Wilson N Merrell, Lei Fan, Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington, Lotte Thomsen
{"title":"Resource Possession in the Mind's Eye: Ideological Convergence and Divergence in the Perceptions of Poor People.","authors":"Wilson N Merrell, Lei Fan, Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington, Lotte Thomsen","doi":"10.1177/01461672251371787","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251371787","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social hierarchies ultimately concern resource possession, yet psychological processes for regulating resource-related tensions remain underexplored. We examine how support for intergroup equality (egalitarianism) relates to explicit attitudes toward, and mental images of, the resource poor. In Study 1 (<i>N</i> = 625), egalitarians report more favorable attitudes toward the resource poor than anti-egalitarians. However, using the reverse correlation paradigm, both groups generate similarly negative mental images of this group, as shown by pixel luminance comparisons (Study 1) and evaluated by independent raters of person-perceptual (Study 2, <i>N</i> = 394) and coalitional traits (Study 3, <i>N</i> = 348). While ideology did not shape image generation, it did influence image evaluation: egalitarian raters showed less polarization between resource-poor and resource-rich faces than anti-egalitarian raters. These findings suggest that despite ideological differences in explicit attitudes (divergence), egalitarians, and anti-egalitarians share similarly negative mental representations (convergence) of the resource poor, highlighting a nuanced interplay between social perception and hierarchy regulation.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3464-3480"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145391846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bryn Bandt-Law, Nathan N Cheek, Jessica J Glazier, Kristina R Olson, Cheryl R Kaiser
{"title":"The Underestimation of Transgender Women's Vulnerability to Workplace Sexual Harassment.","authors":"Bryn Bandt-Law, Nathan N Cheek, Jessica J Glazier, Kristina R Olson, Cheryl R Kaiser","doi":"10.1177/01461672251368955","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251368955","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite experiencing sexual harassment more frequently and more severely than cisgender women, transgender women survivors'/victims' experiences of workplace sexual harassment are often omitted or ignored. Drawing from theorizing on victim prototypes and perceptions of sexual harassment, we show across six studies (total <i>N</i> = 2,022) that people incorrectly believe that transgender women are less likely to experience workplace sexual harassment compared to cisgender women. This effect is stronger among individuals who deny that transgender women are, in fact, women. We also show that people perceive harassment claims from transgender women who experience unwanted advances to be less credible than identical claims from cisgender women. Perceptions that transgender women are unlikely and non-credible victims of sexual harassment have important implications for understanding the erasure and neglect of transgender women survivors and the obstruction of transgender women's civil rights.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3279-3294"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145239517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effects of Friendship Influence and Normative Pressure on Adolescent Attitudes and Behaviors.","authors":"Tibor Zingora, Andreas Flache","doi":"10.1177/01461672251366388","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251366388","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Peers are assumed to be crucial in shaping adolescents' attitudes and behaviors in schools; what peers yield social influence over adolescents is less clear. We disentangled two mechanisms of peer influence: friendship influence and normative pressure. Friendship influence refers to the impact of friends' attitudes and behaviors, while normative pressure stems from the influence of peers from the same social group, such as gender group. We adopted a network perspective, recognizing that peer influence can be shaped by changing relationships among peers. We investigated friendship influence and normative pressure based on sharing the same gender and ethnicity in shaping academic drive, prejudice, and religiosity. We analyzed a sample of German school grades (<i>N</i> = 2,838; 29 school grades) using stochastic actor-oriented modeling. Adolescents influenced each other via both friendship influence and normative pressure. These findings improve our understanding of who influences whom in schools and open new research avenues.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3216-3234"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507506/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145138248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abigail Bergman, Mohamed A Hussein, Rhia Catapano, Zakary L Tormala
{"title":"Fifteen Reasons You Should Read This Paper: How Providing Many Arguments Increases Perceptions of Both Expertise and Persuasive Intent.","authors":"Abigail Bergman, Mohamed A Hussein, Rhia Catapano, Zakary L Tormala","doi":"10.1177/01461672251366068","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251366068","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People generally believe that more is better in persuasion, for good reason. Past research has shown that providing more arguments can enhance a message's persuasiveness. In contrast, we demonstrate that increasing the number of arguments in a message can have conflicting effects on perceptions of the message source. Compared to using few arguments, using many arguments makes the source seem more like an expert, increasing persuasion, but it can also make the source appear to have greater persuasive intent, decreasing persuasion. These perceptions suppress each other, resulting in minimal or no overall benefit to persuasion. We document these effects across multiple experiments. We further demonstrate that providing many arguments can have a clear positive or negative effect, depending on whether high expertise or low persuasive intent is more valued. These findings expand our understanding of argument quantity effects in persuasion and contribute to a growing literature on conflicting source perceptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3199-3215"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145138213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When the Shot Backfires: Demonstrating How Science Communication Can Fail.","authors":"Yashvin Seetahul, Tobias Greitemeyer","doi":"10.1177/01461672251370004","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251370004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We examined how scientific research influences the beliefs of those most invested in the research. We focused specifically on violent video game (VVG) and aggression research and tested the hypothesis that non-players and non-habitual players would update their beliefs based on the study conclusions, whereas more habitual players would not. Participants read abstracts with either a positive effect or a null effect. Beliefs about the effect of VVGs on aggression were measured before and after reading. Results in both studies (overall <i>N</i> = 1,576) showed that at low VVG exposure levels, participants in both conditions updated their beliefs to align with the research. However, at high VVG exposure levels, participants maintained their belief that VVGs do not increase aggression, and at very high VVG exposure levels, positive-effect studies led participants to believe the opposite: that VVGs reduce aggression. We interpret this pattern of response as suggesting a process of psychological distancing, whereby individuals defensively shift their beliefs away from threatening claims. These findings highlight the need to understand how scientific information is received and to develop strategies that prevent reinforcing misconceptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3426-3446"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507507/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145378327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yhonatan S Shemesh, Avi Gamoran, David Leiser, Michael Gilead
{"title":"Do People Listen to Cassandra? Persuasion and Accuracy in Geopolitical Forecasts.","authors":"Yhonatan S Shemesh, Avi Gamoran, David Leiser, Michael Gilead","doi":"10.1177/01461672251375500","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251375500","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In a world marked by persistent uncertainty, accurately predicting the future is vital. While certain people (\"superforecasters\") and practices (aggregation) can produce more accurate forecasts, the utility of these forecasts depends on whether they are persuasive enough to be heeded. This study investigates the relationship between persuasion and accuracy in geopolitical forecasts. In a forecasting competition, 153 forecasters predicted future global events and explained their rationales. Next, 474 evaluators rated these rationales for persuasiveness. Using a neural network-based language model, we found that although forecasting rationales contained valid cues for accuracy, evaluators were no more persuaded by accurate forecasts. Further analyses using large language models revealed that psychological attributes indicating expertise, trustworthiness, and emotional composure were associated with both persuasion and accuracy, while eloquence and confidence, though persuasive, were unrelated to accuracy. We conclude that people are sensitive to valid cues, but are misled by invalid ones, impairing overall calibration.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3363-3378"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507494/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145308479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Control Motivation Function of Populist Attitudes: Causal Evidence that Populist Reasoning Raises Perceptions of Control.","authors":"Annedore Hoppe, Immo Fritsche, Helena Pauen","doi":"10.1177/01461672251373106","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251373106","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present studies investigate how populist attitudes influence perceptions of personal control. Populist reasoning is proposed to enhance personal control by promoting a sense of belonging to an agentic group (\"the people\") that opposes a perceived antagonistic \"corrupt elite.\" Across three experiments (<i>N</i> = 733), participants were asked to adopt either a populist or a pluralistic reasoning style. In Study 3, the salience of high versus low personal control was additionally manipulated. Results showed that populist reasoning increased participants' sense of control, particularly in relation to specific goals, such as performing well in an upcoming debate. However, making low control salient tended to diminish this effect. These findings suggest that populist narratives may be appealing during crises due to their control-enhancing function. The novel experimental method for manipulating populist attitudes opens new pathways for testing causal effects and understanding the motivational drivers of populism, potentially contributing to future interventions in this field.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3512-3527"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507497/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145409824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Goals Out Loud: Telling Others About a Goal Increases Support Received and Facilitates Goal Pursuit.","authors":"Johanna Peetz, Roger Buehler, Tayler Wells","doi":"10.1177/01461672251382271","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251382271","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Four longitudinal studies (<i>N =</i> 1,035) examined whether telling others about personal goals enhances goal support received, goal pursuit effort, and goal progress. In Study 1, participants nominated a personal goal and 1 week later reported whether they had shared this goal during the week. Goal disclosure predicted more support received from others and greater goal pursuit effort. In Studies 2 and 3, participants assigned to share a goal in the coming week later reported receiving more support from others, which in turn was linked to greater goal pursuit effort and progress. In Study 4, participants were assigned either to share a goal with a person accompanying them at that moment or to keep it private; goal disclosure was again linked to goal pursuit effort, though not to support received. Together, these studies reveal the benefits of sharing goals and highlight the importance of considering the audience and manner of goal disclosure.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3447-3463"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507492/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145378361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Demotivating Justice: White Americans' Outrage at Individual Bigotry May Reduce Action to Address Systematic Racial Inequity.","authors":"Zachary K Rothschild, Myles Hugee","doi":"10.1177/01461672251361264","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251361264","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>These studies examine whether expressing outrage at a prejudiced individual may undermine justice-insensitive White Americans' motivation to engage in more costly actions addressing systemic racism. Study 1 (<i>N</i> = 896) manipulated White privilege salience and the opportunity to express outrage before measuring donations to a racial justice organization. Reminders of racial privilege increased White collective guilt, and donations among White U.S. participants low (but not high) in justice sensitivity. However, the opportunity to express outrage at another's prejudicial behavior negated privilege-induced reparative action. A second preregistered study (<i>N</i> = 1344) found this effect only when outrage was directed at a racialized (vs. non-racialized) injustice. A third preregistered study (<i>N</i> = 1133) replicated the effects using a more controlled manipulation of outrage expression and more ecologically valid outcomes. Findings suggest that salient racial privilege may motivate some White Americans to address systemic racism, but expressing outrage at another's bigotry may undermine this process.</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3164-3181"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145023933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Re-examining Spontaneous Trait Transference from an Attributional Perspective.","authors":"Marine Rougier, Leonard Heusler, Jan De Houwer","doi":"10.1177/01461672251365982","DOIUrl":"10.1177/01461672251365982","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In spontaneous trait transference (STT), communicators describing the behavior of others (i.e., actors) are perceived as having the personality traits implied by the behavior they describe. We tested whether this effect relies on moderators that are indicative of rule-based, attributional processes: the communicator-actor relation (friends vs. enemies; Experiment 1), the diagnosticity of the statement for inferring the implied trait to the communicator (Experiment 2), and the validity of the statement (i.e., whether it was actually provided by the communicator; Experiment 3). In line with attributional theories, trait ratings revealed a joint impact of the three moderators. Experiment 4 showed that communicators were attributed alternative traits-not implied by the behavior itself, but by the fact that they described the behavior. Together, our results suggest that participants attribute traits to the communicator based on the communicator's behavior (i.e., the act of describing the behavior of someone else).</p>","PeriodicalId":19834,"journal":{"name":"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"3235-3250"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145186484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}