The Political Divide Over Same-Sex Marriage: Mating Strategies in Conflict?
Although support for same-sex marriage has grown dramatically over the past decade, public opinion remains markedly divided. Here, we propose that the political divide over same-sex marriage represents a deeper divide between conflicting mating strategies. Specifically, we propose that opposition to same-sex marriage can be explained in terms of (a) individual differences in short-term mating orientation and (b) mental associations between homosexuality and sexual promiscuity. We created a novel Implicit Association Test to measure mental associations between homosexuality and promiscuity. We found that mental associations...
Source: Psychological Science - April 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Pinsof, D., Haselton, M. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Retraction of "Womens Preference for Attractive Makeup Tracks Changes in Their Salivary Testosterone"
At the request of the authors, the following article has been retracted by the Editor and publishers of Psychological Science:
Fisher, C. I., Hahn, A. C., DeBruine, L. M., & Jones, B. C. (2015). Women’s preference for attractive makeup tracks changes in their salivary testosterone. Psychological Science, 26, 1958–1964. doi:10.1177/0956797615609900 (Source: Psychological Science)
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: Retraction Source Type: research
Corrigendum: A Person-by-Situation Approach to Emotion Regulation: Cognitive Reappraisal Can Either Help or Hurt, Depending on the Context
Troy, A. S., Shallcross, A. J., & Mauss, I. B. (2013). A person-by-situation approach to emotion regulation: Cognitive reappraisal can either help or hurt, depending on the context. Psychological Science, 24, 2505–2514. (Original DOI: 10.1177/0956797613496434) (Source: Psychological Science)
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: Corrigendum Source Type: research
To Live Among Like-Minded Others: Exploring the Links Between Person-City Personality Fit and Self-Esteem
Does it matter if your personality fits in with the personalities of the people where you live? The present study explored the links between person-city personality fit and self-esteem. Using data from 543,934 residents of 860 U.S. cities, we examined the extent to which the fit between individuals’ Big Five personality traits and the Big Five traits of the city where they live (i.e., the prevalent traits of the city’s inhabitants) predicts individuals’ self-esteem. To provide a benchmark for these effects, we also estimated the degree to which the fit between person and city religiosity predicts individu...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Bleidorn, W., Schönbrodt, F., Gebauer, J. E., Rentfrow, P. J., Potter, J., Gosling, S. D. Tags: Research Report Source Type: research
Looking Under the Hood of Third-Party Punishment Reveals Design for Personal Benefit
Third-party intervention, such as when a crowd stops a mugger, is common. Yet it seems irrational because it has real costs but may provide no personal benefits. In a laboratory analogue, the third-party-punishment game, third parties ("punishers") will often spend real money to anonymously punish bad behavior directed at other people. A common explanation is that third-party punishment exists to maintain a cooperative society. We tested a different explanation: Third-party punishment results from a deterrence psychology for defending personal interests. Because humans evolved in small-scale, face-to-face social worlds, th...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Krasnow, M. M., Delton, A. W., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Is Empathic Accuracy Enough to Facilitate Responsive Behavior in Dyadic Interaction? Distinguishing Ability From Motivation
Growing evidence suggests that interpersonal responsiveness—feeling understood, validated, and cared for by other people—plays a key role in shaping the quality of one’s social interactions and relationships. But what enables people to be interpersonally responsive to others? In the current study, we argued that responsiveness requires not only accurate understanding but also compassionate motivation. Specifically, we hypothesized that understanding another person’s thoughts and feelings (empathic accuracy) would foster responsive behavior only when paired with benevolent motivation (empathic concer...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Winczewski, L. A., Bowen, J. D., Collins, N. L. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Does Seeing Faces of Young Black Boys Facilitate the Identification of Threatening Stimuli?
Pervasive stereotypes linking Black men with violence and criminality can lead to implicit cognitive biases, including the misidentification of harmless objects as weapons. In four experiments, we investigated whether these biases extend even to young Black boys (5-year-olds). White participants completed sequential priming tasks in which they categorized threatening and nonthreatening objects and words after brief presentations of faces of various races (Black and White) and ages (children and adults). Results consistently revealed that participants had less difficulty (i.e., faster response times, fewer errors) identifyi...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Todd, A. R., Thiem, K. C., Neel, R. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
When the Spatial and Ideological Collide: Metaphorical Conflict Shapes Social Perception
In the present article, we introduce the concept of metaphorical conflict—a conflict between the concrete and abstract aspects of a metaphor. We used the association between the concrete (spatial) and abstract (ideological) components of the political left-right metaphor to demonstrate that metaphorical conflict has marked implications for cognitive processing and social perception. Specifically, we showed that creating conflict between a spatial location and a metaphorically linked concept reduces perceived differences between the attitudes of partisans who are generally viewed as possessing fundamentally different ...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kleiman, T., Stern, C., Trope, Y. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Discouraged by Peer Excellence: Exposure to Exemplary Peer Performance Causes Quitting
We examined such discouragement by peer excellence by exploiting the incidental exposure to peers’ abilities that occurs when students are asked to assess each other’s work. Study 1 was a natural experiment in a massive open online course that employed peer assessment (N = 5,740). Exposure to exemplary peer performances caused a large proportion of students to quit the course. Study 2 explored underlying psychological mechanisms in an online replication (N = 361). Discouragement by peer excellence has theoretical implications for work on social judgment, social comparison, and reference bias and has practical i...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Rogers, T., Feller, A. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Low Childhood Socioeconomic Status Promotes Eating in the Absence of Energy Need
Life-history theory predicts that exposure to conditions typical of low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood will calibrate development in ways that promote survival in harsh and unpredictable ecologies. Guided by this insight, the current research tested the hypothesis that low childhood SES will predict eating in the absence of energy need. Across three studies, we measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Studies 2 and 3) participants’ energy need and gave them the opportunity to eat provided snacks. Participants also reported their SES during childhood and their current SES. Results revealed that people who grew ...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Hill, S. E., Prokosch, M. L., DelPriore, D. J., Griskevicius, V., Kramer, A. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Pleasure Now, Pain Later: Positive Fantasies About the Future Predict Symptoms of Depression
Though common sense suggests that positive thinking shelters people from depression, the four studies reported here showed that this intuition needs to be qualified: Positive thinking in the form of fantasies about the future did indeed relate to decreased symptoms of depression when measured concurrently; however, positive fantasies predicted more depressive symptoms when measured longitudinally. The pattern of results was observed for different indicators of fantasies and depression, in adults and in schoolchildren, and for periods of up to 7 months (Studies 1–4). In college students, low academic success partially...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Oettingen, G., Mayer, D., Portnow, S. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Money Cues Increase Agency and Decrease Prosociality Among Children: Early Signs of Market-Mode Behaviors
People can get most of their needs broadly satisfied in two ways: by close communal ties and by dealings with people in the marketplace. These modes of relating—termed communal and market—often necessitate qualitatively different motives, behaviors, and mind-sets. We reasoned that activating market mode would produce behaviors consistent with it and impair behaviors consistent with communal mode. In a series of experiments, money—the market-mode cue—was presented to Polish children ages 3 to 6. We measured communal behavior by prosocial helpfulness and generosity and measured market behavior by perf...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Gasiorowska, A., Chaplin, L. N., Zaleskiewicz, T., Wygrab, S., Vohs, K. D. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Adolescents in Peer Groups Make More Prudent Decisions When a Slightly Older Adult Is Present
We examined whether target subjects’ risk taking was greater when they were in groups of 4 late-adolescent males (ages 18–22) than when they were in groups that mixed 3 late-adolescent males with 1 slightly older adult (age 25–30); risk taking in both of these conditions was compared with that of adolescents tested alone. We found that adolescents took more risks and expressed stronger preference for immediate rewards when they were grouped with 3 same-age peers than when they were alone. When 1 adolescent was replaced by someone slightly older, however, adolescents’ decision making and reward proce...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Silva, K., Chein, J., Steinberg, L. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Agreement Attraction and Impasse Aversion: Reasons for Selecting a Poor Deal Over No Deal at All
In the present studies, we examined the positive value of agreement and the negative value of impasse. Participants chose to give up real value and sacrifice economic efficiency in order to attain an agreement outcome and avoid an impasse outcome. A personally disadvantageous option was selected significantly more often when it was labeled "Agreement" rather than "Option A," and a personally advantageous option was avoided significantly more often when it was labeled "Impasse" rather than "Option B." In a face-to-face negotiation, a substantial proportion of individuals reached an agreement that was inferior to their best ...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tuncel, E., Mislin, A., Kesebir, S., Pinkley, R. L. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Unexpected but Incidental Positive Outcomes Predict Real-World Gambling
Positive mood can affect a person’s tendency to gamble, possibly because positive mood fosters unrealistic optimism. At the same time, unexpected positive outcomes, often called prediction errors, influence mood. However, a linkage between positive prediction errors—the difference between expected and obtained outcomes—and consequent risk taking has yet to be demonstrated. Using a large data set of New York City lottery gambling and a model inspired by computational accounts of reward learning, we found that people gamble more when incidental outcomes in the environment (e.g., local sporting events and su...
Source: Psychological Science - March 11, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Otto, A. R., Fleming, S. M., Glimcher, P. W. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
