Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-08-09DOI: 10.1177/09567976241258149
Gordon Heltzel, Kristin Laurin
{"title":"Why Twitter Sometimes Rewards What Most People Disapprove of: The Case of Cross-Party Political Relations.","authors":"Gordon Heltzel, Kristin Laurin","doi":"10.1177/09567976241258149","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241258149","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent evidence has shown that social-media platforms like Twitter (now X) reward politically divisive content, even though most people disapprove of interparty conflict and negativity. We document this discrepancy and provide the first evidence explaining it, using tweets by U.S. Senators and American adults' responses to them. Studies 1a and 1b examined 6,135 such tweets, finding that dismissing tweets received more Likes and Retweets than tweets that engaged constructively with opponents. In contrast, Studies 2a and 2b (<i>N</i> = 856; 1,968 observations) revealed that the broader public, if anything, prefers politicians' engaging tweets. Studies 3 (<i>N</i> = 323; 4,571 observations) and 4 (<i>N</i> = 261; 2,610 observations) supported two distinct explanations for this disconnect. First, users who frequently react to politicians' tweets are an influential yet unrepresentative minority, rewarding dismissing posts because, unlike most people, they prefer them. Second, the silent majority admit that they too would reward dismissing posts more, despite disapproving of them. These findings help explain why popular online content sometimes distorts true public opinion.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141907577","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-08-14DOI: 10.1177/09567976241260247
Alexandra D W Sullivan, Sarah M Merrill, Chaini Konwar, Michael Coccia, Luisa Rivera, Julia L MacIsaac, Alicia F Lieberman, Michael S Kobor, Nicole R Bush
{"title":"Intervening After Trauma: Child-Parent Psychotherapy Treatment Is Associated With Lower Pediatric Epigenetic Age Acceleration.","authors":"Alexandra D W Sullivan, Sarah M Merrill, Chaini Konwar, Michael Coccia, Luisa Rivera, Julia L MacIsaac, Alicia F Lieberman, Michael S Kobor, Nicole R Bush","doi":"10.1177/09567976241260247","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241260247","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Early-life adversity increases the risk of health problems. Interventions supporting protective and responsive caregiving offer a promising approach to attenuating adversity-induced changes in stress-sensitive biomarkers. This study tested whether participation in an evidence-based dyadic psychosocial intervention, child-parent psychotherapy (CPP), was related to lower epigenetic age acceleration, a trauma-sensitive biomarker of accelerated biological aging that is associated with later health impairment, in a sample of children with trauma histories. Within this quasi-experimental, repeated-measures study, we examined epigenetic age acceleration at baseline and postintervention in a low-income sample of children receiving CPP treatment (<i>n</i> = 45; age range = 2-6 years; 76% Latino) compared with a weighted, propensity-matched community-comparison sample (<i>n</i> = 110; age range = 3-6 years; 40% Latino). Baseline epigenetic age acceleration was equivalent across groups. However, posttreatment, epigenetic age acceleration in the treatment group was lower than in the matched community sample. Findings highlight the potential for a dyadic psychosocial intervention to ameliorate accelerated biological aging in trauma-exposed children.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141976473","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-05-28DOI: 10.1177/09567976241251766
Michael Prinzing
{"title":"Proenvironmental Behavior Increases Subjective Well-Being: Evidence From an Experience-Sampling Study and a Randomized Experiment.","authors":"Michael Prinzing","doi":"10.1177/09567976241251766","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241251766","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Two preregistered studies investigated whether engaging in proenvironmental behavior increases a person's well-being. A 10-day experience-sampling study (7,161 observations from 181 adults in 14 countries, primarily the United States) revealed positive within-person and between-person associations, and a randomized controlled experiment (<i>N</i> = 545 U.S. undergraduates) found that incorporating proenvironmental behavior into individuals' daily activities increased their experiences of happiness and meaning in life. Indeed, the effect was comparable to incorporating activities selected specifically to elicit such positive states, though these results may be affected by demand characteristics. The studies also offered some tentative preliminary evidence about why such an effect might emerge. There was some support for the hypothesis that proenvironmental behavior affects well-being by creating a \"warm glow.\" But overall the findings align more closely with the hypothesis that proenvironmental behavior helps to satisfy individuals' basic psychological needs.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141162451","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 Bennett, Lucy Albertella, Laura Forbes, Ty Hayes, Antonio Verdejo-Garcia, Lukasz Walasek, Elliot A Ludvig
{"title":"People Place Larger Bets When Risky Choices Provide a Postbet Option to Cash Out.","authors":"Daniel Bennett, Lucy Albertella, Laura Forbes, Ty Hayes, Antonio Verdejo-Garcia, Lukasz Walasek, Elliot A Ludvig","doi":"10.1177/09567976241266516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241266516","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>After a risky choice, decision makers must frequently wait out a delay period before the outcome of their choice becomes known. In contemporary sports-betting apps, decision makers can \"cash out\" of their bet during this delay period by accepting a discounted immediate payout. An important open question is how availability of a postchoice cash-out option alters choice. We investigated this question using a novel gambling task that incorporated a cash-out option during the delay between bet and outcome. Across two experiments (<i>N</i> = 240 adults, recruited via Prolific), cash-out availability increased participants' bet amounts by up to 35%. Participants who were more likely to cash out when odds deteriorated were less likely to cash out when odds improved. Furthermore, the effect of cash-out availability on bet amounts was positively correlated with individual differences in cash-out propensity for bets with deteriorating odds only. These results suggest that cash-out availability may promote larger bets by allowing bettors to avoid losing their entire stake.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142056327","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-06-20DOI: 10.1177/09567976241256961
Kate Nussenbaum, Perri L Katzman, Hanxiao Lu, Samuel Zorowitz, Catherine A Hartley
{"title":"Sensitivity to the Instrumental Value of Choice Increases Across Development.","authors":"Kate Nussenbaum, Perri L Katzman, Hanxiao Lu, Samuel Zorowitz, Catherine A Hartley","doi":"10.1177/09567976241256961","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241256961","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Across development, people tend to demonstrate a preference for contexts in which they have the opportunity to make choices. However, it is not clear how children, adolescents, and adults learn to calibrate this preference based on the costs and benefits of agentic choice. Here, in both a primary, in-person, reinforcement-learning experiment (<i>N</i> = 92; age range = 10-25 years) and a preregistered online replication study (<i>N</i> = 150; age range = 8-25 years), we found that participants overvalued agentic choice but also calibrated their agency decisions to the reward structure of the environment, increasingly selecting agentic choice when choice had greater instrumental value. Regression analyses and computational modeling of participant choices revealed that participants' bias toward agentic choice-reflecting its intrinsic value-remained consistent across age, whereas sensitivity to the instrumental value of agentic choice increased from childhood to early adulthood.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141432650","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-05-14DOI: 10.1177/09567976241237699
Xin Zhou, Xuancu Hong, Patrick C M Wong
{"title":"Autistic Traits Modulate Social Synchronizations Between School-Aged Children: Insights From Three fNIRS Hyperscanning Experiments.","authors":"Xin Zhou, Xuancu Hong, Patrick C M Wong","doi":"10.1177/09567976241237699","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241237699","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The current study investigated how autistic traits modulate peer interactions using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. Across three experiments, we tested the effect of copresence, joint activity, and a tangible goal during cooperative interactions on interbrain coherence (IBC) in school-aged children between 9 and 11 years old. Twenty-three dyads of children watched a video alone or together in Experiment 1, engaged in joint or self-paced book reading in Experiment 2, and pretended to play a Jenga game or played for real in Experiment 3. We found that all three formats of social interactions increased IBC in the frontotemporoparietal networks, which have been reported to support social interaction. Further, our results revealed the shared and unique interbrain connections that were predictive of the lower and higher parent-reported autism-spectrum quotient scores, which indicated child autistic traits. Results from a convergence of three experiments provide the first evidence to date that IBC is modulated by child autistic traits.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140922940","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-06-18DOI: 10.1177/09567976241237700
Steven Shepherd, Rowena Crabbe, Tanya L Chartrand, Gavan J Fitzsimons, Aaron C Kay
{"title":"When and Why Antiegalitarianism Affects Resistance to Supporting Black-Owned Businesses.","authors":"Steven Shepherd, Rowena Crabbe, Tanya L Chartrand, Gavan J Fitzsimons, Aaron C Kay","doi":"10.1177/09567976241237700","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241237700","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding how initiatives to support Black-owned businesses are received, and why, has important social and economic implications. To address this, we designed three experiments to investigate the role of antiegalitarian versus egalitarian ideologies among White American adults. In Study 1 (<i>N</i> = 199), antiegalitarianism (vs. egalitarianism) predicted viewing initiatives supporting a Black-owned business as less fair, but only when the business was competing with other (presumably White-owned) businesses. In Study 2 (<i>N =</i> 801), antiegalitarianism predicted applying survival-of-the-fittest market beliefs, particularly to Black-owned businesses. Antiegalitarianism also predicted viewing initiatives supporting Black-owned businesses as less fair than initiatives that targeted other (presumably White-owned) businesses, especially for tangible (vs. symbolic) support that directly impacts the success of a business. In Study 3 (<i>N</i> = 590), antiegalitarianism predicted rejecting a program investing in Black-owned businesses. These insights demonstrate how antiegalitarian ideology can have the effect of maintaining race-based inequality, hindering programs designed to reduce that inequality.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141420565","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-06-18DOI: 10.1177/09567976241235930
William J Villano, Noah I Kraus, T Rick Reneau, Brittany A Jaso, A Ross Otto, Aaron S Heller
{"title":"The Causes and Consequences of Drifting Expectations.","authors":"William J Villano, Noah I Kraus, T Rick Reneau, Brittany A Jaso, A Ross Otto, Aaron S Heller","doi":"10.1177/09567976241235930","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241235930","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Awaiting news of uncertain outcomes is distressing because the news might be disappointing. To prevent such disappointments, people often \"brace for the worst,\" pessimistically lowering expectations before news arrives to decrease the possibility of surprising disappointment (a negative <i>prediction error</i>, or PE). Computational decision-making research commonly assumes that expectations do not drift within trials, yet it is unclear whether expectations pessimistically drift in real-world, high-stakes settings, what factors influence expectation drift, and whether it effectively buffers emotional responses to goal-relevant outcomes. Moreover, individuals learn from PEs to accurately anticipate future outcomes, but it is unknown whether expectation drift also impedes PE-based learning. In a sample of students awaiting exam grades (<i>N</i> = 625), we found that expectations often drift and tend to drift pessimistically. We demonstrate that bracing is preferentially modulated by uncertainty; it transiently buffers the initial emotional impact of negative PEs but impairs PE-based learning, counterintuitively sustaining uncertainty into the future.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141420564","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 Basic Units of Working Memory Manipulation Are Boolean Maps, Not Objects.","authors":"Huichao Ji, Kaiyue Wang, Garry Kong, Xiaodan Zhang, Wenzhen He, Xiaowei Ding","doi":"10.1177/09567976241257443","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241257443","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Determining the manipulation unit of working memory is one of the fundamental questions in understanding how working memory functions. The prevalent object-based theory in cognitive research predicts that memory manipulation is performed on the level of objects. Here we show instead that the basic units of working memory manipulation are <i>Boolean maps</i>, a data structure describing what can be perceived in an instant. We developed four new manipulation tasks (with data from 80 adults) and showed that manipulation times only increased when the number of Boolean maps manipulated increased. Increasing the number of orientations manipulated did not induce longer manipulation times, consistent with a key prediction of the Boolean map theory. Our results show that Boolean maps are the manipulation unit of working memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141420563","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}
Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-06-18DOI: 10.1177/09567976241249183
Michael L DeKay, Shiyu Dou
{"title":"Risky-Choice Framing Effects Result Partly From Mismatched Option Descriptions in Gains and Losses.","authors":"Michael L DeKay, Shiyu Dou","doi":"10.1177/09567976241249183","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241249183","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Textbook psychology holds that people usually prefer a certain option over a risky one when options are framed as gains but prefer the opposite when options are framed as losses. However, this pattern can be amplified, eliminated, or reversed depending on whether option descriptions include only positive information (e.g., \"200 people will be saved\"), only negative information (e.g., \"400 people will not be saved\"), or both. Previous studies suggest that framing effects arise only when option descriptions are mismatched across frames. Using online and student samples (<i>N</i>s = 906 and 521), we investigated 81 framing-effect variants created from matched and mismatched pairs of 18 option descriptions (nine in each frame). Description valence or gist explained substantial variation in risk preferences (prospect theory does not predict such variation), but a considerable framing effect remained in our balanced design. Risky-choice framing effects appear to be partly-but not completely-the result of mismatched comparisons.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141420562","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}