Evidence for the DTA hypothesis II: Threatening self-esteem increases death-thought accessibility

Three studies assessed the impact of self-esteem threat on death-thought accessibility (DTA). Increased DTA resulted from three distinct types of self-esteem threat. Studies 1 and 2 employed negative feedback procedures in which participants were told that they scored below average on an intelligence test (Study 1), or that their personality was incongruent for their desired career path (Study 2). In Study 3, participants were led to believe that they would give an ill prepared speech in front of their peers. In Studies 1 and 2 DTA was assessed via reaction times on a lexical decision task, while Study 3 employed a word-fragment completion task. Study 3 demonstrated the DTA buffering effect of fortifying self-esteem via self-affirmation. Discussion focused on general implications for TMT, self-esteem, and mental health.     

Are emotionally intelligent people less prejudiced? The importance of emotion management skills for outgroup attitudes

People vary in their ability to understand, process, and manage information about one's own and others’ emotions, a construct known as Emotional Intelligence (EI). Past research highlighted the importance of EI in interpersonal relations as well as the key role of emotions underlying outgroup prejudice. Remarkably, hardly any research has investigated the associations between EI and outgroup prejudice. In three studies (total N = 922) conducted in Spain and the United Kingdom, we measured emotional intelligence using self-report and performance tests and prejudice toward a variety of outgroups. Results showed that those with stronger performance-based emotion management skills expressed lower generalized ethnic prejudice (Studies 1–3), more positive attitudes toward immigrants (Study 2a) and refugees (Study 2b), and less homophobic attitudes (Study 3). This negative association between emotion management and prejudice was found with different performance-based EI measures and held after controlling for self-perceived EI (Study 1) and self-reported abilities to regulate emotions (Study 3). Study 3 further demonstrated that higher empathy partly accounted for the association between emotion management and prejudice. The findings suggest that emotion management abilities play an important, but so far largely neglected role in generalized prejudice.     

On emotionally intelligent time travel: individual differences in affective forecasting ability

In two studies, the authors examined whether people who are high in emotional intelligence (EI) make more accurate forecasts about their own affective responses to future events. All participants completed a performance measure of EI (the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test) as well as a self-report measure of EI. Affective forecasting ability was assessed using a longitudinal design in which participants were asked to predict how they would feel and report their actual feelings following three events in three different domains: politics and academics (Study 1) and sports (Study 2). Across these events, individual differences in forecasting ability were predicted by participants' scores on the performance measure, but not the self-report measure, of EI; high-EI individuals exhibited greater affective forecasting accuracy. Emotion Management, a subcomponent of EI, emerged as the strongest predictor of forecasting ability.     

System justification and the defense of committed relationship ideology

A consequential ideology in Western society is the uncontested belief that a committed relationship is the most important adult relationship and that almost all people want to marry or seriously couple (DePaulo & Morris, 2005). In the present article, we investigated the extent to which the system justification motive may contribute to the adoption of this ideology. In Studies 1 and 2, we examined whether a heightened motive to maintain the status quo would increase defense of committed relationship values. In Study 3, we examined the reverse association, that is, whether a threat to committed relationship ideology would also affect sociopolitical system endorsement. As past research has found that the justification of political systems depends upon how much these systems are perceived as controlling, in Study 4 we tested whether the defense of the system of committed relationships would also increase when framed as controlling. Results from Studies 1-4 were consistent with our hypotheses, but only for men. In Study 5, using cross-cultural data, we sought to replicate these findings correlationally and probe for a cause of the gender effect. Results from more than 33,000 respondents indicated a relationship (for men) between defense of the sociopolitical system and defense of marriage in countries where the traditional advantages of men over women were most threatened. In Studies 6 and 7, we investigated when this gender difference disappears. Results revealed that when we measured (Study 6) or manipulated (Study 7) personal relationship identity rather than relationship ideology, effects also emerge for women.     

Coping concordance in couples

Romantic partners' daily coping behavior can be viewed as a context for one's own coping. These three studies found that individuals were more likely to cope actively, seek support, or use alcohol, food, and drugs as means of coping when they perceived their partners doing so on a given occasion (Study 1, a cross‐sectional study) and when their partners reported using these strategies (Studies 2 and 3, longitudinal couples studies). These effects were evident regardless of whether or not one partner was dealing with an acute stressor (Study 2) or if both partners were dealing with day‐to‐day hassles (Study 3). Although these patterns are correlational, they raise important questions about how individuals choose to cope with acute stressors.     

Emotional intelligence and job performance: The role of enactment and focus on others’ emotions

The link between emotional intelligence (EI) and job performance was examined focusing on the interplay between self- and other-focused EI dimensions. Two diary studies were conducted among divorce lawyers and salespersons. We adopted a two-level perspective including individual differences in EI (person-level EI) and within-person fluctuations in the usage of EI (enacted EI). It was hypothesized that a focus on others’ emotions predicts job performance in social jobs. Multilevel analyses showed that others-emotion appraisal contributed more to subjective (Studies 1 and 2) and objective (Study 2) job performance than other EI dimensions. This link was more apparent in person-level EI in Study 1 and in enacted EI in Study 2. Furthermore, EI dimensions interacted with regard to job performance, such that appraising the emotions of one person was more effective than appraising the emotions of two persons (other and self), and appraising others’ emotions was more effective when one’s own emotions were also used or regulated.     

The Existential Consequences of an Unjust World: The Effects of Individual Differences in Belief in a Just World and Just World Threats on Death-Thought Accessibility

Research has demonstrated that undermining cultural worldviews increases death-thought accessibility (DTA). However, individual differences in commitment to a particular worldview may predict DTA when that belief is challenged. In the present research, we tested if individual differences in belief in a just world (BJW) relate to DTA when the BJW is undermined. In Studies 1 and 3, BJW was associated with DTA when people reflected on an unfair experience. Study 3 indicated that this effect is driven by general BJW. In Study 2, BJW was associated with DTA after the 2012 presidential election among individuals who supported the losing candidate.     

An exploration of psychological and physical injury schemas in civil cases

Civil plaintiffs often seek compensation for their psychological injuries. Yet little is known about jurors' preconceived notions (or schemas) for a prospective plaintiff's pain and suffering. The present studies examined (a) whether jurors have psychological injury schemas (Studies 1 and 2), (b) whether their existence and development vary by the type of civil case (Studies 1 and 2) or its severity (Study 2), and (c) how psychological injury schemas compare with physical injury schemas on a number of theoretically and legally relevant judgments (e.g., injury severity, availability, and plaintiff credibility; Study 2). Study 1 (N = 233) presented undergraduate mock jurors with 2 negligence incidents (car accident and slip and fall) and 2 intentional tort incidents (sexual assault and kidnapping) and asked them to report the typical incident and injuries that would result from the defendant's conduct. Results supported the sparse existence of psychological injury schemas but found that they were more developed in the kidnapping and sexual assault incidents than in the car accident and slip and fall incidents. Study 2 (N = 288) additionally manipulated incident schema severity (mild vs. severe) while having participants separately report and rate their psychological and physical injury schemas on judgments of legal and theoretical interest. Results indicated that although mock jurors' psychological injury schemas contained fewer injuries than their physical injury schemas, the reported psychological injuries were rated as more severe than physical injuries. We discuss how schemas may underlie the disparate treatment of psychological and physical injuries by legal decision‐makers.     

I haven't thought about this for years! Dating recent recalls of vivid memories

In three studies, we examined memories for previous recall. In Studies 1 and 2, undergraduates were asked whether they had vivid memories about various childhood events. After a one‐hour (Study 1) or 2‐week (Study 2) interval, they completed a second questionnaire containing new, but also previously presented childhood items. Participants estimated how recently they had thought about old and new items. A non‐trivial proportion of recent recalls of vivid childhood memories was dated incorrectly. In Study 3, women with recovered and continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) completed the childhood events questionnaires used in studies 1 and 2. After a one‐hour interval, they indicated how recently they had thought about new, but also previously presented childhood items. Compared to women with continuous CSA memories, women with recovered memories underestimated their prior remembering. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Counterfactual seeking: The scenic overlook of the road not taken

Decision makers faced with an opportunity to learn the outcome of a foregone alternative must balance anticipated regret, should that information be unfavorable, with the potential benefits of this information in reducing experienced regret. Counterfactual seeking, the choice to learn more about foregone alternatives, may be a functional, regret-regulating strategy for individuals already experiencing regret. Counterfactual seeking increases in response to dissatisfying outcomes (Studies 1 and 2). Counterfactual seeking is generally able to reduce dissatisfaction (Study 2), regardless of whether individuals personally chose to view this information or were randomly assigned to do so (Study 3). Moreover, both imaginative (vs. factual) thoughts about the foregone option and upward (vs. downward) counterfactual thoughts play a role in this improvement in satisfaction (Study 4). Regret thus has a complex influence in how individuals engage with counterfactual information.     

Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility

According to terror management theory, if the cultural worldview protects people from thoughts about death, then weakening this structure should increase death-thought accessibility (DTA). Five studies tested this DTA hypothesis. Study 1 showed that threatening Canadian participants' cultural values (vs. those of another culture) increased DTA on a word-fragment completion task. Study 2 showed that when participants could dismiss the threat, DTA remained low. Study 3 replicated the results of Study 1, but DTA was measured using a lexical decision task. Response latencies to death, negative, and neutral content were measured. Worldview threat increased DTA relative to accessibility for negative and neutral content. Study 4 showed that the DTA effect emerged independently of the arousal of anger or anxiety. Finally, Study 5 demonstrated that participants with a pro-creation (vs. pro-evolution) worldview had higher DTA after reading an anti-creation article. Discussion focused on theoretical implications and directions for further research.     

An age-embedding effect: time sensitivity and time insensitivity when pricing health benefits

Benefits are often extended over time. One determinant of this benefit duration is how long a person will live to enjoy them. In four studies, we investigated whether people are sensitive to age when pricing benefits that will last for the remainder of one's life. In Study 1 drivers gave their willingness-to-pay (WTP) to cure a medical condition which would stop them from driving. Results showed an age-embedding effect: WTP was unrelated to the estimated number of driving years left. Study 2 tested whether age-embedding arose because people have a lot of information about themselves which dilutes the impact of age on their valuations. In Studies 3 and 4 we investigated whether people believed that age was an important consideration, or if they failed to properly incorporate it into their judgment. Results indicate that little weight is given to age when making individual pricing decisions, although people did not believe it was normatively irrelevant.     

Religion and unforgivable offenses

ABSTRACT The value of forgiveness is emphasized in many religions, but little is known about how members of distinct religious cultures differ in their views of forgiveness. We hypothesized and found that Jews would agree more than Protestants that certain offenses are unforgivable and that religious commitment would be more negatively correlated with belief in unforgivable offenses among Protestants than among Jews (Studies 1 and 2). Dispositional forgiveness tendencies did not explain these effects (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 3, Jews were more inclined than Protestants to endorse theologically derived reasons for unforgivable offenses (i.e., some offenses are too severe to forgive, only victims have the right to forgive, and forgiveness requires repentance by the perpetrator). Differential endorsement of these reasons for nonforgiveness fully mediated Jew-Protestant differences in forgiveness of a plagiarism offense and a Holocaust offense.     

It's a wonderful life: mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts

The authors hypothesized that thinking about the absence of a positive event from one's life would improve affective states more than thinking about the presence of a positive event but that people would not predict this when making affective forecasts. In Studies 1 and 2, college students wrote about the ways in which a positive event might never have happened and was surprising or how it became part of their life and was unsurprising. As predicted, people in the former condition reported more positive affective states. In Study 3, college student forecasters failed to anticipate this effect. In Study 4, Internet respondents and university staff members who wrote about how they might never have met their romantic partner were more satisfied with their relationship than were those who wrote about how they did meet their partner. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the literatures on gratitude induction and counterfactual reasoning.     

Side effects of gender‐fair language: How feminine job titles influence the evaluation of female applicants

In many languages, feminization has been used as a strategy to make language more gender‐fair, because masculine terms, even in a generic function, exhibit a male bias. Up to date, little is known about possible side effects of this language use, for example, in personnel selection. In three studies, conducted in Polish, we analyzed how a female applicant was evaluated in a recruitment process, depending on whether she was introduced with a feminine or masculine job title. To avoid influences from existing occupations and terms, we used fictitious job titles in Studies 1 and 2: diarolo?ka (feminine) and diarolog (masculine). In Study 3, we referred to existing occupations that varied in gender stereotypicality. In all studies, female applicants with a feminine job title were evaluated less favorably than both a male applicant (Study 1) and a female applicant with a masculine job title (Studies 1, 2, and 3). This effect was independent of the gender stereotypicality of the occupation (Study 3). Participants' political attitudes, however, moderated the effect: Conservatives devaluated female applicants with a feminine title more than liberals (Studies 2 and 3). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young Children's Sensitivity to Speaker Gender When Learning From Others

This research explores whether young children are sensitive to speaker gender when learning novel information from others. Four- and 6-year-olds (N = 144) chose between conflicting statements from a male versus a female speaker (Studies 1 and 3) or decided which speaker (male or female) they would ask (Study 2) when learning about the functions of novel objects. Some objects were in gender-typing colors (light pink or navy blue), and some were in a gender-ambiguous color (yellow). The results indicated that children did use speaker gender to guide their learning, by either consistently choosing to agree with the speakers of their own gender or making choices that are associated with gender stereotypes about color. The findings are discussed in relation to how in-group preference and stereotype attributions might influence children's learning from others.     

What will Phil do next? : Spontaneously inferred traits influence predictions of behavior

Past research has shown that perceivers intentionally may make trait inferences about others and use this information to make predictions about these others' future behaviors. Other research has also shown that people can make trait inferences without intent—that is, spontaneously. However, one unexplored avenue is whether spontaneous trait inferences (STI), affect how perceivers predict others' will behavior. Three studies explored this issue. Results from Studies 1 and 2 showed that: (1) exposure to trait-implicative behaviors describing an actor influences subsequent behavior predictions made about the actor in a trait-consistent manner, and (2) predictions occurred regardless of behavior recall, implying that the behavior predictions were derived from prior trait inferences and not from behavior recall. Results from Study 3 bolstered this conclusion by showing that behavior predictions were similar regardless of whether subjects were explicitly instructed to make inferences or not, but that a manipulation known to interfere with inference generation (lie detection instructions) muted behavior predictions. Results from Study 3 also suggested that the prediction effects had both automatic and controlled components, and that reductions observed in the lie detection condition of Study 3 were caused by alterations in the automatic influence of trait knowledge to the behavior predictions. These results suggest that STI may be causal inferences about the actors' dispositions.     

Assessing the adequacy of postexperimental inquiries in deception research and the factors that promote participant honesty

The primary aim of this research was to assess the adequacy of postexperimental inquiries (PEI) used in deception research, as well as to examine whether mood state, reward, or administering the PEI as a face-to-face interview or computer survey impacts participants’ willingness to divulge suspicion or knowledge about a study. We also sought to determine why participants are not always forthcoming on the PEI. Study 1 examined how frequently PEIs are included in research and found that most researchers employing deception do use a PEI. Studies 2 and 3 showed that participants are often unwilling to divulge suspicion or awareness of deception or to admit to having prior knowledge about a study, though offering a reward and completing the PEI on a computer modestly improved awareness and admission rates. Study 4 indicated several reasons why participants may not reveal suspicion or knowledge about a study on the PEI.     

Is disability really an obstacle to success? Impact of a disability simulation on motivation and performance

In Western societies, statistics on the integration of people with disabilities into the labor market consistently indicate that this category of workers faces serious discrimination. Research has evidenced negative perceptions about their occupational skills, despite positive beliefs about their personal qualities. The main purpose of this study was to show how these subjective beliefs about disability can shape performance (speed and accuracy, Studies 1, 3, and 4) and self‐reported motivation (Studies 2, 3, and 4) of able‐bodied persons simulating a disability. Participants were 281 French students without disabilities who carried out a task either with or without a simulated disability. This simulated disability constituted an actual handicap to perform the task (Studies 1 and 2) or not (Studies 3 and 4). The first three studies were focused on cognitive abilities, whereas Study 4 introduced a job interview component. Results consistently showed that participants in the simulated disability situation completed the task more accurately than controls, but took more time to do so. Higher degrees of motivation and perseverance are found for participants in the simulated disability situation, except in a job interview setting. These results are important for understanding how subjective beliefs about persons with disabilities can constitute objective barriers to social participation, and more specifically, to access to the labor market.