Inaugural editorial

The commencement of a new editorial tenure within the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition (JPSP: ASC) provides an opportunity for reflection regarding the journal's core mission. The editors recognize that social psychology is at a crossroads due to competing demands that may have led to reduced submissions and posed challenges for previous editors in filling the journal's pages. Now, JPSP: ASC has been allotted more pages to allow for growth during this editorial term. Although this is desirable for the field, it adds to the pressure of identifying articles for publication given the difficulties filling the pages during previous editorial terms. As the premier outlet of social psychology since 1965, JPSP: ASC will retain its centrality if we increase submissions and publish more articles, while continuing to strive to communicate methodologically trustworthy, intellectually stimulating, and socially relevant research, in a responsible fashion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Moral psychology biases toward individual, not systemic, representations

We expand Chater & Loewenstein's discussion of barriers to s-frames by highlighting moral psychological mechanisms. Systemic aspects of moralized social issues can be neglected because of (a) the individualistic frame through which we perceive moral transgressions; (b) the desire to punish elicited by moral emotions; and (c) the motivation to attribute agency and moral responsibility to transgressors.

Socioeconomic Status and Meta-Perceptions: How Markers of Culture and Rank Predict Beliefs About How Others See Us

How does a person's socioeconomic status (SES) relate to how she thinks others see her? Seventeen studies (eight pre-registered; three reported in-text and 14 replications in supplemental online material [SOM], total N = 6,124) found that people with low SES believe others see them as colder and less competent than those with high SES. The SES difference in meta-perceptions was explained by people's self-regard and self-presentation expectations. Moreover, lower SES people's more negative meta-perceptions were not warranted: Those with lower SES were not seen more negatively, and were less accurate in guessing how others saw them. They also had important consequences: People with lower SES blamed themselves more for negative feedback about their warmth and competence. Internal meta-analyses suggested this effect was larger and more consistent for current socioeconomic rank than cultural background.

Is Religion Special?

Religion makes unique claims (e.g., the existence of supernatural agents) not found in other belief systems, but is religion itself psychologically special? Furthermore, religion is related to many domains of psychological interest, such as morality, health and well-being, self-control, meaning, and death anxiety. Does religion act on these domains via special mechanisms that are unlike secular mechanisms? These could include mechanisms such as beliefs in supernatural agents, providing ultimate meaning, and providing literal immortality. We apply a critical eye to these questions of specialness and conclude that although it is clear that religion is psychologically important, there is not yet strong evidence that it is psychologically special, with the possible exception of its effects on health. We highlight what would be required of future research aimed at convincingly demonstrating that religion is indeed psychologically special, including careful definitions of religion and careful attention to experimental design and causal inference.

Who would mourn democracy? Liberals might, but it depends on who's in charge

Despite widespread support for the principles of democracy, democratic norms have been eroding globally for over a decade. We ask whether and how political ideology factors into people's reactions to democratic decline. We offer hypotheses derived from two theoretical lenses, one considering ideologically relevant dispositions and another considering ideologically relevant situations. Preregistered laboratory experiments combined with analyses of World Values Survey (WVS) data indicate that there is a dispositional trend: Overall, liberals are more distressed than conservatives by low democracy. At the same time, situational factors also matter: This pattern emerges most strongly when the ruling party is conservative and disappears (though it does not flip into its mirror image) when the ruling party is liberal. Our results contribute to ongoing debates over ideological symmetry and asymmetry; they also suggest that, if democracy is worth protecting, not everyone, everywhere will feel the urgency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Seek and Ye Shall Be Fine: Attitudes Toward Political-Perspective Seekers

Six preregistered studies (N = 2,421) examined how people respond to copartisan political-perspective seekers: political allies who attempt to hear from shared opponents and better understand their views. We found that North American adults and students generally like copartisan seekers (meta-analytic Cohen's d = 0.83 across 4,231 participants, representing all available data points). People like copartisan perspective seekers because they seem tolerant, cooperative, and rational, but this liking is diminished because seekers seem to validate-and may even adopt-opponents' illegitimate views. Participants liked copartisan seekers across a range of different motivations guiding these seekers' actions but, consistent with our theorizing, their liking decreased (though rarely disappeared entirely) when seekers lacked partisan commitments or when they sought especially illegitimate beliefs. Despite evidence of rising political intolerance in recent decades, these findings suggest that people nonetheless celebrate political allies who tolerate and seriously consider their opponents' views.

Assumptions About Algorithms' Capacity for Discrimination

Although their implementation has inspired optimism in many domains, algorithms can both systematize discrimination and obscure its presence. In seven studies, we test the hypothesis that people instead tend to assume algorithms discriminate less than humans due to beliefs that algorithms tend to be both more accurate and less emotional evaluators. As a result of these assumptions, people are more interested in being evaluated by an algorithm when they anticipate that discrimination against them is possible. We finally investigate the degree to which information about how algorithms train using data sets consisting of human judgments and decisions change people's increased preferences for algorithms when they themselves anticipate discrimination. Taken together, these studies indicate that algorithms appear less discriminatory than humans, making people (potentially erroneously) more comfortable with their use.

Polarization in America: two possible futures

The rise of polarization over the past 25 years has many Americans worried about the state of politics. This worry is understandable: up to a point, polarization can help democracies, but when it becomes too vast, such that entire swaths of the population refuse to consider each other's views, this thwarts democratic methods for solving societal problems. Given widespread polarization in America, what lies ahead? We describe two possible futures, each based on different sets of theory and evidence. On one hand, polarization may be on a self-reinforcing upward trajectory fueled by misperception and avoidance; on the other hand it may have recently reached the apex of its pendulum swing. We conclude that it is too early to know which future we are approaching, but that our ability to address misperceptions may be one key factor.

Being "good" or "good enough": Prosocial risk and the structure of moral self-regard

The motivation to feel moral powerfully guides people's prosocial behavior. We propose that people's efforts to preserve their moral self-regard conform to a moral threshold model. This model predicts that people are primarily concerned with whether their prosocial behavior legitimates the claim that they have acted morally, a claim that often diverges from whether their behavior is in the best interests of the recipient. Specifically, it predicts that for people to feel moral following a prosocial decision, that decision need not have promised the greatest benefit for the recipient but only one larger than at least one other available outcome. Moreover, this model predicts that once people produce a benefit that exceeds this threshold, their moral self-regard is relatively insensitive to the magnitude of benefit that they produce. In 6 studies, we test this moral threshold model by examining people's prosocial risk decisions. We find that, compared with risky egoistic decisions, people systematically avoid making risky prosocial decisions that carry the possibility of producing the worst possible outcome in a choice set-even when this means avoiding a decision that is objectively superior. We further find that this aversion to producing the worst possible prosocial outcome leads people's prosocial (vs. egoistic) risk decisions to be less sensitive to those decisions' maximum possible benefit. We highlight theoretical and practical implications of these findings, including the detrimental consequence that people's desire to protect their moral self-regard can have on the amount of good that they produce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The context of low socioeconomic status can undermine people's motivation for financial success

Why are some people poor, and why does poverty persist? One popular explanation blames society for blocking the advancement of lower socioeconomic status (SES) individuals. A second accuses the poor of being lazy. Here, we argue that both perspectives are missing a critical point. It is true that the material, social, and cultural context of low SES makes it difficult for people to successfully move up the ladder, even if they try. But this same context undermines their motivation to try, by encouraging them to believe they lack the requisite skills, that the world will treat them unfairly, and that professional success comes with significant costs. We argue that, if overlooked, this motivational consequence can reinforce stereotypes and inequality.

Collectives in organizations appear less morally motivated than individuals

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on Oct 24 2019 (see record 2019-63657-001). In the article "Collectives in Organizations Appear Less Morally Motivated Than Individuals" by Arthur S. Jago, Tamar A. Kreps, and Kristin Laurin, the second affiliation of the first author was omitted from the byline and author note. The byline should appear instead as University of Southern California and University of Washington-Tacoma. The first paragraph of the author note should appear instead as Arthur S. Jago, Department of Management and Organization, University of Southern California, and Milgard School of Business, University of Washington-Tacoma. The third paragraph of the author note should appear instead as the following: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Arthur S. Jago, Milgard School of Business, University of Washington - Tacoma, 1900 Commerce Street DOU 306, Tacoma, WA 98402. Email: ajago@uw.edu] Organizations often benefit from signaling moral values. Across 5 studies, we explore how people attribute moral conviction to different organizational agents. We find that people believe collectives (e.g., groups; entire organizations) have less moral conviction than individuals, even when both agents behave identically (Studies 1 and 2). We test a variety of potential mechanisms for this effect, and find evidence for two parallel pathways: first, people believe collectives have less of a capacity for emotional experience, and therefore are less likely to use emotions when making decisions; and second, people believe collectives are also more self-interested, and therefore more likely to behave out of concern for their reputations rather than morality (Study 3). In examining boundary conditions for this effect, we find that it occurs when people judge generic for-profit companies and government entities, but not family businesses or charities (Study 4). Finally, we demonstrate that, because collectives appear less morally motivated than individuals, people also assume collectives will exhibit less persistence after enacting prosocial initiatives (Study 5). We discuss theoretical, practical, and social implications of these differing attributions of moral conviction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Motivational Accounts of the Vicious Cycle of Social Status: An Integrative Framework Using the United States as a Case Study

Social mobility is limited in most industrialized countries, and especially in the United States: Children born to relatively poor parents are less likely to prosper than other children. This observation has multiple explanations; in the current article, we focus on emerging motivational perspectives, synthesizing them into a novel integrative framework grounded in a classic theory of motivation: expectancy-value theory. Together, these findings indicate that individuals with lower socioeconomic status (SES) may be less motivated to achieve status relative to individuals with higher SES—not because of their own personal failings, but as a result of their material, social and cultural contexts. We then consider the significant theoretical advantages of this integrative framework, most notably that it enables us to consider how the disparate perspectives linking motivation to SES are linked and may at times compound or offset each other. In turn, this enables us to make sophisticated predictions concerning the conditions that will enable individuals with low SES to escape the vicious cycle of low motivation. Moreover, our account helps bridge the gap between explanations that locate the cause for low social mobility within individuals and those that locate it in the broader system. We end by addressing implications for the psychological understanding of low status and implications for social policy.

System justification: Experimental evidence, its contextual nature, and implications for social change

We review conceptual and empirical contributions to system justification theory over the last fifteen years, emphasizing the importance of an experimental approach and consideration of context. First, we review the indirect evidence of the system justification motive via complimentary stereotyping. Second, we describe injunctification as direct evidence of a tendency to view the extant status quo (the way things are) as the way things should be. Third, we elaborate on system justification's contextual nature and the circumstances, such as threat, dependence, inescapability, and system confidence, which are likely to elicit defensive bolstering of the status quo and motivated ignorance of critical social issues. Fourth, we describe how system justification theory can increase our understanding of both resistance to and acceptance of social change, as a change moves from proposed, to imminent, to established. Finally, we discuss how threatened systems shore up their authority by co-opting legitimacy from other sources, such as governments that draw on religious concepts, and the role of institutional-level factors in perpetuating the status quo.

Inaugurating Rationalization: Three Field Studies Find Increased Rationalization When Anticipated Realities Become Current

People will often rationalize the status quo, reconstruing it in an exaggeratedly positive light. They will even rationalize the status quo they anticipate, emphasizing the upsides and minimizing the downsides of sociopolitical realities they expect to take effect. Drawing on recent findings on the psychological triggers of rationalization, I present results from three field studies, one of which was preregistered, testing the hypothesis that an anticipated reality becoming current triggers an observable boost in people’s rationalizations. San Franciscans rationalized a ban on plastic water bottles, Ontarians rationalized a targeted smoking ban, and Americans rationalized the presidency of Donald Trump, more in the days immediately after these realities became current compared with the days immediately before. Additional findings show evidence for a mechanism underlying these behaviors and rule out alternative accounts. These findings carry implications for scholarship on rationalization, for understanding protest behavior, and for policymakers.

Belief in God: A Cultural Adaptation With Important Side Effects

This article integrates a recent spate of findings regarding beliefs in or thoughts about God and how they influence behavior. I first describe a fast-emerging cultural evolutionary perspective on why people believe in powerful, watchful, and morally invested Gods. I then apply this perspective to the recent spate of findings, arguing that those three culturally evolved features of Gods are responsible for certain additional effects beyond those thought to be their original adaptive function. These effects pertain to self-regulation, the reinforcement of social norms, risk taking, and more. I end by spelling out the theoretical leverage gained by applying a cultural fitness lens to these findings.

Who wants to get to the top? Class and lay theories about power

We investigated class-based differences in the propensity to seek positions of power. We first proposed that people's lay theories suggest that acquiring power requires playing politics-manipulating one's way through the social world, relying on a pragmatic and Machiavellian approach to impression management and social relationships to get ahead. Then, drawing on empirical work portraying individuals with relatively low social class as more strongly focused on others and less focused on themselves, we hypothesized that these individuals would show less interest in seeking positions of power than their high-class counterparts, because they feel less comfortable engaging in political behavior. We tested these ideas in 7 studies. Our findings indicated that, even though individuals with relatively low social class see political behavior as necessary and effective for acquiring positions of power, they are reluctant to do it; as a result, they have a weaker tendency to seek positions of power compared to individuals with relatively high social class. Consistent with our theorizing, we also found that individuals with relatively low social class intend to seek positions of power as much as their high-class counterparts when they can acquire it through prosocial means (Study 2), and when they reconstrue power as serving a superordinate goal of helping others (Study 4). Moreover, we checked the robustness of our findings by measuring social class in a number of ways within each study, and examined whether our results held across each measure. Together, our findings suggest that the common belief that political behavior is required for advancement may help explain why class inequalities persist and why creating class-based diversity in upper-level positions poses a serious challenge. (PsycINFO Database Record

Power and the pursuit of a partner's goals

We investigated how power dynamics in close relationships influence the tendency to devote resources to the pursuit of goals valued by relationship partners, hypothesizing that low (vs. high) power in relationships would lead individuals to center their individual goal pursuit around the goals of their partners. We study 2 related phenomena: partner goal prioritization, whereby individuals pursue goals on behalf of their partners, and partner goal contagion, whereby individuals identify and adopt as their own the goals that their partner pursues. We tested our ideas in 5 studies that employed diverse research methods, including lab experiments and dyadic studies of romantic partners, and multiple types of dependent measures, including experience sampling reports, self-reported goal commitment, and behavioral goal pursuit in a variety of goal domains. Despite this methodological diversity, the studies provided clear and consistent evidence that individuals with low power in their relationships are especially likely to engage in both partner goal prioritization and partner goal contagion. (PsycINFO Database Record

Corporate personhood: Lay perceptions and ethical consequences

Modern conceptions of corporate personhood have spurred considerable debate about the rights that society should afford business organizations. Across eight experiments, we compare lay perceptions of how corporations and people use rights, and also explore the consequences of these judgments. We find that people believe corporations, compared to humans, are similarly likely to use rights in protective ways that prevent harm but more likely to use rights in nonprotective ways that appear independent from-or even create-harm (Experiments 1a through 1c and Experiment 2). Because of these beliefs, people support corporate rights to a lesser extent than human rights (Experiment 3). However, people are more supportive of specific corporate rights when we framed them as serving protective functions (Experiment 4). Also as a result of these beliefs, people attribute greater ethical responsibility to corporations, but not to humans, that gain access to rights (Experiments 5a and 5b). Despite their equitability in many domains, people believe corporations and humans use rights in different ways, ultimately producing different reactions to their behaviors as well as asymmetric moral evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Anticipating Divine Protection? Reminders of God Can Increase Nonmoral Risk Taking

Religiosity and participation in religious activities have been linked with decreased risky behavior. In the current research, we hypothesized that exposure to the concept of God can actually increase people’s willingness to engage in certain types of risks. Across seven studies, reminders of God increased risk taking in nonmoral domains. This effect was mediated by the perceived danger of a risky option and emerged more strongly among individuals who perceive God as a reliable source of safety and protection than among those who do not. Moreover, in an eighth study, when participants were first reminded of God and then took a risk that produced negative consequences (i.e., when divine protection failed to materialize), participants reported feeling more negatively toward God than did participants in the same situation who were not first reminded of God. This research contributes to an understanding of the divergent effects that distinct components of religion can exert on behavior.

Religion and Punishment

We hypothesize that two distinct facets of religiosity—orthodoxy (an emphasis on belief) and orthopraxy (an emphasis on behavior)—predict differential sensitivity to an actor’s intent when making moral judgments. Participants judged actors who performed misdeeds intentionally or unintentionally. In Study 1, high orthopraxy predicted harsher judgments of the unintentional actor, while high orthodoxy predicted more lenient judgments. In Study 2, we investigated a potential explanation for these effects, priming participants with either an “action focus” or a “thought focus.” Action-focused participants judged the unintentional actor more harshly than did thought-focused participants. In Study 3, participants from an orthopraxic tradition (Hinduism) judged the unintentional actor more harshly than did those from an orthodox tradition (Protestantism). These findings contribute to a growing literature on the multifaceted nature of religion. They also carry broader implications for understanding people’s responses to actions as a function of the actor’s mental state.

A Relationship With God? Connecting with the Divine to Assuage Fears of Interpersonal Rejection

We examine the possibility that people can leverage their “relationship” with God as a stand-in for interpersonal relationships. More specifically, we hypothesize that people will seek closeness with the divine when facing the threat of interpersonal rejection and that conversely, they will seek interpersonal closeness when facing the threat of divine rejection. We test this idea across four studies. Along the way, we test additional predictions derived from the close relationships literature, concerning the consequences of this process and the moderating role of self-esteem. Taken together, our findings add to the literature on God as a relationship partner and connect this idea to the dynamic ebb and flow of interpersonal connection.

A functional basis for structure-seeking: exposure to structure promotes willingness to engage in motivated action

A recurring observation of experimental psychologists is that people prefer, seek out, and even selectively "see" structure in their social and natural environments. Structure-seeking has been observed across a wide range of phenomena--from the detection of patterns in random arrays to affinities for order-providing political, religious, social, and scientific worldviews--and is exacerbated under psychological threat. Why are people motivated for structure? An intriguing, but untested, explanation holds that perceiving structure, even in domains unrelated to one's current behavioral context, can facilitate willingness to take goal-directed actions. Supporting this, in 5 studies, reminders of structure in nature or society increase willingness to engage in goal pursuit.

Attachment and internalizing behavior in early childhood: a meta-analysis

Empirical research supporting the contention that insecure attachment is related to internalizing behaviors has been inconsistent. Across 60 studies including 5,236 families, we found a significant, small to medium effect size linking insecure attachment and internalizing behavior (observed d = .37, 95% CI [0.27, 0.46]; adjusted d = .19, 95% CI [0.09, 0.29]). Several moderator variables were associated with differences in effect size, including concurrent externalizing behavior, gender, how the disorganized category was treated, observation versus questionnaire measures of internalizing behavior, age of attachment assessment, time elapsed between attachment and internalizing measure, and year of publication. The association between avoidant attachment and internalizing behavior was also significant and small to moderate (d = .29, 95% CI [0.12, 0.45]). The effect sizes comparing resistant to secure attachment and resistant to avoidant attachment were not significant. In 20 studies with 2,679 families, we found a small effect size linking disorganized attachment and internalizing behavior (observed d = .20, 95% CI [0.09, 0.31]); however, the effect size was not significant when adjusted for probable publication bias (d = .12, 95% CI [-0.02, 0.23]). The existing literature supports the general notion that insecure attachment relationships in early life, particularly avoidant attachment, are associated with subsequent internalizing behaviors, although effect sizes are not strong.

Outsourcing punishment to God: beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment

The sanctioning of norm-transgressors is a necessary--though often costly--task for maintaining a well-functioning society. Prior to effective and reliable secular institutions for punishment, large-scale societies depended on individuals engaging in 'altruistic punishment'--bearing the costs of punishment individually, for the benefit of society. Evolutionary approaches to religion suggest that beliefs in powerful, moralizing Gods, who can distribute rewards and punishments, emerged as a way to augment earthly punishment in large societies that could not effectively monitor norm violations. In five studies, we investigate whether such beliefs in God can replace people's motivation to engage in altruistic punishment, and their support for state-sponsored punishment. Results show that, although religiosity generally predicts higher levels of punishment, the specific belief in powerful, intervening Gods reduces altruistic punishment and support for state-sponsored punishment. Moreover, these effects are specifically owing to differences in people's perceptions that humans are responsible for punishing wrongdoers.

Reactance Versus Rationalization

How do people respond to government policies and work environments that place restrictions on their personal freedoms? The psychological literature offers two contradictory answers to this question. Here, we attempt to resolve this apparent discrepancy. Specifically, we identify the absoluteness of a restriction as one factor that determines how people respond to it. Across two studies, participants responded to absolute restrictions (i.e., restrictions that were sure to come into effect) with rationalization: They viewed the restrictions more favorably, and valued the restricted freedoms less, compared with control participants. Participants responded in the opposite way to identical restrictions that were described as nonabsolute (i.e., as having a small chance of not coming into effect): In this case, participants displayed reactance, viewing the restrictions less favorably, and valuing the restricted freedoms more, compared with control participants. We end by discussing future research directions.

Social disadvantage and the self-regulatory function of justice beliefs

Five studies support the hypothesis that beliefs in societal fairness offer a self-regulatory benefit for members of socially disadvantaged groups. Specifically, members of disadvantaged groups are more likely than members of advantaged groups to calibrate their pursuit of long-term goals to their beliefs about societal fairness. In Study 1, low socioeconomic status (SES) undergraduate students who believed more strongly in societal fairness showed greater intentions to persist in the face of poor performance on a midterm examination. In Study 2, low SES participants who believed more strongly in fairness reported more willingness to invest time and effort to achieve desirable career outcomes. In Study 3, ethnic minority participants exposed to a manipulation suggesting that fairness conditions in their country were improving reported more willingness to invest resources in pursuit of long-term goals, relative to ethnic minority participants in a control condition. Study 4 replicated Study 3 using an implicit priming procedure, demonstrating that perceptions of the personal relevance of societal fairness mediate these effects. Across these 4 studies, no link between fairness beliefs and self-regulation emerged for members of advantaged (high SES, ethnic majority) groups. Study 5 contributed evidence from the World Values Survey and a representative sample (Inglehart, Basañez, Diez-Medrano, Halman, & Luijkx, 2004). Respondents reported more motivation to work hard to the extent that they believed that rewards were distributed fairly; this effect emerged more strongly for members of lower SES groups than for members of higher SES groups, as indicated by both self-identified social class and ethnicity.

Restricted Emigration, System Inescapability, and Defense of the Status Quo

The freedom to emigrate at will from a geographic location is an internationally recognized human right. However, this right is systematically violated by restrictive migration policies. In three experiments, we explored the psychological consequences of violating the right to mobility. Our results suggest that, ironically, restricted freedom of movement can lead to increased system justification (i.e., increased support of the status quo). In Study 1, we found that participants who read that their country was difficult to leave became stronger defenders of their system’s legitimacy than before, even in domains unrelated to emigration policy (e.g., gender relations). In Study 2, we demonstrated that this increased system defense was the result of a motivated process. In Study 3, we broadened the scope of this psychological phenomenon by conceptually replicating it using a different system (participants’ university) and measure of system defense. The importance of these two findings—the first experimental demonstration of the psychological consequences of restrictive emigration policies and the introduction of a novel psychological phenomenon—is discussed.

God and the government: testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems

The authors propose that the high levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and the defense of external systems, including increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God (Studies 1 and 2) and defense of the overarching socio-political system (Study 4). A 4th experiment (Study 5) showed the converse to be true: A challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. In addition, a cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control (across 67 nations; Study 3). Each study identified theoretically consistent moderators and mediators of these effects. The implications of these results for understanding why a high percentage of the population believes in the existence of God, and why people so often endorse and justify their socio-political systems, are discussed.