Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Vol 97, Iss 5

Affirmed yet unaware: Exploring the role of awareness in the process of self-affirmation.

2009

Three studies investigated whether self-affirmation can proceed without awareness, whether people are aware of the influence of experimental self-affirmations, and whether such awareness facilitates or undermines the self-affirmation process. The authors found that self-affirmation effects could proceed without awareness, as implicit self-affirming primes (utilizing sentence-unscrambling procedures) produced standard self-affirmation effects (Studies 1 and 3). People were generally unaware of self-affirmation’s influence, and self-reported awareness was associated with decreased impact of the affirmation (Studies 1 and 2). Finally, affirmation effects were attenuated when people learned that self-affirmation was designed to boost self-esteem (Study 2) or told of a potential link between self-affirmation and evaluations of threatening information (Study 3). Together, these studies suggest not only that affirmation processes can proceed without awareness but also that increased awareness of the affirmation may diminish its impact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The existence bias.

2009

The authors demonstrate that people treat the mere existence of something as evidence of its goodness. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that an existing state is evaluated more favorably than an alternative. Study 3 shows that imagining an event increases estimates of its likelihood, which in turn leads to favorable evaluation; the more likely that something will be, the more positively it is evaluated. Study 4 shows that the more a form is described as prevalent, the more aesthetically attractive is that form. This indicates a causal relationship between aesthetic judgments and existence in a domain lacking choice among alternatives. Study 5 extends the existence bias to gustatory evaluation and demonstrates that the effect is not moderated by valence. Together these studies suggest that mere existence leads to assumptions of goodness; the status quo is seen as good, right, attractive, tasty, and desirable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

When the association between appearance and outcome contaminates social judgment: A bidirectional model linking group homogeneity and collective treatment.

2009

Group formation is an inevitable consequence of social life, and the tendency to perceive people as a collective unit persists once they have been categorized as a group. Drawing on the concept of homogeneity, the authors propose a model suggesting that groups may endure in part because people who are perceived as homogeneous attract collective treatment (e.g., monetary rewards and punishment), and such treatment further reinforces the perception that the group’s members are homogeneous. In support of this model, more homogeneous groups attracted collective treatment and collectively treated groups seemed to be more homogeneous thereafter. The authors suggest that these effects arise in part because people intuitively believe that group homogeneity is associated with collective treatment, and they present evidence suggesting that this applies to at least one policy-relevant real-world setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Self-centered social exchange: Differential use of costs versus benefits in prosocial reciprocity.

2009

Maintaining equitable social relations often requires reciprocating “in kind” for others’ prosocial favors. Such in-kind reciprocity requires assessing the value of a prosocial action, an assessment that can lead to egocentric biases in perceived value between favor givers versus favor receivers. In any prosocial exchange, 1 person (the giver) incurs a cost to provide a benefit for another person (the receiver). Six experiments suggest that givers may attend more to the costs they incur in performing a prosocial act than do receivers, who tend to focus relatively more on the benefits they receive. Givers may therefore expect to be reciprocated on the basis of the costs they incur, whereas receivers actually reciprocate primarily on the basis of the benefit they receive. This research identifies 1 challenge to maintaining a sense of equity in social relations and predicts when people are likely to feel fairly versus unfairly valued in their relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Seeking conversion versus advocating tolerance in the pursuit of social change.

2009

In 2 studies, the authors examined reactions to social change effected by minorities’ successful increase of tolerance for diversity within a group or conversion of a group to the minority position. Minorities who increased tolerance for diversity, compared with those who converted a group to their own position, identified more strongly with the group (Study 1). Study 2 replicated these findings. Additionally, it showed that majorities disidentified less from the group when majorities lost their dominant position due to the group’s increased tolerance for diversity than when majorities lost their dominant position due to the group’s conversion to the minority position. Thus, minority-effected social change left a group stronger when that change increased the group’s tolerance than when the group experienced conversion. Expectations that differences within a group would be regulated through social conflict (vs. conciliation) mediated the effect of the mode of change on group identification. Motives for minorities’ pursuit of social change through tolerance of diversity versus group conversion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Defensive helping: Threat to group identity, ingroup identification, status stability, and common group identity as determinants of intergroup help-giving.

2009

On the basis of development of the concept of “defensive helping,” the authors demonstrated that high ingroup identifiers thwart a threat to group identity through defensive help-giving (i.e., by extending help to an outgroup member whose achievements jeopardize their status). Participants were 255 Israeli high school students (130 boys and 125 girls) ages 16–18. The phenomenon of defensive helping was demonstrated in a minimal group (Study 1) and real-group (Study 2) experiment. Study 3, which examined real groups, supported the extension of the phenomenon of defensive helping to relations between high- and low-status groups, showing that members of a high-status group who perceive status relations with the low-status outgroup as unstable will protect the ingroup’s identity by providing dependency-oriented help to the low-status outgroup. Priming for common ingroup identity reversed this pattern, with participants electing to offer autonomy-oriented rather than defensive help. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed with respect to social change, paternalism, and helping between nations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Give a person power and he or she will show interpersonal sensitivity: The phenomenon and its why and when.

2009

The goal of the present research was to investigate whether high or low power leads to more interpersonal sensitivity and what potentially mediates and moderates this effect. In Study 1, 76 participants in either a high- or low-power position interacted; in Study 2, 134 participants were implicitly primed with either high- or low-power or neutral words; and in Study 3, 96 participants were asked to remember a situation in which they felt high or low power (plus a control condition). In Study 4, 157 participants were told to identify with either an egoistic, empathic, or neutral leadership style. In all studies, interpersonal sensitivity, defined as correctly assessing other people, was then measured using different instruments in each study. Consistently, high power resulted in more interpersonal sensitivity than low power. Feeling respected and proud was partially responsible for this effect. Empathic power as a personality trait was related to more interpersonal sensitivity, and high-power individuals who adopted an empathic instead of an egoistic leadership style were more interpersonally sensitive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The cultural effects of job mobility and the belief in a fixed world: Evidence from performance forecast.

2009

Results from 5 studies illustrate how perception of and experiences with low job mobility can shape culture-characteristic pattern of judgments and behaviors. Although both Americans and some Asian groups (e.g., Chinese, Asian Americans) consider having successful practitioners’ personality traits (role personalities) to be important to job performance, the Asian groups place heavier emphasis on possessing role personalities when making performance forecast than do Americans (Studies 1–3). Moreover, even among Americans, a brief subjective experience with low job mobility can increase the perceived importance of possessing role personalities in performance forecast (Study 4), and a brief direct experience with low job mobility can increase job applicants’ tendency to claim possession of role personality traits in job applications (Study 5). Furthermore, the belief in a fixed world mediates the relationship between perception of low job mobility and perceived importance of possessing role personalities in performance forecast (Study 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Does devoutness delay death? Psychological investment in religion and its association with longevity in the Terman sample.

2009

Religious people tend to live slightly longer lives (M. E. McCullough, W. T. Hoyt, D. B. Larson, H. G. Koenig, & C. E. Thoresen, 2000). On the basis of the principle of social investment (J. Lodi-Smith & B. W. Roberts, 2007), the authors sought to clarify this phenomenon with a study of religion and longevity that (a) incorporated measures of psychological religious commitment; (b) considered religious change over the life course; and (c) examined 19 measures of personality traits, social ties, health behaviors, and mental and physical health that might help to explain the religion–longevity association. Discrete-time survival growth mixture models revealed that women (but not men) with the lowest degrees of religiousness through adulthood had shorter lives than did women who were more religious. Survival differences were largely attributable to cross-sectional and prospective between-class differences in personality traits, social ties, health behaviors, and mental and physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Intellect as distinct from openness: Differences revealed by fMRI of working memory.

2009

Relatively little is known about the neural bases of the Big Five personality trait Openness/Intellect. This trait is composed of 2 related but separable aspects, Openness to Experience and Intellect. On the basis of previous behavioral research (C. G. DeYoung, J. B. Peterson, & D. M. Higgins, 2005), the authors hypothesized that brain activity supporting working memory (WM) would be related to Intellect but not to Openness. To test this hypothesis, the authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan a sample of 104 healthy adults as they performed a difficult WM task. Intellect (and not Openness) was found to correlate with WM accuracy and with accuracy-related brain activity, in left lateral anterior prefrontal cortex and posterior medial frontal cortex. Neural activity in these regions mediated the association between Intellect and WM performance, implicating these regions in the neural substrate of Intellect. Intellect was also correlated significantly with scores on tests of intelligence and WM capacity, but the association of Intellect with brain activity could not be entirely explained by cognitive ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Predicting unpredictability: Do measures of interpersonal rigidity/flexibility and distress predict intraindividual variability in social perceptions and behavior?

2009

Maladjusted individuals have been theorized to exhibit problematic intraindividual variability of social behavior across situations. This variability is either excessively high (i.e., unpredictable) or low (i.e., rigid), or the behavior is inappropriately matched to the interpersonal context (noncomplementary). However, research has not tested systematically whether interpersonal distress and purported measures of rigidity actually predict these different types of variability across a broad range of social situations. Participants completed measures of interpersonal functioning and then responded to a range of hypothetical interpersonal scenarios, rating perceptions of others and their own expected behavioral responses (Study 1). A subset of participants also rated others’ and their own social behaviors across a week of naturalistic social interactions (Study 2). Results most consistently suggested that interpersonal distress predicts high intraindividual variability, with little support for the measurement or theory of rigidity. Moreover, variability of social perceptions partially mediated the link between distress and behavioral variability. Results largely persisted even after accounting for gender and variables’ mean levels, and cannot be fully explained by interpersonal complementarity. The implications of these dynamic processes for understanding personality and interpersonal adjustment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The structure of intraindividual value change.

2009

Values are assumed to be relatively stable during adulthood. Yet, little research has examined value stability and change, and there are no studies on the structure of value change. On the basis of S. H. Schwartz’s (1992) value theory, the authors propose that the structure of intraindividual value change mirrors the circumplexlike structure of values so that conflicting values change in opposite directions and compatible values change in the same direction. Four longitudinal studies, varying in life contexts, time gaps, populations, countries, languages, and value measures, supported the proposed structure of intraindividual value change. An increase in the importance of any one value is accompanied by slight increases in the importance of compatible values and by decreases in the importance of conflicting values. Thus, intraindividual changes in values are not chaotic, but occur in a way that maintains Schwartz’s value structure. Furthermore, the greater the extent of life-changing events, the greater the value change found, whereas age was only a marginal negative predictor of value change when life events were taken into account. Implications for the structure of personality change are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

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