The effects of priming legal concepts on perceived trust and competitiveness, self-interested attitudes, and competitive behavior

Socio-legal scholars have suggested that, as a ubiquitous social system, law shapes social reality and provides interpretive frameworks for social relations. Across five studies, we tested the idea that the law shapes social reality by fostering the assumptions that people are self-interested, untrustworthy, and competitive. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that people implicitly associated legal concepts with competitiveness. Studies 3-5 showed that these associations had implications for social perceptions, self-interested attitudes, and competitive behavior. After being primed with constructs related to the law, participants perceived social actors as less trustworthy and the situation as more competitive (Study 3), became more against a political issue when it conflicted with their normative self-interest (Study 4), and made more competitive choices during a prisoner’s dilemma game when they believed that social relations were basically zero-sum in nature (Study 5). The implications and applications of these results are discussed.     

Toddlers’ social evaluations of agents who act on false beliefs

Mature social evaluations privilege agents’ intentions over the outcomes of their actions, but young children often privilege outcomes over intentions in verbal tasks probing their social evaluations. In three experiments (N = 118), we probed the development of intention-based social evaluation and mental state reasoning using nonverbal methods with 15-month-old toddlers. Toddlers viewed scenarios depicting a protagonist who sought to obtain one of two toys, each inside a different box, as two other agents observed. Then, the boxes’ contents were switched in the absence of the protagonist and either in the presence or the absence of the other agents. When the protagonist returned, one agent opened the box containing the protagonist's desired toy (a positive outcome), and the other opened the other box (a neutral outcome). When both agents had observed the toys move to their current locations, the toddlers preferred the agent who opened the box containing the desired toy. In contrast, when the agents had not seen the toys move and therefore should have expected the desired toy's location to be unchanged, the toddlers preferred the agent who opened the box that no longer contained the desired toy. Thus, the toddlers preferred the agent who intended to make the protagonist's desired toy accessible, even when its action, guided by a false belief concerning that toy's location, did not produce a positive outcome. Well before children connect beliefs to social behavior in verbal tasks, toddlers engage in intention-based evaluations of social agents with false beliefs.     

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.     

7–0? That is awful! Should I trust my national team again?: The role of mindsets in team trust

This investigation examined the role of mindsets in team trust after a major loss. It is proposed that individuals can believe that personal characteristics are fixed and that there is not much one can do about it (a fixed mindset) or that personal characteristics are malleable and that one can improve (a growth mindset). The participants, self-identified football fans, were shown a picture of a major loss experienced by the Mexican national team and then answered questions that assessed the participants' team trust, intention to provide future support, and mindsets. We conceptualised mindsets as latent variables and classes to test our hypotheses. The results from the latent variable model showed a significant, positive influence of a growth mindset on team trust. Similarly, the results from the latent class model showed that the class characterised by high levels of a growth mindset was more likely to trust the national team. Regarding intentions to provide future support to the national team, a growth mindset had an indirect, positive effect through its influence on team trust. Similarly, the class with high levels of a growth mindset was more likely to support the national team in the future. The implications for social psychology and consumer behaviour are discussed.     

How do employees react to leaders’ unethical behavior? The role of moral disengagement

Concerns over unethical leader behavior persist in today's workplace. Although some employees continue to support their leaders after learning of their unethical actions, others do not. In this paper, we integrate social cognitive theory with social information processing theory to propose that the support employees give to leaders who act unethically hinges on their propensity to morally disengage. Specifically, we develop a conditional indirect effects model, wherein moral disengagement propensity mitigates the negative impact of unethical leader behavior on leader-directed support via employees’ perceptions of value congruence with and trust in the leader. The sum result is an improved understanding of when and why employees offer support to versus withhold support from leaders who act in ethically questionable ways.