{"title":"The vicious cycle of status insecurity.","authors":"Maren Hoff, Adam D Galinsky, Derek D Rucker","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000473","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspi0000473","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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 <i>both</i> 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 <i>Survivor</i> (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) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"101-122"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142770029","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 glass half full of money: Dispositional optimism and wealth accumulation across the income spectrum.","authors":"Joe J Gladstone,Justin Pomerance","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000530","url":null,"abstract":"What drives some people to save more effectively for their future than others? This multistudy investigation (N = 143,461) explores how dispositional optimism-the generalized tendency to hold positive expectations about the future-shapes individuals' financial decisions and outcomes. Leveraging both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs across several countries, our findings reveal that optimism significantly predicts greater savings over time, even when controlling for various demographic, psychological, and financial covariates. Furthermore, we find that the role of optimism varies based on socioeconomic circumstances: Among lower income individuals, optimism is more strongly associated with saving. This suggests optimism may be particularly beneficial for the financial well-being of economically disadvantaged populations. To ensure the robustness of our conclusions, we employ diverse methodological approaches, including cross-sectional and longitudinal data sets, objective measures of saving behavior to reduce self-report bias, and within-person analyses to control for stable individual differences. These findings suggest that interventions and policies aimed at fostering optimism may be an effective approach to promoting savings and building financial resilience, especially among economically vulnerable populations. More broadly, our work underscores the value of integrating psychological factors into economic models of saving behavior to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how people make financial decisions in the real world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"29 1","pages":"147-195"},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143062047","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":"How people (fail to) control the influence of affective stimuli on attitudes.","authors":"Mandy Hütter, Steven Sweldens","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000426","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspa0000426","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"38-60"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142647847","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}
Shir Ginosar Yaari, Dana Katsoty, Anat Bardi, Daniela Barni, Ewa Skimina, Jan Cieciuch, Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Markku J Verkasalo, Ariel Knafo-Noam
{"title":"Wishful perceiving: A value-based bias for perception of close others.","authors":"Shir Ginosar Yaari, Dana Katsoty, Anat Bardi, Daniela Barni, Ewa Skimina, Jan Cieciuch, Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Markku J Verkasalo, Ariel Knafo-Noam","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000482","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspi0000482","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Why do people not perceive their close others accurately, although they have ample information about them? We propose that one reason for such errors may be bias based on personal values. Personal values may serve as schemas defining what people see as positive, and thus affect perceptions of others' behavior, values, and traits. We propose that, in close relationships, people see others as sharing their own values. Six studies (<i>N</i> = 2,225; four preregistered analyses and one preregistered study) tested this bias. Perceivers reported their personal values and the perceived values, behaviors, or traits of a close other (target), while the target also reported on the same values, behaviors, or traits. Personal values significantly and positively related to perception of close others' values and behaviors, while controlling for the real targets' value/behavior. Results were replicated for spouses, romantic partners, children, parents, and friends. Some evidence also supports the idea that the bias is stronger for relationships of better quality. Implications for relationship quality are discussed, as well as implications for the adaptive properties of this bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142829023","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}
Jasper Neerdaels, Ali Teymoori, Christian Tröster, Niels Van Quaquebeke
{"title":"When lack of control leads to uncertainty: Explaining the effect of anomie on support for authoritarianism.","authors":"Jasper Neerdaels, Ali Teymoori, Christian Tröster, Niels Van Quaquebeke","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000483","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Studies have shown that anomie, that is, the perception that a society's leadership and social fabric are breaking down, is a central predictor of individuals' support for authoritarianism. However, causal evidence for this relationship is missing. Moreover, previous studies are ambiguous regarding the mediating mechanism and lack empirical tests for the same. Against this background, we derive a set of integrative hypotheses: First, we argue that perceptions of anomie lead to a perceived lack of political control. The repeated failure to exert control in the political sphere leads to feelings of uncertainty about the functioning and meaning of the political world. This uncertainty heightens people's susceptibility to authoritarianism because, we argue, the latter promises a sense of order, meaning, and the guidance of a \"strong leader.\" We support our hypothesis in a large-scale field study with a representative sample of the German population (<i>N</i> = 1,504) while statistically ruling out alternative explanations. Adding internal validity, we provide causal evidence for each path in our sequential mediation hypothesis in three preregistered, controlled experiments (conducted in the United States, total <i>N</i> = 846). Our insights may support policymakers in addressing the negative political consequences of anomie. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142829021","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}
Ana Leal, Martijn van Zomeren, Roberto González, Ernestine Gordijn, Pia Carozzi, Michal Reifen-Tagar, Belén Álvarez, Cristián Frigolett, Eran Halperin
{"title":"Attitude moralization in the context of collective action: How participation in collective action may foster moralization over time.","authors":"Ana Leal, Martijn van Zomeren, Roberto González, Ernestine Gordijn, Pia Carozzi, Michal Reifen-Tagar, Belén Álvarez, Cristián Frigolett, Eran Halperin","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000486","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although much is known about why people engage in collective action participation (e.g., politicized identity, group-based anger), little is known about the psychological consequences of such participation. For example, can participation in collective action facilitate attitude moralization (e.g., moralize their attitudes on the topic)? Based on the idea that collective action contexts often involve a strong social movement fighting against an immoral adversary, we propose that participating in collective action facilitates attitude moralization over time. By integrating the moralization and collective action literatures, we hypothesized that participation in collective action moralizes individuals' attitudes over time because it politicizes their identity, enrages them vis-a-vis the outgroup, and/or empowers them to achieve social change. We tested these hypotheses in a 2-year, five-wave longitudinal study (<i>N</i> = 1,214) in the contentious context of the Chilean student movement. We examined within-person (and between-person) changes over time and consistently found that participation in collective action predicted individual changes in moral conviction over time through politicized identification and group-based anger toward the outgroup. Furthermore, moral conviction predicted participation in collective action over time-an effect consistently explained by politicized identification. These findings are the first to show that (a) participation in collective action moralizes individuals' attitudes because it politicizes their identity and enrages them vis-a-vis the (immoral) outgroup and that (b) moralization in turn helps to better understand sustained movement participation. Theoretical implications for the literature on moralization and collective action are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142829019","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}
Martina Bader, Lau Lilleholt, Christoph Schild, Benjamin E Hilbig, Morten Moshagen, Ingo Zettler
{"title":"Basic personality and actual criminal convictions.","authors":"Martina Bader, Lau Lilleholt, Christoph Schild, Benjamin E Hilbig, Morten Moshagen, Ingo Zettler","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000537","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Crime is an issue with severe consequences for individuals, economies, and society at large. Developing effective crime prevention strategies requires a clear understanding of who is likely to engage in crime and why. A promising approach in this regard likely is integrating established criminological theories with established models of basic personality structure. Correspondingly, the present investigation derives hypotheses from three criminological theories-self-control theory/general theory of crime, situational action theory, and general strain theory-on the relation between the HEXACO personality dimensions and crime. The preregistered hypotheses were tested by linking HEXACO data of a Danish adult personality panel (<i>N</i> = 12,496) to official records on all criminal convictions of the participants registered within the past 41 years. Results revealed negative associations of honesty-humility, emotionality, agreeableness versus anger, and conscientiousness with crime (0.71 ≤ odds ratios ≤ 0.88). Except for agreeableness, effects were robust to controlling for relevant background variables (e.g., sex, age, education, income). The relation of the HEXACO dimensions varied only slightly across different types of offenses (e.g., interpersonal crimes, property crimes). In sum, this investigation provides a robust theoretical and empirical basis for how personality relates to crime. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142818454","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":"Ideas worth spreading? When, how, and for whom information load hurts online talks' popularity.","authors":"Amir Sepehri, Rod Duclos, Nasir Haghighi","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000430","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What makes cultural products such as edutainment (i.e., online talks) successful versus not? Asked differently, which characteristics make certain addresses more (vs. less) appealing? Across 12 field and lab studies, we explore when, why, and for whom the information load carried in TED talks causes them to gain (vs. lose) popularity. First and foremost, we uncover a negative effect whereby increases in the number of topics broached in a talk (i.e., information load) hurt viewer adoption. The cause? Processing disfluency. As information load soars, content becomes more difficult to process, which in turn reduces interest. Probing process further, we show this effect fades among audience members with greater need for cognition, a personality trait marking a penchant for deep and broad information processing. Similarly, the effect fades among edutainment viewers favoring education goals (i.e., cognitive enrichment) whereas it amplifies among those favoring entertainment (i.e., hedonic pleasure). Our investigation also documents the counterintuitiveness of our findings (i.e., how individuals mispredict which talks they would actually [dis]like). From these results, we derive theoretical insights for processing fluency research and the psychology of cultural products adoption (i.e., we weigh in on when, why, and for whom fluency has favorable vs. unfavorable downstream effects). We also derive <i>prescriptive</i> insights for (a) players of the edutainment industry whose very business hinges on curating appealing content (e.g., TED, Talks@Google, The Moth, Big Think, Spotify) and (b) communicators of all creeds wishing to broaden their reach and appeal (e.g., professors, scientists, politicians, journalists, bloggers, podcasters, content editors, online community managers). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142818455","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}
David B Newman, Paul K Lutz, Matthew E Sachs, John M Zelenski
{"title":"Unlocking the bitter potential of nostalgia: Covariation between and causal effects of nostalgia on envy.","authors":"David B Newman, Paul K Lutz, Matthew E Sachs, John M Zelenski","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000529","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past that is experienced across people from various cultures and across the lifespan. Though nostalgia has typically been conceptualized as a mixed emotion, prior research has primarily focused on positive effects. We hypothesized that nostalgia can additionally have certain negative effects. In particular, nostalgia shares certain features with envy, a negative emotion defined as a resentful longing for another person's fortune, luck, possessions, or attributes. We predicted that nostalgia would be positively related to envy and that nostalgia would increase feelings of envy. In two cross-sectional studies (Studies 1 and 2; <i>N</i> = 2,588), nostalgia was positively related to envy between individuals and after controlling for demographics and relevant personality traits. In three daily diary studies (Studies 3-5; <i>N</i> = 298; 3,454 daily reports), daily states of nostalgia were positively related to daily feelings of envy and after controlling for daily negative events. Lagged analyses indicated bidirectional effects, such that nostalgia predicted greater envy on the following day and vice versa. In two experiments (Studies 6 and 7; <i>N</i> = 513), nostalgia increased feelings of envy. This effect was mediated by feelings of regret and envy for a past self, suggesting that nostalgia makes people feel envious of their past self which leads to general feelings of envy. These studies point to a novel bitter effect of nostalgia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142818458","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}
Jennifer Suliteanu, Eugene K Ofosu, Ana Paquin Domingues, Eric Hehman
{"title":"Prejudice and stereotypes at regional and individual levels: Related but distinct.","authors":"Jennifer Suliteanu, Eugene K Ofosu, Ana Paquin Domingues, Eric Hehman","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000433","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Exploring how psychological constructs and their outcomes vary across geographic regions is a rapidly expanding area of research, yet fundamental questions remain. Can constructs designed to describe individual variation in attitudes be interpreted in the same way when aggregated to regional levels? To what extent are they related or distinct? We tested the relationship between individual and regional attitudes across four studies in the domain of intergroup attitudes. Participants reported explicit prejudices and stereotypes toward 14 different social groups, and incorporating data from Project Implicit, we compared the characteristics of regional and individual operationalizations of prejudice. Further, we tested whether attitudes related to one another in the same way across levels using representational similarity analysis. Drawing from construct validity theory, we find evidence that regional prejudice is an emergent property of individual attitudes, to which it is related but distinct. These findings contextualize stereotype and prejudice constructs in regional analyses in psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142818457","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}