{"title":"Temporal dynamics of cue integration for sense of agency in social comparative context.","authors":"Yunyun Chen, Xintong Zou, Hong He, Xuemin Zhang","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70039","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cue integration theory suggests that the sense of agency arises from the interaction of multiple cues, weighted by their reliability and availability. However, whether this integration is dynamic or static remains unclear. This study explored the potential dynamics of cue integration by examining the interplay between internal and external cues in social comparison contexts. Participants in the two experiments controlled a circle to a target location, with the circle's motion either fluent or disfluent. After completing the task, the participants received feedback on their performance relative to others, delivered in either a social (hand gestures in Experiment 1) or non-social format (arrow symbols in Experiment 2), presented either before or after they provided agency ratings. Results revealed that both socially and non-socially formatted feedback influenced agency ratings for future actions (forward modulation) as well as for past actions (backward modulation). Notably, a dynamic pattern of integration was evident only between socially formatted feedback and motion fluency: under disfluent motion, forward and backward effects of socially formatted feedback intensified over time. Conversely, with fluent motion, the impact of socially formatted feedback diminished over time. These findings underscore the complexity of cue integration, indicating a need to incorporate temporal dynamics into cue integration theory.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145285716","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}
Dylan de Gourville, Karen M Douglas, Robbie M Sutton
{"title":"Denialist vs. warmist climate change conspiracy beliefs: Ideological roots, psychological correlates and environmental implications.","authors":"Dylan de Gourville, Karen M Douglas, Robbie M Sutton","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the current research, we use network analysis to examine the structure, ideological foundations and correlates of climate change conspiracy theories, distinguishing between denialist and warmist beliefs. Denialist beliefs, typically endorsed on the political right, claim that climate change is exaggerated, whereas warmist beliefs, more prevalent on the left, allege the suppression of climate science and the downplaying of climate change. Across four studies, these beliefs showed a weak and unstable positive correlation but were reliably connected via indirect associations with general conspiracy beliefs and negatively through opposing relationships with denial of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) and conservatism. General conspiracy beliefs and denial of ACC were not directly connected but were instead related indirectly through climate-specific conspiracy beliefs: positively via denialist and negatively via warmist. We found no evidence across studies for an association between climate change conspiracy beliefs and indices of non-rational thinking. Finally, denialist beliefs were negatively associated with pro-environmental intentions, environmental concern, policy support and collective guilt, whereas warmist beliefs were positively related to these outcomes, except for environmental concern, where no significant relationship emerged. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing ideological variants of climate change conspiracy beliefs to contextualize their psychological significance and potential impacts.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145285711","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":"Negative targets specifically enhance conscious and unconscious social attention.","authors":"Tian Yuan, Li Wang, Antao Chen, Yi Jiang","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70036","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans are highly adept at utilizing various social signals, such as eye gaze and biological motion (BM), to detect important events (e.g. threat, reward) in the environment, a phenomenon termed social attention. Here we investigated whether the affective information carried by the contextual event would modulate this social attention behaviour. By introducing natural emotional pictures (negative, neutral and positive) as peripheral probing targets within the modified central cueing paradigm, we found that central BM induced a stronger attentional orienting effect towards negative targets than neutral and positive ones. Moreover, this modulation was observed in attentional effects induced by another well-known social cue (i.e. eye gaze), whereas no such effect was obtained with the non-social arrow cues. Importantly, this negativity bias persisted at the subliminal level, as shown by the significant attentional effects towards negative targets induced by unconscious social cues (i.e. BM, eye gaze). In contrast, no attentional effects were obtained with non-conscious arrow cues. Overall, these findings reveal a general enhancement of negative targets on conscious and unconscious social attention induced by different types of social signals (i.e. BM, eye gaze) and highlight the distinction of social attention compared to non-social attention in detecting potentially detrimental events.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145273871","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}
Xiaolei Sun, Jiajia Che, Marcos Nadal, Helmut Leder
{"title":"Information and affective valence influence judgments of complexity, liking and understanding.","authors":"Xiaolei Sun, Jiajia Che, Marcos Nadal, Helmut Leder","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70037","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Visual complexity is a key factor in perceptual and evaluative judgments. People's representation of visual complexity is constructed from quantitative and structural image features, but it is also influenced by familiarity and expertise. We examined how people represent visual complexity and its impact on perception and evaluation, focusing on information about paintings and their affective valence on judgments of visual complexity, liking and understanding. Seventy-six participants rated 60 representational artworks of negative, neutral, and positive valence on complexity, beauty and understanding. Half of the participants received written information about each artwork. Results showed that negative artworks were judged as more complex than neutral artworks and positive ones, but this effect was attenuated by the provided information. Liking judgments increased with judged complexity, were higher for positive artworks than neutral ones, for neutral than negative ones, and were higher when information was provided. Understanding judgments were higher for positive artworks than neutral ones, and higher for neutral artworks than negatively valenced ones. Information increased understanding only for negative artworks, and judged complexity did not affect these judgments. In sum, the representation of the visual complexity of an image is influenced by its valence and the available information, modulating judgments of complexity and liking, but not of understanding.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145249825","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}
Corinna Perchtold-Stefan, Christian Rominger, Simon Ceh, Katharina Sattler, Sarah-Vanessa Veit, Andreas Fink
{"title":"Out of the dark - Psychological perspectives on people's fascination with true crime.","authors":"Corinna Perchtold-Stefan, Christian Rominger, Simon Ceh, Katharina Sattler, Sarah-Vanessa Veit, Andreas Fink","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70038","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The success of the true crime media genre reflects humanity's avid curiosity about violence, deviance, and murder, yet psychological research on this phenomenon is lacking. In this article, we highlight why true crime consumption may be relevant to various research fields that go beyond simple media preferences. Additionally, we present a large-scale behavioural investigation for comprehensive empirical insights into motives, and behavioural and well-being correlates of true crime consumption. In n = 307-571 participants, we (a) confirm a robust gender difference in true crime consumption in favour of women, and (b) find more general (morbid curiosity) and distinct motives (defensive vigilance, excitement) for true crime consumption. Additionally, (c) through principal component analysis, we extract five components from numerous variables (negative affectivity, antagonism, fear of crime, self-focused adaptive regulation, and affective creativity) to test for contributions to true crime consumption. Ultimately, (d) in multiple regression models, gender, income, fear of crime, and antagonism emerged as unique predictors of overall true crime consumption, though results varied for different formats (e.g., podcasts) and motives. Notably, defensive vigilance motivation (higher in women) was linked to more adaptive self-regulation. Our investigation adds to the emerging body of research on negative crime-related information seeking.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145243808","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}
Ala Yankouskaya, Claudia Salera, Marianna Constantinou, Anna Pecchinenda
{"title":"Effects of social exclusion on following the gaze of others.","authors":"Ala Yankouskaya, Claudia Salera, Marianna Constantinou, Anna Pecchinenda","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70034","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Evidence shows that social exclusion motivates to paying attention to the situation to reconnect with others or to protect oneself from further exclusion. However, it is unclear how social attention is affected by who offers an opportunity to reconnect. Two studies filled this gap by assessing whether being excluded affects our propensity to share attention with another individual (seen or novel) with a happy or a neutral expression. Findings show a significant three-way interaction with differences in gaze cueing between groups only for seen faces with a neutral expression. Gaze-cueing effects for seen (excluders) faces with a neutral expression occurred in 73% of socially excluded individuals - this was 33% for seen (includers) faces for socially included. There were no differences in gaze cueing for novel faces with happy or neutral expressions. In Study 2, social information about faces was learned without direct exclusion. Here, the proportion of participants showing the effect observed in Study 1 and the associations between gaze cueing and emotional expressions differed. In line with the social monitoring system theory, individuals in the immediate aftermath of exclusion remain socially engaged, displaying a dual attentional strategy: vigilance towards the excluder and openness to affiliative signals from novel others.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145231532","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}
Jia-Yan Mao, Cai-Yu Tian, Shen-Long Yang, Jan-Willem van Prooijen
{"title":"'Sweet poison' and 'mild medicine': Different effects of collective narcissism and collective self-esteem on ingroup versus outgroup conspiracy beliefs.","authors":"Jia-Yan Mao, Cai-Yu Tian, Shen-Long Yang, Jan-Willem van Prooijen","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70032","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Collective narcissism and non-narcissistic ingroup positivity (notably collective self-esteem) are associated differently with conspiracy beliefs. We conducted three cross-sectional surveys in China and the United States that distinguished between ingroup and outgroup conspiracy beliefs, to explore the intricate relationships and underlying mechanisms of these variables. Studies 1 (N = 800) and 2 (N = 385) showed that, in China, collective narcissism was positively associated with outgroup conspiracy belief (partially mediated by increased perceived threat from the outgroup) and with ingroup conspiracy belief (partially mediated by increased instrumental treatment of ingroup members); collective self-esteem was positively associated with outgroup conspiracy belief (fully mediated by increased victim consciousness), but negatively with ingroup conspiracy belief (fully mediated by increased system-justifying belief). Study 3 (N = 397) only replicated the significant positive relationship between collective narcissism and outgroup conspiracy belief in a US sample, and the partial mediating effect of increased perceived threat from the outgroup in it, while the other three paths were not statistically significant. These findings suggest that the association between different forms of ingroup positivity (narcissistic versus non-narcissistic) and conspiracy beliefs is influenced both by the identity of the conspirators (ingroup versus outgroup) and cultural context.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145147935","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}
Alexander Scott English, Thomas Talhelm, Rongtian Tong, Liuqing Wei, Xingyu Li, Jianhong Ma, Haitao Yu, Shihou Zhou, Wei Zhang, Tianhai Lin, Meng Zhang, Li-Juan Hu, Peng Cui, Evan Hacker, Bin Ling, Brooke Logterman, Zhijia Zeng, Cheng Huang, Zhongya Liu
{"title":"Moving to wheat-farming regions increases analytic thought, but moving to cities does not: A three-wave longitudinal study.","authors":"Alexander Scott English, Thomas Talhelm, Rongtian Tong, Liuqing Wei, Xingyu Li, Jianhong Ma, Haitao Yu, Shihou Zhou, Wei Zhang, Tianhai Lin, Meng Zhang, Li-Juan Hu, Peng Cui, Evan Hacker, Bin Ling, Brooke Logterman, Zhijia Zeng, Cheng Huang, Zhongya Liu","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Does moving to a new environment change people's cultural thought style? We tracked the cultural thought style of 1462 university students at 18 sites over time after they moved across China for college. We tested their holistic thought, which is more common in interdependent cultures. One logical prediction is that students would think less holistically after moving to big cities and more economically developed areas, in line with modernization theory. However, moving to bigger cities or more-developed areas did not predict decreases in holistic thought. Instead, regions' history of rice versus wheat farming predicted change in thought style. Within just five months, students who moved to wheat-farming prefectures thought less holistically than people who moved to rice-farming prefectures. This fits with the idea that rice farming required more coordination and interdependence than wheat farming. In a follow-up wave three years later, differences widened between students in rice and wheat areas. This three-wave longitudinal study documents the transmission of cultural differences in cognition, even without personal experience farming. The results suggest that China's farming history is still shaping cultural differences in the modern day.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145147998","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}
Zahra Rahmani Azad, Tobia Spampatti, Sebastian Gluth, Kim-Pong Tam, Ulf J J Hahnel
{"title":"Sampling and processing of climate change information and disinformation across three diverse countries.","authors":"Zahra Rahmani Azad, Tobia Spampatti, Sebastian Gluth, Kim-Pong Tam, Ulf J J Hahnel","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70028","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the media, accurate climate information and climate disinformation often coexist and present competing narratives about climate change. Whereas previous research documented detrimental effects of disinformation on climate beliefs, little is known about how people seek climate-related content and how this varies between cross-cultural contexts. In a preregistered experiment, we studied how individuals sequentially sample and process Pro- and Anti-climate statements across 15 rounds. Participants from the United States, China, and Germany (N<sub>total</sub> = 2226) freely sampled real-world climate-related statements, retrieved from Twitter and validated in previous studies. Overall, reading both Pro- and Anti-climate statements influenced climate concern in all countries. Participants preferred statements that were better aligned with their initial climate beliefs, and this confirmatory tendency intensified the more information had been sampled. Moreover, participants' confirmatory evaluation (i.e., accepting aligned and rejecting opposing messages) increased over time. While climate concern was mostly stable, in the United States, climate concern levels and box choices mutually reinforced each other, leading to greater polarization within the sample over the course of the experiment. The paradigm offers new perspectives on how people process and navigate conflicting narratives about climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145147967","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}
Barbora Illithova, Andrew W Young, Mingyuan Chu, Clare A M Sutherland
{"title":"Conceptual trait associations predict impressions of highly variable faces.","authors":"Barbora Illithova, Andrew W Young, Mingyuan Chu, Clare A M Sutherland","doi":"10.1111/bjop.70031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70031","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People form consequential trait judgements from seeing others' faces. The influential dynamic interactive theory suggests that trait judgements reflect the combined use of visual cues from faces (e.g. smiling looks trustworthy) with individuals' own conceptual trait associations (e.g. believing trustworthy people are also kind), thus far supported for impressions of highly constricted neutral faces in the US cultural context. Here, we provide a stringent new test of the dynamic interactive theory by examining whether conceptual trait associations predict impressions of highly variable everyday faces, within and across cultures and individuals. Study 1 shows that conceptual trait associations predict impressions of highly variable everyday faces in British perceivers. Study 2 demonstrates that British and Chinese perceivers' conceptual trait associations (expressed in English and Mandarin, respectively) predict impressions of highly variable White and Asian faces similarly. Study 3 finds that individuals' conceptual trait associations predict their impressions of highly variable face images. Together, we show for the first time that conceptual trait associations predict impressions even when faces provide rich visual cues and extend this understanding beyond Western perceivers, faces and languages. Our findings thus offer independent support for dynamic interactive theory in naturalistic impressions across cultures.</p>","PeriodicalId":9300,"journal":{"name":"British journal of psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145129983","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}