Status Decreases Dominance in the West but Increases Dominance in the East
In the experiments reported here, we integrated work on hierarchy, culture, and the enforcement of group cooperation by examining patterns of punishment. Studies in Western contexts have shown that having high status can temper acts of dominance, suggesting that high status may decrease punishment by the powerful. We predicted that high status would have the opposite effect in Asian cultures because vertical collectivism permits the use of dominance to reinforce the existing hierarchical order. Across two experiments, having high status decreased punishment by American participants but increased punishment by Chinese and I...
Source: Psychological Science - February 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kuwabara, K., Yu, S., Lee, A. J., Galinsky, A. D. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Corrigendum: Popularity, Similarity, and the Network Extraversion Bias
Feiler, D. C., & Kleinbaum, A. M. (2015). Popularity, similarity, and the network extraversion bias. Psychological Science, 26, 593–603. (Original DOI: 10.1177/0956797615569580)
In our Acknowledgments section, we thanked Pino Audia in an insufficiently precise way. We intended to acknowledge his help in recruiting participants and his input regarding the measures and instead thanked him for helpful comments and suggestions on the article. Our Acknowledgments section should read as follows:
We are grateful to Andy Bernard, Alex Jordan, David Krackhardt, Sunita Sah, Jack Soll, Thalia Wheatley, seminar participants ...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: Corrigendum Source Type: research
Quick Thinkers Are Smooth Talkers: Mental Speed Facilitates Charisma
(Source: Psychological Science)
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: von Hippel, W., Ronay, R., Baker, E., Kjelsaas, K., Murphy, S. C. Tags: Short Report Source Type: research
Interest in Babies Negatively Predicts Testosterone Responses to Sexual Visual Stimuli Among Heterosexual Young Men
In this study, we tested the hypothesis that self-reported interest in babies is inversely related to testosterone reactivity to cues of short-term mating among heterosexual young men. Among 100 participants, interest in babies was related to a slow life-history strategy, as assessed by the Mini-K questionnaire, and negatively related to testosterone responses to an erotic video. Interest in babies was not associated with baseline testosterone levels or with testosterone reactivity to nonsexual social stimuli. These results provide the first evidence that differential testosterone reactivity to sexual stimuli may be an imp...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Zilioli, S., Ponzi, D., Henry, A., Kubicki, K., Nickels, N., Wilson, M. C., Maestripieri, D. Tags: Research Reports Source Type: research
Opportunity Cost Neglect Attenuates the Effect of Choices on Preferences
The idea that choices alter preferences has been widely studied in psychology, yet prior research has focused primarily on choices for which all alternatives were salient at the time of choice. Opportunity costs capture the value of the best forgone alternative and should be considered as part of any decision process, yet people often neglect them. How does the salience of opportunity costs at the time of choice influence subsequent evaluations of chosen and forgone options? In three experiments, we found that there was a larger postchoice spread between evaluations of focal options and opportunity costs when opportunity c...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Greenberg, A. E., Spiller, S. A. Tags: Research Reports Source Type: research
Inferring Identity From Language: Linguistic Intergroup Bias Informs Social Categorization
The present research examined whether a communicator’s verbal, implicit message regarding a target is used as a cue for inferring that communicator’s social identity. Previous research has found linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) in individuals’ speech: They use abstract language to describe in-group targets’ desirable behaviors and concrete language to describe their undesirable behaviors (favorable LIB), but use concrete language for out-group targets’ desirable behaviors and abstract language for their undesirable behaviors (unfavorable LIB). Consequently, one can infer the type of language a...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Porter, S. C., Rheinschmidt-Same, M., Richeson, J. A. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Virtues, Vices, and Political Influence in the U.S. Senate
What qualities make a political leader more influential or less influential? Philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists have puzzled over this question, positing two opposing routes to political power—one driven by human virtues, such as courage and wisdom, and the other driven by vices, such as Machiavellianism and psychopathy. By coding nonverbal behaviors displayed in political speeches, we assessed the virtues and vices of 151 U.S. senators. We found that virtuous senators became more influential after they assumed leadership roles, whereas senators who displayed behaviors consistent with vices—p...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: ten Brinke, L., Liu, C. C., Keltner, D., Srivastava, S. B. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Print-Speech Convergence Predicts Future Reading Outcomes in Early Readers
Becoming a skilled reader requires building a functional neurocircuitry for printed-language processing that integrates with spoken-language-processing networks. In this longitudinal study, functional MRI (fMRI) was used to examine convergent activation for printed and spoken language (print-speech coactivation) in selected regions implicated in printed-language processing (the reading network). We found that print-speech coactivation across the left-hemisphere reading network in beginning readers predicted reading achievement 2 years later beyond the effects of brain activity for either modality alone; moreover, coactivat...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Preston, J. L., Molfese, P. J., Frost, S. J., Mencl, W. E., Fulbright, R. K., Hoeft, F., Landi, N., Shankweiler, D., Pugh, K. R. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Failure of Intuition When Choosing Whether to Invest in a Single Goal or Split Resources Between Two Goals
In a series of related experiments, we asked people to choose whether to split their attention between two equally likely potential tasks or to prioritize one task at the expense of the other. In such a choice, when the tasks are easy, the best strategy is to prepare for both of them. As difficulty increases beyond the point at which people can perform both tasks accurately, they should switch strategy and focus on one task at the expense of the other. Across three very different tasks (target detection, throwing, and memory), none of the participants switched their strategy at the correct point. Moreover, the majority con...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Clarke, A. D. F., Hunt, A. R. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Classroom Age Composition and the School Readiness of 3- and 4-Year-Olds in the Head Start Program
The federal Head Start program, designed to improve the school readiness of children from low-income families, often serves 3- and 4-year-olds in the same classrooms. Given the developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds, it is unknown whether educating them together in the same classrooms benefits one group, both, or neither. Using data from the Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009 cohort, this study used a peer-effects framework to examine the associations between mixed-age classrooms and the school readiness of a nationally representative sample of newly enrolled 3-year-olds (n = 1,644) and 4-year-olds (n =...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ansari, A., Purtell, K., Gershoff, E. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
What Comes After /f/? Prediction in Speech Derives From Data-Explanatory Processes
Acoustic cues are short-lived and highly variable, which makes speech perception a difficult problem. However, most listeners solve this problem effortlessly. In the present experiment, we demonstrated that part of the solution lies in predicting upcoming speech sounds and that predictions are modulated by high-level expectations about the current sound. Participants heard isolated fricatives (e.g., "s," "sh") and predicted the upcoming vowel. Accuracy was above chance, which suggests that fine-grained detail in the signal can be used for prediction. A second group performed the same task but also saw a still face and a le...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: McMurray, B., Jongman, A. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
In-Group Ostracism Increases High-Fidelity Imitation in Early Childhood
The Cyberball paradigm was used to examine the hypothesis that children use high-fidelity imitation as a reinclusion behavior in response to being ostracized by in-group members. Children (N = 176; 5- to 6-year-olds) were either included or excluded by in- or out-group members and then shown a video of an in-group or an out-group member enacting a social convention. Participants who were excluded by their in-group engaged in higher-fidelity imitation than those who were included by their in-group. Children who were included by an out-group and those who were excluded by an out-group showed no difference in imitative fideli...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Watson-Jones, R. E., Whitehouse, H., Legare, C. H. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Vicarious Fear Learning Depends on Empathic Appraisals and Trait Empathy
Empathy and vicarious learning of fear are increasingly understood as separate phenomena, but the interaction between the two remains poorly understood. We investigated how social (vicarious) fear learning is affected by empathic appraisals by asking participants to either enhance or decrease their empathic responses to another individual (the demonstrator), who received electric shocks paired with a predictive conditioned stimulus. A third group of participants received no appraisal instructions and responded naturally to the demonstrator. During a later test, participants who had enhanced their empathy evinced the strong...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Olsson, A., McMahon, K., Papenberg, G., Zaki, J., Bolger, N., Ochsner, K. N. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
The Evolutionary Basis of Honor Cultures
Around the globe, people fight for their honor, even if it means sacrificing their lives. This is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective, and little is known about the conditions under which honor cultures evolve. We implemented an agent-based model of honor, and our simulations showed that the reliability of institutions and toughness of the environment are crucial conditions for the evolution of honor cultures. Honor cultures survive when the effectiveness of the authorities is low, even in very tough environments. Moreover, the results show that honor cultures and aggressive cultures are mutually dependent in what re...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Nowak, A., Gelfand, M. J., Borkowski, W., Cohen, D., Hernandez, I. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Neural Discriminability of Object Features Predicts Perceptual Organization
How does the neural representation of simple visual features affect perceptual operations, such as perceptual grouping? If the strength of feature representations in the brain is indicative of how the perceptual system partitions information into visual elements, then identifying the underlying neural representation may determine why things look the way they do. During functional MRI, participants viewed objects that varied along three feature dimensions: shape, color, and orientation. Afterward, participants performed an independent perceptual-grouping task outside the scanner to measure the strength of feature grouping. ...
Source: Psychological Science - January 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ward, E. J., Chun, M. M. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
