Agency and communion from the perspective of self versus others

Willingness valued more than ability in partner choice: Insights into behavioral and ERP data

In human cooperation, people prefer to choose partners with high willingness and ability-while both are valued by partners, individuals often prioritize willingness. Two event-related potential (ERP) experiments were conducted to discern the neural processes underpinning this preference. In the first experiment, participants made a choice between two potential partners and received feedback on the selected partner's willingness to cooperate. This was followed by feedback on the partner's task performance (ability) or a gambling outcome. In contrast, the second experiment first provided feedback on ability, then presented feedback on willingness or a gambling outcome. This study revealed that a potential partner's willingness trait significantly influences individuals' emotional evaluations and monetary allocations than the ability trait. Electrophysiological data indicated that low-willingness feedback elicited a diminished feedback-related negative (FRN) and an amplified P3 compared to high-willingness feedback. In contrast, no such difference was discernible between high- and low-ability feedback. Moreover, the P3 difference from high versus low willingness was considerably more pronounced than that from gambling outcomes, whereas the difference wave between high and low ability paralleled gambling outcomes. These findings bolster the novel finding that partner willingness may provide more substantial social rewards than ability. Furthermore, this study provides the first ERP evidence of willingness and ability trait perceptions in partner choice decisions.

Hear me out: the role of competent and warm vocal tones in risk communication

Risk communication involves conveying potential risks to the audience. It's crucial for shaping behavior and influencing individual well-being. Previous research predominantly focused on verbal and written aspects of risk communication, with less emphasis on nonverbal cues like vocal tone. Addressing this gap, our study explores the impact of competent and warm vocal tones on risk communication across two risky decision-making paradigms, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) in Study 1 and the Gambling Task in Study 2. Results show that competent and warm vocal tones are more persuasive than neutral tones, and their effectiveness varies in different decision-making scenarios. Additionally, participants' perceived competence and warmth of vocal tones mediate this persuasiveness. This study enhances our theoretical understanding of risk communication by incorporating the impact of vocal tones. Also, it carries practical implications for marketers and practitioners, demonstrating the importance of using voice as a medium to persuade in real-world scenarios.

Agency effects on the binding of event elements in episodic memory

Representing events in episodic memory in a coherent manner requires that their constituent elements are bound together. So far, only few moderators of these binding processes have been identified. Here we investigate whether the presence of an agentic element in an event facilitates binding. The results from six experiments provided no evidence for a facilitating effect of agency on the binding of event elements. In addition, binding effects were only found when event elements were presented simultaneously, but not when they were presented sequentially pairwise, contrary to previous findings. The results suggest that the presence of an agentic element in an event does not, or only to a very limited extent, contribute to the formation of coherent memory representations and that additional processes may be required when binding event elements across temporarily divided encoding episodes. These findings add to a growing body of research regarding moderators and processes relevant for the binding of event elements in episodic memory. Explanations of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Morality or competence is more important? The effect of evaluation dimensions on ERP responses to neutral faces depends on contextual valence and self-relevance

Recent studies have shown that the processing of neutral facial expressions could be modulated by the valence and self-relevance of preceding verbal evaluations. However, these studies have not distinguished the dimension (i.e., morality and competence) from verbal evaluations. In fact, there is a hot controversy about whether morality or competence receives more weight. Therefore, using the ERP technique, the current study aimed to address this issue by comparing the influence of morality and competence evaluations on behavioral and neural responses to neutral facial expressions when these evaluations varied with contextual valence and self-relevance. Our ERP results revealed that the early EPN amplitudes were larger for neutral faces after receiving evaluations about self relative to evaluations about senders. Moreover, the EPN was more negative after a competence evaluation relative to a morality evaluation when these evaluations were positive, while this effect was absent when these evaluations were negative. The late LPP was larger after a morality evaluation compared to a competence evaluation when these evaluations were negative and directed to self. However, no significant LPP effect between morality and competence evaluations was observed when these evaluations were positive. The present study extended previous studies by showing that early and late processing stages of faces are affected by the evaluation dimension in a top-down manner and further modulated by contextual valence and self-relevance.

Can exposure to sexual objectification impact policy attitudes? Evidence from two survey experiments

Research in social psychology has long argued that exposure to objectifying portrayals of women can lead to increasingly misogynist attitudes and behavior. We argue that such images can also impact on gendered policy attitudes. We suggest that objectifying images prime sexist attitudes and reduce perceptions of women's agency, warmth, and competence. We argue that this may translate into decreased support for reproductive rights and other gender-salient policies. Furthermore, these effects may vary by the gender of those exposed to these images. In two survey experiments with brief exposures to objectifying images, we find mixed support for these predictions. Although we find some negative effects as predicted, we also find positive effects of objectification among women in the sample that are suggestive of a backlash effect. We discuss potential explanations for this heterogeneity. Overall, our results suggest interesting avenues to further explore the effects of objectification on political outcomes.

Differential Behavioral Pathways Linking Personality to Leadership Emergence and Effectiveness in Groups

This study integrates leadership process models with process models of personality and behavioral personality science to examine the behavioral-perceptual pathways that explain interpersonal personality traits' divergent relation to group leadership evaluations. We applied data from an online group interaction study (N = 364) alternately assigning participants as leaders conducting brief tasks. We used four variable types to build the pathways in multiple mediator models: (a) Self-reported personality traits, (b) video recordings of expressed interpersonal behaviors coded by 6 trained raters, (c) interpersonal impressions, and (d) mutual evaluations of leadership emergence/effectiveness. We find interpersonal big five traits to differently relate to the two leadership outcomes via the behavioral-perceptual pathways: Extraversion was more important to leadership emergence due to impressions of assertiveness evoked by task-focused behavior being strongly valued. Agreeableness/emotional stability were more important to leadership effectiveness due to impressions of trustworthiness/calmness evoked by member-focused/calm behavior being stronger valued.

Intersectional race-gender stereotypes in natural language

How are Asian and Black men and women stereotyped? Research from the gendered race and stereotype content perspectives has produced mixed empirical findings. Using BERT models pre-trained on English language books, news articles, Wikipedia, Reddit and Twitter, with a new method for measuring propositions in natural language (the Fill-Mask Association Test, FMAT), we explored the gender (masculinity-femininity), physical strength, warmth and competence contents of stereotypes about Asian and Black men and women. We find that Asian men (but not women) are stereotyped as less masculine and less moral/trustworthy than Black men. Compared to Black men and Black women, respectively, both Asian men and Asian women are stereotyped as less muscular/athletic and less assertive/dominant, but more sociable/friendly and more capable/intelligent. These findings suggest that Asian and Black stereotypes in natural language have multifaceted contents and gender nuances, requiring a balanced view integrating the gender schema theory and the stereotype content model. Exploring their semantic representations as propositions in large language models, this research reveals how intersectional race-gender stereotypes are naturally expressed in real life.

The semantic structure of accuracy in eyewitness testimony

In two studies, we examined if correct and incorrect statements in eyewitness testimony differed in semantic content. Testimony statements were obtained from participants who watched staged crime films and were interviewed as eyewitnesses. We analyzed the latent semantic representations of these statements using LSA and BERT. Study 1 showed that the semantic space of correct statements differed from incorrect statements; correct statements were more closely related to a dominance semantic representation, whereas incorrect statements were more closely related to a communion semantic representation. Study 2 only partially replicated these findings, but a mega-analysis of the two datasets showed different semantic representations for correct and incorrect statements, with incorrect statements more closely related to representations of communion and abstractness. Given the critical role of eyewitness testimony in the legal context, and the generally low ability of fact-finders to estimate the accuracy of witness statements, our results strongly call for further research on semantic content in correct and incorrect testimony statements.

Construction and Validation of a Scale to Assess Social Judgments Toward Sex Work from the Stereotype Content Model

Sex workers (SW) are subject to social judgment and the associated attitudes, ranging from admiration to contempt. The presence of stereotypical attitudes toward SW is common and can be analyzed using the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), where the concepts of warmth and competence play a central role. The interweaving of both dimensions allows the identification of four emotions and corresponding political positions toward SW: admiration (non-interventionism), pity (abolitionism), contempt (prohibitionism), and fear (regulationism). From the SCM framework, this study offers the construction, validation and performance of a 25-item scale with a snowball sample of 1,543 participants residing in Spanish-speaking countries. The four-factor hypothesized model yielded adequate values. Internal consistency was sufficient on all factors, as was model-based reliability and convergent validity. The scale also showed measurement invariance between gender and age groups, suggesting that the measure is interpreted in a conceptually similar manner by respondents representing different genders or ages. Further analysis revealed that male participants scored significantly higher on admiration. Baby boomers showed less pity and contempt while Millennials showed more fear and less admiration. SW and those who know or work with SW showed less fear and pity and more admiration. The SCM and the process of developing social judgments offer us a way to understand the differences that underlie irreconcilable policy positions. Overcoming these differences requires mutual understanding from scientific frameworks instead of from ideological perspectives.

The many faces of compensation: The similarities and differences between social and facial models of perception

Previous research shows that stereotypes can distort the visual representation of groups in a top-down fashion. In the present endeavor, we tested if the compensation effect-the negative relationship that emerges between the social dimensions of warmth and competence when judging two social targets-would bias the visual representations of these targets in a compensatory way. We captured participants' near spontaneous facial prototypes of social targets by means of an unconstrained technique, namely the reverse correlation. We relied on a large multi-phase study (N = 869) and found that the expectations of the facial content of two novel groups that differed on one of the two social dimensions are biased in a compensatory manner on the facial dimensions of trustworthiness, warmth, and dominance but not competence. The present research opens new avenues by showing that compensation not only manifests itself on abstract ratings but that it also orients the visual representations of social targets.

A test of the Morality-Agency-Communion (MAC) model of respect and liking across positive and negative traits

The Morality-Agency-Communion (MAC) model of respect and liking suggests that traits linked with morality are important for respect and liking; traits related to competence or assertiveness are important for respect and traits related to warmth are important for liking. However, tests of this model have tended not to consider traits related to immorality, incompetence, lack of assertiveness or coldness. This study addressed this issue by utilizing a within-subjects design in which participants were required to rate their respect and liking for individuals with specific trait types across four categories (moral; competence; assertiveness; and warmth) at three levels (positive, negative and neutral). The central tenets of the MAC model were supported for 'positive' traits (morality, competence, assertiveness and warmth). However, for 'negative' traits (immorality, incompetence and lack of assertiveness), individuals were similarly not liked and not respected. Individuals who were cold were respected more than liked. The findings of this study extend the MAC model by indicating that the amount that individuals are respected versus liked depends not only on trait type but also whether a trait is positive or negative.

The Roles of Gender and Employment Status in Abdication Decisions

Abdication-the act of giving up a choice to another person-has been shown to prompt reciprocal generosity (Kardas et al., 2018), but it is not clear whether men or women are more likely to engage in abdication. The present research utilized a gift card scenario adapted from Kardas et al. (2018) in two Amazon Mechanical Turk samples to explore whether women abdicated more frequently than men, whether men abdicated to women less frequently than to other men, and whether employment status predicts abdication. In experiment one, participants (N = 520) were assigned to one of three conditions in which they had to either choose who received a hypothetical gift card themselves or abdicate the decision to a friend (sex not specified, male friend, or female friend). Chi-square analyses revealed no significant differences between participants who abdicated and those who allocated; men and women had similar abdication patterns; there was no significant difference in abdication as a function of friend gender for male or female participants. In experiment two, participants (N = 707) were again assigned to one of the three conditions but were also asked their employment status. Chi-square analyses indicated that participants generally preferred to be allocators rather than abdicators; women showed a similar abdication pattern to men; there was no significant difference in abdication as a function of friend gender for male or female participants. Lastly, unemployed participants abdicated more frequently (70%) than their employed counterparts (42%), and this was especially likely for women. These results have implications for potential factors that influence abdication decisions.

When Taking Pay off the Table: A Qualitative Study of Gender Equity for Academic Leaders in the US Military

INTRODUCTION

Although gender inequity persists globally in academic leadership positions, the United States Military has equitable pay and, in academic pediatrics, has equitable gender representation in leadership positions. To better understand how the US Military framework affects physician leaders, pediatricians were interviewed to illuminate the factors that facilitated their success and what barriers they faced in their career.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In 2022, following institutional review board approval, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 total participants (69% female, 31% male) serving as general pediatricians or pediatric subspecialists in the US Military. These pediatricians were in leadership positions of military academic medicine across seven graduate medical education (GME) sites. The interviews examined the leaders' perceptions of facilitators and barriers to their success. The authors analyzed the interviews using Acker's theory of gendered organizations as a theoretical framework, which explains embedded gender roles within work environments.

RESULTS

Drawing on the theory of gendered organizations, the authors identified that participants described several facilitators to their success, including the availability of mentorship/sponsorship, inclusive leadership, and early and persistent exposure to women leaders in GME training and beyond. Because medicine's ideal worker was normed around the traditional roles of men, men observed and women experienced barriers to leadership success around issues related to childbearing, maternity leave, and microaggressions.

CONCLUSIONS

This study revealed that equitability for pediatric GME leadership in the military heavily relied on structures and support created by former leaders and mentors. Isolating these structures within a unique context of military academic medicine can illuminate physicians' experiences to address barriers and better support equitable leadership roles in both military and civilian academic medicine.

Servant versus directive leadership and promotability: does leader gender matter?

Are leaders more promotable when they show servant or directive leadership - and does this hold for women and men alike? Servant leaders are likely seen as more effective, likable, and thus promotable but less prototypical than directive leaders. We argue that differing degrees of communion (i.e., warmth, morality) and agency (i.e., competence, dominance) underlie the relationship of servant and directive leadership with leaders' promotability. Based on expectancy-violation theory, we assume that men benefit more from servant leadership and women benefit more from directive leadership. Servant leadership aligns more with communion and stereotypes about women. In contrast, directive leadership aligns more with agency and stereotypes about men. These differences may result in gender-biased evaluations threatening fairness in leadership promotions. In a pre-study, servant leadership was more expected of women leaders than of men leaders. However, directive leadership was equally expected of women leaders and men leaders. An experimental vignette study (N = 454) revealed that servant leaders were seen as more effective, likable, and promotable than directive leaders, regardless of gender. Perceived leader warmth, morality, and competence were positively, and dominance was negatively, related to leader effectiveness and leader liking, which were positively related to leader promotability. We also investigated whether raters' gender role beliefs influenced the evaluations, which they did not (as reported in the Supplementary material). Concluding, women and men profit equally from exhibiting servant compared to directive leadership.

Do Agency and Communion Explain the Relationship Between Perceiver and Target Effects in Interpersonal Perception? A Meta-Analysis on Generalized Reciprocity

This meta-analysis examines generalized reciprocity, that is, the relationship between how people perceive others and how they are perceived by others. It tests the hypothesis that generalized reciprocity varies as a function of the content domain under investigation. Generalized reciprocity for attributes with primarily communal content (e.g., friendliness) was hypothesized to be more positive than generalized reciprocity for attributes with primarily agentic content (e.g., assertiveness). Sixty-four primary studies reporting correlations between perceiver and target effects with a total number of 17,561 participants were included in the analysis. Results of a multilevel meta-analytical random effects model showed that reciprocity correlations were slightly negative, but around zero, for primarily agentic attributes (r = -.05) and became more positive with increasing communal content (up to r = .18 for primarily communal attributes). Generalized reciprocity thus varied depending on the extent to which the regarded attribute is agentic versus communal.

Happy thoughts: The role of communion in accepting and sharing (mis)beliefs

The negativity bias favours the cultural diffusion of negative beliefs, yet many common (mis)beliefs-naturopathy works, there's a heaven-are positive. Why? People might share 'happy thoughts'-beliefs that might make others happy-to display their kindness. Five experiments conducted among Japanese and English-speaking participants (N = 2412) show that: (i) people higher on communion are more likely to believe and share happier beliefs, by contrast with people higher in competence and dominance; (ii) when they want to appear nice and kind, rather than competent and dominant, people avoid sharing sad beliefs, and instead prefer sharing happy beliefs; (iii) sharing happier beliefs instead of sad beliefs leads to being perceived as nicer and kinder; and (iv) sharing happy beliefs instead of sad beliefs fleads to being perceived as less dominant. Happy beliefs could spread, despite a general negativity bias, because they allow their senders to signal kindness.

Humans perceive warmth and competence in artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) increasingly suffuses everyday life. However, people are frequently reluctant to interact with A.I. systems. This challenges both the deployment of beneficial A.I. technology and the development of deep learning systems that depend on humans for oversight, direction, and regulation. Nine studies (N = 3,300) demonstrate that social-cognitive processes guide human interactions across a diverse range of real-world A.I. systems. Across studies, perceived warmth and competence emerge prominently in participants' impressions of A.I. systems. Judgments of warmth and competence systematically depend on human-A.I. interdependence and autonomy. In particular, participants perceive systems that optimize interests aligned with human interests as warmer and systems that operate independently from human direction as more competent. Finally, a prisoner's dilemma game shows that warmth and competence judgments predict participants' willingness to cooperate with a deep-learning system. These results underscore the generality of intent detection to perceptions of a broad array of algorithmic actors.

Gazing left, gazing right: exploring a spatial bias in social attention

Faces oriented rightwards are sometimes perceived as more dominant than faces oriented leftwards. In this study, we explored whether faces oriented rightwards can also elicit increased attentional orienting. Participants completed a discrimination task in which they were asked to discriminate, by means of a keypress, a peripheral target. At the same time, a task-irrelevant face oriented leftwards or rightwards appeared at the centre of the screen. The results showed that, while for faces oriented rightwards targets appearing on the right were responded to faster as compared to targets appearing on the left, for faces oriented leftwards no differences emerged between left and right targets. Furthermore, we also found a negative correlation between the magnitude of the orienting response elicited by the faces oriented leftwards and the level of conservatism of the participants. Overall, these findings provide evidence for the existence of a spatial bias reflected in social orienting.

When Does Competence Matter? Character as a Moderator in the Development of Trust

This article examines the relationship between the two fundamental attributes of the trustee: character and competence. Although the trust research predominantly adopts an additive perspective, our research emphasizes a moderation (i.e., multiplicative) relationship and the significance of their interaction. We find that competence is an important but not always reliable predictor of trust. First, the positive effect of competence is conditional on the trustee's high character. Second, higher competence can have a lower marginal effect as character decreases. Furthermore, situational assurance weakens the effect of character on competence, which explains the additive joint effect found in previous research. Our modified trust game also makes a methodological contribution by examining the interaction between the various personal and situational sources of trust (as compared with the lone operationalization of character in the classic trust game). We discuss the shortcomings of the additive perspective and the implications of our method and findings.

Looking Competent Does Not Appeal to All Voters Equally: The Role of Social Class and Politicians' Facial Appearance for Voting Likelihood

Voters generally value competence in politicians. Four studies, all conducted in Germany, show that this is especially pronounced in people of higher compared with lower social class. The first study, with a representative sample (N1 = 2239), found that the reported importance of competence in politicians increased with increasing socioeconomic status (SES). This was mediated by self-perceived competence which was higher in participants of higher SES. In three further studies (two preregistered, N2a&2b = 396, N3 = 400) participants merely saw pictures of politicians' faces. Perceived competence based on facial appearance increased the likelihood of voting for a politician. Again, this effect was stronger among participants of higher compared with lower SES. This moderation persisted after controlling for participants' political orientation and politicians' perceived warmth and dominance. We discuss implications for future research on the psychological underpinnings of social class as well as appearance effects in the political context.

Who Do I (Not) Ask to Play my Lottery? Effects of Perceived Positive and Negative Agency, Communion and Luck on the Illusion of Control by Proxy

The paper investigates the illusion of control by proxy in games of chance - an attempt to exert control by assigning it to others who are perceived as more capable, communable or luckier. Following up on research by Wohl & Enzle, who showed participants' preference to ask lucky others to play a lottery instead of doing it themselves, we included proxies with positive and negative qualities in the domains of agency and communion, as well good and bad luck. In three experiments (total N = 249) we tested participants' choices between these proxies and a random number generator in a task consisting of obtaining lottery numbers. We obtained consistent preventative illusions of control (i.e. avoidance of proxies with strictly negative qualities, as well as proxies with positive communion but negative agency), however we observed indifference between proxies with positive qualities and random number generators.

People are curious about immoral and morally ambiguous others

Looking to the popularity of superheroes, true crime stories, and anti-heroic characters like Tony Soprano, we investigated whether moral extremity, especially moral badness, piques curiosity. Across five experiments (N = 2429), we examine moral curiosity, testing under what conditions the moral minds of others spark explanation-seeking behavior. In Experiment 1, we find that among the most widely watched Netflix shows in the US over a five-month period, the more immoral the protagonist, the more hours people spent watching. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we find that when given a choice to learn more about morally good, bad, ambiguous, or average others, people preferred to learn more about morally extreme people, both good and bad. Experiment 3 reveals that people are more curious for explanations about (vs. descriptions of) morally bad and ambiguous people compared to morally good ones. Finally, Experiment 4 tests the uniqueness of curiosity for moral ambiguity. We find that people are more drawn to moral rather than aesthetic ambiguity, suggesting that ambiguity, which is cognitively taxing and sometimes avoided, preferentially engenders information seeking in the moral domain. These findings suggest deviations from moral normativity, especially badness, spur curiosity. People are curious about immorality and agents who differ from the norm.

Wage (in)equality matters: the effect of organizational economic inequality on others' and self-ascriptions

Economic inequality has consequences at the social-psychological level, such as in the way people make inferences about their environment and other people. In the present two preregistered studies, we used a paradigm of an organizational setting to manipulate economic inequality and measured ascriptions of agentic versus communal traits to employees and the self. In Study 1 (N = 187), participants attributed more agency than communion to a middle-status employee, and more communion than agency when economic equality was salient. In Study 2 (N = 198) this finding was replicated. Further, this inequality-agency association was explained by perceptions of competitive employee relationships. Results, moreover, suggested that participants mainly attributed more communion than agency to themselves in the equality condition. We conclude that agency and communion ascriptions may be functional and thus inform about the expectations people have on the nature of social relationships in the face of economic inequality.

What Ratio of Warmth to Competence Is Ideal for Likable Friends?

The current study aimed to test the perceivers' ratings of likability and their willingness to become friends with targets who have different ratios of warmth to competence. In Study 1, we recruited 106 females and 61 males. The results of Study 1 showed that perceivers were reluctant to become friends with targets that had extreme ratios of warmth to competence (0:5 or 5:0). In Study 2, we recruited 137 males and 164 females. The results of Study 2 showed that male perceivers were willing to become friends with a female target whose ratio of warmth to competence was 5:0 and unwilling to become friends with a male target whose ratio was 0:5. Female perceivers were unwilling to become friends with a female target whose ratio was 0:5. Moreover, participants were unwilling to choose targets with a ratio of 5:0 as partners in a competition context. These results could help researchers understand how the process of impression formation works when considering different ratios of warmth to competence.

Inferring Causal Factors of Core Affect Dynamics on Social Participation through the Lens of the Observer

A core endeavour in current affective computing and social signal processing research is the construction of datasets embedding suitable ground truths to foster machine learning methods. This practice brings up hitherto overlooked intricacies. In this paper, we consider causal factors potentially arising when human raters evaluate the affect fluctuations of subjects involved in dyadic interactions and subsequently categorise them in terms of social participation traits. To gauge such factors, we propose an emulator as a statistical approximation of the human rater, and we first discuss the motivations and the rationale behind the approach.The emulator is laid down in the next section as a phenomenological model where the core affect stochastic dynamics as perceived by the rater are captured through an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process; its parameters are then exploited to infer potential causal effects in the attribution of social traits. Following that, by resorting to a publicly available dataset, the adequacy of the model is evaluated in terms of both human raters' emulation and machine learning predictive capabilities. We then present the results, which are followed by a general discussion concerning findings and their implications, together with advantages and potential applications of the approach.

On How to Be Liked in First Encounters: The Effects of Agentic and Communal Behaviors on Popularity and Unique Liking

When meeting other people for the first time, how should one behave in order to be liked? We investigated the effects of agentic and communal behaviors on two forms of being liked: popularity (being generally liked by others) and unique liking (being uniquely liked by specific interaction partners). In a round-robin study, 139 unacquainted German adults had dyadic conversations and provided liking ratings afterward. The conversations were recorded on video, and four agentic behaviors (leading, dominant, confident, boastful) and four communal behaviors (polite, benevolent, warm, friendly) were each rated by trained observers. Participants who generally showed agentic and communal behavior were also generally liked (popularity). When participants' level of communal, but not agentic, behavior exceeded their personal standards during an interaction, they were particularly well-liked by the respective interaction partner (unique liking). The behavioral predictors of being liked thus differ, depending on whether one focuses on popularity or unique liking.

Busy or poor: How time or money scarcity cues differentially impact purchase decisions regarding service firms

Our research uniquely shows that scarcity cues, when effectively managed by the service firms, can lead to favorable purchase decisions. We investigate how service firms that are scarce on time resource (busy) vs. money resource (poor) are perceived differentially on the two basic dimensions of social perceptions: warmth and competence. Across four studies, we provide the first empirical evidence that busy service firms are perceived higher on competence and poor service firms are perceived higher on warmth. We also find that service firms that are both busy and poor have the highest purchase preference compared to either busy or poor service firms. In addition, purchase preferences are moderated by the consumption contexts (exchange vs. communal relationship domain). Managerially, our findings that scarcity cues influence purchase preferences can benefit the design and execution of marketing strategies.

A Prosociality Paradox: How Miscalibrated Social Cognition Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Prosocial Action

Behaving prosocially can increase well-being among both those performing a prosocial act and those receiving it, and yet people may experience some reluctance to engage in direct prosocial actions. We review emerging evidence suggesting that miscalibrated social cognition may create a psychological barrier that keeps people from behaving as prosocially as would be optimal for both their own and others’ well-being. Across a variety of interpersonal behaviors, those performing prosocial actions tend to underestimate how positively their recipients will respond. These miscalibrated expectations stem partly from a divergence in perspectives, such that prosocial actors attend relatively more to the competence of their actions, whereas recipients attend relatively more to the warmth conveyed. Failing to fully appreciate the positive impact of prosociality on others may keep people from behaving more prosocially in their daily lives, to the detriment of both their own and others’ well-being.

A WEIRD Theory? On the Prevalence of Western Folk Theory of Social Change in the West and Asia

According to Western folk theory of social change, modernization of societies causes them to become less warm but more competent over time. Since WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies are often at the forefront of modernization (with some exceptions, most notably China), these societies may also be most prone to internalizing this folk theory. In this research, we test this idea by making a comparison across a sample group of Western and Asian societies, using a self-report measure of perceived societal warmth and competence: The Social Change Perception Scale (SCPS). We found the scale to be metrically invariant among university students from a set of Western and Asian countries (United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, The Philippines, China, and Malaysia). In all seven countries, people expected their society to become more competent over time. In most countries, people also expected their society to become colder over time, although this tendency was slight and insignificant among New Zealanders and Americans. The perceived social cooling tended to be more prevalent in Asian countries rather than in Western countries. The countries’ degrees of WEIRDness, as reflected in their country-level indicators of individualism, education, industrialization, wealth, and democracy, did not adequately account for the observed variation. Though there is still much work to be done in applying the SCPS to broader samples and contexts, this study provides a starting point for measuring and understanding how people experience the social implications of modernization around the world.

Doesn't everybody jaywalk? On codified rules that are seldom followed and selectively punished

Rules are meant to apply equally to all within their jurisdiction. However, some rules are frequently broken without consequence for most. These rules are only occasionally enforced, often at the discretion of a third-party observer. We propose that these rules-whose violations are frequent, and enforcement is rare-constitute a unique subclass of explicitly codified rules, which we call 'phantom rules' (e.g., proscribing jaywalking). Their apparent punishability is ambiguous and particularly susceptible to third-party motives. Across six experiments, (N = 1440) we validated the existence of phantom rules and found evidence for their motivated enforcement. First, people played a modified Dictator Game with a novel frequently broken and rarely enforced rule (i.e., a phantom rule). People enforced this rule more often when the "dictator" was selfish (vs. fair) even though the rule only proscribed fractional offers (not selfishness). Then we turned to third person judgments of the U.S. legal system. We found these violations are recognizable to participants as both illegal and commonplace (Experiment 2), differentiable from violations of prototypical laws (Experiments 3) and enforced in a motivated way (Experiments 4a and 4b). Phantom rule violations (but not prototypical legal violations) are seen as more justifiably punished when the rule violator has also violated a social norm (vs. rule violation alone)-unless the motivation to punish has been satiated (Experiment 5). Phantom rules are frequently broken, codified rules. Consequently, their apparent punishability is ambiguous, and their enforcement is particularly susceptible to third party motives.

Penalized for Challenging Traditional Gender Roles: Why Heterosexual Relationships in Which Women Wear the Pants May Be More Precarious

There is growing evidence that heterosexual relationships in which traditional gender roles are reversed because women have attained higher societal status than their male partner are more precarious. We argue that this is the case because both partners in role-reversed relationships are evaluated more negatively than partners in more egalitarian or traditional gender role relationships. In two experimental studies conducted in the United States (N = 223) and the Netherlands (N = 269), we found that when encountering role-reversed relationships, participants perceive the woman as the more dominant and agentic one and the man as the weaker one in the relationship. They also perceive women in role-reversed relationships as less likeable, have less respect for men in role-reversed relationships, and expect that such relationships are less satisfying. In addition, in a third partner study (N = 94 heterosexual couples), we found that both male and female partners in role-reversed relationships considered the man to be the weaker one and the woman to be the more dominant one. Moreover, perceiving the man as the weaker one predicted lower relationship satisfaction in role-reversed couples. Overall, this research indicates that gender stereotypes about heterosexual relationships should be considered in efforts to achieve gender equity.

Does Leader Character Have a Gender?

Virtues and character strengths are often assumed to be universal, considered equally important to individuals across cultures, religions, racial-ethnic groups, and genders. The results of our surveys and laboratory studies, however, bring to light subtle yet consistent gender differences in the importance attributed to character in leadership: women considered character to be more important to successful leadership in business than did men, and women had higher expectations that individuals should demonstrate character in a new leadership role. Further, the gender of the research participant affected character ratings such that male respondents viewed a female leader who exhibited agentic behaviors in a professionally challenging situation less positively than a male leader who displayed the same agentic behaviors. The data also showed that male participants rated almost every dimension of character displayed by the female leader lower than did female participants. Our findings suggest that the question as to what extent gender differences may bias the assessment of virtues and character strengths is an important one, and one for which the practical implications for individuals in organizations need to be studied in more detail.

Incorporating rivalry in reinforcement learning for a competitive game

Recent advances in reinforcement learning with social agents have allowed such models to achieve human-level performance on certain interaction tasks. However, most interactive scenarios do not have performance alone as an end-goal; instead, the social impact of these agents when interacting with humans is as important and largely unexplored. In this regard, this work proposes a novel reinforcement learning mechanism based on the social impact of rivalry behavior. Our proposed model aggregates objective and social perception mechanisms to derive a rivalry score that is used to modulate the learning of artificial agents. To investigate our proposed model, we design an interactive game scenario, using the Chef’s Hat Card Game, and examine how the rivalry modulation changes the agent’s playing style, and how this impacts the experience of human players on the game. Our results show that humans can detect specific social characteristics when playing against rival agents when compared to common agents, which affects directly the performance of the human players in subsequent games. We conclude our work by discussing how the different social and objective features that compose the artificial rivalry score contribute to our results.

Gender and contextual variations in self-perceived cognitive competence

School performance and cognitive competence can be conceptualized as social and relational constructs. Thus, we expect their association to vary as a function of other socially-embedded variables which have proven meaningful in the academic domain. The present study takes a critical theory approach to assess gender-related and contextual variability in the association between peer-assessed school performance and self-perceived cognitive competence. The sample consisted of 719 preadolescents (M age = 9.5 years, range = 9 to 12.5 years) living in lower- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada and Barranquilla, Columbia. Multigroup comparisons revealed that (a) peer-assessed school competence was more strongly associated with self-perceived cognitive competence for upper-middle-class than lower-middle-class participants from Barranquilla, whereas the opposite pattern was observed with Montreal participants, and (b) that the association between communal orientation and self-perceived cognitive competence was stronger for girls than for boys across the sample, especially in the upper-middle-class school in Montreal. These findings highlight the nuanced degree of gender differences in preadolescents’ perceived academic competence and emphasize the role of SES in shaping self-perceptions.

How threatening are people with mental disability? it depends on the type of threat and the disability

There is clear evidence that people with mental disability suffer from discrimination at school, at work, and in society. Less is known about the psychological processes and perceptions that guide such behaviors and even less if these perceptions vary according to the type of disability. Our objective was to build on well-established social psychological models and investigate the perceptions (i.e., stereotypes, perceived threats, and emotions) of people towards different types of mental disability. Participants from two francophone countries completed a questionnaire measuring their perceptions towards 18 mental disabilities and their familiarity with disability (N = 560). As expected, results revealed heterogeneous perceptions across groups. Moreover, perceived threats mediated the link between the stereotype of warmth and emotions. Surprisingly, greater familiarity with mental disability went along with greater derogation. This research nuances the overly generalized perceptions often associated with mental disability. We discuss implications for the reduction of discrimination against people with mental disability.

Social perception of embodied digital technologies—a closer look at bionics and social robotics

This contribution of the journal Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) presents a study on the social perception of Embodied Digital Technologies (EDTs) and provides initial insights into social perception processes concerning technicality and anthropomorphism of robots and users of prostheses. EDTs such as bionic technologies and robots are becoming increasingly common in workspaces and private lives, raising questions surrounding their perception and their acceptance. According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), social perception and stereotyping are based on two fundamental dimensions: Warmth (recently distinguished into Morality and Sociability) and Competence. We investigate how human actors, namely able-bodied individuals, users of low-tech prostheses and users of bionic prostheses, as well as artificial actors, such as industrial robots, social robots, and android robots, are perceived in terms of Competence, Sociability, and Morality. Results show that individuals with low-tech prostheses were perceived as competent as users of bionic prostheses, but only users of low-tech prostheses were perceived less competent than able-bodied individuals. Sociability did not differ between users of low-tech or bionic prostheses or able-bodied individuals. Perceived morality was higher for users of low-tech prostheses than users of bionic prostheses or able-bodied individuals. For robots, attributions of competence showed that industrial robots were perceived as more competent than more anthropomorphized robots. Sociability was attributed to robots to a lesser extent. Morality was not attributed to robots, regardless of their level of anthropomorphism.

Appearing competent or moral? The role of organizational goals in the evaluation of candidates

The Big Two theoretical framework suggests that two traits, namely morality and competence, govern social judgments of individuals and that morality shows a primacy effect over competence because it has more diagnostic value. In this study we tested the primacy effect of morality in the workplace by examining how instrumental or relational goals of organizations might influence the importance of morality or competence of candidates during the hiring process. We hypothesized that the primacy effect of morality might hold when organizational goals are relational, but it might get reversed when organizational goals are instrumental. Supporting our hypothesis, in a field study and two experiments (both preregistered) we found that people perceive moral candidates as more appropriate for recruitment when an organization prioritizes relational goals (Studies 1, 2, and 3). In contrast, people perceive competent candidates as more appropriate for recruitment when an organization prioritizes instrumental goals (Studies 1 and 2). Perceived appropriateness of a candidate, in turn, predicts a stronger intention to recruit a candidate (Studies 2 and 3). These results provide evidence for a reversal of the primacy effect of morality in a work setting, and illuminate the important role of organizational goals in social judgments.

Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies

Job advertisements are often worded in ways that might pose discrimination risks leading to the exclusion of certain groups of applicants, particularly in relation to their gender. Especially in male-dominated professions or leadership roles, the specific linguistic formulation of job postings acquires relevance if more women are to be attracted to apply. Various technologies have emerged that offer automated text screening, some of them even suggesting alternative formulations to increase gender inclusivity. In this study we analyze four software providers on the German market using a corpus of ∼160, 000 job ads from three different platforms. We identify the relevant social psychological research on gender and language that is at the scientific core of these technologies. We show that, despite sharing a common foundation, the four tools assess the potential for exclusion in job postings in a considerably divergent way on multiple levels of comparison. We discuss the levers in the software pipeline of all four technologies, as well as the potential effect of certain implementation decisions, such as string-based vs. semantic approaches to computational processing of natural language. We argue that the ‘technological translation’ of research is extremely involved and further studies of its use in practice are needed to assess the potential for more gender equality.

Agency and communion as fundamental dimensions of social judgment – and Bogdan Wojciszke’s brilliant idea on perspective