Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 237-252

Ana, Guinote

Six studies examined how power affects responses to situational affordances. Participants were assigned to a powerful or a powerless condition and were exposed to various situations that afford different classes of behavior. Study 1 examined behavior intentions for weekdays and weekends. Studies 2 and 3 focused on responses to imaginary social and work situations. Study 4 examined planned behavior for winter and summer days. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 examined behavior and attention in the presence of situation-relevant and irrelevant information. Consistently across these studies, powerful individuals acted more in situation-consistent ways, and less in situation-inconsistent ways, compared with powerless...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 253-273

Paul D., Windschitl , Jason P., Rose , Michael T., Stalkfleet , Andrew R., Smith

People are often egocentric when judging their likelihood of success in competitions, leading to overoptimism about winning when circumstances are generally easy and to overpessimism when the circumstances are difficult. Yet, egocentrism might be grounded in a rational tendency to favor highly reliable information (about the self) more so than less reliable information (about others). A general theory of probability called extended support theory was used to conceptualize and assess the role of egocentrism and its consequences for the accuracy of people's optimism in 3 competitions (Studies 1–3, respectively). Also, instructions were manipulated to test whether people who were urged...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 274-292

Sean M., McCrea

Researchers interested in counterfactual thinking have often found that upward counterfactual thoughts lead to increased motivation to improve in the future, although at the cost of increased negative affect. The present studies suggest that because upward counterfactual thoughts indicate reasons for a poor performance, they can also serve as excuses. In this case, upward counterfactual thoughts should result in more positive self-esteem and reduced future motivation. Five studies demonstrated these effects in the context of self-handicapping. First, upward counterfactual thinking was increased in the presence of a self-handicap. Second, upward counterfactual thoughts indicating the presence of a self-handicap protected self-esteem...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 293-307

Jane L., Risen , Thomas, Gilovich

The present research explored the belief that it is bad luck to “tempt fate.” Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that people do indeed have the intuition that actions that tempt fate increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. Studies 3–6 examined our claim that the intuition is due, in large part, to the combination of the automatic tendencies to attend to negative prospects and to use accessibility as a cue when judging likelihood. Study 3 demonstrated that negative outcomes are more accessible following actions that tempt fate than following actions that do not tempt fate. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 308-318

Paul G., Davies , Claude M., Steele , Hazel Rose, Markus

Three experiments investigated how perceived foreign threats to the United States can influence Americans' endorsement of assimilation and multiculturalism as models for foreign and domestic intergroup relations. The initial study, conducted during the 6-month anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (9/11), discovered that a diverse group of Americans preferred assimilation as a foreign policy and multiculturalism as a domestic policy. After reading that foreigners were supporting the dominant global status of the United States, however, Americans in Experiment 2 no longer expressed this preference for assimilation as a model for foreign intergroup relations. Experiment 3 discovered that Americans...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 319-337

Gráinne M., Fitzsimons , James Y., Shah

Findings from 6 experiments support the hypothesis that relationship evaluations and behavioral tendencies are goal dependent, reflecting the instrumentality of significant others for the self's progress toward currently active goals. Experiments 1 and 3 found that active goals can automatically bring to mind significant others who are instrumental for the activated goal, heightening their accessibility relative to noninstrumental others. Experiments 2–5 found that active goals cause individuals to evaluate instrumental others more positively, draw closer to them, and approach them more readily, compared with noninstrumental others. Experiment 6 found that people who engage in goal-dependent interpersonal evaluations are more successful,...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 338-351

Rodolfo, Mendoza-Denton , Janina, Pietrzak , Geraldine, Downey

We examined the interactive effects of ethnic identification (EI) and race-based rejection sensitivity (RS–race) on institutional outcomes among African American college students. We distinguished between effects on institutional identification on the one hand and academic goal pursuit (e.g., staying in school, grade point average [GPA]) on the other. Supporting the utility of this distinction, we found that EI and RS–race interacted to predict these outcomes differently. Higher EI in combination with higher RS–race predicted reduced identification with the institution (Studies 1, 2, and 3a). This combination, however, did not lead to decreases in GPA over time. Moreover, EI was positively...

Publication year: 2008
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 95, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 352-368

Stephanie L., Anderson , Glenn, Adams , Victoria C., Plaut

Previous research has suggested that physically attractive people experience more positive life outcomes than do unattractive people. However, the importance of physical attractiveness in everyday life may vary depending on the extent to which different cultural worlds afford or require individual choice in the construction and maintenance of personal relationships. The authors hypothesized that attractiveness matters more for life outcomes in settings that promote voluntaristic-independent constructions of relationship as the product of personal choice than it does in settings that promote embedded-interdependent constructions of relationship as an environmental affordance. Study 1 examined self-reported outcomes of attractive and unattractive persons. Study...