Journal of Experimental Psychology: General最新文献

{"title":"Reasoning about the merits of meritocracy.","authors":"Shuai Shao, Gail D Heyman","doi":"10.1037/xge0001767","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001767","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Tensions between merit-based and egalitarian forms of material distribution underlie some of the most consequential sociopolitical debates in modern history (Starmans et al., 2017). The present research examines how children, adolescents, and adults in the United States (total <i>N</i> = 173) reason about these practices and their implications. Participants were asked to make inferences about two organizations where employees had the same job and total compensation across all employees was matched. In a merit-based organization, this total was divided up based on work completed (a zero-sum system). In an egalitarian organization, everyone received the same level of compensation. Across two studies, there was strong evidence that participants of all age groups thought individuals operating under the merit-based system would work harder. There was also some evidence that they associated the merit-based system with higher levels of interpersonal conflict. These findings indicate that from childhood to adulthood, people recognize that merit-based compensation systems can bring both opportunities and challenges. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144181601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of emotional content in segmenting naturalistic videos into events.","authors":"Ruiyi Chen, Khena M Swallow","doi":"10.1037/xge0001783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001783","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The human mind automatically divides continuous experience into meaningful events <i>(event segmentation</i>). Despite abundant evidence that some kinds of situation changes (e.g., action, goal, or location changes) contribute to event segmentation, a component of experience that is critical for understanding and predicting others' behavior, emotion, is rarely investigated. In two experiments, we sought to establish that viewers can track emotion changes while viewing naturalistic videos and that these changes contribute to event segmentation. Participants watched commercial film excerpts while identifying either emotion changes or <i>event boundaries</i> (moments that separate two events) of different grains (Experiment 1: neutral grain; Experiment 2: fine grain or coarse grain). We found that participants agreed with each other about when emotion changes occurred in the videos, demonstrating that viewers are able to track changes in the emotional content of dynamic naturalistic videos as they are experienced. Moreover, the emotion changes participants identified were temporally aligned with the event boundaries identified by other groups. In addition, valence and arousal changes rated by a separate group of participants uniquely predicted the likelihood of identifying emotion changes and event boundaries, even after accounting for other types of change. However, emotion changes were more strongly tied to valence changes than arousal changes while coarse boundaries were more strongly associated with affective changes than were fine boundaries. These novel findings suggest that emotional information plays a substantial role in structuring ongoing experiences into meaningful events, providing a stronger basis for understanding how emotion shapes the perception and memory of everyday experiences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144159634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trait characteristics of midfrontal theta connectivity as a neurocognitive measure of cognitive control and its relation to general cognitive abilities.","authors":"Anna-Lena Schubert, Christoph Löffler, Henrike M Jungeblut, Mareike J Hülsemann","doi":"10.1037/xge0001780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001780","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding the neurocognitive basis of cognitive control and its relationship with general cognitive ability is a key challenge in individual differences research. This study investigates midfrontal theta connectivity as a neurocognitive marker for individual differences in cognitive control. Using electroencephalography, we examined midfrontal global theta connectivity across three distinct cognitive control tasks in 148 participants. Our findings reveal that midfrontal theta connectivity can be modeled as a trait-like latent variable, indicating its consistency across tasks and stability over time. However, the reliability of the observed measures was found to be low to moderate, suggesting substantial measurement error. We also replicated previous results, finding a strong correlation (<i>r</i> = 0.64) between midfrontal theta connectivity and cognitive abilities, especially during higher order stages of information processing. We disentangled the specific cognitive processes contributing to this relationship by employing a task-cueing paradigm with distinct cue and target intervals. The results indicated that only theta connectivity during response-related processes, not during cue-evoked task-set reconfiguration, correlated with cognitive abilities. These insights significantly advance theoretical models of intelligence, highlighting the critical role of specific aspects of cognitive control in cognitive abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144127877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The emotional impact of forgiveness on autobiographical memories of past wrongdoings.","authors":"Gabriela Fernández-Miranda, Matthew Stanley, Samuel Murray, Leonard Faul, Felipe De Brigard","doi":"10.1037/xge0001787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001787","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Victims of wrongdoing sometimes forgive to repair relationships with the wrongdoer. But how does forgiveness do this? Some have argued that forgiveness changes the way the wrongdoing is remembered. We empirically adjudicate two competing accounts of how forgiveness is related to memory. The <i>episodic fading</i> account states that forgiveness alters both the episodic <i>and</i> the affective characteristics of autobiographical memories of being wronged. By contrast, the <i>emotional fading</i> account states that forgiveness mainly alters the affective characteristics of autobiographical memories of being wronged. While the episodic fading account predicts that forgiveness is associated with less vivid and detailed memories of being wronged, the emotional fading account predicts that forgiveness need not be associated with diminished episodic characteristics. Across four studies (<i>N</i> = 1,479, after exclusions), we found consistent support for the emotional fading account but not for the episodic fading account. In a pilot study and in Study 1, we found that forgiven wrongs were rated as less affectively intense and less negatively valenced compared to unforgiven wrongs, while there was no difference in the episodic characteristics of the memories. We replicated this finding in Study 2 and additionally found that the valence and intensity of forgiven wrongs are different for the victims of wrongdoings compared to perpetrators. Finally, in Study 3, we found once again different ratings of intensity and valence for forgiven relative to not forgiven wrongs and, additionally, we found that the affective characteristics of remembered forgiven wrongs were associated with diminished tendencies toward seeking revenge and avoiding the wrongdoer along with amplified benevolence toward the wrongdoer. In sum, memories of forgiven wrongs consistently differed in their affective, but not their episodic, characteristics relative to memories of wrongdoings that were not forgiven. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144127870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of social and emotional experience in representing abstract words.","authors":"Daria Goriachun, Kristof Strijkers, Núria Gala, Johannes C Ziegler","doi":"10.1037/xge0001771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001771","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>words challenge embodied cognition theories due to their lack of direct connections to the sensory and bodily world. To address this, some theories propose that abstract words are represented through emotional and social information. We tested these theories across seven experiments using semantic categorization and lexical decision tasks in two languages. In Experiment 1, we investigated the effects of emotional valence, socialness and sensory experience in a large-scale study using a lexical decision task. We found that positive valence and socialness facilitates word recognition. In Experiment 2, we explored socialness and its interaction with concreteness in two semantic categorization tasks in English and French. While concreteness consistently facilitated word recognition, the effects of socialness varied across languages. In Experiment 3, we used the same tasks to investigate the effects of emotional valence, showing that valence facilitated abstract word recognition in both languages, but only if the task required decisions about valence. In Experiments 4-7, we primed lexical decision and semantic categorization of target words by social or affective primes. Affective priming enhanced the valence effect, whereas socialness priming did not enhance the socialness effects. Overall, our data provide evidence that emotional valence plays a strategic role in the processing of abstract words, while socialness does not seem to influence the processing of abstract words. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144127874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A computational model for individual differences in nonreinforced learning.","authors":"Tom Salomon, Alon Itzkovitch, Nathaniel D Daw, Tom Schonberg","doi":"10.1037/xge0001739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001739","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cue-Approach Training (CAT) is a paradigm that enhances preferences without external reinforcements, suggesting a potential role for internal learning processes. Here, we developed a novel Bayesian computational model to quantify anticipatory response patterns during the training phase of CAT. This phase includes individual items, and thus, this marker potentially reflects internal learning signals at the item level. Our model, fitted to meta-analysis data from 28 prior CAT experiments, was able to predict individual differences in nonreinforced preference changes using a key computational marker. Crucially, two new experiments manipulated the training procedure to influence the model's predicted learning marker. As predicted and preregistered, the manipulation successfully induced differential preference changes, supporting a causal role of our model. These findings demonstrate powerful potential of our computational framework for investigating intrinsic learning processes. This framework could be used to predict preference changes and opens new avenues for understanding intrinsic motivation and decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144127801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Nature adds color to life: Less boredom in natural versus artificial environments.","authors":"Muireann K O'Dea,Ioana E Militaru,Eric R Igou,Peter J Rentfrow,Isabelle Barrett,Wijnand A P van Tilburg","doi":"10.1037/xge0001764","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001764","url":null,"abstract":"Boredom is a common and unpleasant experience associated with a range of problematic correlates and consequences. We examine a catalyst and its putative remedy all but neglected in the psychological science of emotion, and boredom in particular: the living environment. Specifically, we proposed and tested that \"artificial\" (e.g., urban) environments elicit boredom and that natural environments may counter it. Study 1, a field experiment, showed that people placed in natural versus artificial surroundings experienced less boredom. In Study 2, we found that the more prominently regions were characterized by natural (vs. artificial) geography, the less boredom was expressed on social media in the region. Study 3 showed experimentally that images of natural environments elicited less boredom than artificial ones, and Study 4 found that this effect is partly due to the vividness of colors in nature. Study 5 established that higher boredom in artificial versus natural environments can be attributed especially to the increase in boredom that artificial environments bring about. These findings provide the first systematic evidence of the importance of the environment on boredom and illustrate the cumulative effects that changes in one's environment can have on emotion experiences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144087842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evidence for multiple kinds of belief in theory of mind.","authors":"Alejandro Vesga,Neil Van Leeuwen,Tania Lombrozo","doi":"10.1037/xge0001765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001765","url":null,"abstract":"Lay people routinely appeal to \"beliefs\" in explaining behavior; psychologists do so as well (for instance, in explaining belief polarization and learning). Across three studies (N = 1,843, U.S.-based adults), we challenge the assumption that \"belief\" picks out a single construct in people's theory of mind. Instead, laypeople attribute different kinds of beliefs depending on whether the beliefs play predominantly epistemic roles (such as truth-tracking) or nonepistemic roles (such as social signaling). We demonstrate that epistemic and nonepistemic beliefs are attributed under different circumstances (Study 1) and support different predictions about the believer's values (Study 2) and behavior (Study 3). This differentiation emerges reliably across three distinct signatures of attributed belief and even when the believed content and attributed level of certainty about that content are held constant across cases. Our findings call for a more fine-grained characterization of theory of mind and provide indirect support for the hypothesis that human cognition itself features multiple varieties of belief. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144087855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamics of learning new words from context.","authors":"Layla Unger,Vladimir M Sloutsky","doi":"10.1037/xge0001768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001768","url":null,"abstract":"Often the only source of information for learning a new word is its surrounding language context. For example, even if one has never seen a rambutan, it is possible to learn that \"rambutan\" is a kind of fruit just from hearing \"I like sweet, juicy rambutans.\" What processes unfold at the moment upon encountering a new word in context that lead to successful word learning? We conducted three experiments to evaluate the role of working memory, which may be critical for linking a new word to the meaning implied by its surrounding language context. In each experiment, we assessed word learning from sentences in which new words occurred either before or after an informative context. In Experiment 1, we tracked gaze during reading to gain insight into the real-time processing of the surrounding language context and the new word. Results highlighted the importance of working memory resources for holding the language context in mind while processing the new word, regardless of which was encountered first. Experiment 2 replicated the importance of working memory resources for learning new words heard in fluent speech, and Experiment 3 replicated this finding while controlling for overall engagement measured from performance on an unrelated task. Together, these findings support the conclusion that successful word learning from context depends on maintaining the context in working memory while linking it to a new word. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144065719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Restoring a top-down control assumption: Salience effects in working memory are overcome with time.","authors":"Nicholas Gaspelin,Nelson Cowan","doi":"10.1037/xge0001776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001776","url":null,"abstract":"Working memory is a short-term storage space for cognitive information with a highly limited capacity. Due to this limited capacity, many theories address the issue of how items compete in working memory. The present study assesses whether the relative salience of items is automatically important or whether the deployment of working memory is more flexible than that. Some recent studies have suggested that salient stimuli are automatically prioritized in visual working memory. If true, this would suggest a fundamental inflexibility in how information is stored and remembered. We critically evaluate this claim and provide evidence favoring a more flexible account, which allows for top-down control to mitigate the influence of salience on working memory representations. Across four experiments, we support this account by demonstrating that previously observed relative salience effects on recall are not fully automatic and can be greatly reduced by allowing sufficient time to find all task-relevant objects. These findings suggest that salient objects are not inflexibly prioritized in working memory; but rather low-salience objects are difficult to find and encode, especially in large displays at brief time limits. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144065720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}