Shilpa Madan, Krishna Savani, Pranjal H Mehta, Desiree Y Phua, Ying-Yi Hong, Michael W Morris
{"title":"Stress reactivity and sociocultural learning: More stress-reactive individuals are quicker at learning sociocultural norms from experiential feedback.","authors":"Shilpa Madan, Krishna Savani, Pranjal H Mehta, Desiree Y Phua, Ying-Yi Hong, Michael W Morris","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000487","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspi0000487","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>When interacting with others in unfamiliar sociocultural settings, people need to learn the norms guiding appropriate behavior. The present research investigates an individual difference that helps this kind of learning: stress reactivity. Interactions in an unfamiliar sociocultural setting are stressful, particularly when the actor fails to follow its rules. Although stress is typically considered a liability, more stress-reactive individuals may be more motivated to improve and, thus, quicker to learn these rules. Consistent with this idea, a pilot study found that people genetically inclined to stress reactivity, as computed by a genetic profile score across 59 single-nucleotide polymorphisms on 10 different genes, learned unfamiliar sociocultural norms from experiential feedback at a faster rate (i.e., exhibited a greater increase in accuracy across trials). Study 1 found that participants with higher acute cortisol reactivity in response to a physical stressor were faster at learning unfamiliar sociocultural norms. Study 2 conceptually replicated these results using a self-report measure of dispositional stress reactivity. Study 3 found that self-reported dispositional stress reactivity similarly predicted the rate of learning in a sociocultural task and a nonsocial task. Study 4 provided evidence for the underlying mechanism-participants higher on dispositional stress reactivity experienced more stress early in the sociocultural norm learning task, which predicted faster learning overall and lower stress later on in the task. These findings indicate that more stress-reactive individuals get more stressed out from the negative feedback that they receive in social interactions in unfamiliar settings, which motivates them to learn the relevant norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1292-1314"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143468218","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":"Methods reflect values: Evaluating the shortcomings of the average for measuring population well-being.","authors":"Sofia L Panasiuk, Anthony McCanny, Felix Cheung","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000549","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspp0000549","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As governments and institutions embrace subjective well-being as a policy outcome, aggregating well-being in a population has become commonplace. The default method used to aggregate population well-being is taking the arithmetic mean (average). However, using average well-being as a key performance indicator, while useful, can omit morally relevant information, like the extent of suffering and inequality. We examine three alternative methods for aggregating life satisfaction, grounded in the ethical theories of: prioritarianism (a weighted average that prioritizes improvements at the bottom of the scale), sufficientarianism (the proportion of respondents answering above a \"suffering\" threshold), and egalitarianism (the degree of inequality) and compare them to the average. Toward this end, we used nationally representative data from 3,035,971 participants across 148 countries drawn from the 2005 to 2022 Gallup World Poll and the 1981-2021 World Values Survey. We found that the distribution of life satisfaction deviated significantly from a normal distribution in all countries, suggesting that using the mean and standard deviation cannot adequately capture the full distribution. After re-ranking countries according to the degree of life satisfaction inequality, we found that 56 countries deviated by at least 20 ranks compared to their average life satisfaction rankings. Finally, we observed that 9%-46% of the time, increases in average well-being at the country level were accompanied by increasing suffering and inequality. Our findings show the downside of using the average and offer alternatives that are aligned with promoting equitable well-being growth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1355-1370"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143523268","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}
M Catalina Enestrom, Maya Rossignac-Milon, Amanda L Forest, John E Lydon
{"title":"Meaning-making with romantic partners: Shared reality promotes meaning in life by reducing uncertainty.","authors":"M Catalina Enestrom, Maya Rossignac-Milon, Amanda L Forest, John E Lydon","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000472","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspi0000472","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We propose that, although deeply personal, meaning is facilitated by interpersonal processes. Namely, we theorize that experiencing a sense of shared reality with a close partner (i.e., perceiving an overlap in inner states about the world in general) reduces uncertainty about one's environment, which in turn promotes meaning in work and life. In the current research, we test this hypothesis across five mixed-method studies (e.g., longitudinal, experimental). We find cross-sectional evidence for this association in a couples' study (Study 1: <i>N</i> = 103 romantic dyads) and in ecologically rich samples of people experiencing highly uncertain situations, specifically Black people consistently facing racism in the United States (Study 2: <i>N</i> = 190 participants) and frontline health care workers directly treating COVID-19 patients during the height of the pandemic (Study 3: <i>N</i> = 139 participants). Further, we provide causal evidence for this association in two experiments (Studies 4 and 5: <i>N</i>₄ = 364 participants, <i>N</i>₅ = 389 participants). Taken together, this work suggests that shared reality with close partners has real-world benefits, reducing uncertainty and promoting meaning. In addition, we show that experimentally heightening shared reality, by reducing uncertainty, can promote a greater sense of meaning in life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1315-1335"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142818456","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 ecology of relatedness: How living around family (or not) matters.","authors":"Oliver Sng, Minyoung Choi, Joshua M Ackerman","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000428","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspa0000428","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1243-1270"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142622619","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}
René Mõttus, Christian Kandler, Michelle Luciano, Tõnu Esko, Uku Vainik
{"title":"Familial similarity and heritability of personality traits and life satisfaction are higher than shown in typical single-method studies.","authors":"René Mõttus, Christian Kandler, Michelle Luciano, Tõnu Esko, Uku Vainik","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000550","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pspp0000550","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Personality trait similarity among ordinary relatives is surprisingly low, with parent-offspring and sibling-sibling correlations usually <i>r</i> ≤ .15. We explain why these correlations are biased in typical single-method studies and argue that this problem can only be addressed with multimethod designs. We also explain why ordinary relative comparisons can provide a more generalizable way of estimating (additive, narrow-sense) heritability than the better known twin comparisons. In a sample of parent-offspring (<i>N</i><sub>pairs</sub> = 522), sibling-sibling (<i>N</i><sub>pairs</sub> = 388), and second-degree relative pairs (<i>N</i><sub>pairs</sub> = 476), who rated their Big Five personality traits and life satisfaction and were each rated by an independent informant (Nparticipants = 2,258 + informants), we found that parent-offspring and sibling correlations were about one third higher than typically shown (<i>r</i> ≈ .20). Based on the ordinary relative comparisons, the heritability of personality traits and life satisfaction was about 40%, compared with about 26% typical to self-report studies. Life satisfaction was as heritable as personality traits, sharing about 80% of its genetic variance with neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. About half of life satisfaction's phenotypic correlations with neuroticism and extraversion and its entire correlation with conscientiousness were explained by shared genetic factors. Using data from a larger sample of relatives with only self-reports (<i>N</i><sub>participants</sub> = 32,004; Npairs = 24,118), we provide further evidence that growing up together does not make people more similar. The results were consistent for both aggregate traits and individual items. Only multimethod designs can accurately reveal traits' similarity among relatives and their genetic and environmental transmission. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1336-1354"},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143730532","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 Goal Harmony","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000452.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000452.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"138 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144229424","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 Punitive but Discerning: Reputation Can Fuel Ambiguously Deserved Punishment, but Does Not Erode Sensitivity to Nuance","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pspa0000435.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000435.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144229425","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}
Kristin Laurin, Holly R Engstrom, Toni Schmader, Khai Qing Chua, Nadav Klein, Stéphane Côté
{"title":"Trust and trust funds: How others' childhood and current social class context influence trust behavior and expectations.","authors":"Kristin Laurin, Holly R Engstrom, Toni Schmader, Khai Qing Chua, Nadav Klein, Stéphane Côté","doi":"10.1037/pspi0000497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000497","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Trust is vital for success in all kinds of social interactions. But how do people decide whether an individual can be trusted? One factor people may consider is that individual's social class. We hypothesize that people trust others from lower social class contexts more than others from higher class contexts; we also consider nuances between current and childhood class context and between trust as a behavior and trust as an expectation. Five preregistered studies (total <i>N</i> = 1,934, with three of five studies including a within-subjects component), and 12 preregistered replications summarized in the supplement, yielded two sets of findings. First, people consistently behaviorally trusted others whose <i>childhoods</i> were spent in low-class (compared to high-class) contexts and expected them to honor that trust. These effects were mediated by perceived morality. Second, people behaviorally trusted others <i>currently</i> in low-class (compared to high-class) contexts, but they did not expect these individuals to honor that trust or perceive them as moral. Instead, the effect of current class was linked to altruism. Our findings emerged in samples drawn from different populations, across varying manipulations of social class, in actual and hypothetical decisions, and with imaginary targets and real acquaintances. We consider implications for the psychology of trust and of social class. (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":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144127952","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":"Low self-esteem as a risk factor for depression: A longitudinal study with continuous time modeling.","authors":"Jasmin A Aebi,Ulrich Orth","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000560","url":null,"abstract":"Is low self-esteem a risk factor for depression, and do experiences of depression deteriorate an individual's self-esteem? In this preregistered study, we used continuous time modeling to investigate how prospective effects between self-esteem and depression change as a function of the time interval over which the effects are observed. Analyses were based on data from six measurement waves of the Longitudinal Study of Generations, covering a period of 17 years in total. The sample included 2,854 individuals (53% female) aged 16-102 years. Self-esteem and depression were modeled as latent constructs to control for measurement error. Moreover, the models also controlled for stable between-person differences in the constructs. The results indicated that low self-esteem significantly predicted an increase in depression, but that depression did not predict later self-esteem. The effect of self-esteem on depression reached its maximum at a time interval of approximately 2 years, with a standardized cross-lagged effect of -.09. The effect remained significant for a time interval up to 10 years and held for gender and across generations. Moreover, the effect held for three specific factors of depression (i.e., depressed affect, lack of positive affect, and interpersonal difficulties). However, the effect was not found for the depression factor of somatic complaints. The findings provide support for the vulnerability model, which proposes that low self-esteem is a risk factor for depression. Moreover, the findings suggest that this vulnerability effect is best studied over a time course of several years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"128 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144087849","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}
Cornelia Wrzus,Yannick Roos,Michael D Krämer,Ramona Schoedel,Mitja D Back,David Richter
{"title":"Affiliation motive and social interactions in people's daily life: A temporal processes approach using ecological momentary assessment and mobile sensing.","authors":"Cornelia Wrzus,Yannick Roos,Michael D Krämer,Ramona Schoedel,Mitja D Back,David Richter","doi":"10.1037/pspp0000555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000555","url":null,"abstract":"Individual differences in social traits such as the affiliation motive are closely linked to the formation and maintenance of social relationships. Most previous research focused on long-term characteristics or momentary assessments of social relationships (e.g., social network size, relationship quality), whereas theoretical accounts have emphasized the temporal dynamics, that is, how social interactions unfold over time. The present studies examined how social interactions unfold within days as well as between days, taking personality traits and situational affordances into account. In two multimethod studies (Study 1: N = 307, age 18-80 years, 51% female; Study 2: N = 385, age 19-84 years, 48% female), we assessed participants' social interactions in daily life using ecological momentary assessments and mobile sensing over 2 and 14 days, respectively. Furthermore, participants answered questionnaires on affiliation, additional social traits, and situational affordances, for example, the voluntariness of social situations. Multilevel lead-lag analyses showed that affiliation predicted momentary social desires but not future social interactions, except when social interactions were assessed with unobtrusive mobile sensing. Situational affordances, such as the valence and voluntariness of social interactions, additionally predicted social desires and future contact. The results were largely specific to affiliation and not observed for extraversion. Future research on social interactions would benefit from (a) examining and specifying meaningful timescales of social relationship processes, (b) following the renewed interactionist call for considering person and situation factors, and (c) integrating the myriad of social trait concepts in theories and measurements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":16691,"journal":{"name":"Journal of personality and social psychology","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144087845","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}