A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 12 May 2020. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4878591.v1.

In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., "If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others") or potential gains (e.g., "If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others")? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions.

Slow lies: Response delays promote perceptions of insincerity

Evaluating other people's sincerity is a ubiquitous and important part of social interactions. Fourteen experiments (total N = 7,565; 10 preregistered; 11 in the main article, three in the online supplemental materials; with U.S. American and British members of the public, and French students) show that response speed is an important cue on which people base their sincerity inferences. Specifically, people systematically judged slower (vs. faster) responses as less sincere for a range of scenarios from trivial daily conversations to high stakes situations such as police interrogations. Our findings suggest that this is because slower responses are perceived to be the result of the responder suppressing automatic, truthful thoughts, and fabricating a novel answer. People also seem to have a rich lay theory of response speed, which takes into account a variety of situational factors. For instance, the effect of response delay on perceived sincerity is smaller if the response is socially undesirable, or if it can be attributed to mental effort. Finally, we showed that explicit instructions to ignore response speed can reduce the effect of response speed on judgments on sincerity. Our findings not only help ascertain the role of response speed in interpersonal inference making processes, but also carry important practical implication. In particular, the present study highlights the potential effects that may be observed in judicial settings, because the response speed of innocent suspects may mislead people to judge them as insincere and hence guilty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Replication and Extension of Alicke (1985) Better-Than-Average Effect for Desirable and Controllable Traits

People tend to regard themselves as better than average. We conducted a replication and extension of Alicke’s classic study on trait dimensions in evaluations of self versus others with U.S. American Mechanical Turk workers in two waves (total N = 1,573; 149 total traits). We successfully replicated the trait desirability effect, such that participants rated more desirable traits as being more descriptive of themselves than of others (original: [Formula: see text] = .78, 95% confidence interval [CI] [.73, .81]; replication: sr 2 = .54, 95% CI [.43, .65]). The effect of desirability was stronger for more controllable traits (effect of Desirability × Controllability interaction on self–other-ratings difference; original: [Formula: see text] = .21, 95% CI [.12, .28]; replication: sr 2 = .07, 95% CI [.02, .12]). In an extension, we found that desirable traits were rated as more common for others, but not for the self. Thirty-five years later, the better-than-average effect appears to remain robust. All materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/2y6wj/ .

Loudness Perceptions Influence Feelings of Interpersonal Closeness and Protect Against Detrimental Psychological Effects of Social Exclusion

We propose that perceptions of auditory loudness and interpersonal closeness are bidirectionally related. Across 12 experiments (total N = 2,219; 10 preregistered; with Singaporean, British, U.S. American, and Australian participants), we demonstrated that louder audio made people feel physically (Study 1a) and socially (Study 1b) closer to others, presumably because loudness activates interpersonal closeness-related concepts implicitly (Studies 1c and 1d). This loudness-interpersonal closeness effect was observed across diverse samples (Studies 2a, 3a, and S1), for longer listening intervals (Study 2b), and in natural settings (Studies 3a and 3b). Conversely, individuals made to feel socially excluded rated their surroundings as quieter (Study 4). Furthermore, following social exclusion, individuals showed a preference for louder volume (Study 5). Finally, exposure to loud stimuli mitigated detrimental psychological effects of social exclusion (Study 6). Theoretical implications for the social cognition of loudness, social exclusion and compensatory strategies, and practical implications for ameliorating loneliness are discussed.

Prototypes of People With Depression

This article investigates the content and the consequences of the prototypes of people with depression in a multimethod fashion. Fourteen preregistered studies (total N = 5,023, with U.S. American, British, and French adult participants) show that laypeople consider people with depression as having specific psychological, social, and physical features (e.g., unattractive, overweight, unsuccessful, introverted). Target prototypicality influences how much laypeople believe others have depression, how much observers believe that depression-like symptoms cause someone to experience psychological pain, and how much professional mental health care is appropriate for others. This effect was not reduced by instructing people to focus on the symptoms and ignore the target features yet was weakly reduced by informing them of the effect. We discuss theoretical implications for the understanding of prototypes of people with depression and practical implications for alleviating the impact of prototypes.

Perceived morality of direct versus indirect harm: Replications of the preference for indirect harm effect

Royzman and Baron (2002) demonstrated that people prefer indirect harm to direct harm: they judge actions that produce harm as a by-product to be more moral than actions that produce harm directly. In two preregistered studies, we successfully replicated Study 2 of Royzman and Baron (2002) with a Hong Kong student sample (N = 46) and an online American Mechanical Turk sample (N = 314). We found con- sistent evidential support for the preference for indirect harm phenomenon (d = 0.46 [0.26, 0.65] to 0.47 [0.18, 0.75]), weaker than effects reported in the original findings of the target article (d = 0.70 [0.40, 0.99]). We also successfully replicated findings regarding reasons underlying a preference for indirect harm (di- rectness, intent, omission, probability of harm, and appearance of harm). All materials, data, and code are available at osf.io/ewq8g.

Super-Size Me: An Unsuccessful Preregistered Replication of the Effect of Product Size on Status Signaling

Dubois, Rucker, and Galinsky (2012, Experiment 1) found that consumers view larger-size options as a signal of higher status. We conducted a close replication of this finding (N = 415), and observed a nonsignificant effect in the opposite direction (small vs. large product size: doriginal = 1.49, 95%CI [1.09, 1.89], dreplication = 0.09 95%CI [-0.15, 0.33]; medium vs. large: doriginal = 0.89 95%CI [0.52, 1.26], dreplication = 0.11 95%CI [-0.13, 0.34]; small vs. medium: doriginal = 0.62 95%CI [0.26, 0.98], dreplication = -0.01 95%CI [-0.25, 0.23]). We discuss potential reasons for this unsuccessful replication as well as implications for the status-signaling literature in consumer psychology.

Give Me a Straight Answer: Response Ambiguity Diminishes Likability

Across nine experiments (eight preregistered) involving Western and Asian samples, we showed that people providing ambiguous (vs. specific) responses to questions in various social scenarios are seen as less likable. This is because, depending on the social context, response ambiguity may be interpreted as a way to conceal the truth and as a sign of social disinterest. Consequently, people reported lower inclination to befriend or date individuals who appeared to provide ambiguous responses. We also identified situations in which response ambiguity does not harm likability, such as when the questions are sensitive and the responder may need to "soften the blow." A final exploratory study showed that response ambiguity also impacts personality perceptions-individuals providing ambiguous responses are judged as less warm, less extraverted, less gullible, and more cautious. We discuss theoretical implications for the language psychology and person perception literatures and practical implications for impression management and formation.

The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

Prototypes of Victims of Workplace Harassment

What do people think of when they think of workplace harassment? In 13 pre-registered studies with French, British, and U.S. American adult participants (N = 3,892), we conducted a multi-method investigation into people's social prototypes of victims of workplace harassment. We found people imagined such victims in physically, socially, psychologically, and economically different ways compared with non-victims: for example, as less attractive, more introverted, and paid less. In addition, we found ambiguous harassment leveled against a prototypical (vs. non-prototypical) victim was more likely to be classified as harassment, and perceived to cause the victim more psychological pain. As such, both lay-people and professionals wanted to punish harassers of victims who "fit the prototype" more. Notably, providing people with instructions to ignore a victim's personal description and instead assess the harassment behavior did not reduce the prototype effect.

Faster responders are perceived as more extraverted

Personality inferences are fundamental to human social interactions and have far-reaching effects on various social decisions. Fourteen experiments (13 preregistered; total N = 5,160; using audio, video, and text stimuli) involving British, U.S. American, Singaporean, and Australian participants show that people responding to a question immediately (vs. after a slight pause) are seen as more extraverted. This is because response delays are believed to signal nervousness and passivity, and hence introversion. This effect was consistently observed across a range of scenarios from everyday small talk to mock job interviews and for various types of response formats, including face-to-face, phone, and online conversations. We found that the effect was not influenced by apparent relationship closeness between the responder and questioner but that it was influenced by whether observers believed that the responder was mentally occupied during the interaction. Importantly, our results also suggest that the effect of response timing on extraversion perceptions influences hiring decisions-job applicants are more likely to be hired by mock employers for job types congruent with their level of extraversion as exuded from their response timing. Finally, we found that observers typically expect that introverted individuals would pause for longer before responding to questions, as compared to extraverted individuals. Theoretical implications for the understanding of personality impression formation and response timing and practical implications for hiring and other interpersonal situations are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).