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.
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.
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:
η
p
2
= .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:
η
p
2
= .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/.
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.
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 (
= 3,892), we conducted a multi-method ...investigation into people's
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.
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.
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.
People routinely evaluate how useful objects are to themselves and to others. Seventeen experiments (with U.S. American and French participants, total N = 8016) show that people believe others find ...the same objects more useful than they themselves do. Using both mediation analysis and causal chain designs, the authors show that overestimating usefulness to others is caused by a self-serving bias in perceived materialism and by the belief that others need the same object more. The effect is reduced if participants own the object in question, for target others who are well-known, and for objects considered less indicative of materialistic values. The effect also drives overestimation of others' willingness-to-pay. The authors find evidence against alternative explanations involving perceived sophistication or specifically thinking of object users. The authors discuss theoretical implications for self-other biases and materialism, as well as practical implications for proxy decision-making, gift-giving, and negotiation.
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.
We report a consistent effect in the evaluation of actions: later actions – specifically, actions that are closer to a final, positive outcome - are considered as contributing more to that outcome, ...compared to earlier actions. Twelve experiments (total n = 5658, six pre-registered, with U.S. American and British participants, manipulating action timing both within-subjects and between-subjects) provide evidence in support of a late-action effect. This effect extends to different domains, from sports to business to academics. Further, this effect is disproportionately larger when actions are closer to the end of an event. We identify two mediators. The first is a heightened tendency to imagine negative alternative scenarios when the action is closer to an outcome, that is, higher counterfactual potency for later actions. The second is perceived outcome reversibility – lower for later actions, when there is less time for the provisional outcome to change. The effect is mitigated if people are instructed to imagine counterfactual outcomes (consistent with the notion of a counterfactual potency mediation), and if the action does not produce a provisional outcome change. We discuss theoretical implications for the psychological understanding of timing, causality attributions, and counterfactual thinking, as well as future research directions for goal-gradient (the tendency to give more weight to the last steps towards goal completion).