Working together (vs. individually) improves the performance of people from working-class contexts. Consequently, teams with a higher (vs. lower) percentage of individuals from working-class contexts perform better. However, previous research offers two competing mechanisms for this effect. On the one hand, research has provided evidence for a pathway through skills: people from working-class contexts more frequently engage in effective group processes when working together. On the other hand, there is evidence for a pathway through sense of fit: individuals from working-class contexts feel a greater sense of belonging in interdependent settings. In this registered report, we will provide the first simultaneous test of these two proposed mechanisms as the route to successful performance for working-class individuals in teams. Moreover, we will examine if meeting mode—i.e., the extent to which teams work together synchronously (vs. asynchronously)—serves as an important boundary condition for the performance of people from working-class contexts in teams. We hypothesize that the beneficial effects of working together for students from working-class contexts will be diminished when teams work together primarily asynchronously. Lastly, we will provide the first confirmatory test and extension in a real-world collegiate setting where students from working-class contexts are in the majority (in contrast to prior work where they were in the numerical minority). Taken together, this registered report will replicate and extend past research on contextual routes to reduce social class inequalities, and shed light on the mechanisms through which these routes operate.

It is important to understand how persuasive the most-cited climate change messaging strategies are. In five replication studies, we found limited evidence of persuasive effects of three highly cited strategies (N = 3,216). We then conducted a registered report megastudy (N = 13,544) testing the effects of the 10 most-cited climate change messaging strategies on Americans’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. Six messages significantly affected multiple preregistered attitudes, with effects ranging from 1 to 4 percentage points. Persuasiveness varied little across party lines, inconsistent with theories predicting heterogeneous effects for targeted messages. No message increased pro-environmental donations, suggesting costly behaviours are difficult to influence with messaging alone. Inference of mechanisms driving effects was limited as the most impactful messages influenced multiple mediating variables. Taken together, these results identify several persuasive strategies, while also highlighting the limits of short-form messages for increasing Americans’ support for action to address climate change.

Are experiences that bring meaning different from experiences that bring happiness? If so, do people seek out different experiences in pursuing meaning versus happiness? In an adversarial collaboration, we conducted three preregistered experiments (total N = 879) to address these questions. We asked participants to describe an experience from the past month (Study 1) or past day (Study 2) that had provided them with either happiness, meaning, happiness without meaning, or meaning without happiness. Experiences that were happy but not meaningful differed substantially from those that were meaningful but not happy. However, experiences that provided happiness showed only small differences from those that provided meaning. In Study 3, to examine whether people seek out different experiences in pursuing happiness versus meaning, we instructed participants to choose an activity over the weekend that would provide them with happiness, meaning, happiness without meaning, or meaning without happiness. Again, experiences differed substantially when people pursued happiness without meaning or meaning without happiness, but these differences disappeared when people were simply told to pursue happiness or meaning. Our findings suggest that happiness and meaning are linked to distinct sets of thoughts, feelings and behaviors, but the differences between them are small in everyday life.