Psychological SciencePub Date : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-08-20DOI: 10.1177/09567976241263784
Kuan-Ju Huang
{"title":"Does Valuing Happiness Lead to Well-Being?","authors":"Kuan-Ju Huang","doi":"10.1177/09567976241263784","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241263784","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Happiness has become one of the most important life goals worldwide. However, does valuing happiness lead to better well-being? This study investigates the effect of valuing happiness on well-being using a population-based longitudinal survey of Dutch adults (<i>N</i> = 8,331) from 2019 to 2023. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models indicated that those who valued happiness generally exhibited higher well-being as manifested by life satisfaction, more positive affect, and less negative affect. However, increases in valuing happiness did not result in changes in life satisfaction 1 year later and had mixed emotional consequences (i.e., increasing both positive and negative affect). Additional analyses using fixed-effects models indicated that valuing happiness had contemporaneous positive effects on well-being. These findings indicate that endorsing happiness goals may have immediate psychological benefits but may not necessarily translate into long-term positive outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1155-1163"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142009353","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 : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-08-19DOI: 10.1177/09567976241267854
Patricia Kanngiesser, Jahnavi Sunderarajan, Sebastian Hafenbrädl, Jan K Woike
{"title":"Children Sustain Cooperation in a Threshold Public-Goods Game Even When Seeing Others' Outcomes.","authors":"Patricia Kanngiesser, Jahnavi Sunderarajan, Sebastian Hafenbrädl, Jan K Woike","doi":"10.1177/09567976241267854","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241267854","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many societal challenges are threshold dilemmas requiring people to cooperate to reach a threshold before group benefits can be reaped. Yet receiving feedback about others' outcomes relative to one's own (<i>relative feedback</i>) can undermine cooperation by focusing group members' attention on outperforming each other. We investigated the impact of relative feedback compared to <i>individual feedback</i> (only seeing one's own outcome) on cooperation in children from Germany and India (6- to 10-year-olds, <i>N</i> = 240). Using a threshold public-goods game with real water as a resource, we show that, although feedback had an effect, most groups sustained cooperation at high levels in both feedback conditions until the end of the game. Analyses of children's communication (14,374 codable utterances) revealed more references to social comparisons and more verbal efforts to coordinate in the relative-feedback condition. Thresholds can mitigate the most adverse effects of social comparisons by focusing attention on a common goal.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1094-1107"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142000595","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 : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-08-19DOI: 10.1177/09567976241258146
Qianqian Wan, Vladimir M Sloutsky
{"title":"Exploration, Distributed Attention, and Development of Category Learning.","authors":"Qianqian Wan, Vladimir M Sloutsky","doi":"10.1177/09567976241258146","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241258146","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Category learning is a crucial aspect of cognition that involves organizing entities into equivalence classes. Whereas adults tend to focus on category-relevant features, young children often distribute attention between relevant and irrelevant ones. The reasons for children's distributed attention are not fully understood. In two category-learning experiments with adults and with children aged 4, 5, and 6 (<i>N</i> = 201), we examined potential drivers of distributed attention, including (a) immature filtering of distractors and (b) the general tendency for exploration or broad information sampling. By eliminating distractor competition, we reduced filtering demands. Despite identifying the features critical for accurate categorization, children, regardless of their categorization performance, continued sampling more information than was necessary. These results indicate that the tendency to sample information extensively contributes to distributed attention in young children. We identify candidate drivers of this tendency that need to be examined in future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1164-1177"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142005050","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 : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-08-20DOI: 10.1177/09567976241266513
Laura Sels, Yasemin Erbas, Sarah T O'Brien, Lesley Verhofstadt, Margaret S Clark, Elise K Kalokerinos
{"title":"The Double-Edged Sword of Social Sharing: Social Sharing Predicts Increased Emotion Differentiation When Rumination Is Low but Decreased Emotion Differentiation When Rumination Is High.","authors":"Laura Sels, Yasemin Erbas, Sarah T O'Brien, Lesley Verhofstadt, Margaret S Clark, Elise K Kalokerinos","doi":"10.1177/09567976241266513","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241266513","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Laypeople believe that sharing their emotional experiences with others will improve their understanding of those experiences, but no clear empirical evidence supports this belief. To address this gap, we used data from four daily life studies (<i>N</i> = 659; student and community samples) to explore the association between social sharing and subsequent emotion differentiation, which involves labeling emotions with a high degree of complexity. Contrary to our expectations, we found that social sharing of emotional experiences was linked to greater subsequent emotion differentiation on occasions when people ruminated less than usual about these experiences. In contrast, on occasions when people ruminated more than usual about their experiences, social sharing of these experiences was linked to lower emotion differentiation. These effects held when we controlled for levels of negative emotion. Our findings suggest that putting feelings into words through sharing may only enable emotional precision when that sharing occurs without dwelling or perseverating.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1079-1093"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142009367","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 : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-08-19DOI: 10.1177/09567976241263002
Henry M Jones, Gisella K Diaz, William X Q Ngiam, Edward Awh
{"title":"Electroencephalogram Decoding Reveals Distinct Processes for Directing Spatial Attention and Encoding Into Working Memory.","authors":"Henry M Jones, Gisella K Diaz, William X Q Ngiam, Edward Awh","doi":"10.1177/09567976241263002","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241263002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Past work reveals a tight relationship between spatial attention and storage in visual working memory. But is spatially attending an item tantamount to working memory encoding? Here, we tracked electroencephalography (EEG) signatures of spatial attention and working memory encoding while independently manipulating the number of memory items and the spatial extent of attention in two studies of adults (<i>N</i> = 39; <i>N</i> = 33). Neural measures of spatial attention tracked the position and size of the attended area independent of the number of individuated items encoded into working memory. At the same time, multivariate decoding of the number of items stored in working memory was insensitive to variations in the breadth and position of spatial attention. Finally, representational similarity analyses provided converging evidence for a pure load signal that is insensitive to the spatial extent of the stored items. Thus, although spatial attention is a persistent partner of visual working memory, it is functionally dissociable from the selection and maintenance of individuated representations in working memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1108-1138"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142005049","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 : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-08-20DOI: 10.1177/09567976241263347
Marlie C Tandoc, Bharat Nadendla, Theresa Pham, Amy S Finn
{"title":"Directing Attention Shapes Learning in Adults but Not Children.","authors":"Marlie C Tandoc, Bharat Nadendla, Theresa Pham, Amy S Finn","doi":"10.1177/09567976241263347","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241263347","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Children sometimes learn distracting information better than adults do, perhaps because of the development of selective attention. To understand this potential link, we ask how the learning of children (aged 7-9 years) and the learning of adults differ when information is the directed focus of attention versus when it is not. Participants viewed drawings of common objects and were told to attend to the drawings (Experiment 1: 42 children, 35 adults) or indicate when shapes (overlaid on the drawings) repeated (Experiment 2: 53 children, 60 adults). Afterward, participants identified fragments of these drawings as quickly as possible. Adults learned better than children when directed to attend to the drawings; however, when drawings were task irrelevant, children showed better learning than adults in the first half of the test. And although directing attention to the drawings improved learning in adults, children learned the drawings similarly across experiments regardless of whether the drawings were the focus of the task or entirely irrelevant.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1139-1154"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142009352","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}
Marco Balducci, Marie-Pier Larose, Gijsbert Stoet, David C. Geary
{"title":"The Gender-Equality Paradox in Intraindividual Academic Strengths: A Cross-Temporal Analysis","authors":"Marco Balducci, Marie-Pier Larose, Gijsbert Stoet, David C. Geary","doi":"10.1177/09567976241271330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241271330","url":null,"abstract":"Independent of overall achievement, girls’ intraindividual academic strength is typically reading, whereas boys’ strength is typically mathematics or science. Sex differences in intraindividual strengths are associated with educational and occupational sex disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Paradoxically, these sex differences are larger in more gender-equal countries, but the stability of this paradox is debated. We assessed the stability of the gender-equality paradox in intraindividual strengths, and its relation to wealth, by analyzing the academic achievement of nearly 2.5 million adolescents across 85 countries and regions in five waves (from 2006 to 2018) of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Girls’ intraindividual strength in reading and boys’ strength in mathematics and science were stable across countries and waves. Boys’ advantage in science as an intraindividual strength was larger in more gender-equal countries, whereas girls’ advantage in reading was larger in wealthier countries. The results have implications for reducing sex disparities in STEM fields.","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":"85 1","pages":"9567976241271330"},"PeriodicalIF":8.2,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142180963","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: 2024-09-02DOI: 10.1177/09567976241263344
Luzi Xu, Chris L E Paffen, Stefan Van der Stigchel, Surya Gayet
{"title":"Statistical Learning Facilitates Access to Awareness.","authors":"Luzi Xu, Chris L E Paffen, Stefan Van der Stigchel, Surya Gayet","doi":"10.1177/09567976241263344","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241263344","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Statistical learning is a powerful mechanism that enables the rapid extraction of regularities from sensory inputs. Although numerous studies have established that statistical learning serves a wide range of cognitive functions, it remains unknown whether statistical learning impacts conscious access. To address this question, we applied multiple paradigms in a series of experiments (<i>N</i> = 153 adults): Two reaction-time-based breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS) experiments showed that probable objects break through suppression faster than improbable objects. A preregistered accuracy-based b-CFS experiment showed higher localization accuracy for suppressed probable (versus improbable) objects under identical presentation durations, thereby excluding the possibility of processing differences emerging after conscious access (e.g., criterion shifts). Consistent with these findings, a supplemental visual-masking experiment reaffirmed higher localization sensitivity to probable objects over improbable objects. Together, these findings demonstrate that statistical learning alters the competition for scarce conscious resources, thereby potentially contributing to established effects of statistical learning on higher-level cognitive processes that require consciousness.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1035-1047"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142111343","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: 2024-06-24DOI: 10.1177/09567976241246709
Hiroyuki Tsubomi, Keisuke Fukuda, Atsushi Kikumoto, Ulrich Mayr, Edward K Vogel
{"title":"Task Termination Triggers Spontaneous Removal of Information From Visual Working Memory.","authors":"Hiroyuki Tsubomi, Keisuke Fukuda, Atsushi Kikumoto, Ulrich Mayr, Edward K Vogel","doi":"10.1177/09567976241246709","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241246709","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Working memory (WM) is a goal-directed memory system that actively maintains a limited amount of task-relevant information to serve the current goal. By this definition, WM maintenance should be terminated after the goal is accomplished, spontaneously removing no-longer-relevant information from WM. Past studies have failed to provide direct evidence of spontaneous removal of WM content by allowing participants to engage in a strategic reallocation of WM resources to competing information within WM. By contrast, we provide direct neural and behavioral evidence that visual WM content can be largely removed less than 1 s after it becomes obsolete, in the absence of a strategic allocation of resources (total <i>N</i> = 442 adults). These results demonstrate that visual WM is intrinsically a goal-directed system, and spontaneous removal provides a means for capacity-limited WM to keep up with ever-changing demands in a dynamic environment.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"995-1009"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141446883","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: 2024-07-24DOI: 10.1177/09567976241251741
Kerem Oktar, Tania Lombrozo, Thomas L Griffiths
{"title":"Learning From Aggregated Opinion.","authors":"Kerem Oktar, Tania Lombrozo, Thomas L Griffiths","doi":"10.1177/09567976241251741","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09567976241251741","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The capacity to leverage information from others' opinions is a hallmark of human cognition. Consequently, past research has investigated how we learn from others' testimony. Yet a distinct form of social information-<i>aggregated opinion</i>-increasingly guides our judgments and decisions. We investigated how people learn from such information by conducting three experiments with participants recruited online within the United States (<i>N</i> = 886) comparing the predictions of three computational models: a Bayesian solution to this problem that can be implemented by a simple strategy for combining proportions with prior beliefs, and two alternatives from epistemology and economics. Across all studies, we found the strongest concordance between participants' judgments and the predictions of the Bayesian model, though some participants' judgments were better captured by alternative strategies. These findings lay the groundwork for future research and show that people draw systematic inferences from aggregated opinion, often in line with a Bayesian solution.</p>","PeriodicalId":20745,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"1010-1024"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141752500","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}