Much research has found self-awareness to be associated with positive qualities, but we explore cases in which self-awareness sends a negative signal to others. Specifically, we propose that when a target person appears to be high in social self-awareness-that is, the person seems to accurately know what others think of them-observers infer that the target's actions are more because the target is acting while seeming to know what others think of their actions. Because perceived intent is the key input to trust judgments, perceived self-awareness impacts observers' trust toward the target but does so differently depending on whether the target behaves in ways that positively or negatively impact others. When the target behaves in positive ways, exhibiting high (relative to low) self-awareness should increase trust as the positive behaviors will be interpreted as conveying stronger positive intentions toward others. However, for negative behaviors, exhibiting self-awareness should trust, as it should convey stronger negative intent toward others. Across six studies ( = 4,707) using online experiments, a recall study paradigm, and live interactions in a laboratory setting, we find support for this framework. We also show that when we constrain the extent to which people can infer a target's intentions toward others from their behaviors-by reducing the target's control over their own behavior or by reducing the impact of the target's actions on others-the effect of self-awareness on trust attenuates. Our findings suggest that self-awareness, though often considered a desirable quality, does not universally increase others' trust. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The current research presents and tests a new model: The Vicious Cycle of Status Insecurity. We define status insecurity as doubting whether one is respected and admired by others. Status insecurity leads people to view status as a limited and zero-sum resource, where a boost in the status of one individual inherently decreases that of other individuals. As a result, the insecure become reluctant to share status in the form of highlighting the contributions of others. However, we suggest this reluctance to give others credit is often counterproductive. In contrast to the zero-sum beliefs of the insecure, we propose that giving credit to others boosts the status of the sharer and the recipient, expanding the overall status pie. Because the insecure miss opportunities to gain status by not elevating others, they reinforce their initial insecurity. We provide evidence for this vicious cycle across 17 studies, including a content analysis of people's personal experiences with status insecurity, an archival analysis of the final speeches held on the reality TV show (using ChatGPT), and more than a dozen experimental studies. To enhance generalizability and external validity, our experimental contexts include consulting pitches, venture capital competitions, and idea generation contests. To demonstrate discriminant validity, we differentiate status insecurity from self-esteem insecurity. Across the studies, status insecurity consistently decreased status sharing while status sharing reliably increased one's status. Ultimately, status insecurity paradoxically lowers one's status because it reduces the propensity to elevate and celebrate others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Building on the perspectives reflected in the Western intellectual tradition of the psychology of identity and the self, current research in cultural psychology tends to conceptualize uniqueness preferences as reflecting an identity-based motive and argues that people in Western cultures value uniqueness because it is viewed as inherently important to their identity and individuality. In this research, we introduce a complementary Eastern perspective to understand uniqueness preferences and argue that uniqueness preferences can also reflect a strategic motive where people in East Asian cultures may also value uniqueness because of the instrumental material and social benefits they believe uniqueness may confer. We tested our propositions in nine preregistered studies contrasting the decision making of people in the United States with those in China. We found that compared to participants from the United States, those from China were more likely to pursue uniqueness or believe others would pursue uniqueness in situations where being unique could potentially confer material and social benefits (Studies 1a-1c, 2, 4, 5), and this behavioral tendency could be explained in part by participants from China exhibiting a greater strategic motive for uniqueness seeking (Studies 3-5). Further, correlational and experimental studies provided some evidence for the roles of the need for power, power distance orientation, trait competitiveness, and upward social comparison as psychological antecedents to the strategic motive for uniqueness seeking (Studies 5-7). Overall, this research provides an alternative Eastern cultural perspective to balance the prevailing Western cultural perspective for understanding uniqueness preferences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A great deal of research in dual-process models has been devoted to highlighting differences in the structure and function of the implicit and explicit attitude constructs. However, the two forms of attitudes can also demonstrate important shared properties, and prior work suggests that one similarity may be in factors that determine measurement reliability. To better explore this issue, Study 1 analyzed the test-retest reliability in measures of both implicit and explicit attitudes within a single study session across 75 topics ( > 35,000). Explicit attitudes had greater test-retest reliability than implicit attitudes, but each showed considerable heterogeneity across topics even when measured within a single study session. Analyses also included several candidate moderator variables, such as attitude certainty or familiarity. While results were not identical, the moderators associated with greater test-retest reliability for implicit and explicit attitudes exhibited more similarities than differences. Specifically, attitudes experienced as more distinctive, more relevant to one's self-concept, more certain, and more accessible had higher test-retest reliability for both forms of evaluation. Variation in short-term reliability for implicit and explicit attitudes was replicated in Study 2, and Study 3 revealed that topics low in short-term reliability were also lower in a longitudinal sample that completed attitude measures separated by several weeks. These results advance our understanding of each attitude construct and are consistent with a more dynamic relationship between an attitude and its measure, as even attitudes measured with high levels of conscious control could show remarkable short-term instability when assessed only minutes apart. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Discrimination in the evaluation of others is a key cause of social inequality around the world. However, relatively little is known about psychological interventions that can be used to prevent biased evaluations. The limited evidence that exists on these strategies is spread across many methods and populations, making it difficult to generate reliable best practices that can be effective across contexts. In the present work, we held a research contest to solicit interventions with the goal of reducing discrimination based on physical attractiveness using a hypothetical admissions task. Thirty interventions were tested across four rounds of data collection (total > 20,000). Using a signal detection theory approach to evaluate interventions, we identified two interventions that reduced discrimination by lessening both decision noise and decision bias, while two other interventions reduced overall discrimination by only lessening noise or bias. The most effective interventions largely provided concrete strategies that directed participants' attention toward decision-relevant criteria and away from socially biasing information, though the fact that very similar interventions produced differing effects on discrimination suggests certain key characteristics that are needed for manipulations to reliably impact judgment. The effects of these four interventions on decision bias, noise, or both also replicated in a different discrimination domain, political affiliation, and generalized to populations with self-reported hiring experience. Results of the contest for decreasing attractiveness-based favoritism suggest that identifying effective routes for changing discriminatory behavior is a challenge and that greater investment is needed to develop impactful, flexible, and scalable strategies for reducing discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How does living in an environment with many or few family relatives shape our psychology? Here, we draw upon ideas from behavioral ecology to explore the psychological effects of ecological relatedness-the prevalence of family relatives in one's environment. We present six studies, both correlational and experimental, that examine this. In general, people and populations that live in ecologies with more family relatives (Studies 1-4b), or who imagine themselves to be living in such ecologies (Studies 2/3a/3b/4b), engage in more extreme pro-group behavior (e.g., being willing to go to war for their country), hold more interdependent self-concepts, are more punishing of antisocial behaviors (e.g., support the death penalty for murder), identify themselves as more connected to and trust nearby groups (e.g., their community and neighbors) but less so distant groups (e.g., foreigners, the world), and also judge sibling incest as more morally wrong. These effects are examined across three countries (the United States, Ghana, the Philippines) and are robust to a range of controls and alternative explanations (e.g., ingroup preferences, familiarity effects, kinship intensity). The current work highlights the psychological effects of an underexamined dimension of our social ecology, provides a set of methods for studying it, and holds implications for understanding the ecological origins of a range of social behaviors and cultural differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Although the structure of subjective well-being (SWB) has been examined in various studies, no consensus on its structure has yet been reached. This may be due to a neglect of the construct's dynamic aspects and domain satisfaction as a core aspect of SWB. This article aimed to overcome existing research gaps by applying network modeling to longitudinal data of 32,700 adults (24-64 years old) from the German Socioeconomic Panel to analyze within- and between-person dynamics in the structure of SWB across the lifespan. Results indicated that the relationships across SWB components differed across the investigated within- and between-person network structures. Family, work, and income satisfaction tended to be the most central domains across different levels of analysis. The relationship between life and domain satisfaction was neither solely top-down nor bottom-up but instead characterized by distinct, mostly reciprocal relationships. Furthermore, the dynamic relationships of SWB were similar across compared age groups. In sum, the results suggest that the structure of SWB differs between the within-person level and the between-person level but does not change fundamentally throughout middle adulthood. Additionally, this study demonstrates the importance of considering domain satisfaction as an essential component of SWB and that psychometric network models can advance our understanding of the structure and dynamics of SWB. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

People's attitudes toward almost any stimulus (e.g., brands, people, food items) can change in line with the valence of co-occurring stimuli (e.g., images, messages, other people), a phenomenon known as the evaluative conditioning (EC) effect. Recent research has shown that EC effects are not always controlled, which is problematic in many circumstances (e.g., advertising, misinformation). We examined conditions under which uncontrolled EC effects are more likely to reflect retrieval failures or uncontrolled encoding processes. To provide an experimental test of this question, we propose that people can either integrate or add validity information to the stimulus valence. Specifically, we propose that controlled processes can integrate validity information into the stored valence representations mostly when validity information is provided at the time of exposure to the evaluative information. Control attempts taking place later are more likely to add than to integrate the validity information to the stored representation. Moreover, if validity information is merely added to the stimulus valence as compared to integrated, forgetting this information potentially inflates indices of uncontrolled processes. Our findings demonstrate important boundary conditions for the interpretation of measures of uncontrolled encoding processes. Nevertheless, they provide further evidence that uncontrolled encoding processes can contribute to EC effects. We discuss implications for theories of attitude change and for protection from misinformation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Why do we care so much for friends-much more than one might predict from reciprocity alone? According to a recent theory, organisms who cooperate with each other come to have a stake in each other's well-being: A good cooperator is worth protecting-even anonymously if necessary-so they can be available to cooperate in the future. Here, we present three experiments showing that reciprocity creates a stake in a partner's well-being, such that people are willing to secretly pay to protect good cooperative partners, if doing so keeps those partners available for future interaction. Participants played five rounds of a cooperative game (Prisoner's Dilemma) and then received an opportunity to help their partner, without the partner ever knowing. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were more willing to help a cooperative partner if doing so kept that partner available for future rounds, compared to when the help simply raised the partner's earnings. This effect was specific to cooperative partners: The type of help mattered less for uncooperative partners or for recipients that participants did not directly interact with. In other words, an ongoing history of reciprocity gave people a stake in their partner's good condition but not their partner's payoff. Experiment 3 showed that participants had less stake in their partners if those partners could be easily replaced by another cooperator. These findings show that reciprocity and stake are not separate processes. Instead, even shallow reciprocity creates a deeper stake in a partner's well-being, including a willingness to help with zero expectation of recognition. Future work should examine how one's stake in partners is affected by ecological factors that affect the gains of cooperation and the ease of finding new partners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Compassionate love, generally defined as giving oneself for the good of another, has been receiving increased attention, especially in the context of romantic relationships. The purpose of the present research was to examine compassionate love "where it begins," namely, in the family. Seven studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that compassionate love would be correlated with various kinds of beneficence in familial relationships, including parent-child (Studies 1 and 2) and adult child-parent relationships (Studies 3-7). Levels of compassionate love and beneficence varied somewhat, depending on the gender of the parent and the child (e.g., adult children reported more compassionate love for their mother than their father). Across relationships, there was strong support for the main prediction that compassionate love would be associated with beneficence, such as willingness to sacrifice, responsive caregiving, and the provision of support. However, it was not the case that compassionate love was negatively associated with variables that were expected to be antithetical to beneficence (e.g., caregiving motivated by obligation). It was concluded that it is important to promote compassionate love where it begins-in the home-given its strong associations with other-oriented, prosocial motivations and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The explosive growth of individuals identifying as multiracial in the U.S. population has motivated significant interest in multiracial face perception. Interestingly, the literature reveals stunningly low rates of classifications of multiracial faces as multiracial. Five studies examined the possibility that this lack of correspondence is rooted in perceptual confusion. To test this, we utilized multidimensional scaling and discriminant function analysis to determine how participants mentally represent multiracial faces relative to Latinx and monoracial faces. Studies 1-3 establish that multiracial faces are perceptually discriminable from non-multiracial faces using three different sets of facial stimuli: Asian-White female (Study 1), Black-White female (Study 2), and Asian-White male faces (Study 3). Study 4 examined whether mental representation was further moderated by sample demographics by comparing U.S. participants sampled from Hawaii and California. Finally, Study 5 tests the consistency of mental representations across individuals and rules out potential statistical artifacts associated with group multidimensional scaling. These studies provide consistent evidence that multiracial faces are perceptually distinct from Latinx and monoracial faces, suggesting that the categorization patterns of multiracial faces observed in past research likely stem from downstream processes rather than perceptual confusability of multiracial faces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Stress experiences have been found to vary at both the interindividual and intraindividual levels. The present study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal associations between values and stress at both the between-person and the within-person levels. We considered multiple aspects of stress, including self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress, as well as general and domain-specific stress. In Study 1, data were drawn from the Midlife in the United States ( = 3,905) to test the between-person concurrent and prospective relations between values, changes in values, and general and domain-specific perceived stress. In Study 2, data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences ( = 13,940) were used to examine the associations between values and general and domain-specific self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress at the between- and within-person levels. The results supported meaningful associations between values and individual differences in self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress. In general, growth-oriented values consistently displayed negative relations to perceived stress, especially in the job domain. Social-focused values also showed negative associations with stress experiences. After controlling for between-person variance, temporal relations were also found between values and stress at the within-person level, with the pattern varying across types and domains of stress. Findings from the present study provide us with insights into the interindividual and intraindividual processes of values and stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Are people better at recognizing individuals of more relevant groups, such as ingroup compared to outgroup members or high-status compared to low-status individuals? Previous studies that associated faces with group information found a robust effect of group on face recognition but only tested it using the same images presented during the learning phase. They therefore cannot tell whether group information enhances encoding of the specific image presented during learning or encoding of the person who appears in it, which should generalize to other images of that person. In addition, the measures used in these studies do not sufficiently distinguish between sensitivity and response bias. In this article, we addressed these limitations and examined in three experiments the effect of group membership (Experiments 1 and 2) and social status (Experiment 3) on face recognition. In all experiments, we assessed recognition of both learned and unlearned views of the learned faces. Our results show improved recognition of ingroup members compared to outgroup members and of individuals of high-status groups compared to low-status groups for both learned and unlearned views. These effects emerged also when we used measures of memory accuracy that adequately control for response bias. These findings highlight the importance of group and status information in person recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the change of a conditioned stimulus's evaluation due to its pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (US). While learning typically shows negativity biases, we found no such biases in a reanalysis of meta-analytic EC data. We provide and test a cognitive-ecological answer for this lack of negativity bias. We assume that negativity effects follow from ecological differences in evaluative information's distributions (i.e., differential frequency). Accordingly, no negativity bias emerges because positive and negative information is equally frequent in most EC experiments. However, if negative (or positive) information is rare, we predict a negativity (positivity) bias. We tested this prediction in five preregistered experiments (three laboratory-based, = 394, two online, = 391). As predicted, if negative USs were rare, a negativity bias followed. However, if positive USs were rare, we also observed positivity biases in participants' conditioned stimulus evaluations. These data support a cognitive-ecological explanation of valence asymmetries and partially explain why EC experiments show no negativity bias: Typical EC designs do not reflect the ecological information structure that contributes to a negativity bias in the first place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How do descriptive norms shape injunctive norm beliefs, and what does this tell us about the cognitive processes underlying social norm cognition? Across six studies ( = 2,671), we examined whether people update their injunctive norm beliefs-as well as their moral judgments and behavioral intentions-after receiving descriptive norm information about how common (or uncommon) a behavior is. Specifically, we manipulated the descriptive normativity of behaviors, describing behaviors as uncommon (20% of people were doing the behavior) or common (80% of people were doing the behavior), and the type of behavior across studies (fairness, conventional, harm, preference). To measure belief updating, we assessed beliefs prior to and after receiving information about the descriptive norm. We had three main findings: First, participants positively updated their prior injunctive norm beliefs, moral judgments, and behavioral intentions (i.e., rated behaviors more injunctively normative and moral) after receiving a common descriptive norm and negatively updated their beliefs (i.e., rated behaviors less injunctive and moral) after receiving an uncommon descriptive norm, and updated to a larger extent for the common than uncommon descriptive norm. Second, participants were more likely to update their beliefs about what is moral for compared to what is moral for the . Third, participants updated their beliefs to a greater extent for fairness and conventional behaviors compared to harm behaviors and preferences. Together, our findings suggest that descriptive norms shape our injunctive norm beliefs and moral judgments and help to paint a fuller picture of the social cognition of social norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A "big two" model has shown stronger cross-cultural replicability and links to theory than other contemporary models of personality trait structure. However, its theoretical and measurement models require better specification. We address this to create an initial English-language version of the Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory with an empirically informed and culturally decentered approach, meaning that input from global contexts is used from the outset, without prioritizing Western perspectives. Four studies are reported: (1) Fifty-five items were identified from commonalities among 11 global lexical studies to define two factors. Communion/Social Self-Regulation captures the internalization of versus resistance to the normative codes of one's society, with components of warmth, morality, respect, industriousness, and even temper. Agency/Dynamism captures approach versus avoidance tendencies, with components of competence, confidence, fearlessness, positive mood, sociability, and surgency. (2) Items were reduced to the 45 most consistent across English-speaking contexts based on (a) frequency of use in World English corpora; (b) familiarity and exploratory factor analysis results among Africa Long Life Study participants, who were 18-year-olds from Namibia, Kenya, and South Africa ( = 2,958); and (c) distribution test statistics, exploratory factor analysis results, and test-retest reliability in online data from 13 diverse English-speaking countries ( = 63,720). (3) The 45-item Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory was assessed psychometrically and validated against external criteria in the Africa Long Life Study samples and (4) in the online data and additionally compared to existing two-factor frameworks. The relation of the cross-cultural big two to other two-factor models and theories, its future development, and the potential and importance of culturally decentered models and inventories are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are often perceived as lacking humanlike qualities, leading to a preference for human experts over AI assistance. Extending prior research on AI aversion, the current research explores the potential aversion toward those using AI to seek advice. Through eight preregistered studies (total = 2,317) across multiple AI use scenarios, we found that people denied humanness, especially emotional capacity and human nature traits, to AI advice seekers in comparison to human advice seekers (Studies 1-5 and S1-S3). This is because people perceived less similarity between themselves and AI advice seekers (vs. human advice seekers), with a stronger mediating role of perceived similarity among individuals with greater aversion to AI (Studies 2 and S1). Dehumanization of AI advice seekers predicted less behavioral support for (Study 3) and helping intention toward (Studies S2 and S3) them and could be alleviated through anthropomorphism-related interventions, such as perceiving humanlike qualities in AI or utilizing generative AI (Studies 4 and 5). These findings represent an important theoretical step in advancing research on AI aversion and add to the ongoing discussion on the potential adverse outcomes of AI, focusing on AI users. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This research synthesis sought to determine the magnitude of associations between major personality dimensions and components of diet. A comprehensive literature search identified 49 articles (584 effect sizes; 151,750 participants) that met the inclusion criteria. Pooled mean effects were computed using inverse-variance weighted random effects meta-analysis. Mean effect sizes from 98 separate meta-analyses provided evidence that lower levels of neuroticism, = -.05 (95% confidence interval, CI [-.09, -.01]), and higher levels of extraversion, = .07 (95% CI [.03, .11]); openness, = .13 (95% CI [.07, .18]); agreeableness, = .07 (95% CI [.04, .11]); and conscientiousness, = .12 (95% CI [.08, .16]), are associated with a healthier diet. Personality traits related to fruit and vegetable consumption; sugar intake (e.g., candy, sugary drinks); salt intake; consumption of meat, dairy, and fiber; low-fat foods; fast food and snacks; convenience foods; breakfast frequency; meal irregularity; and emotional and restrained eating. There was evidence of publication bias complicating conclusions for conscientiousness and meat eating. Random effects metaregression showed that agreeableness had a stronger positive association with healthy eating among older adults. These findings should be of interest to health care professionals developing health care services that aim to promote healthy eating. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Frontal alpha asymmetry has been proposed as a ubiquitous marker of state and trait approach motivation, but recent meta-analyses found weak or nonexistent links with personality traits. It has been suggested that frontal asymmetry may show stronger individual differences in situations that elicit approach motivation (state-trait interaction). To investigate this with sufficient statistical power, we utilized data from the CoScience project ( = 740). Frontal asymmetry was measured during a resting period, a picture viewing task, and a guessing task, which were expected to trigger different levels of approach motivation. Results showed that frontal asymmetry was not reliably affected by task manipulations and did not relate to self-reported traits. Furthermore, Bayesian statistics and a cooperative forking path analysis were used to supplement the preregistered analyses. To conclude, this comprehensive analysis could not support the validity of frontal asymmetry as a marker of approach motivation, neither as a reliable state nor as a trait marker. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Although fear of missing out (FOMO) has become a widely experienced phenomenon, the specific social situations and cognitions driving the FOMO experience have not yet been closely studied. Across seven experiments ( = 5,441), we find that FOMO occurs when people miss events involving valued social groups and is driven by the perception of missed bonding and concerns about how this may negatively affect their future relationships. People feel greater FOMO when they miss events involving valued others (vs. strangers or irrelevant social groups) and when events foster social bonding (vs. individual activity)-even when the events themselves may be unenjoyable. FOMO is further intensified when concerns about one's future social-group belonging are elevated, either stemming from situational triggers (e.g., social media photos) or one's chronic anxious attachment to their social group. Notably, these concerns are exaggerated when considering the social costs of missing an event for oneself (vs. a friend). Given the social underpinnings of FOMO, reaffirming one's social belonging by reflecting on past social connection provides temporary relief. By revealing a novel, situational antecedent of FOMO and the underlying cognitions, this research demonstrates that current well-being is informed not only by current and past feelings of belonging but also by hypothetical projections about one's future social belonging. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of social bonding in experiential consumption, identify new determinants of FOMO, and lay the groundwork for simple interventions to mitigate FOMO and its maladaptive consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Romantic partners tend to be more similar in self-reported personality traits than would be expected by chance. This similarity can be due to the choice of a similar partner, partners becoming more similar to each other over time, or dissimilar couples breaking up. To examine whether these processes (choice, convergence, or breakup) explain personality trait similarities in couples, we followed a sample of 1,180 German couples ( = 2,360 individuals; age range = 17-82 years old) from right after moving in together (ranging from 0 to 4 years after) up to 16 years thereafter. Using bivariate latent growth curve models, we found that couples were already similar in openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness in the first years of moving in together. Although couples showed correlated change in conscientiousness, this did not increase similarity. Response surface analyses showed that separation risk was generally unrelated to dissimilarity. Furthermore, romantic partners did not become more dissimilar in the years before separation. Taken together, these results suggest that personality similarity in cohabiting couples is fully driven by choosing a similar partner. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and research on personality similarity in romantic relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Across 15 studies ( = 2,636), people who considered the prevalence of a problem (e.g., 4.2 million people drive drunk each month) inferred it caused less harm, a phenomenon we dub the . People believed dire problems-ranging from poverty to drunk driving-were less problematic upon learning the number of people they affect (Studies 1-2). Prevalence information caused medical experts to infer medication nonadherence was less dangerous, just as it led women to underestimate their true risk of contracting cancer. The big problem paradox results from an optimistic view of the world. When people believe the world is good, they assume widespread problems have been addressed and, thus, cause less harm (Studies 3-4). The big problem paradox has key implications for motivation and helping behavior (Studies 5-6). Learning the prevalence of medical conditions (i.e., chest pain, suicidal ideation) led people to think a symptomatic individual was less sick and, as a result, to help less-in violation of clinical guidelines. The finding that scale warps judgments and de-motivates action is of particular relevance in the globalized 21st century. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Cooperation underlies the ability of groups to realize collective benefits (e.g., creation of public goods). Yet, cooperation can be difficult to achieve when people face situations with conflicting interests between what is best for individuals versus the collective (i.e., social dilemmas). To address this challenge, groups can implement rules about structural changes in a situation. But what institutional rules can best facilitate cooperation? Theoretically, rules can be made to affect structural features of a social dilemma, such as the possible actions, outcomes, and people involved. We derived 13 preregistered hypotheses from existing work and collected 6 decades of empirical research to test how nine structural features influence cooperation within prisoner's dilemmas and public goods dilemmas. We do this by meta-analyzing mean levels of cooperation across studies (Study 1, = 2,340, = 229,528), and also examining how manipulations of these structural features in social dilemmas affect cooperation within studies (Study 2, = 909). Results indicated that lower conflict of interests was associated with higher cooperation and that (a) the implementation of sanctions (i.e., reward and punishment of behaviors) and (b) allowing for communication most strongly enhanced cooperation. However, we found inconsistent support for the hypotheses that group size and matching design affect cooperation. Other structural features (e.g., symmetry of dilemmas, sequential decision making, payment) were not associated with cooperation. Overall, these findings inform institutions that can (or not) facilitate cooperation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Ideal partner preferences (i.e., ratings of the desirability of attributes like attractiveness or intelligence) are the source of numerous foundational findings in the interdisciplinary literature on human mating. Recently, research on the predictive validity of ideal partner preference matching (i.e., Do people positively evaluate partners who match vs. mismatch their ideals?) has become mired in several problems. First, articles exhibit discrepant analytic and reporting practices. Second, different findings emerge across laboratories worldwide, perhaps because they sample different relationship contexts and/or populations. This registered report-partnered with the Psychological Science Accelerator-uses a highly powered design ( = 10,358) across 43 countries and 22 languages to estimate preference-matching effect sizes. The most rigorous tests revealed significant preference-matching effects in the whole sample and for partnered and single participants separately. The "corrected pattern metric" that collapses across 35 traits revealed a zero-order effect of β = .19 and an effect of β = .11 when included alongside a normative preference-matching metric. Specific traits in the "level metric" (interaction) tests revealed very small (average β = .04) effects. Effect sizes were similar for partnered participants who reported ideals before entering a relationship, and there was no consistent evidence that individual differences moderated any effects. Comparisons between stated and revealed preferences shed light on gender differences and similarities: For attractiveness, men's and (especially) women's stated preferences underestimated revealed preferences (i.e., they thought attractiveness was less important than it actually was). For earning potential, men's stated preferences underestimated-and women's stated preferences overestimated-revealed preferences. Implications for the literature on human mating are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Attachment theory, as originally outlined by Bowlby (1973, 1980, 1969/1982), suggests that the ways people think, feel, and behave in close relationships are shaped by the dynamic interplay between their genes and their social environment. Research on adult attachment, however, has largely focused on the latter, providing only a partial picture of how attachment styles emerge and develop throughout life. The present research leveraged data from the Minnesota Twin Registry, a large sample of older adult twins ( = 1,377 twins; 678 pairs; = 70.40 years, = 5.42), to examine the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to adult attachment styles. Participants reported on both their attachment styles and attachments to their mothers, fathers, partners, and best friends. The results suggest that attachment styles are partly heritable (∼36%) and partly attributable to environmental factors that are not shared between twins (∼64%). Heritability estimates were somewhat higher for parent-specific attachment styles (∼51%), whereas nonshared environmental factors accounted for larger proportions of the variance in partner- and best friend-specific attachment styles. Using multivariate biometric models, we also examined the genetic and environmental factors underlying the covariation among people's relationship-specific attachment styles. The findings indicate that the similarities among people's avoidant tendencies in different relationships can be explained by a single, higher order latent factor (e.g., global avoidance). In contrast, the genetic and environmental factors underlying attachment anxiety appear to be more differentiated across specific close relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Stereotypes are strategically complex. We propose that people hold not just stereotypes about what groups are generally like (e.g., "men are competitive") but stereotypes about how groups behave toward specific groups (e.g., "men are competitive toward")-what we call Across studies, we find that perceivers indeed hold directed stereotypes. Four studies examine directed stereotypes of sex and age (Studies 1 and 2; = 541) and of race/ethnicity (of Asian/Black/Latino/White Americans; Studies 3 and 4; = 769), with a focus on stereotypes of competitiveness, aggressiveness, cooperativeness, and communion. Across studies, directed stereotypes present unique patterns that both qualify and reverse well-documented stereotype patterns in the literature. For example, men are typically stereotyped as more competitive than women. However, directed stereotypes show that women are stereotyped to be more competitive than men, when this competitiveness is directed toward young women. Multiple such patterns emerge in the current data, across sex, age, and racial/ethnic stereotypes. Directed stereotypes also uniquely predict intergroup attitudes, over and above general stereotypes (Study 4). The idea of directed stereotypes is compatible with multiple theoretical perspectives and intuitive. However, they have been unexamined. We discuss the implications of the current work for thinking about the nature and measurement of social stereotypes, stereotype content, and social perception more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceivers hold ecology stereotypes-beliefs about how the environments others live in shape their behavior. Drawing upon a life history perspective, we examine the stereotypes people hold about those who live in relatively harsh and unpredictable ecologies. First, across diverse demographic groups and societies (the United States, India, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom), people believe that individuals who live in harsh and unpredictable environments engage in "faster" behaviors ( = 2,078; from .80 to 2.14)-that they are more impulsive, sexually unrestricted, opportunistic, and invest less in education and their own children (Studies 1, 2, and 3). Second, these ecology stereotypes seem to underlie certain Black/White race stereotypes held by White perceivers in the United States (Study 1) and family structure stereotypes (i.e., growing up in a single-mother home) held by perceivers in both Japan and the United States (Studies 4a and 5a). Supporting this, the application of these race and family structure stereotypes is overridden or attenuated when perceivers are presented with direct information about a specific person's ecology (Studies 1, 4A, and 5B). Third, beliefs that there is high ecological mobility within a society reduce the magnitude of ecology stereotypes (Study 3), as one would expect if ecology stereotypes function to help perceivers better predict others' behavior. Last, ecology stereotypes do not seem to be just general valence biases or to simply reflect social class stereotypes. In sum, ecology stereotypes may be an influential but relatively unexamined type of stereotype, with broad implications for thinking about other group stereotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Fit hypotheses are a common theme in psychological theories. Various theoretical approaches postulate that fit is also relevant for the within-person dynamics of personality states. A better understanding of these dynamics is important to comprehend the functioning of personality and its relations to relevant life outcomes. Two forms of fit are relevant for personality states: personality states that fit with characteristics of the current situation (state-situation fit) and personality states that fit with personality trait levels (state-trait fit). Both forms of fit are assumed to be related to more positive affect. In three intensive longitudinal studies (Sample 1: N = 194, 4,244 observations; Sample 2: N = 254, 7,667 observations; Sample 3: N = 374, 16,418 observations), we conducted moderated multilevel polynomial regression and response surface analysis to examine whether trait-state fit and state-situation fit were associated with state affect. Generally, there was no consistent evidence for state-trait fit, state-situation fit, or interactions between personality traits, personality states, and situation characteristics predicting momentary state affect. The analyses yielded several spurious significant fit and interaction effects that could however not be replicated in the other samples. Taken together, in one of the most comprehensive attempts to demonstrate fit effects in personality states to date, we could not find any consistent evidence for fit or interactions between personality traits, personality states, and situation characteristics predicting momentary affect. Furthermore, these findings emphasize the importance of replications and robustness checks when examining complex personality dynamics such as fit or interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Do people of different socioeconomic status (SES) differ in how they see themselves on the Big Two self-concept dimensions of agency and communion? Existent research relevant to this theoretically and socially important question has generally been indirect: It has relied on distant proxies for agentic and communal self-concepts, narrow operationalizations of SES, comparatively small samples, and data from few nations/world regions. By contrast, the present research directly examines the associations between SES and agentic and communal self-concepts, relies on well-validated measures of agency and communion, examines three complementary measures of SES, and uses data from 6 million people (years of age: = 26.12, = 11.50) across 133 nations. Overall, people of higher status saw themselves as somewhat more agentic and as slightly less (or negligibly less) communal. Crucially, those associations varied considerably across nations. We sought to explain that variation with 11 national characteristics and found only three of them to be robustly relevant: National religiosity and pathogen load curbed status differences in agentic self-concepts, and income inequality amplified status differences in communal self-concepts. Our discussion develops theory to explain the importance of national religiosity, pathogen load, and income inequality for socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts and it also describes the substantial societal implications of those differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Seeing a situation as a zero-sum game, where one party's success must come at the expense of another, stifles cooperation-even when such cooperation could greatly benefit both parties. Consequently, zero-sum beliefs can undermine progress when cooperation is needed for success. In this article, we propose that zero-sum thinking (any specific instance of zero-sum construals or beliefs) can also be understood as a broader mindset-a belief about how the world works. Thus, the zero-sum mindset predisposes one toward zero-sum thinking, and its cognitive and strategic consequences, a. In an investigation spanning six countries (Belgium, India, Italy, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and United States) on three continents, and more than 10,000 unique participants, we use cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental methods to provide foundational evidence for the zero-sum mindset. In Studies 1-5 (Concept), we show that the zero-sum mindset is distinct from existing concepts, stable over time, and predictive of disparate instances of zero-sum thinking and its strategic implications across domains and cultures. In Studies 6-7 (Cognitions), we show that zero-sum configurations of success promote hostile interpretations of others and that the zero-sum mindset predicts this bias even in objectively non-zero-sum situations. In Studies 8-9 (Consequences), we show that the zero-sum mindset predicts lower cooperation even in situations where cooperation is a matter of life or death. These findings call attention to the way lay game theories such as the zero-sum mindset bear critical implications for the cognitions and attitudes that drive social behavior and success. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).