Melvin Konner); unconscious prejudice (Mahzarin Banaji); cultural production of evil and how hope arises in suffering (Cheryl Kirk-Duggan); causes and consequences-neurological and social-of developmental trauma (Laurie Pearlman); social conditions for genocide and mass violence and responses that enable healing and prevent further violence (Ervin Staub); practices for conflict transformation, reconciliation, and peace building (Robert and Alice Evans); and from Eastern religions diagnoses of and prescriptions for overcoming central obstacles to fullness of life (Barbara Jamestone). The papers published here by William Shoemaker, Ervin Staub, and Karl Peters carry forward these evolutionary, neurological, social, and religious analyses and offer ways to become more active in diminishing harmful and nonresponsive behaviors and in enhancing human good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-of-day effects in human psychological functioning have been known of since the 1800s. However, outside of research specifically focused on the quantification of circadian rhythms, their study has largely been neglected. Moves toward online data collection now mean that psychological investigations take place around the clock, which affords researchers the ability to easily study time-of-day effects. Recent analyses have shown, for instance, that implicit attitudes have time-of-day effects. The plausibility that these effects indicate circadian rhythms rather than selection effects is considered in the current study. There was little evidence that the time-of-day effects in implicit attitudes shifted appropriately with factors known to influence the time of circadian rhythms. Moreover, even variables that cannot logically show circadian rhythms demonstrated stronger time-of-day effects than did implicit attitudes. Taken together, these results suggest that time-of-day effects in implicit attitudes are more likely to represent processes of selection rather than circadian rhythms, but do not rule out the latter possibility.