Vincenzo J Olivett, Madeleine Stults, David S March
{"title":"Downward spiral: Police-threat associations and perceptions of aggression during arrests are mutually reinforcing.","authors":"Vincenzo J Olivett, Madeleine Stults, David S March","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000461","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the United States, encounters among police officers and civilians are laden with the potential for dangerous outcomes. At the same time, the ubiquity of digital and social media has made observing violent police-civilian encounters easier than ever. Perhaps consequently, recent evidence suggests that Americans automatically associate the police with and behaviorally respond to officers as a source of physical threat. However, little is known about the interplay between observations of violent police encounters and automatic police-threat associations. Four studies (<i>N</i> = 857) reveal a mutually reinforcing dynamic in which (a) automatic police-threat associations shape perceptions of aggression during arrests, (b) perceptions of aggression during arrests influence automatic police-threat associations, and (c) changes in automatic police-threat associations influence downstream perceptions of aggression. That is, people perceive aggression during arrest encounters through the lens of their existing police-threat associations, and these perceptions in turn reinforce those associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145192023","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}
Brittany C Solomon, Hannah B Waldfogel, Matthew E K Hall
{"title":"Political plausible deniability: Political difference can divert attributions of socially unacceptable bias.","authors":"Brittany C Solomon, Hannah B Waldfogel, Matthew E K Hall","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000470","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspa0000470","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While many social biases are considered taboo, bias against political outgroups is increasingly explicit, ubiquitous, and tolerated. We contend that expressing political bias can reduce third-party perceptions of socially unacceptable biases-a phenomenon we call <i>political plausible deniability</i>. By diverting attributions away from biases based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, individuals can express bias yet ostensibly align with social norms. Pretests indicate people intuitively understand the concept of a socially <i>acceptable</i> bias, with political bias rated most acceptable among 15 biases. Across 13 preregistered survey experiments, we find that third parties are less likely to perceive racism, sexism, and (sometimes) heterosexism when an actor expresses an antiliberal statement toward a Black, female, or gay target. These effects emerge across open-ended (Studies 1a-c) and Likert-type (Studies 2a-c, 3a-c, 4a-c) responses, which we replicate in a conjoint experiment (Study 5). Participants' political leanings did not moderate effects. Finally, in 12 exploratory studies, we further illuminate political plausible deniability, for example, by examining anticonservative biases, comparing political with other (nonpolitical) biases, and exploring the role of intersecting target identities. Our research exposes an inconspicuous way that political bias may shape social perception, with implications for understanding how prejudice operates in everyday life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145191460","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":"Supplemental Material for Political Plausible Deniability: Political Difference Can Divert Attributions of Socially Unacceptable Bias","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000470.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000470.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"114 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145254879","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":"Knowing yourself and your partner: Accuracy of personality judgment in recently cohabiting couples.","authors":"Janina Larissa Bühler, Louisa Scheling, Cornelia Wrzus","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000579","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Big Five personality traits and states are positively associated with each other. However, most of this knowledge is based on intrapersonal perception (i.e., either self- or partner reports), and little is known about the associations based on interpersonal perception (i.e., combining self- and partner reports). Such knowledge, however, would be crucial in understanding how accurately close others (e.g., romantic partners) perceive each other's personality in general and daily life. Therefore, the goal of this study was to comprehensively test the trait-state associations, using self- and partner reports, to better understand accuracy of personality judgment among couples. Moreover, to learn about the conditions of better or worse accuracy in personality judgment, we examined the moderating roles of relationship satisfaction and situational factors. Data came from 292 recently cohabiting couple members (<i>M</i> = 25.41 years) who participated in a preregistered experience-sampling study, providing up to 50 personality-state assessments over 10 days. The findings from multilevel models supported previous knowledge on intrapersonal perception and significantly expanded the knowledge on interpersonal perception. Specifically, the findings suggested the most robust pattern for conscientiousness and neuroticism, ascribing these Big Five domains a significant role among recently cohabiting couples. Interestingly, accuracy was not enhanced among more satisfied couple members, but it was largely facilitated when partners were exclusively together as a couple (vs. with other people). Overall, this research shows that the use of multiple sources allows for a more comprehensive understanding of personality, especially when the aim is to understand the accuracy of personality judgment in couples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145191157","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}
Nicolas Fay, Keith J Ransom, Bradley Walker, Piers D L Howe, Andrew Perfors, Yoshihisa Kashima
{"title":"Truth over falsehood: Experimental evidence on what persuades and spreads.","authors":"Nicolas Fay, Keith J Ransom, Bradley Walker, Piers D L Howe, Andrew Perfors, Yoshihisa Kashima","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000467","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspa0000467","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The English poet John Milton portrayed truth as a powerful warrior capable of defeating falsehood in open combat. The spread of false information online suggests otherwise. Here, we test the persuasive power and transmission potential of true versus false messages in a controlled experimental setting, free from the effects of social media algorithms and bot amplification. Across four experiments (combined <i>N</i> = 4,607), we tested how perceived veracity affects message persuasion and shareability, using messages generated by both humans and large language models. Experiments 1 and 2 (persuasion game) involved participants creating and evaluating persuasive messages; Experiments 3 and 4 (attention game) focused on messages optimized to capture attention. Our findings consistently show that messages created with the intention of being truthful were more persuasive and more likely to be shared than those designed to be false. While perceived message truth was the main driver of persuasion, message transmission was primarily driven by positive emotion and social engagement, indicating that social connection is prioritized during information sharing. These results suggest that truth holds a competitive edge in the marketplace of ideas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145191646","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":"Supplemental Material for Knowing Yourself and Your Partner: Accuracy of Personality Judgment in Recently Cohabiting Couples","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000579.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000579.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145254880","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":"Supplemental Material for Downward Spiral: Police-Threat Associations and Perceptions of Aggression During Arrests Are Mutually Reinforcing","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000461.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000461.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"99 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145134630","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}
Chau B Tran,Katya Ivanova,Olga Stavrova,Anne K Reitz
{"title":"Changes in psychological well-being across the transition to motherhood: Combining longitudinal and experience sampling methods.","authors":"Chau B Tran,Katya Ivanova,Olga Stavrova,Anne K Reitz","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000573","url":null,"abstract":"Becoming a parent is a major life event associated with changes in psychological well-being. Existing research has often focused on the long-term development of trait well-being, leaving several gaps unaddressed. The current preregistered study employed three waves of intensive longitudinal data, including 7-day experience sampling data per wave, to investigate psychological well-being trajectories across the transition to motherhood. This approach provides novel, detailed insights into the timing of well-being changes (beyond traditional annual assessments), explores developments in different change indicators (mean-level, intraindividual variability, and individual differences), and various well-being components (affective, cognitive, and meaning in life) during this critical life transition. Following 161 first-time Dutch mothers from 20 weeks of pregnancy to 6 months postpartum, we observed increases in positive affect and meaning in life, along with decreases in life and relationship satisfaction that occurred between pregnancy and 2-3 months postpartum, with no significant changes afterward. In contrast, no significant changes in intraindividual variability in well-being (i.e., well-being fluctuations from moment to moment and day to day) were observed throughout the transition. There were both similarities and differences between the trajectories of trait and mean-state measures of different well-being outcomes, and additional exploratory analyses highlighted how various daily predictors (e.g., sleep quality, infant crying) became more (or less) important for mothers' well-being as they moved across the transition. The present study contributed to a better understanding of how the changes in a broad range of well-being components and other parameters unfold across the transition to motherhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145078338","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}
Daniel J Chiacchia,George E Newman,Rachel L Ruttan
{"title":"The head, heart, and soul: Lay theories of decision conflict and the role of the true self.","authors":"Daniel J Chiacchia,George E Newman,Rachel L Ruttan","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000465","url":null,"abstract":"Which mental process reveals one's authentic preference-deliberative reasoning or one's gut impulses? The existing literature offers conflicting answers to this question: Some research suggests that people generally see deliberation as more fundamental, while other work suggests that people see intuition as more fundamental. This article argues that belief in a true self provides a unifying framework to explain when participants will attribute one's authentic preference to either System 1 or System 2. In line with predictions made by our theory, the results from four experiments (N = 3,399 American adults) show that attributions about others' authentic preferences vary predictably across normative and nonnormative contexts. Further, we show that the more participants report believing in a good true self, the more their judgments about others adhere to a predictable pattern, and directly manipulating information about a target's true self changes people's judgments about a target's authentic preferences. By integrating theories of decision conflict and existing research on the true self, this work advances our understanding of how people reason about others' minds, revealing how lay theories about identity can systematically shape social prediction and judgment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"88 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145078337","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}
Whitney R Ringwald,Katherine M Lawson,Aleksandra Kaurin,Richard W Robins
{"title":"Linking temperament and personality traits from late childhood to adulthood by examining continuity, stability, and change.","authors":"Whitney R Ringwald,Katherine M Lawson,Aleksandra Kaurin,Richard W Robins","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000576","url":null,"abstract":"Theories of personality development emphasize the continuity between who we are as a child and who we are as an adult. The conceptual overlap in influential trait taxonomies designed for children (Rothbart's temperament model) and adults (the Big Five personality) has reinforced theories about developmental continuity, but key hypotheses remain untested because no studies have linked these trait models longitudinally. To bridge this divide, the present study used longitudinal data from a sample of 674 Mexican-origin youth who completed assessments of Rothbart's temperament traits (i.e., Negative Emotionality, Surgency, Affiliation, Effortful Control) from ages 10 to 16 and assessments of Big Five personality traits from ages 14 to 26. Leveraging two waves of overlapping temperament/personality trait assessments at ages 14 and 16, we found the following: (a) continuity between childhood/adolescent temperament and age 26 personality, with the strongest associations between conceptually similar traits, and Effortful Control predicting all Big Five traits (except Extraversion), suggesting self-regulation broadly promotes maturation; (b) temperament starts predicting adult personality traits by age 12-14, consistent with theory positing the temperamental foundations of adult personality crystallize in adolescence; (c) conceptually similar temperament/personality traits reflect different expressions of the same underlying trait from age 10 to 26, established by latent growth models of joint temperament/personality factors; and (d) mean-level personality development across late childhood to adulthood showing that all joint traits maintain consistent rank-order stability and youth increase in Effortful Control/Conscientiousness, decrease in Negative Emotionality/Neuroticism and Surgency/Extraversion, and do not change in Affiliation/Agreeableness. Findings add novel support for widely accepted-yet largely untested-theories, although some unexpected results undermine prevailing assumptions about personality trait development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145078339","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}