Does disseminating (mis)information restore social connection during a global pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic impeded social interaction, negatively affecting well-being worldwide. To slow virus spread, practices were enacted to minimize face-to-face contact, leading to increased social disconnection. As people turned increasingly to online environments (e.g., social media) to fulfill needs for inclusion and belonging, misinformation regarding COVID-19 simultaneously ran rampant. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether impeded social inclusion may have contributed to the spread of misinformation. We recruited a sample of adult social media users in the United States (N = 431) and randomly assigned them to be either included, ostracized (i.e., ignored), or rejected (i.e., to receive explicitly negative attention). Participants subsequently rated their willingness to share COVID-19 claims via social media (in fact, all claims were false). Participants learned that sharing some claims would likely lead to high expected engagement from others on social media (e.g., “likes”), whereas some claims would likely lead to little expected engagement. While information sharing was low in our sample, participants were more willing to share claims that they believed would lead to higher levels of engagement—consistent with the idea that sharing information is motivated not only by the desire to educate others but also to elicit social connection. However, this behavioral intention was no more common among participants who had been momentarily ostracized or rejected online than among participants who had been included. Future research should continue to explore the link between social exclusion and the motivation to disseminate (mis)information beyond a pandemic-related context.     

An unintended consequence of social distance regulations: COVID-19 social distancing promotes the desire for money

Social distance regulations have been widely adopted during the global COVID-19 pandemic. From an evolutionary perspective, social connection and money are interchangeable subsistence resources for human survival. The substitutability principle of human motivation posits that scarcity in one domain (e.g., social connection) could motivate people to acquire or maintain resources in another domain (e.g., money). Two experiments were conducted to test the possibility that COVID-19 social distancing enhances the desire for money. Results showed that compared with controls, participants receiving social distancing primes (via recollection of experiences of social distancing or a Chinese glossary-search task) offered less money in the dictator game, showed lower willingness towards charitable donation (Experiment 1; N = 102), donated less money to a student fund, and rated money as having more importance (Experiment 2; N = 140). Our findings have far-reaching implications for financial decisions, charitable donations, and prosociality during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Similar minds in the family: COVID-19 centrality and relationship quality

We examined whether perceived similarity in COVID-19 centrality (i.e., the extent to which one thinks of the pandemic as shaping current and future life) is associated with family relationship quality during the pandemic. Thinking that other family members are similar to oneself regarding the pandemic's centrality may improve the quality of family relationships. We collected data from Turkish family triads (i.e., mother, father, 18–25 years old child) and had 481 participants from 180 families. Participants rated their similarity in COVID-19 centrality with the other two family members and reported the general and daily quality of their relationship with them (relationship satisfaction, closeness, conflict). We analyzed the data using the Social Relations Model. We found that family members who, on average, perceived more similarity in COVID-19 centrality reported higher levels in positive attributes of general relationship quality (i.e., satisfaction and closeness). The effects on conflict and daily relationship quality were less conclusive. This research confirms that family members' reactions during the COVID-19 pandemic are interdependent. Perceiving that other family members are of similar minds about the centrality of the pandemic relates positively to some aspects of relationship quality.     

Possible number systems

Number systems—such as the natural numbers, integers, rationals, reals, or complex numbers—play a foundational role in mathematics, but these systems can present difficulties for students. In the studies reported here, we probed the boundaries of people’s concept of a number system by asking them whether “number lines” of varying shapes qualify as possible number systems. In Experiment 1, participants rated each of a set of number lines as a possible number system, where the number lines differed in their structures (a single straight line, a step-shaped line, a double line, or two branching structures) and in their boundedness (unbounded, bounded below, bounded above, bounded above and below, or circular). Participants also rated each of a group of mathematical properties (e.g., associativity) for its importance to number systems. Relational properties, such as associativity, predicted whether participants believed that particular forms were number systems, as did the forms’ ability to support arithmetic operations, such as addition. In Experiment 2, we asked participants to produce properties that were important for number systems. Relational, operation, and use-based properties from this set again predicted ratings of whether the number lines were possible number systems. In Experiment 3, we found similar results when the number lines indicated the positions of the individual numbers. The results suggest that people believe that number systems should be well-behaved with respect to basic arithmetic operations, and that they reject systems for which these operations produce ambiguous answers. People care much less about whether the systems have particular numbers (e.g., 0) or sets of numbers (e.g., the positives).     

Intellectual humility predicts COVID-19 preventive practices through greater adoption of data-driven information and feelings of responsibility

Preventive health practices have been crucial to mitigating viral spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. In two studies, we examined whether intellectual humility—openness to one's existing knowledge being inaccurate—related to greater engagement in preventive health practices (social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing). In Study 1, we found that intellectually humble people were more likely to engage in COVID-19 preventive practices. Additionally, this link was driven by intellectually humble people's tendency to adopt information from data-driven sources (e.g., medical experts) and greater feelings of responsibility over the outcomes of COVID-19. In Study 2, we found support for these relationships over time (2 weeks). Additionally, Study 2 showed that the link between intellectual humility and preventive practices was driven by a greater tendency to adopt data-driven information when encountering it, rather than actively seeking out such information. These findings reveal the promising role of intellectual humility in making well-informed decisions during public health crises.     

Testing the bidirectional relationship between belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and psychological distress: A five-wave longitudinal study

Previous studies have primarily focused on understanding why people believe conspiracy theories, especially during societal crises (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). The investigation of how such conspiracy beliefs would influence people's mental well-being has just begun recently. The present research aims to address this crucial question by testing the relationships between psychological distress and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs with a five-wave longitudinal study. On the one hand, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs could be more appealing to people with heightened distress, as these theories apparently help people to make sense of the uncertainty and life-threatening disease outbreak. On the other hand, conspiracy theories could be a source of existential threat and thus, would induce rather than reduce psychological distress. We tested these possibilities empirically by a series of cross-lagged model analyses. Using the random intercept cross-lagged panel model analysis, we only found a between-person association but not a cross-lagged within-person relationship between the two. COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs was predicted by being more politically conservative. These findings were further corroborated by the supplementary latent growth curve analyses. Overall, our findings suggest that conspiracy beliefs may not induce or reduce psychological distress in the context of COVID-19.     

The Liking-Similarity Effect: Perceptions of Similarity as a Function of Liking

In these two studies, we examined whether the inferences people make about likable and dislikable targets align with the predictions of balance theory. We hypothesized that people exhibit a liking-similarity effect by perceiving greater similarity with a likable person than a dislikable person. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated the likability of a target person and then assessed participants’ perceptions of similarity to that target person. In both studies, people rated likable others as more similar to themselves than dislikable others across a variety of domains (e.g., attitudes, personality characteristics, behaviors). In Study 2, individual differences in self-concept clarity, self-esteem, and preference for consistency moderated the liking-similarity effect.     

Why do U.S. conservatives take fewer COVID-19 precautions? The role of worry,perceived risk,and governmental trust

Research suggests a U.S. political ideology gap for taking COVID-19 precautions, but we do not know the role of cognitive risk (assessed here as perceived risk) and affective risk (assessed here as worry) in explaining why conservative Americans participated in fewer recommended precautions (e.g., mask wearing) and whether governmental trust attenuates the effect. We predicted that conservatives (compared with liberals) would take fewer precautions because they thought they were less at risk and were less worried about COVID-19, but that this would be more pronounced for those with low governmental trust. In this study, U.S. adults (representative sample: N = 738; M_age = 46.8; 52% women; 78% white) who had not had COVID-19 took two online surveys 2 weeks apart during the first wave of the pandemic (April 2020). Participants reported ideology, perceived risk of getting or dying of COVID-19, worry about COVID-19, and trust in the CDC and state officials at baseline. At follow-up, participants reported on COVID-19 precautions: (1) prevention behavior participation (e.g., mask wearing) and (2) behavioral willingness for future behaviors (e.g., vaccination). Results showed that, politically conservative Americans took fewer precautions due to lower worry (but unexpectedly not due to lower perceived risk). As predicted, when trust was high, the ideology gap was muted for predicting precautions as well as for predicting perceived risk and worry. In sum, conservatives worried less about COVID-19 which predicted fewer precautions, but trust in governmental institutions reduced this ideological gap. Improving governmental trust could be one fruitful path to increasing COVID-19 precautions.     

Impressions of people with gender-ambiguous male or female first names

Undergraduates (12 men, 12 women) read a scenario in which they formed an impression of nine people who had left their first name on an answering machine. Participants rated the extent to which seven characteristics (Ethical, Caring, Popular, Cheerful, Successful, Masculine, Feminine) applied to people whose first names were gender-ambiguous (e.g., Chris), male (e.g., Ken) or female (e.g., Pam). People with gender-ambiguous names were rated less Ethical than those with female names, and people with gender-ambiguous names and male names were rated less Caring, less Cheerful, and less Feminine than those with female names. These results are consistent with the idea that there is a bias towards assuming that a person of unspecified sex is a male.     

COVID-19 attitudes,cognitions, and behaviors in association with personal ideology and social media exposure: Findings from emerging adults in the Southern United States

In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has been highly politicized and has been the subject of large-scale media misinformation. Personal ideologies—including religiosity and political leanings (i.e., conservative, liberal)—have heavily guided responses to the pandemic, particularly in the Southern United States. However, microenvironments like Southern U.S. universities provide a unique perspective into the juxtaposition of larger societal conservatism and the liberalism associated with higher education. In the current study, we examined Southern university students' political beliefs, religiosity, and social media exposure in association with their COVID-19 attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors. Participants' political beliefs were associated with their COVID-19 concern, myth acceptance, vaccination status, and likelihood to receive a future vaccination. Religiosity and social media exposure were more nuanced. Future research into personal ideologies as emerging adults develop their independent identities away from their parents, and how this process can impact health behaviors, is needed.     

Differences in the importance of romantic structures among transgender and cisgender adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

The stressors of the global COVID-19 pandemic have led to an increased need for support. For adults, romantic relationships often represent an environment of emotional support and stability; as such, attitudes toward—and particularly the importance of—romantic relationships may have shifted as a result of the pandemic. The present cross-sectional study explores how U.S. transgender (n = 99) and cisgender people (n = 1886) report whether they have perceived a change in their feelings about the importance of long-term romantic structures (i.e., committed relationships, monogamy, cohabiting with a romantic partner, and marriage) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results found that transgender people reported a more positive perceived change in importance placed on all four romantic items relative to cisgender people. Different forms of stress (e.g., social, financial, health) associated with the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to an increased need, and subsequent desire, for social connection and support in the form of romantic relationships among transgender individuals to a greater extent than cisgender individuals, perhaps in part due to the additional layers of stress transgender people must navigate. Results are discussed through the lens of the minority stress framework.     

Goal disruption during COVID-19: Reimagining goals during a global pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major source of professional and personal disruption and has had both direct and downstream consequences on almost every aspect of peoples' lives, including their personal goal pursuits. In the face of unexpected hardships and obstacles, people have had to find new paths to goal achievement. In the present work, we examined whether difficulty adjusting goal pursuit during the global disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic is related to negative affective, cognitive, and behavioral goal-related outcomes. Across two studies, we found that people who had more difficulty adjusting their goal pursuit during the pandemic experienced more negative feelings toward their goals, were less satisfied with the status of their goals, and were less likely to actually achieve their goals. Moreover, individual differences in planning tendencies, need for predictability, general adaptability, and perceived pandemic disruption were related to more difficulty adjusting goal pursuit. This work demonstrates the importance of flexibility in the face of setbacks and obstacles, especially during times of disruption and uncertainty.     

“I'm Moderna,what are you?” Evidence that people favor those who received their same brand COVID-19 vaccine

In two studies, we investigated the extent to which people are biased toward people with the same COVID-19 vaccine brand using a monetary allocation task. Informed by theoretical approaches to intergroup bias and the minimal-groups paradigm, we expected that, when deciding how to allocate financial resources among three different people—each with an equal need for assistance but a different COVID-19 vaccine brand—people would allocate more money, on average, to those who received the same versus different vaccine brand than participants personally received. We found in Study 1 (N = 94) that people given a hypothetical $10.00 experimental endowment allocated an average of $2.00 more when a person was a member of their vaccine ingroup than to those from their vaccine brand outgroup. We replicated this effect in Study 2 (N = 219), finding that people continued to allocate more money ($1.42) to a person from their vaccine brand ingroup versus those from their vaccine brand outgroup. Taken together, this work suggests that, among vaccinated people, the brand of another person's vaccine meaningfully influences the allocation of monetary resources and that people are biased toward people with the same COVID-19 vaccine brand. Implications for social identity theories are discussed.     

Pilgrims sailing the Titanic: Plausibility effects on memory for misinformation

People rely on information they read even when it is inaccurate (Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, Journal of Memory and Language 49:519–536, 2003), but how ubiquitous is this phenomenon? In two experiments, we investigated whether this tendency to encode and rely on inaccuracies from text might be influenced by the plausibility of misinformation. In Experiment 1, we presented stories containing inaccurate plausible statements (e.g., “The Pilgrims’ ship was the Godspeed”), inaccurate implausible statements (e.g., . . . the Titanic), or accurate statements (e.g., . . . the Mayflower). On a subsequent test of general knowledge, participants relied significantly less on implausible than on plausible inaccuracies from the texts but continued to rely on accurate information. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results with the addition of a think-aloud procedure to elicit information about readers’ noticing and evaluative processes for plausible and implausible misinformation. Participants indicated more skepticism and less acceptance of implausible than of plausible inaccuracies. In contrast, they often failed to notice, completely ignored, and at times even explicitly accepted the misinformation provided by plausible lures. These results offer insight into the conditions under which reliance on inaccurate information occurs and suggest potential mechanisms that may underlie reported misinformation effects.     

Somatic and social: Chinese Americans talk about emotion

Empirical findings suggest that Chinese and Americans differ in the ways that they describe emotional experience, with Chinese using more somatic and social words than Americans. No one, however, has investigated whether this variation is related to differences between Chinese and American conceptions of emotion or to linguistic differences between the English and Chinese languages. Therefore, in two studies, the authors compared the word use of individuals who varied in their orientation to Chinese and American cultures (European Americans [EA], more acculturated Chinese Americans [CA], and less acculturated CA) when they were speaking English during emotional events. Across both studies, less acculturated CA used more somatic (e.g., dizzy) and more social (e.g., friend) words than EA. These findings suggest that even when controlling for language spoken, cultural conceptions of emotion may shape how people talk about emotion.     

Confusions of self with close others

This article explores the cognitive underpinnings of interpersonal closeness in the theoretical context of "including other in the self" and, specifically, the notion of overlap between cognitive representations of self and close others. In each of three studies, participants first rated different traits for self, close others (e.g., romantic partner, best friend), and less close others (e.g., media personalities), followed by a surprise source recognition task (who was each trait rated for?). As predicted, in each study, there were more source confusions between traits rated for self and close others (e.g., a trait rated for self recalled as having been rated for the close other) than between self (or close others) and non-close others. Furthermore, several results suggest that the greater confusions between self and close others are due specifically to interpersonal closeness and not to greater familiarity or similarity with close others     

A CONCEPTUAL AND EMPIRICAL REEXAMINATION OF THE MEASUREMENT OF THE SOCIAL DESIRABILITY OF ITEMS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DETECTING DESIRABLE RESPONSE STYLE AND SCALE DEVELOPMENT

This paper calls into question traditional methods of measuring the social desirability of items and their use in scale construction. First, we make explicit that the proper focus for desirability studies of items and traits are the rated desirabilities of the alternative item responses indicating different trait levels. Second, the results from our first study show that the relation between degree of endorsement of an item and its judged desirability level is often nonlinear and varies across items such that no general model of item desirability can be adopted that will accurately represent the relations across all items, traits, and trait levels. In addition, the nature of these relationships can vary depending on whether desirability is considered in a work or general context. Third, results from a second study indicate specifically that people when instructed to self-present in a maximally desirable manner will choose for some attributes a moderate level of endorsement (e.g., "agree") rather than a more extreme response option (e.g., "strongly agree"). Subjects offer several different reasons for viewing the less extreme response options, which yield more moderate trait level scores, as more desirable. These reasons are linked to perceptions of the more extreme response option as being associated with negative behaviors and concerns about how others will view a more extreme response to the item. Both studies indicate that desirable responding to personality items is more complex than previously believed.     

Prosocial orientation and COVID-19 vaccine willingness in the U.S.

Despite evidence of the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and their wide availability, many in the U.S. are not vaccinated. Research demonstrates that prosocial orientations predict COVID-19 health behaviors (e.g., social distancing) and vaccination intentions, however, little work has examined COVID-19 vaccination willingness in the U.S. since vaccines were approved. Findings from two U.S. samples show that, in contrast to other COVID-19 health behaviors, vaccine willingness in unvaccinated people is unrelated to prosocial orientation. Study 2 demonstrates that the lack of association between vaccine willingness and prosocial orientation in unvaccinated participants was specific to those with stronger beliefs that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective. Thus, in prosocial people, perceptions of vaccines' ineffectiveness may undermine COVID-19 vaccine willingness.     

Blinded by trust in close others: Examining the effect of social closeness on cooperative behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic

In the context of public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that individuals cooperate by complying with preventive measures (e.g., wearing a mask). The current research examines how high trust in close others is linked to less cooperation—that is, less compliance with measures—and thus, undermines collective interests. Specifically, we test whether individuals are less willing to comply with preventive measures when interacting with close others they trust. We conducted two experiments in which participants read a vignette depicting a social interaction with either close others (e.g., family) or strangers. Participants had to report the extent to which they would (1) trust the other people in the situation and (2) comply with the mask wearing and physical distancing measures during this interaction. In both experiments, we find that when individuals are considering an interaction with close others, they report experiencing higher trust which is then linked to lower compliance with preventive measures. In Experiment 2, we further demonstrate that participants report less compliance with preventive measures around close others, even when they perceive non-compliance with the measures as morally “wrong”. Our findings shed light on the challenges that compliance with preventive measures poses during social interactions in a context of high trust.     

Positive and Negative Peace as Predictors of Pandemic Preparedness: Evidence from a Micro- and Macro-Level Investigation During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated unprecedented human loss and financial difficulties worldwide. In line with recent calls for social sciences to help collective efforts to address COVID-19, we investigated the link between peace and pandemic preparedness, advancing the literatures on negative (i.e., absence of direct violence) and positive peace (i.e., absence of structural violence and presence of equality) and governments' crisis preparedness as well as crisis relief efforts. Two studies tested whether both positive and negative peace predict pandemic preparedness, operationalized as COVID-19 tests, cases, and positivity rates, during the onset of the pandemic. Study 1 did so at the national level across 155 countries; Study 2 did so at a local level, across 3144 counties within the United States. Even after controlling for population size, population density, GDP, and amount of air travel, higher levels of both negative and positive peace predicted a greater number of COVID-19 tests per one million people, fewer overall COVID-19 cases, and a lower positivity rate. These findings point to the possibility that by promoting peace, governments and the international community could potentially become better prepared to handle future pandemics and other crises.