It is well established that manipulations of low-level stimulus properties unrelated to mass can impact perception of heaviness, the most famous example being the size-weight illusion whereby small objects feel heavier than equally-weighted larger objects. Interestingly, manipulations of high-level cues such as material have also induced weight illusions, highlighting that cognitive expectations alone are enough to create illusory weight differences. Less is known, however, about what type of cognitive expectations can influence perception of heaviness. As labels are often used to signify the heaviness of objects, this study examined whether semantic cues could induce a novel weight illusion. Participants lifted equally-sized and equally-weighted sets of objects labelled as ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ and reported their perceived heaviness both prior to and after lifting. Fingertip forces were also measured to understand how semantic cues may influence sensorimotor prediction. The labels clearly affected pre-lift-off expectations of heaviness. By contrast, we found no effect of these labels on the perceived heaviness of objects, nor on the forces used to grip and lift them on early trials. In other words, we find no evidence that semantic cues affect perception or action enough to induce a novel weight illusion. These findings suggest that the explicit expectations created by the labels did not dominate the implicit expectations created by the equal sizes of the objects, highlighting the segregated nature of cognitive expectations and their variable influences on perception and action.

Mental representations of possibility in everyday contexts incorporate descriptive and prescriptive norms. People intuitively think that Mr. X cannot perform an immoral action; even when upon deliberation they realize that the immoral action is in fact possible (Phillips & Cushman, 2017). We replicate this “moral-possibility constraint”, providing further support for the notion that default representations of possibility are - at first pass - limited to moral alternatives. We also test how context affects representations of possibility by asking whether the same findings hold in a war context. This context has different prescriptive norms (e.g., it is permissible to kill combatants, but not non-combatants), and we use Phillips and Cushman's (2017) reaction-time paradigm to test whether these prescriptive norms shape people's representations of what is possible in war. We find that the moral-possibility constraint is sensitive to variation in degree of immorality (e.g., killing a person vs. torturing a child); however the war context did not influence the constraint in the way we expected. The results further advance our understanding of the relationship between morality and domain-general cognition, and provide insight into the moral landscape of war.

This article details a registered report for a well-powered (N = 1500) experiment examining the influence of wealth inequality between groups on ingroup bias, as well as the potential moderating role of justification for the wealth distribution. Using the Minimal Group Paradigm, in which participants are assigned to groups with anonymous others and asked to allocate resources to ingroup or outgroup members, we randomly assigned participants to a relatively disadvantaged or a relatively advantaged group. Group assignments were ostensibly based on chance (weak justification), performance on a financial decision-making task (strong justification), or an ambiguous combination of the two (ambiguous justification). As expected, we found evidence for an inequity aversion hypothesis, with disadvantaged participants displaying heightened ingroup bias compared to their advantaged counterparts. Interestingly, however, our predictions regarding the moderating role of justification were not supported, with disadvantaged participants displaying the highest ingroup bias when the inequality was ambiguously justified. We discuss implications of these results for understanding the causal factors underlying ingroup bias.

Context frames such as describing a Prisoner's Dilemma as a “community” or a “stock exchange” game cause significant variation in cooperative behaviour. Here, we draw on recent advances in research on situation construal to propose that perceived conflict of interests is a mechanism underlying framing effects on cooperation in experimental games. Specifically, we argue that people readily think about situations in terms of conflicts of interests, and how people perceive the conflict of interests in different games predicts differences in cooperation across these games. In a formal model, we show that variation in perceived conflict of interests can affect cooperative decisions even when first-order beliefs and social preferences are static. We test this model across two studies (total N = 1615). In each study, we elicited situation perceptions and beliefs about others' behaviour in a framed game. The basic framing effect replicated in a dichotomous-choice Prisoner's Dilemma (study 1), but not in a continuous-choice Prisoner's Dilemma (study 2). Perceptions of conflict of interests mediated between framing and cooperative behaviour, whereas beliefs and preferences did not. Exploratorily, perceptions of conflict of interests had a causal effect on cooperative behaviour when induced orthogonally to the frame. This study provides evidence for perceptions of conflict of interests as a mechanism underlying framing effects and integrates framing effects with the wider literature on situation perception. Moreover, it supports a causal role of situation perception in social decision-making. However, the results also call into question the generalisability of framing effects.

Past research suggests that trait self-control, trait mindfulness, and implicit theories about willpower contribute to self-control, however, their incremental value for this adaptive capacity is unknown. Applying the four-step model of motivated behavior (Hofmann, Baumeister, Förster, & Vohs, 2012), we assessed the frequency of desire experience, resistance, and enactment in everyday life. Results of two highly-powered correlational studies (Study 1: n = 273, Study 2: n = 465) suggest that higher trait self-control is associated with a less frequent experience of desires, higher trait mindfulness with less frequent desire resistance, and a nonlimited theory about willpower is associated with a less frequent enactment of desires. These findings suggest that the traits studied contribute to successful self-control in different ways.

Mindset refers to a person’s beliefs about the nature of their abilities—whether they believe their ability in a given domain is malleable or fixed. We investigated whether a brief, online intervention could alter ability and non-ability traits, including mindset of intelligence, locus of control, challenge-approach motivation, grit, and performance on cognitive ability tests. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that measures of mindset, grit, and locus of control loaded onto a common self-determination factor, which was independent of a second factor reflecting fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Multilevel modeling further revealed that participants who received a mindset intervention reported more growth mindset, internal locus of control, challenge-approach motivation, and self-determination. The mindset intervention did not alter cognitive ability scores or grittiness.

Recent high-profile incidents reignited the conversation about psychopathic traits in police officers. Psychopathy is characterized by multiple variants: primary and secondary psychopathy. There is limited research examining psychopathy in populations that may exhibit adaptive psychopathic traits. This study used model-based cluster analyses of high psychopathy scorers to investigate psychopathic subtypes in an urban police sample. Relative to the primary subtype, the secondary group displayed higher levels of Self-Centered Impulsivity, trait anxiety, covert narcissism, borderline personality disorder traits, substance use, psychiatric treatment, and aggression. These findings support the concept of successful psychopathy and the existence of psychopathy profiles in police officers, providing a useful look at how successful psychopathy may manifest as well as implications for the criminal justice system and police departments.

We tested the scope of the congruency model of political preference by examining how people high in various dark personalities evaluate political candidates with dark characteristics. In Study 1, participants high in dark personalities reported enhanced self-possession of dark characteristics and, in general, more tolerance of those characteristics in politicians. In Study 2, although participants viewed a wholesome (vs. dark) politician as more similar to the self and likeable, this effect diminished as participants indicated greater possession of dark personalities. Exploratory analyses involving other perceiver traits (self-esteem, political conservatism/liberalism) yielded additional insights about tolerance for dark politicians. Findings contribute to understanding how people high in dark personalities evaluate others and offer a novel perspective on similarity-liking effects in candidate evaluation.

Social media sites are overflowing with millions of selfies, because people increasingly share what they do and who they are with the rest of the world. We examined whether self-expressions based on selfies elicit enhanced, consensual and accurate interpersonal perceptions compared to commonly employed laboratory conditions. Perceived narcissism was relatively higher and conscientiousness lower when ratings were based on selfies. This effect did not extend to the accuracy of ratings: Across all conditions, unacquainted observers agreed with each other and their ratings were correlated with a criterion measure of target personality. Except for agreeableness and self-esteem, accuracy correlations were somewhat higher when ratings were based on selfies. Randomization-based exploratory lens-model analyses were conducted to bolster the interpretation of our results.

Are people who spend more time with others always happier than those who spend less time in social activities? Across four studies with more than 250,000 participants, we show that social time has declining marginal utility for subjective well-being. In Study 1 (N = 243,075), we use the Gallup World Poll with people from 166 countries, and in Study 2 (N = 10,387) the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), to show that social time has declining returns for well-being. In Study 3a (N = 168) and Study 3b (N = 174), we employ the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to provide initial evidence for both intra-domain (principle of diminishing satisfaction) and inter-domain mechanisms (principle of satisfaction limits). We discuss implications for theory, research methodology, and practice.

Although prior studies have investigated authenticity and attachment across a variety of relationships, published research has yet to simultaneously investigate these constructs across multiple domains. American adults (N = 391) responded to a modified version of the Relationship Structures Questionnaire assessing four relationships (mother, father, romantic partner, friend) that included measures of attachment, self and perceived other authenticity, as well as interpersonal trust, need satisfaction and social support. A novel application of latent variable modeling provided more precise estimates of the role-specific regressions. As expected, self and other authenticity contributed to positive relationship outcomes, independent of attachment, suggesting that although the attachment system continues to shape interactions with close others across adult relationship domains, perceived authenticity often uniquely predicts relationship outcomes.

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a genetic disorder that affects a range of tissue systems, however the associated muscle weakness and fatigability can have a profound impact on quality of life. Prior studies using the limb-specific Nf1 knockout mouse (Nf1Prx1-/-) revealed an accumulation of intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) that could be rescued by a diet supplemented with L-carnitine and enriched for medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs). In this study we used the Nf1Prx1-/- mouse to model a range of dietary interventions designed to reduce IMCL accumulation, and analyze using other modalities including in situ muscle physiology and lipid mass spectrometry. Histological IMCL accumulation was significantly reduced by a range of treatments including L-carnitine and high MCFAs alone. A low-fat diet did not affect IMCL, but did provide improvements to muscle strength. Supplementation yielded rapid improvements in IMCL within 4 weeks, but were lost once treatment was discontinued. In situ muscle measurements were highly variable in Nf1Prx1-/- mice, attributable to the severe phenotype present in this model, with fusion of the hips and an overall small hind limb muscle size. Lipidome analysis enabled segregation of the normal and modified chow diets, and fatty acid data suggested increased muscle lipolysis with the intervention. Acylcarnitines were also affected, suggestive of a mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation disorder. These data support the theory that NF1 is a lipid storage disease that can be treated by dietary intervention, and encourages future human trials.

In this Registered Report, we assessed the utility of the affective priming paradigm (APP) as an indirect measure of food attitudes and related choice behaviour in two separate cohorts. Participants undertook a speeded evaluative categorization task in which target words were preceded by food primes that differed in terms of affective congruence with the target, explicit liking (most liked or least liked), and healthiness (healthy or unhealthy). Non-food priming effects were tested as a manipulation check, and the relationship between food priming effects and impulsive choice behaviour was also investigated using a binary food choice task. As predicted, priming effects were observed for both healthy and unhealthy foods, but there was no difference in the magnitude of these effects. This may suggest that the paradigm is most sensitive to affective, but not cognitive, components of attitudes (i.e., healthiness), but alternative theoretical explanations and implications of this finding are discussed. Food and non-food priming effects were observed in both reaction time (RT) and error rate (ER) data, but contrary to expectations, we found no association between food RT priming effects and choice behaviour. All findings from confirmatory analyses regarding RT and ER priming effects, and the absence of the expected correlations between priming effects and impulsive food choices, were successfully replicated in the online cohort of participants. Overall, this study confirms the robustness of the APP as an indirect measure of food liking and raises questions about its applied value for research of eating behaviours.

Leaders' expression of moral anger is considered important in curbing unethical behaviors and maintaining an ethical environment in organizations, but how it affects follower trust in leaders is unknown. The present research examines how leader anger expression in response to moral transgressions influences follower trust. I propose two paths through which leader moral anger affects follower trust: a character-based path whereby leader moral anger increases follower trust by elevating follower perceived leader integrity, and a relationship-based path whereby leader moral anger decreases follower trust by reducing follower perceived leader benevolence. I further propose that the balance of these mechanisms depends on follower moral orientation (i.e., justice orientation or care orientation). The results from two experimental studies did not provide support for the character-based path, but did provide tentative support for the relationship-based path between leader moral anger and follower affective trust. In addition, the results from the exploratory analyses indicated that leader moral anger had a negative direct effect on follower affective trust but not on follower overall trust. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed and a revised model is proposed for the future research.

Past research consistently suggests that singles are stigmatized, but do they constitute a stigmatized group? The current research provides deeper insight into the stigmatization of single people by understanding their ‘group-y’ nature, and how group identification and perception map onto discrimination and prejudice. Study 1 examined the extent to which singles identify as part of a group. Participants were assigned a novel minimal group identity and then completed measures of group identification for four group memberships (e.g., minimal group, relationship status, sexual orientation, nationality). As hypothesized, singles' identification with other singles was lower compared to their identification with other identities—as well as compared to partnered people's group identification. Contrary to our hypothesis, singles did not perceive less discrimination towards singles relative to other aspects of their identity. Study 2 examined the extent to which singles are perceived as a group and the extent to which their group-y-ness vs. perceived responsibility for their group membership explains the acceptability of prejudice towards them. Participants completed measures of entitativity and perceived responsibility for similar out-group identities as in Study 1 (e.g., single people vs. people in romantic relationships). As hypothesized, singles were rated lower in entitativity than people in romantic relationships and other groups. Prejudice towards singles was also more acceptable than prejudice towards national and sexual orientation groups. Accordingly, perceived responsibility was a stronger predictor of the acceptability of prejudice towards singles than their entitativity. We discuss the importance of group-based theoretical perspectives for understanding the current and future stigmatization and well-being of singles.

When judging a male speakers’ likelihood to act sexually unfaithful in a committed relationship, listeners rely on the speakers’ voice pitch such that lower voice pitch is perceived as indicating being more unfaithful. In line with this finding, a recent study (Schild et al. Behavioral Ecology, 2020) provided first evidence that voice pitch might indeed be a valid cue to sexual infidelity in men. In this study, male speakers with lower voice pitch, as indicated by lower mean fundamental frequency (mean F0), were actually more likely to report having been sexually unfaithful in the past. Although these results fit the literature on vocal perceptions in contexts of sexual selection, the study was, as stated by the authors, underpowered. Further, the study solely focused on male speakers, which leaves it open whether these findings are also transferable to female speakers.

We performed a registered and precise replication of Experiment 1 reported in Brady and Alvarez (Psychological Science, 22, 384–392, 2011). The original experiment found that participants, who were asked to memorize the size of differently colored circles, reported the size of a probed circle biased toward the mean size of the same-colored group. Because our previous three unpublished replication attempts failed to find this effect, we powered the present registered replication using a Bayes Factor Design Analysis such that it provided compelling evidence regarding the presence or absence of the reported bias with a high probability, even under the assumption of smaller effect sizes. Thus, we recruited 663 participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk. We observed both a significant bias and strong Bayesian evidence in favor of the existence of a bias over the null hypothesis. Thus, our results can be considered a successful replication of the original findings, although with a considerably smaller effect size. We discuss the role of data quality when recruiting participants with Amazon Mechanical Turk. The present findings corroborate the idea that memory representations of individual objects are influenced by summary statistics.

People often use external reminders to help remember delayed intentions. This is a form of “cognitive offloading”. Individuals sometimes offload more often than would be optimal (Gilbert et al., 2020). This bias has been linked to participants’ erroneous metacognitive underconfidence in their memory abilities. However, underconfidence is unlikely to fully explain the bias. An additional, previously-untested factor that may contribute to the offloading bias is a preference to avoid cognitive effort associated with remembering internally. The present Registered Report examined evidence for this hypothesis. One group of participants received payment contingent on their performance of the task (hypothesised to increase cognitive effort, and therefore reduce the bias towards offloading); another group received a flat payment for taking part, as in the earlier experiment. The offloading bias was significantly reduced (but not eliminated) in the rewarded group, suggesting that a preference to avoid cognitive effort influences cognitive offloading.

Perceived intent is a pivotal factor in moral judgement: intentional moral violations are considered more morally wrong than accidental ones. However, a body of recent research argues that intent is less important for moral judgements of impure acts – that it, those acts that are condemned because they elicit disgust. But the literature supporting this claim is limited in multiple ways. We conducted a new test of the hypothesis that condemnation of purity violations operates independently from intent. In Study 1, participants judged the wrongness of moral violations that were either intentional or unintentional and were either harmful (e.g., stealing) or impure (e.g., public defecation). Results revealed a large effect of intent on moral wrongness ratings that did not vary across harmful and disgusting scenarios. In Study 2, a registered report, participants judged the wrongness of disgust-eliciting moral violations that were either mundane and dyadic (e.g., serving contaminated food) or abnormal and self-directed (e.g., consuming urine). Results revealed a large effect of intent on moral wrongness judgements that did not vary across mundane and abnormal scenarios. Findings challenge the claim that moral judgements about purity violations rely upon unique psychological mechanisms that are insensitive to information about the wrongdoer's mental state.

The tendency to attend to and avoid cues to pathogens varies across individuals and contexts. Researchers have proposed that this variation is partially driven by immunological vulnerability to infection, though support for this hypothesis is equivocal. One key piece of evidence (Miller & Maner, 2011) shows that participants who have recently been ill—and hence may have a reduced ability to combat subsequent infection—allocate more attention to faces with infectious-disease cues than do participants who have not recently been ill. The current article describes a direct replication of this study using a sample of 402 individuals from the University of Michigan, the University of Glasgow, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam—more than 4 times the sample size of the original study. No effect of illness recency on attentional bias for disfigured faces emerged. Though it did not support the original finding, this replication provides suggestions for future research on the psychological underpinnings of pathogen avoidance.

Background Opiate addiction is a major health challenge with substantial societal cost. Though harm minimisation strategies have been effective, there is a growing need for new treatments for detoxification and relapse prevention. Preclinical research has found neurokinin 1 (NK1) receptors have prominent effects on opiate reward and reinforcement, and human studies have found NK1 antagonism led to reductions in craving and withdrawal. However, its effect on brain mechanisms in opiate addiction has not yet been examined. Methods This study aims to assess the impact of NK1 antagonist aprepitant on heroin cue-elicited changes in blood-oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal in opiate dependent individuals undergoing detoxification. Participants will attend two scanning sessions and receive a single dose of aprepitant (320 mg) and a placebo in a randomised, cross-over design. During functional magnetic resonance imaging participants will undergo two runs of a cue reactivity task, which consists of passive viewing of drug cues or neutral cues in a block design fashion. We hypothesise that NK1 antagonism will attenuate the BOLD response to drug cues in the caudate nucleus and amygdala. Regions of interest were selected based on NK1 receptor density and their role in cue reactivity and craving.

The demonstration that human decision-making can systematically violate the laws of rationality has had a wide impact on behavioural sciences. In this study, we use a pupillary index to adjudicate between two existing hypotheses about how irrational biases emerge: the hypothesis that biases result from fast, effortless processing and the hypothesis that biases result from more extensive integration. While effortless processing is associated with smaller pupillary responses, more extensive integration is associated with larger pupillary responses. Thus, we tested the relationship between pupil response and choice behaviour on six different foundational decision-making tasks that are classically used to demonstrate irrational biases. Participants demonstrated the expected systematic biases and their pupillary measurements satisfied pre-specified quality checks. Planned analyses returned inconclusive results, but exploratory examination of the data revealed an association between high pupillary responses and biased decisions. The findings provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that biases arise from gradual information integration.

In an influential paper, Kosfeld et al. (2005) showed that intranasal administration of oxytocin (OT) increases the transfers made by investors in the trust game—suggesting that OT increases trust in strangers. Subsequent studies investigating the role of OT in the trust game found inconclusive effects on the trusting behaviour of investors but these studies deviated from the Kosfeld et al. study in an important way—they did not implement minimal social contact (MSC) between the investors and the trustees in the trust game. Here, we performed a large double-blind and placebo-controlled replication study of the effects of OT on trusting behaviour that yields a power of more than 95% and implements an MSC condition as well as a no-social-contact (NoC) condition. We find no effect of OT on trusting behaviour in the MSC condition. Exploratory post hoc analyses suggest that OT may increase trust in individuals with a low disposition to trust in the NoC condition, but this finding requires confirmation in future research.

To adapt to their more varied and unpredictable (language) environments, infants from bilingual homes may gather more information (sample more of their environment) by shifting their visual attention more frequently. However, it is not known whether this early adaptation is age-specific or lasts into adulthood. If the latter, we would expect to observe it in adults who acquired their second language early, not late, in life. Here we show that early bilingual adults are faster at disengaging attention to shift attention, and at noticing changes between visual stimuli, than late bilingual adults. In one experiment, participants were presented with the same two visual stimuli; one changed (almost imperceptibly), the other remained the same. Initially, participants looked at both stimuli equally; eventually, they fixated more on the changing stimulus. This shift in looking occurred in the early but not late bilinguals. It suggests that cognitive processes adapt to early bilingual experiences.

When people are confronted with health proposals during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it has been suggested that fear of COVID-19 can serve protective functions and ensure public health compliance. However, health proposal repetition and its perceived efficacy also influence the behavior intention toward the proposal, which has not yet been confirmed in the COVID-19 context. The present study aims to examine whether the extended parallel process model (EPPM) can be generalized to a naturalistic context like the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we will explore how repetition of a health proposal is involved with the EPPM. In this study, two groups of participants are exposed to the same health proposal related to COVID-19, where one group is exposed once and another group twice. They then fill out a questionnaire consisting of items concerning behavior intention and adapted from the Risk Behavior Diagnosis Scale. Structural equation modeling will be used to determine the multivariate associations between the variables. We predict that repetition of the health proposal will associate with response efficacy (i.e., a belief about the effectiveness of the health proposal in deterring the threat) and perceived susceptibility (i.e., a belief about the risk of experiencing the threat). It is also predicted that following the EPPM, behavior intention will associate with both perceived efficacy of the health proposal, which will underlie response efficacy, and perceived threat of COVID-19, which will underlie perceived susceptibility. We will discuss the process, based on the model, where health message repetition affects behavior intention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.

The sunk-cost bias describes the tendency to continue an inferior course of action because one has invested significant, irrecoverable resources in it in the past. It can lead individuals to make decisions that are suboptimal for their welfare. Across five experiments (N = 3197), we investigate whether the tendency of individuals to display sunk-cost bias is influenced by their sense of psychological connectedness to their past self that incurred the initial cost, or past-self-continuity. Studies 1–3 show evidence that individuals with low (versus high) past-self-continuity are less likely to display sunk-cost bias because they anticipate less negative feelings associated with abandoning substantial investments. Study 4, which was conducted under Registered Report format, provides partial support for this theory. We discuss potential complementary mechanisms, as well as implications of our findings for negative self-focused emotions and for decision biases routed in overweighting of or overcommitment to past actions.

Ego depletion refers to decrements in self-control performance resulting from prior use of self-control. The ego depletion effect has received much research attention, but the more recent literature reports small or null effects. This registered report examined the moderating effect of task similarity on the ego depletion effect. We predicted a crossover interaction between type of primary and secondary task such that engaging in a demanding self-control task should lead to better performance in the secondary task when it is similar to the primary task (facilitation effect) but worse performance when it is dissimilar (ego depletion). In a preregistered pilot study, N = 80 participants first completed either a visual stop-signal task (SST) or a simple lexical categorization task. They proceeded with one of four tasks classified as increasingly dissimilar based on their underlying operations and executive functions: (1) auditory stop-signal task, (2) Stroop task, (3) Eriksen flanker task, and (4) unsolvable anagrams. Both the pilot study and a high-powered registered replication (N = 300) revealed the predicted interaction effect. However, evidence for facilitation from similar tasks was stronger than evidence for depletion from dissimilar tasks. Together, these findings highlight the important role of task similarity for the study of ego depletion and related phenomena.

Social communication difficulties are a diagnostic feature in autism. These difficulties are sometimes attributed, at least in part, to impaired ability in making inferences about what other people mean. In this registered report, we test a competing hypothesis that the communication profile of adults on the autism spectrum can be more strongly characterised by reduced confidence in making inferences in the face of uncertain information. We will test this hypothesis by comparing the performance of 100 autistic and 100 non-autistic adults on a test of implied meaning, using a test of grammaticality judgements as a control task. We hypothesise that autistic adults will report substantially lower confidence, allowing for differences in accuracy, than non-autistic adults on the test of implied meaning compared to the grammaticality test. In addition, we hypothesise that reduced confidence in drawing inferences will relate to the cognitive trait Intolerance of Uncertainty and self-reported social communication challenges. Finally, we will conduct exploratory analysis to assess the specificity of the communication profile of the autistic adults by comparing their performance to that of dyslexic adults, who might also be expected to experience challenges with language and communication.

Previous research has found that individual differences in epistemic motivation predict political conservatism. However, meta-analyses indicate substantial heterogeneity in this association and such variation remains underexamined. Using a large, pre-existing dataset, we investigated whether group status—a group’s social value—modulates this relationship. We used several assessments of epistemic motivation (need for structure, need for cognition) and group status (race, gender, social class). We found that the epistemic motivation-ideology relationship was stronger for women (versus men) and for members of lower (versus higher) social class groups, although the relationship strength differences were relatively small. The relationship did not consistently vary across racial group status. Group status appears to be a small, but not consistent, moderator of the epistemic motivation-ideology relationship.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most widely used measure to assess automatic evaluations. One classic phenomenon that has been well established both using the IAT and self-report measures of liking is evaluative conditioning (EC), which refers to a change in the evaluation of a stimulus due to its pairing with another stimulus. Research has documented that EC can also occur when participants are merely informed about upcoming stimulus pairings. In a recent study, participants reported a more negative evaluation of non-words that were instructed to be followed by an unpleasant sound compared to non-words that would not to be followed by this sound (De Houwer, Mattavelli, & Van Dessel, 2019). Interestingly, however, an unexpected pattern was observed on an IAT, that is, a preference for the stimulus said to be followed by the sound. We report three pre-registered experiments (N = 650) in which we manipulated different aspects of the procedure such as the stimuli, instructions, and the measure, but that still revealed the same dissociation. Based on three pilot experiments (N = 92), we then conducted a registered report study (Experiment 4) testing whether the unexpected effect depends on how the USs are labelled in the instructions. Although describing the aversive sound as negative eliminated the unexpected IAT effect, the type of instruction only had a weak impact on IAT effects. These results are in line with prior evidence showing that IAT scores are malleable.

Researchers have hypothesized that in order to accommodate variability in how talkers produce their speech sounds, listeners must perform a process of talker normalization. Consistent with this proposal, several studies have shown that spoken word recognition is slowed when speech is produced by multiple talkers compared with when all speech is produced by one talker (a multitalker processing cost). Nusbaum and colleagues have argued that talker normalization is modulated by attention (e.g., Nusbaum & Morin, 1992, Speech Perception, Production and Linguistic Structure, pp. 113–134). Some of the strongest evidence for this claim is from a speeded monitoring study where a group of participants who expected to hear two talkers showed a multitalker processing cost, but a separate group who expected one talker did not (Magnuson & Nusbaum, 2007, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 33[2], 391–409). In that study, however, the sample size was small and the crucial interaction was not significant. In this registered report, we present the results of a well-powered attempt to replicate those findings. In contrast to the previous study, we did not observe multitalker processing costs in either of our groups. To rule out the possibility that the null result was due to task constraints, we conducted a second experiment using a speeded classification task. As in Experiment 1, we found no influence of expectations on talker normalization, with no multitalker processing cost observed in either group. Our data suggest that the previous findings of Magnuson and Nusbaum (2007) be regarded with skepticism and that talker normalization may not be permeable to high-level expectations.

Across various contexts, older adults demonstrate a positivity effect – an age-related increase in a relative bias toward positive emotional stimuli as compared to negative stimuli. Previous research has demonstrated how this effect can influence decision making processes, specifically information search and choice satisfaction. However, the potential impact of the positivity effect and resulting age differences in information acquisition on decision quality has not been conclusively determined. We conducted an online decision making study comprising choices among charitable organisations with 152 younger and 152 older adults to investigate this relationship. We did not observe the positivity effect defined as higher positivity bias in older compared to younger adults. On the contrary, younger adults showed a slightly higher positivity bias. We also did not observe a link between a bias in information search toward positive or negative stimuli and decision quality. The results replicate the link between positivity bias and decision satisfaction. Older and younger adults did not differ in their decision quality. Finally, the findings did not support a potential influence of loss prevention orientation. Further research is required to address the factors that could influence the positivity effect in decision making.

Interoception, the ability to perceive internal bodily sensations, and heart rate variability (HRV) share common physiological pathways, including the baroreflex feedback loop. The baroreflex can be activated by resonance breathing, wherein respiration is paced at 6 times per minute (0.1 Hz), eliciting immediate physiological changes and longer-term therapeutic responses. This registered report characterizes baroreflex functioning as a cardiac mechanism of interoception in a two-session study (n = 67). The heartbeat discrimination task was used to obtain indices of interoceptive accuracy, sensibility and metacognition. Baroreflex functioning was measured as HRV at 0.1 Hz and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS); high frequency (HF) HRV was calculated as a control. Cardiovascular indices were measured at baseline and during active and control paced breathing after which changes in interoception were measured. The first hypothesis was that baseline baroreflex functioning would predict individual differences in interoceptive awareness. The second hypothesis was that resonance breathing would increase participants' ability to detect their own heartbeats, and that this effect would be mediated by increases in 0.1 Hz HRV and BRS. Data were collected upon in principle acceptance of the manuscript. We found a negative relationship of interoceptive accuracy with baseline HF HRV and BRS, and a positive relationship between metacognitive interoception and 0.1HZ HRV, BRS and HF HRV. We found that changes in 0.1 Hz HRV and BRS during resonance breathing positively correlate with increases in interoceptive accuracy. Our results show that the extent to which breathing recruits the resonant properties of the cardiovascular system can facilitate the conscious perception of participants' heartbeats. We interpret this as an increase in vagal afferent signaling and baroreflex functioning following resonance breathing. We put forward an alternative explanation that HRV modulation can reduce interoceptive prediction errors, facilitating the conscious perception of interoceptive signals, and consider the role of resonance breathing on mental health from an interoceptive inference perspective.

In an increasingly globalized and culturally diverse world, extended stays abroad during high school are considered important opportunities for acquiring and improving a variety of skills, most importantly, language achievement. This study examines both predictors and effects of studying abroad in an English-speaking country during high school, using population data from the second largest city in Germany (N = 5361; 13% went abroad). In order to determine the most central predictors of studying abroad, we employed logistic regression models in which students’ socioeconomic background emerged as the strongest predictor of studying abroad. To test the effects of studying abroad, we applied propensity score matching. Studying abroad had positive effects on standardized achievement, grades, and course choice in English, whereas it had hardly any effects on outcomes in math. Implications for studying abroad during high school and future research directions are discussed.

Theory and evidence suggest that the mating benefits of muscle mass in human males trade off with costs of increased energy intake and decreased measures of innate immunity, likely due to an evolutionary history of sexual selection. Lassek and Gaulin (2009) demonstrated a positive association between male fat-free mass and limb muscle volume and mating success but did not investigate women. It is therefore unknown if females experience a similar tradeoff. Using data from the 2013–2014 phase of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a large nationally representative sample of US adults (N = 4316), we tested the prediction from the sexual selection hypothesis that the association of upper-body strength, proxied by grip strength, with mating success is significantly positive for males and significantly less so for females. We found a main effect of strength on mating success proxied by lifetime number of sexual partners and current partnered status, but not past-year number of sexual partners or age at first intercourse. We found consistent evidence for a grip strength X sex interaction on partnered status, such that strength was significantly more important for male partnered status than female (but no significant interaction for lifetime sexual partners). We also tested for tradeoffs of upper-body strength with immune and dietary intake and found a positive relationship between grip strength and protein and energy intake, but no significant relationship between grip strength and innate immune function. Our results suggest that sexually dimorphic upper-body strength might have evolved, in part, by increasing male long-term mating success.

Past research has shown that co-ethnic or ethnically-racially diverse neighborhoods can serve as safe and supportive places for U.S. immigrant families to explore and develop clarity about their ethnic identity. Although parents undergo concurrent changes in the adaptation process with their children, existing research has predominantly focused on adolescents, with fewer examination on adult parents' continued ethnic identity development; additionally, researchers also overlook the impact of neighborhood context on ethnic identity in parents. To fill this gap, this registered study used a three-wave longitudinal dataset of 595 Mexican-origin adolescents and their mothers in central Texas. Latent growth models were used to estimate how ethnic identity (i.e., exploration, centrality, and resolution) changed across time in mother-adolescent dyads. Our findings indicated some level of connectedness in the development of family members' ethnic identities, particularly in terms of exploration. We also found that mothers' ethnic identity development was shaped by their neighborhood contexts, with those residing in more diverse neighborhoods being less likely to explore their ethnic identities. Results inform prevention and intervention efforts to promote family collaboration and help immigrant family members develop a positive sense of ethnic identity in the adaptation process.

Individual behavior is often shaped by observing others’ actions. The seminal and widely cited Experiment 1 by Gino, Ayal, et al. (2009) found that individuals are more likely to behave dishonestly after witnessing blatant dishonest behavior by an ingroup member than by an outgroup member. However, because there was no strict baseline condition in the original study, where participants would be exposed to the dishonesty of others without any in/outgroup signals, it remains unclear whether the original effect is driven by ingroup contagion, outgroup differentiation, or both. Furthermore, because that experiment used natural groups only, it also remains unclear if distinct properties of natural groups are necessary, or if mere categorization into arbitrary groups suffices. In this registered report, we propose to test their general hypothesis that exposure to ingroup dishonesty norms increases individual dishonest behavior more than exposure to outgroup dishonesty norms does. Using validated procedures for studying dishonesty norms, we propose a conceptual replication and extension of Gino, Ayal, et al.'s (2009) Experiment 1. We will test their general hypothesis in both minimal and natural groups with 3,600 U.S. Americans. In the treatment conditions, participants will be exposed to standardized information about others’ dishonest behavior, where we will systematically vary the group identity signals of those dishonest others, and then allow participants to cheat and double their experimental earnings. Findings will bolster understanding of how group identity-based dishonesty norms affect individual dishonesty by clarifying mechanisms and generalizability of the effect.

The conventional wisdom among face perception researchers is that right-handed, neurotypical adults perform better when faces are presented in the left visual field (LVF) than the right visual field (RVF). However, our review of studies that compared performance between the two visual fields suggests that a file drawer problem may have influenced the literature. The distribution of p values in the studies was bimodal; out of 58 experiments, 27 reported a statistically significant LVF advantage and 6 found a significant RVF advantage. Only 25 experiments had p values between the significance thresholds for an LVF advantage and an RVF advantage, and these values were not clustered close to the thresholds. To investigate visual field asymmetries in face perception in an unbiased manner, we designed six tasks using the divided visual field paradigm as part of our Registered Report: Mooney face detection, two-tone face versus face parts task, sex classification, expression classification, age classification, and famous face identification. Initial data (N = 60) demonstrated that LVF minus RVF accuracy was 0.3%, 4.3%, 0.1%, -1.9%, -1.1%, and -1.2% for the six tasks. Neither accuracy nor RT significantly differed between visual fields for any test. Moreover, we found no effect of participant sex on visual field differences. These initial results suggest that the left visual field advantage is not as strong as the literature indicates, and we will further assess this hypothesis by testing 420 participants prior to VSS, as outlined in our Registered Report. Our study is an initial step toward developing an accurate understanding of visual field asymmetries (or lack thereof) in face processing, and we are confident that this goal can be achieved via pre-registered studies from multiple labs.

Power dynamics are intrinsic to interpersonal interactions. Historically, researchers studied romantic relationship power dynamics in the context of man-woman dyads, potentially confounding gender and power effects. We examined the associations among relationship satisfaction, relationship power, and individual characteristics, including dimensional assessments of gender expression and other personality and sociodemographic characteristics. We performed secondary analyses in a dataset (N = 1,750) that was diverse with respect to gender identity, sexual orientation, and relationship structure. Using complementary nonparametric statistical approaches for interactions and multilevel group analysis, we estimated the extent to which associations among key relationship features and personal characteristics vary and account for effects within- versus between-groups. Despite negligible average estimates of moderation of associations between personality traits and relationship satisfaction by relationship power, moderation was more pronounced for certain groups at certain levels of relationship power. When looking at intersectional participant groupings, there was more variation in the association with relationship satisfaction between-groups when based on identity (gender, relationship-type, SGM, assigned sex at birth) than resource indicators (age, education, leadership, SES). The findings demonstrate that person characteristics play a complex role in romantic relationships. Nonlinear models allowing composite consideration of multiple identities and sociodemographic characteristics can reveal nuanced boundaries on associations between personality, relationship power, and relationship satisfaction.

Semantic integration is a mechanism of lexical-semantic processing. When indexed by N400, it emerges coupled with vocabulary spurt in the second year. To what extent maturation and language exposure contribute to its development remains unclear. Bilingual toddlers split their time between two languages. While experiencing similar concepts as monolinguals, bilinguals are less exposed to each language’s words. This makes them a key group to disentangle the relative contribution of maturation and language exposure in the emergence of SI. We investigate (1) whether bilinguals follow the same developmental trajectory of semantic integration as monolinguals, and (2) whether semantic integration differs between bilinguals’ dominant and non-dominant languages across time. If language exposure drives SI, we expect earlier timing of onset of semantic integration in monolinguals than bilinguals and language-dominance effects within bilinguals. In this event-related potential mixed longitudinal and cross-sectional study, bilingual and monolingual 18- and 24-month-olds were shown a picture-word priming-paradigm. We found N400 effect at 18 and 24 months in monolinguals. Bilinguals showed no evidence of N400 effect in either the dominant or non-dominant language at any time-point. Although the bilingual sample was smaller than planned, our results contribute to general neurodevelopmental and dual language acquisition models.

This study focuses on the association between classroom composition characteristics and teaching quality, with the aim of understanding the role of teaching quality as a mechanism underlying compositional effects. We examine how teaching quality is associated with the student body that is taught. Multilevel analyses of a sample of 1,070 3rd graders have indicated that cognitive and motivational composition of the classroom had an association with the classroom management dimension of teaching quality, whereas sociocultural composition was not associated to any of the teaching quality dimensions rated by the students. Correlations at the classroom level have also pointed at a relationship between the teachers’ and observers’ ratings of classroom management and the composition of general cognitive abilities and interest. We suggest that these findings also have implications for the theoretical conceptualization and the empirical assessment of teaching quality.

It is commonly observed that people make promises to commit future behavior to their moral ideals. But do promises work? In particular, can making a promise effectively promote honesty by increasing the moral cost of lying? We explored this research question in three high-powered experiments using representative samples from Norway and the United States (N=7,200). Based on a one-shot “mind game”, in which dishonesty is economically incentivized but impossible to detect at the individual level, we find that about 1/4 of participants are willing to lie for the chance of winning a bonus reward of $100. Crucially, dishonesty was significantly reduced, on average by 7 percentage points (25 percent), when participants were asked to make an inconsequential promise to report accurate information. This promise effect was equally strong in both Norway and the United States, and in different participant subgroups. However, promises reduced dishonesty only when the promise required active choice, suggesting that personal engagement increases the internal inconsistency that would arise from a subsequent lie. In contrast with predictions, an experimentally manipulated expression of trust did not impact honesty by itself or boost the effect of making a promise. Given recent debates about the replicability of dishonesty research in social science, the current work provides high-quality evidence of broad relevance, documenting a moderate but robust effect of promises on subsequent dishonesty. The promise effect is formalized in a simple model integrating cognitive dissonance theory from psychology with perspectives on moral decision-making from behavioral economics.

Mental health is globally underfunded. In low-income settings, innovative and layman solutions may constitute alternatives to formal medical systems. We evaluate an innovative program training hairdressers to act as first responders to manifestations of mental health issues. 73 hairdressers were trained in active listening. We find some evidence that the training improved hairdresser-customer interactions, but found no effect on the mental health of customers. We also found that training worsened mental health outcomes for hairdressers, and speculate that this has to do with reduced stigma and improved self-evaluative capacities, showing that both customers and hairdressers updated their beliefs about mental health. These results suggest that training alone in a context with stigma and poor mental health awareness may not be enough to measurably improve mental health outcomes, and future similar interventions may want to consider combining training with subsidized access to care, at least in an initial phase.

In this paper, we introduce a special issue of Q Open on open access and open science that presents papers from a session at the 2023 European Association of Agricultural Economists Congress. We briefly discuss some of the emerging issues confronting applied economists regarding open access and open science. We also consider how the growth in open access is changing the publication landscape, as well as ongoing efforts to promote open science. As the papers published in the special issue show, there remain unresolved questions regarding the costs and benefits associated with implementing open access and open science.

US presidents increasingly frequently threaten and use economic coercion to target competitors and allies — reaching for tariffs, sanctions or aid suspension. While economic coercion is costly for the target state, it also creates tangible costs for the US economy and households. Yet, we know little about the opinion of the US public on economic coercion, how much are Americans willing to pay for this type of policy and to what extent the target’s relation to the US affects these preferences. This registered report offers a novel constrained choice experiment to uncover preferences of US public for economic coercion in respect to China and Canada, while also tracing the potential role of an explicit discussion of domestic costs, experimentally positioning them either at the individual or aggregate-level. This work advances our knowledge of domestic roots of foreign policy and offers a contribution that links economic coercion to public preferences.

Social media misinformation has become a serious societal problem, and recent research has focused on developing effective ways to counter its harmful impacts. This work investigates user-level countermeasures, or how individuals who see the misinformation respond to it directly, possibly to help stop its spread in their online communities. Using a registered report design, we conducted an online survey of 1010 American social media users who use social media at least once weekly. Participants were asked how they respond and think others should respond to misinformation they unintentionally post or see posted by others, and how their responses differ depending on their relationship with the person who posted that misinformation. Overall, the results revealed a difference between respondents’ beliefs and actions: participants reported expecting others to exert more effort when responding to misinformation than the level of effort they themselves reported. Additionally, on average, participants were more likely to say they intervened when misinformation was posted by someone close to them rather than by an acquaintance or a stranger. Understanding current behavioral patterns and public opinion can inform efforts to elicit public participation in countering misinformation and increase the effectiveness of platform-level countermeasures.

Irritability and temper outbursts are among the most common reasons youth are referred for psychiatric assessment and care. Identifying in vivo clinical variables that precede the onset of temper outbursts would provide valuable clinical utility. Here, we provide the rationale for a study testing the performance of a classifier trained to predict temper outbursts in a group of clinically-referred youth presenting with symptoms of irritability and temper outbursts. Due to the large sample sizes needed for multivariate classification studies, here, we demonstrated the feasibility of our approach using a relatively large preliminary dataset. Our preliminary data included digital based event sampling from an existing Ecological Momentary Assessment dataset consisting of n = 54 participants with a total of 932 time points. We used this data to develop a logistic regression-based classifier for predicting the temper outburst prospectively. Our initial evaluation provided encouraging evidence for the possibility of predicting the presence of a temper outburst based on individual’s momentary clinical responses (e.g., whether the participant is feeling grouchy, hungry, happy, sad, anxious, tired, etc.) prior to the outburst event, as well as external features (e.g., time of day, day of week). However, due to the risk of false positive discoveries and overfitting, these preliminary results are insufficient to conclusively establish the discovery of predictive rules for irritability in Ecological Momentary Assessment data. To more rigorously assess this classifier, we will collect a large confirmatory set, consisting of at least an additional 20 subjects with an expected total of 400 time points, in which will perform confirmatory analyses of the precision and recall of the classifier already fit using preliminary data. This work will potentially provide the foundation for the identification of features predictive of risk and future development of novel mobile-device-based interventions in youth affected with severe and impairing psychopathology.

Psychological literacy refers broadly to students’ capacity to intentionally and adaptively use their psychology knowledge and skills to achieve personal, professional, and societal goals. Psychological literacy is increasingly embedded in top-down policy about psychology education, particularly in the United Kingdom. However, no empirical work has gathered national perspective on the prevalence of psychological literacy practice in undergraduate psychology programs at a national level. We conducted a Registered Report in which we ran a descriptive, exploratory survey of psychological literacy practice in the United Kingdom, investigating (a) what educators associate with psychological literacy, (b) where psychological literacy features in BSc Psychology programs, and (c) how it is being integrated into teaching and learning practice across the United Kingdom. We surveyed psychology educators from the United Kingdom (N = 84). We found that U.K. psychology educators were generally unfamiliar with the term “psychological literacy,” but provided definitions that extend the existing conceptualization, including a concern for reflection and employability. Educators consistently reported incorporating attributes of psychological literacy into their teaching, predominantly through assessment and feedback practices and teaching content. Educators achieve integration of psychological literacy by emphasizing the real-world relevance of psychology, prompting students to reflect on how this content relates to their own experiences, and evaluating students’ knowledge and skills in authentic, applied ways. Across the data, psychological literacy was also linked to core values and principles that shaped both teaching and assessment approaches, including interactivity, collaboration, and reflexivity. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)