Comparing Foodie Calls in Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A Registered Replication Report

Collisson et al. (2020) found Dark Triad traits and gender role beliefs predicted "foodie calls," a phenomenon where people go on a date with others, to whom they are not attracted, for a free meal. Because gender roles and dating norms differ across cultures, we conducted a registered replication across different cultures by surveying 1838 heterosexual women from Poland, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Relying on the structural equation modeling, as conducted in the original study, our findings revealed gender role beliefs best predicted foodie calls and their perceived acceptability, whereas the Dark Triad's general factor was nonsignificant. Analyses at the country level yielded mixed results. The original findings were replicated in the UK and Poland, but not in the US, where only narcissism predicted foodie calls. In the US, gender role beliefs predicted foodie call acceptability, but the Dark Triad general factor did not. Potential reasons for why traditional gender roles, but not the Dark Triad, predicted foodie calls in the US are discussed.

Many Labs 4: Failure to Replicate Mortality Salience Effect With and Without Original Author Involvement

Interpreting a failure to replicate is complicated by the fact that the failure could be due to the original finding being a false positive, unrecognized moderating influences between the original and replication procedures, or faulty implementation of the procedures in the replication. One strategy to maximize replication quality is involving the original authors in study design. We (N = 17 Labs and N = 1,550 participants, after exclusions) experimentally tested whether original author involvement improved replicability of a classic finding from Terror Management Theory (Greenberg et al., 1994). Our results were non-diagnostic of whether original author involvement improves replicability because we were unable to replicate the finding under any conditions. This suggests that the original finding was either a false positive or the conditions necessary to obtain it are not fully understood or no longer exist. Data, materials, analysis code, preregistration, and supplementary documents can be found on the OSF page: https://osf.io/8ccnw/

Foodie Calls: When Women Date Men for a Free Meal (Rather Than a Relationship)

A foodie call occurs when a person, despite a lack of romantic attraction to a suitor, chooses to go on a date to receive a free meal. The present study examines predictors of a deceptive form of the foodie call in the context of male–female dates: when a woman purposefully misrepresents her romantic interest in a man to dine at his expense. In two studies, we surveyed women regarding their foodie call behavior, dark triad personality traits, traditional gender role beliefs, and online dating history. We found 23–33% of women surveyed had engaged in a foodie call. In Study 1, dark triad and traditional gender role beliefs significantly predicted previous foodie call behavior and its perceived acceptability. Study 2 employed fuller measures and suggested again that dark triad traits predicted foodie calls and their perceived acceptability.

Stacking Up With the Stars: Relative Deprivation and Excessive Admiration of Celebrities

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether celebrity admiration is associated with personal relative deprivation, impulsivity, and materialism. We gave the Celebrity Attitude Scale, the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale, the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, a subscale from the Consideration of Future Consequences-14, and the Material Values Scale, to 149 respondents recruited through Mechanical Turk. We found a weak but significant association between personal relative deprivation and celebrity attitudes. We successfully replicated earlier research showing that celebrity attitudes were positively correlated with material values and impulsivity. Personal relative deprivation also correlated positively with both material values and impulsivity. These findings suggest that the constructs of personal relative deprivation and celebrity attitudes appear to have much in common as both are associated with poor quality of life.

Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Samples and Settings

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance ( p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion ( p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely high-powered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.

The interpersonal beginnings of fandom: The relation between attachment style, trust, and the admiration of celebrities

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between people’s attraction to celebrities and their interpersonal trust and attachment style. Previous research suggests that individuals with different attachment styles are differentially attracted to celebrities. We predicted that securely attached participants who mistrust, rather than trust, others tend to have higher levels of benign celebrity attraction. We found only partial support for our hypothesis. Surprisingly, there were no significant differences between different attachment styles on either of the two measures of celebrity admiration. These findings contribute to the literature on trust and celebrity worship by providing new information about how different attachment styles may (or may not) affect the relationships that people have with their favorite celebrity.

Helping others increases meaningful work: Evidence from three experiments

The aim of the current research was to examine whether manipulating task significance increased the meaningfulness of work among students (Study 1), an online sample of working adults (Study 2), and public university employees (Study 3). In Study 1, students completed a typing task for the benefit of themselves, a charity, or someone they knew would directly benefit from their work. People who worked to benefit someone else, rather than themselves, reported greater task meaningfulness. In Study 2, a representative, online sample of employees reflected on a time when they worked to benefit themselves or someone else at work. Results revealed that people who reflected on working to benefit someone else, rather than themselves, reported greater work meaningfulness. In Study 3, public university employees participated in a community intervention by working as they normally would, finding new ways to help people each day, or finding several new ways to help others on a single day. People who helped others many times in a single day experienced greater gains in work meaningfulness over time. Across 3 experimental studies, we found that people who perceived their work as helping others experienced more meaningfulness in their work. This highlights the potential mechanisms practitioners, employers, and other parties can use to increase the meaningfulness of work, which has implications for workers' well-being and productivity. (PsycINFO Database Record

Perceived and actual weight stigma among romantic couples

According to research on weight bias, relationship stigma may be greater among romantic couples comprised of at least one overweight partner, as compared to two healthy-weight partners. However, comparison theories predict that the stigma of being overweight may be greater among mixed-weight couples (i.e., romantic partners with dissimilar body mass indexes; BMI) than matched-weight couples (e.g., similarly overweight partners). To test these rival hypotheses, we assessed perceived and actual stigma experienced by mixed-weight and matched-weight couples. In two studies, people inferred (Study 1) or reported the actual amount (Study 2) of relational stigma and weight-related discomfort experienced by a healthy-weight/overweight person in a mixed/matched-weight relationship. Supporting the weight bias hypothesis, people inferred overweight people and their partners experience greater stigma and weight-related discomfort (Study 1). However, only overweight people in a matched-weight, as compared to mixed-weight, relationships actually reported greater relational stigma and weight-related discomfort (Study 2).

Intimate relationships and attitudes toward celebrities

Previous research indicates that persons who self-report a high level of preoccupation with celebrities tend to have lower levels of well-being. We administered the “Romantic Partner Conflict Scale”, the “Love Attitudes Scale”, the soulmate subscale from the “Relationship Theories Questionnaire”, and the anxiety subscale from the “Experiences in Close Relationships Scale” to 330 students from four universities to see how well scores on these measures would predict scores on each of the three subscales from the “Celebrity Attitude Scale” (CAS). We predicted that persons whose scores on these measures of intimate relationships indicated a troubled, anxious, or poor quality relationship would have higher scores on the CAS, especially on its two problematic subscales. In three multiple regressions, specific measures of behavior during conflict with a romantic partner and certain love styles significantly predicted scores on all three of the CAS subscales. We discuss the implications of being a celebrity worshiper on one’s relationship with an intimate partner.

Managing the Threat of Impending Implicit Attitude Feedback

People facing potentially threatening feedback sometimes opt to avoid it in an attempt to preserve a cherished self-view. In three studies, we examined whether people would adopt such a strategy in the context of the Black–White Implicit Association Test (IAT), which has the potential to reveal implicit prejudice. Study 1 demonstrated that people expect their IAT results to indicate less implicit prejudice than the results actually do, and perceive feedback from the Black–White IAT as potentially threatening. In addition, people who would rather avoid learning their results regretted receiving their feedback. In Studies 2 and 3, more participants declined to learn their IAT results when cued to expect unfavorable, rather than favorable, IAT results. Importantly, participants who received no expectation cue generally opted to receive their IAT feedback, suggesting that participants likely expect favorable IAT feedback.

Ideology and Prejudice

In three studies, we tested whether prejudice derives from perceived similarities and dissimilarities in political ideologies (the value-conflict hypothesis). Across three diverse samples in Study 1, conservatives had less favorable impressions than liberals of groups that were identified as liberal (e.g., African Americans, homosexuals), but more favorable impressions than liberals of groups identified as conservative (e.g., Christian fundamentalists, businesspeople). In Studies 2 and 3, we independently manipulated a target’s race (European American or African American) and political attitudes (liberal or conservative). Both studies found symmetrical preferences, with liberals and conservatives each liking attitudinally similar targets more than dissimilar targets. The amount of prejudice was comparable for liberals and conservatives, and the race of the target had no effect. In all three studies, the same patterns were obtained even after controlling for individual differences on prejudice-related dimensions (e.g., system justification, social-dominance orientation, modern racism). The patterns strongly support the value-conflict hypothesis and indicate that prejudice exists on both sides of the political spectrum.