Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 343-355

Nicholas O., Rule , James V., Garrett , Nalini, Ambady

The preferential allocation of attention and memory to the ingroup (the ingroup memory advantage) is one of the most replicated effects in the psychological literature. But little is known about what factors may influence such effects. Here the authors investigated a potential influence: category salience as determined by the perceiver's geographic environment. They did so by studying the ingroup memory advantage in perceptually ambiguous groups for whom perceptual cues do not make group membership immediately salient. Individuals in an environment in which a particular group membership was salient (Mormon and non-Mormon men and women living in Salt Lake City, Utah)...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 356-374

Juliane, Degner , Dirk, Wentura

Four cross-sectional studies are presented that investigated the automatic activation of prejudice in children and adolescents (aged 9 years to 15 years). Therefore, 4 different versions of the affective priming task were used, with pictures of ingroup and outgroup members being presented as prejudice-related prime stimuli. In all 4 studies, a pattern occurred that suggests a linear developmental increase of automatic prejudice with significant effects of outgroup negativity appearing only around the ages of 12 to 13 years. Results of younger children, on the contrary, did not indicate any effect of automatic prejudice activation. In contrast, prejudice effects in an...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 375-391

Peter, Hegarty , Anthony F., Lemieux , Grant, McQueen

Graphs seem to connote facts more than words or tables do. Consequently, they seem unlikely places to spot implicit sexism at work. Yet, in 6 studies (N = 741), women and men constructed (Study 1) and recalled (Study 2) gender difference graphs with men's data first, and graphed powerful groups (Study 3) and individuals (Study 4) ahead of weaker ones. Participants who interpreted graph order as evidence of author “bias” inferred that the author graphed his or her own gender group first (Study 5). Women's, but not men's, preferences to graph men first were mitigated when participants graphed a difference...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 392-404

Vladas, Griskevicius , Joshua M., Tybur , Bram, Van den Bergh

Why do people purchase proenvironmental “green” products? We argue that buying such products can be construed as altruistic, since green products often cost more and are of lower quality than their conventional counterparts, but green goods benefit the environment for everyone. Because biologists have observed that altruism might function as a “costly signal” associated with status, we examined in 3 experiments how status motives influenced desire for green products. Activating status motives led people to choose green products over more luxurious nongreen products. Supporting the notion that altruism signals one's willingness and ability to incur costs for others' benefit, status...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 405-419

Máire B., Ford , Nancy L., Collins

In this study, the authors investigated self-esteem as a moderator of psychological and physiological responses to interpersonal rejection and tested an integrative model detailing the mechanisms by which self-esteem may influence cognitive, affective, and physiological responses. Seventy-eight participants experienced an ambiguous interpersonal rejection (or no rejection) from an opposite sex partner in the context of an online dating interaction. Salivary cortisol was assessed at 5 times, and self-reported cognitive and affective responses were assessed. Compared with those with high self-esteem, individuals with low self-esteem responded to rejection by appraising themselves more negatively, making more self-blaming attributions, exhibiting greater cortisol reactivity,...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 420-433

Robert B., Lount Jr.

Although the trust development literature has been characterized overwhelmingly by rationality-based models, the current research attempts to explain how affect can influence this process. To better understand how and why affect would influence trust development, 5 experiments were conducted to examine the effects of positive mood on people's tendencies to trust and distrust others. Consistent with theory, which argues that positive mood promotes schema reliance, the relationship between positive mood and trust was influenced by the presence of cues that indicated whether the other party was trustworthy or untrustworthy. Across 5 studies, trusting behaviors (Experiments 1–3) and perceptions of trustworthiness...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 434-449

Daniel, Sullivan , Mark J., Landau , Zachary K., Rothschild

Perceiving oneself as having powerful enemies, although superficially disagreeable, may serve an important psychological function. On the basis of E. Becker's (1969) existential theorizing, the authors argue that people attribute exaggerated influence to enemies as a means of compensating for perceptions of reduced control over their environment. In Study 1, individuals dispositionally low in perceived control responded to a reminder of external hazards by attributing more influence to a personal enemy. In Study 2, a situational threat to control over external hazard strengthened participants' belief in the conspiratorial power of a political enemy. Examining moderators and outcomes of this process,...

Publication year: 2010
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 450-468

Mario, Mikulincer , Phillip R., Shaver , Naama, Bar-On , Tsachi, Ein-Dor

Attachment theorists have emphasized that attachment-anxious individuals are ambivalent in their relational tendencies, wishing to be close to their relationship partners but also fearing rejection. Here we report 6 studies examining the contribution of attachment anxiety and experimentally induced relational contexts (both positive and negative) to explicit and implicit manifestations of (a) attitudinal ambivalence toward a romantic partner and (b) motivational ambivalence with respect to the goals of relational closeness and distance. Attachment-anxious individuals exhibited strong attitudinal ambivalence toward a romantic partner, assessed by both explicit and implicit measures. They also exhibited strong motivational ambivalence regarding closeness (both explicit and...