Hiding effort to gain a competitive advantage: Evidence from China

Previous studies with Western populations have shown that adolescents' tendency to downplay their academic effort is affected by two kinds of motives: ability‐related motives (e.g., to appear competent) and social approval motives (e.g., to be popular). In this research, we test for the presence of additional competition‐related motives in China, a culture placing strong emphasis on academic competition. Study 1 (N = 150) showed that, in response to a scenario in which a hard‐working high‐school junior hid effort from classmates, the most highly endorsed explanation was “to influence others to work less hard to maintain a competitive advantage.” Study 2 (N = 174) revealed that competition‐related explanations were endorsed relatively more often when the speaker and audience had similar academic rankings. This tendency was most evident when both speaker and audience were top performers, and when this was the case, participants' desire to demonstrate superiority over others was a positive predictor of endorsement of competition‐related motives. Study 3 (N = 137) verified that competition‐related motives were more strongly endorsed among Chinese participants than U.S. participants. These results suggest that at least in cultures that emphasize academic competition and in contexts where competition is salient, hiding effort is often about attempting to gain strategic advantage.     

Self‐expression and relationship formation in high relational mobility environments: A study of dual users of American and Japanese social networking sites

This study proposes that self‐expression motivation, an aspect of independent/individualistic psychological tendencies, aids in the formation of social relationships when social relationships are open and mobile. In societies characterised by high relational mobility (e.g., North America), which creates market‐like competition in social relationships, individuals must express their uniqueness and worthiness to form new social relationships. Self‐expression motivation has a relatively weak effect on relationship formation in low relational mobility societies (e.g., Japan), where social relationships are generally predetermined. This hypothesis was examined and supported through a study on dual users of two social networking sites—Facebook and Mixi (the “Facebook of Japan”). As expected, relational mobility was higher on Facebook than on Mixi. Moreover, the association between self‐expression motivation and the number of new friends met on Facebook/Mixi was more positive for Facebook than it was for Mixi. The social functionality of independent tendencies is then discussed.     

The mixed blessings of migration: Life satisfaction and self‐esteem over the course of migration

We investigated the psychological adaptation of Ingrian–Finnish migrants from Russia to Finland between 2008 and 2013. Pre‐migration data (N = 225) were collected at the Finnish language courses that were part of the immigration training program. The three post‐migration follow‐ups were conducted half a year (N = 155), and 2 (N = 133) and 3 years (N = 85) after migration. Well‐being was assessed with measures of Life Satisfaction and Self‐Esteem. Life Satisfaction increased from pre‐migration to the first post‐migration measurement point, after which it stabilized. Self‐Esteem decreased throughout the study. Variables reflecting adjustment to the event of migration (e.g., acculturation stress, socio‐cultural adaptation) were primarily associated with well‐being at the first post‐migration measurement point. More general determinants of well‐being (e.g., social support and subjective economic situation) were more consistently associated with well‐being throughout the study. The results suggest that migration can be beneficial to some but detrimental to other types of well‐being.     

Concepts are not represented by conscious imagery

According to theories of grounded cognition, conceptual representation and perception share processing mechanisms. We investigated whether this overlap is due to conscious perceptual imagery. Participants filled out questionnaires to assess the vividness of their imagery (Questionnaire on Mental Imagery) and the extent to which their imagery was object oriented and spatially oriented (Object-Spatial Imagery Questionnaire), and they performed a mental rotation task. One week later, they performed a verbal property verification task. In this task, involvement of modality-specific systems is evidenced by the modality-switch effect, the finding that performance on a target trial (e.g., apple—green) is better after a same-modality trial (e.g., diamond—sparkle) than after a different-modality trial (e.g., airplane—noisy). Results showed a modality-switch effect, but there was no systematic relation between imagery scores and modality switch. We conclude that conscious mental imagery is not fundamental to conceptual representation.     

Acculturation preferences and behavioural tendencies between majority and minority groups: The mediating role of emotions

The main goal of this research was twofold. First, we aimed at determining how acculturation preferences and emotions were related to specific intergroup behavioural tendencies towards majority and minority groups. Second, we aimed at developing an intergroup behavioural tendencies scale that differentiates between valence (facilitation and harm) and intensity (active and passive). The role of intergroup contact was also examined, as it is a known predictor of intergroup prejudice. In order to fulfil these goals, we carried out two studies. In Study 1 , Spanish participants (N = 279) answered a questionnaire about Moroccans (a devalued group) or Ecuadorians (a valued group) by reporting their acculturation preferences for immigrants, their positive and negative emotions, quantity of contact with them and behavioural tendencies towards them. In Study 2 , Moroccans (N = 92) and Ecuadorians (N = 87) assessed Spaniards on these measures. Results confirmed the structure of the new behavioural tendencies scale across four groups of participants. Overall, findings also showed that acculturation preferences and quantity of contact indirectly predicted behavioural tendencies through positive emotions. This research contributes to knowledge on how the majority and minority's acculturation preferences are related to their emotions and specific dimensions of intergroup behavioural tendencies, confirming the predominant mediating role of positive emotions in this process.     

Getting going and letting go: Religiosity fosters opportunity‐congruent coping with work‐related uncertainties

This study investigated how religiosity relates to goal engagement (i.e., investing time and effort; overcoming obstacles) and goal disengagement (i.e., protecting self‐esteem and motivational resources against failure experiences; distancing from unattainable goals) in coping with perceived work‐related uncertainties (e.g., growing risk of job loss) that arise from current social change. We hypothesised that religiosity not only expands individuals' capacities for both engagement and disengagement but also fosters an opportunity‐congruent pattern of engagement and disengagement, promoting engagement especially under favourable opportunities for goal‐striving in the social ecology and facilitating disengagement especially under unfavourable opportunities. Multilevel analyses in a sample of N = 2089 Polish adults aged 20–46 years partly supported these predictions. Religiosity was associated with higher goal engagement, especially under favourable economic opportunities for goal‐striving in the social ecology (as measured by the regional net migration rate). For disengagement, the results were more mixed; religiosity was related to higher self‐protection independently of the economic opportunity structure and predicted higher goal‐distancing only under the most unfavourable opportunities. These results suggest that religiosity can promote different coping strategies under different conditions, fostering a pattern of opportunity‐congruent engagement and, to some extent, disengagement that is likely to be adaptive.     

Harmful Ideas,The Structure and Consequences of Anti‐Semitic Beliefs in Poland

The harmfulness of anti‐Semitic beliefs is widely discussed in current political and legal debates (e.g., Cutler v. Dorn). At the same time, empirical studies of the psychological consequences of such beliefs are scarce. The present research is an attempt to explore the structure of contemporary anti‐Semitic beliefs in Poland—and to evaluate their predictive role in discriminatory intentions and behavior targeting Jews. Another aim was to determine dispositional, situational, and identity correlates of different forms of anti‐Semitic beliefs and behavior. Study 1, performed on a nation‐wide representative sample of Polish adults (N = 979), suggests a three‐factorial structure of anti‐Semitic beliefs, consisting of: (1) belief in Jewish conspiracy, (2) traditional religious anti‐Judaic beliefs, and (3) secondary anti‐Semitic beliefs, focusing on Holocaust commemoration. Of these three beliefs, belief in Jewish conspiracy was the closest antecedent of anti‐Semitic behavioral intentions. Study 2 (N = 600 Internet users in Poland) confirmed the three‐factor structure of anti‐Semitic beliefs and proved that these beliefs explain actual behavior toward Jews in monetary donations. Both studies show that anti‐Semitic beliefs are related to authoritarian personality characteristics, victimhood‐based social identity, and relative deprivation.     

Driving toward a goal and the goal‐gradient hypothesis: the impact of goal proximity on compliance rate,donation size,and fatigue

Driving toward a goal (DTAG) is a compliance technique derived from observed persuasion practice (e.g., telethons) wherein the persuader utilizes a goal pitch (e.g., “Help us raise $500”) and progress toward a goal (e.g., a tote board) to encourage compliance. It was postulated that DTAG would be more effective than legitimizing a paltry contribution (LPC) at increasing compliance rate, size, and stability. In Study 1, a fundraising field experiment (N = 840 donations) found that LPC garnered significantly more donations and DTAG garnered significantly larger donations. In Study 2, a lab experiment (N = 992 participants) found that LPC garnered more donations at Time 1, DTAG garnered more donations over time (eventually matching LPC), and LPC yielded smaller donations over time.     

Self-compassion promotes positive adjustment for people who attribute responsibility of a romantic breakup to themselves

Attributing responsibility for a romantic breakup to the self can have dual effects on psychological adjustment, exacerbating disruptive thoughts and feelings, yet also increasing the likelihood of positive changes. Three studies (N = 441) examined whether these dual effects associated with attributing responsibility for a romantic breakup to the self are moderated by self-compassion. Supporting this assertion, trait self-compassion predicted better romantic outlook (Studies 1 & 2), and induced self-compassion predicted greater intended future romantic partner appreciation (Study 3), among people who attributed greater responsibility of a breakup to themselves. In addition, higher trait (Study 2) and induced self-compassion (Study 3) boosted self-improvement motivation with regard to future relationships among participants who attributed responsibility of a romantic breakup to themselves. These adjustment-promoting tendencies associated with self-compassion held controlling for a range of variables known to impact romantic breakup adjustment (e.g., self-esteem, attachment styles, and prior relationship characteristics). We discuss possible mechanisms for these effects and broader implications for future self-compassion research.     

Neuroticism and extraversion share genetic and environmental effects with negative and positive mood spillover in a nationally representative sample

Work-family spillover research focuses on how negative and positive moods in one life domain carry over to another. Domain-specific etiologies (e.g., family conflict) are often emphasized to explain spillover. Yet, strong correlations exist between spillover variables of the same emotional valence but originating from different domains, suggesting individual differences in the tendencies to prolong mood-states. The current study (N = 1143 individuals) examined whether these general tendencies are associated with neuroticism and extraversion and how genetic and environmental effects contribute to these associations. Findings revealed that neuroticism and extraversion are related to these tendencies through both genetic and environmental pathways.     

On‐again/off‐again dating relationships: How are they different from other dating relationships?

This article explores the understudied yet prevalent phenomenon of on‐again/off‐again (on‐off) dating relationships. Study 1 (N= 445 U.S. college students) showed that almost two thirds of participants had experienced an on‐off relationship. Analyses of open‐ended responses about relationship experiences showed on‐off partners were less likely to report positives (e.g., love and understanding from partners) and more likely to report negatives (e.g., communication problems, uncertainty) than partners who had not broken up and renewed. Study 2 (N= 236), employing quantitative measures, substantiated these findings and further showed a greater number of renewals was associated with greater negatives and fewer positives. Results highlight the need for further investigation regarding on‐off relationships, and theories potentially useful in explaining these relationships are discussed.     

Psychological aspects of childbirth: Evidence for a birth‐related mindset

Psychological research on childbirth is rare, even though research from other scientific fields such as obstetrics or midwifery highlights the importance of psychological factors in childbirth. In this article, the theoretical construct of a birth‐related mindset and direct and indirect measures for assessing the mindset are proposed. It is assumed that childbirth can be mentally presented as a rather natural (natural mindset) or a rather medicalized (medicalized mindset) event. In three online studies (Study 1: N = 117, Study 2: N = 206, Study 3: N = 192), we aimed to explore whether the proposed birth‐related mindset is related to the retrospectively reported process of labor and birth (operationalized, e.g., by performed interventions, duration of birth, place of birth). For this, the relation between the mothers’ birth‐related decisions and outcomes of childbirth and the mothers' birth‐related mindsets were analyzed. Results indicated that (1) birth‐related criteria such as place of birth, epidural anesthesia, and C‐sections were associated with the birth‐related mindset, (2) these aspects of the delivery were related to the evaluation of the birth (birth experience), (3) the birth‐related mindset moderated the relationship between C‐section and birth experience, and (4) the indirect measures had little to no added explanatory value to the developed Mindset and Birth Questionnaire. Thus, the results indicate that the birth process experienced by the women and the mental representations of birth (birth‐related mindset) are closely related. Future studies need to investigate to what extend the experienced birth process influences the mindset of birth, or the mindset the experienced birth process, or both.     

The effects of news report valence and linguistic labels on prejudice against social minorities

ABSTRACT

Combating prejudice against social minorities is a challenging task in current multicultural societies. Mass media can decisively shape prejudice, because it often represents the main source of information about social minorities. In 3 studies in the Czech Republic (N = 445) and Switzerland (N = 362; N = 220), we investigated how prejudice against negatively and positively perceived minorities (the Roma in Study 1, Kosovo Albanians in Study 2, Italians in Study 3) is influenced by a single exposure to a print news report, by manipulating the valence of reports about minority members (positive vs. negative vs. mixed) and linguistic forms for minorities’ ethnicity (nouns vs. adjectives). Positive and negative reports shaped prejudice in the respective directions; the effect of mixed reports mostly did not differ from positive reports. Labeling ethnicity with nouns (e.g., a male Roma) resulted in more prejudice than adjectives (e.g., a Roma man), independent of report valence. Report valence influenced the affective part of prejudice (i.e., feelings toward a minority), whereas language consistently shaped the behavioral part of prejudice (i.e., preferred social distance from a minority).     

Social comparison and the drive upward revisited: Affiliation as a response to marital stress

To test theoretical ideas derived from classic and recent social comparison theory, two studies examined affiliative tendencies as a response to marital problems among individuals varying in marital dissatisfaction. Study 1 (n. = 632) showed that the higher the degree of marital dissatisfaction and the higher the uncertainty about how things are going in one's marriage, the stronger was the desire for affiliation (operationalized as the desire to talk with others about one's marriage). Moreover, among individuals high in marital dissatisfaction, a preference for upward affiliation was found, i.e. for contact with others having better marriages. Individuals with lower levels of dissatisfaction preferred affiliation with similar others. Women experienced more uncertainty and a stronger affiliative tendency than men. In Study 2 (n = 233), these findings were largely replicated. Moreover, it was shown that the desire to affiliate when facing marital stress was particularly strong among individuals high in interpersonal orientation.     

Be it ever so humble: Proposing a dual-dimension account and measurement of humility

What does it mean to be humble? We argue that humility is an epistemically and ethically aligned state of awareness – the experience of ourselves as a small part of a larger universe and as one among a host of other morally relevant beings. So conceived, humility can be operationalized and measured along the dual dimensions of low self-focus and high other-focus and is distinct from other related constructs (e.g., modesty and open-mindedness). We discuss our newly developed scale (Study 1 and 2), and provide preliminary validation using self-report (Study 3) and behavioral measures (Study 4), showing that humility is related to people’s general ethical orientation (e.g., empathy, universalism/benevolence, and civic responsibility), their well-being (e.g., sense of autonomy, life-purpose, and secure attachment), mature religious beliefs/practices, and reactions to disagreement – specifically, people high in humility sat closer and less angled away from their conversation partner with whom they disagreed. Together, this provides support for our new Dual-Dimension Humility Scale.     

Are animacy effects in episodic memory independent of encoding instructions?

The adaptive view of human memory [Nairne, J. S. 2010. Adaptive memory: Evolutionary constraints on remembering. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 53 pp. 1–32). Burlington: Academic Press; Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. 2010a. Adaptive memory: Ancestral priorities and the mnemonic value of survival processing. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 1–22, 2010b; Memory functions. In The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology and behavioral science, (Vol 3, 4th ed. pp. 977–979). Hokoben, NJ: John Wiley & Sons] assumes that animates (e.g., baby, rabbit presented as words or pictures) are better remembered than inanimates (e.g., bottle, mountain) because animates are more important for fitness than inanimates. In four studies, we investigated whether the animacy effect in episodic memory (i.e., the better remembering of animates over inanimates) is independent of encoding instructions. Using both a factorial (Studies 1 and 3) and a multiple regression approach (Study 2), three studies tested whether certain contexts drive people to attend to inanimate more than to animate things (or the reverse), and therefore lead to differential animacy effects. The findings showed that animacy effects on recall performance were observed in the grassland-survival scenario used by Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007. Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 33, 263–273) (Studies 1–3), when words were rated for their pleasantness (Study 2), and in explicit learning (Study 3). In the non-survival scenario of moving to a foreign land (Studies 1–2), animacy effects on recall rates were not reliable in Study 1, but were significant in Study 2, whereas these effects were reliable in the non-survival scenario of planning a trip as a tour guide (Study 3). A final (control) study (Study 4) was conducted to test specifically whether animacy effects are related to the more organised nature of animates than inanimates. Overall, the findings suggest that animacy effects are robust since they do not vary across different sets of encoding instructions (e.g., encoding for survival, preparing a trip and pleasantness).     

Turning Believers into Skeptics: 3-Year-Olds' Sensitivity to Cues to Speaker Credibility

Under most circumstances, children (and adults) can safely assume that the testimony they hear is true. In two studies, we investigated whether 3-year-olds (N = 100) would continue to hold this assumption even if the person who provided the testimony behaved in an uncertain, ignorant, and/or distracted manner. In Study 1, children were less likely to trust that, for example, a key-like object was a spoon if the speaker indicated uncertainty about her testimony (e.g., “I think this is a spoon”) than if she simply labeled the object ostensively (e.g., “This is a spoon”). In Study 2, 3-year-olds were also more skeptical about a speaker's testimony when she had earlier made an obvious naming error and seemed distracted, but not when she either made an error or seemed distracted. These results indicate that 3-year-olds can respond differently to the same testimony, depending on the speaker's behavior.     

Current issues and new directions in Psychology and Health : Bringing basic and applied research together to address underlying mechanisms

Three different studies were conducted to examine the impact of heuristic reasoning in the perception of health-related events: lifetime risk of breast cancer (Study 1, n = 468), subjective life expectancy (Study 2, n = 449), and subjective age of onset of menopause (Study 3, n = 448). In each study, three experimental conditions were set up: control, anchoring heuristic and availability heuristic. Analyses of Covariance controlling for optimism, depressive mood, Locus of Control, hypochondriac tendencies and subjective health, indicated significant effect of experimental conditions on perceived breast-cancer risk (p = 0.000), subjective life expectancy (p = 0.000) and subjective onset of menopause (p = 0.000). Indeed, all findings revealed that availability and anchoring heuristics were being used to estimate personal health-related events. The results revealed that some covariates, hypochondriac tendencies in Study 1, optimism, depressive mood and subjective health in Study 2 and internal locus of control in Study 3 had significant impact on judgment of riskiness.