Psychology Research Digest
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Vol 130, Iss 6
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology publishes original papers in all areas of personality and social psychology. It emphasizes empirical reports but may include specialized theoretical, methodological, and review papers.
The environment impressions model.
Across six studies (N = 7,290), the present research identifies and validates four factors underlying the impressions people form of the environments they live in and navigate every day: density, desirability, light, and temperature. U.S. participants qualitatively described environments (Study 1), and both U.S. and U.K. participants rated environments on those characteristics (Studies 2–4). Exploratory factor analyses identified the factors underlying environment impressions. Subsequent validation revealed that these factors are associated with different behavioral intentions (Study 5) and that systematically manipulating the appearance of environments caused impressions on the relevant factor to change (Study 6). Overall, the present work proposes the environment impressions model, which serves as the foundation for our expanding understanding of how impressions of the environment might influence an individual’s attitudes and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Transcending embarrassment: On the reputational benefits of laughing at yourself.
How do people judge those who commit faux pas? Across six preregistered studies (N = 3,204), we find that the answer depends on how a faux pas is presented to others and the extent to which it harms others. For faux pas that cause minimal or no harm to others, those who display amusement (by laughing at their error) are seen as warmer, more competent, and more authentic (though not significantly more or less moral) than those who display embarrassment. While both amusement and embarrassment displays serve an appeasement function (which reflects positively on actors), observers view those displaying embarrassment as being excessively self-conscious (which limits positive character judgments). In contrast, amusement displays are deemed more emotionally calibrated, since they signal that an actor recognizes the faux pas is benign and therefore not serious enough to warrant negative self-conscious emotions. In other words, observers do not believe actors ought to feel particularly embarrassed upon committing common benign faux pas. However, when a faux pas harms others, those who display amusement are seen as experiencing a deficient level of self-consciousness, since, in this case, amusement indicates a disregard for the welfare of others. As a result, as harm to others increases, the benefits of displaying amusement become either attenuated or reversed relative to displaying embarrassment. Together, these findings provide a simple framework for understanding when amusement and embarrassment displays reflect well on individuals who commit faux pas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Face the difference: Metacontrast as an affordance to spontaneous social categorization.
Humans readily categorize their social environment based on visible features regarded as diagnostic for group membership (e.g., skin color, hair color, body morphology) along lines of various social dimensions, including gender, race, age, to name just a few. Despite overwhelming evidence for the notion that these dimensions can be used to bring categorical order into the world, psychologists know surprisingly little about what determines which of these lenses is active in a given moment. The present research examines whether ecological metacontrast provides an affordance to social categorization and selective category use. Across seven studies (N = 1,234), we manipulated metacontrast ratios by varying the dispersion of race- and gender-related facial features to examine their effects on spontaneous social categorization. Categorization was assessed using the “Who Said What?” paradigm (Taylor et al., 1978), with categorization parameters estimated via multinomial processing tree models (Klauer & Wegener, 1998) and a Speeded Categorization task (Thomas et al., 2014). Participants consistently categorized faces by race (Studies 1a, 2a) and gender (Studies 1b, 2b), regardless of metacontrast ratio. However, when race and gender were crossed (Studies 3–5), significant interaction effects emerged: categorization along the low metacontrast dimension decreased, while it increased along the high metacontrast dimension. These findings provide initial evidence that metacontrast modulates the relative accessibility of social categorizations. The distribution of category-related features within a social information ecology thus provides affordance to some categorizations more readily than others. Study-specific patterns related to stimuli and task constraints are discussed to inform future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>On the relationship between indirect measures of Black versus White racial attitudes and discriminatory outcomes: An adversarial collaboration using a sample of White Americans.
The idea that racial prejudice contributes to discrimination not only deliberately but also in a more automatic fashion has been one of the most prominent topics in social psychological research in the past 30 years. Much of the evidence for theories of automatic prejudice stems from the use of indirect measures of implicit attitudes, yet meta-analyses give differing estimates regarding the predictive validity of such measures. The present adversarial collaboration provides a test of the relationships between prominent measures of implicit racial attitudes and discriminatory behavior using a set of established lab-based paradigms among a sample of White Americans (N = 2,114). Using structural equation models that can account for measurement error, frequentist and Bayesian multiverse analyses confirmed that White Americans’ performance on indirect measures correlate modestly with these behavioral outcomes, and explain unique variance (∼2.5%) beyond direct, self-report measures of racial attitudes. At the same time, self-report measures exhibited greater predictive and incremental validity than indirect measures (explaining ∼45% of the variance) despite behavioral measures of discrimination displaying weak internal reliability. Results provided some support for greater predictive and incremental validity for indirect measures among participants scoring relatively low on measures of executive function and motivation to control prejudice. These results lend themselves to both relatively optimistic and pessimistic interpretations concerning scientific and practical significance. All collaborators agree that the best path forward is collaborative and focused on the generalizability of implicit racial attitudes to high-accountability organizational settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The uniquely powerful impact of explicit, blatant dehumanization on support for intergroup violence.
To effectively address support for intergroup violence, we must understand the psychology promoting it. Dehumanization—the explicit and blatant denial of an outgroup’s humanity—is widely considered one such promoter, which has informed extensive research and practice on support for intergroup violence. Nonetheless, dehumanization is often intertwined with intense dislike, raising concerns that dehumanization’s explanatory power is much more restricted than widely assumed. In the extreme, “dehumanization” is merely another way to express dislike. If so, then theories of dehumanization distort our understanding of the psychology promoting support for intergroup violence. Here, we test dehumanization’s reality and explanatory power through three studies that span diverse methods and samples. First, we meta-analyze existing studies on dehumanization and dislike to establish their independent effects on support for violence (k = 120; N = 128,022). We then test the generalizability of these effects across four violent conflicts in the United States, Russia and Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinian diaspora, and India (NTotal = 3,773). In these studies, we also test whether individuals’ dehumanizing responses are merely metaphor or whether they are intended literally. Finally, we experimentally isolate dehumanization’s role in support for violence in another U.S. sample (N = 753). Our results converge to demonstrate that dehumanization (a) is distinct from dislike and often literal, (b) has a unique—and particularly strong—relationship with support for violence, and (c) can promote such support. This clarifies our understanding of the psychology promoting support for intergroup violence and can inform efforts to address it. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Conversations about boring topics are more interesting than we think.
Conversations enhance social connection and well-being, but the kinds of conversations that come to mind when thinking of these benefits are ones about interesting topics. Everyday life, however, does not spare people from conversations about boring topics. We examine the extent to which people’s expectations of conversations about boring topics are calibrated with their actual experiences. Nine preregistered experiments (five in the main text, four in the Supplemental Material; total N = 1,800) reveal that participants consistently underestimated how enjoyable and interesting conversations about boring topics were. Expectations were relatively more calibrated for conversations about interesting topics. This pattern held across virtual and in-person settings, conversations with friends and strangers, and self-generated and experimenter-assigned topics. This occurs partly due to the relative ease of assessing the static elements of conversations and the difficulty of assessing their dynamic elements. The topic is a static element that is easy to assess prior to a conversation, and so people overweight it in their forecasts. The level of engagement conversations command—the need to respond, listen, and pay attention to another person—makes them enjoyable, but is harder to assess because it dynamically emerges only once a conversation begins. Expectations about enjoyment guide decisions to enter conversations, suggesting that miscalibration between predicted and actual enjoyment can lead people to avoid conversations they would, in fact, enjoy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Are the metatraits fact or artifact? Ruling out alternative explanations for the higher-order factors of the Big Five.
The Big Five were originally conceived as orthogonal dimensions and the top of the personality trait hierarchy, but they have been found to be regularly correlated, and two higher-order factors or metatraits have been identified above them, often labeled Stability (conscientiousness, agreeableness, and low neuroticism) and Plasticity (extraversion and openness/intellect). Skeptics have argued that the metatraits are likely to be method artifacts rather than substantive trait dimensions. In meta-analytic data and in American and Croatian samples, using both lexical data and purpose-built measures of the Big Five, we investigated whether correlations among the Big Five remain after controlling for three sources of artifactual correlation among variables: (a) acquiescence bias, which we controlled through ipsatization; (b) evaluative consistency bias (social desirability) and other rater biases, which we controlled through the use of multiple raters; and (c) blended variables, which we controlled through the use of exploratory factor models that allow cross-loadings, thereby allowing blended variance in a given item or scale to be accounted for in the factor loadings rather than in the correlations among factors. Even after controlling for all sources of artifact simultaneously, the Big Five remained correlated at the latent level, and the correlations revealed the standard metatraits. The metatraits were not consistently correlated, providing some evidence against a general factor of personality. Our results suggest that the Big Five are genuinely correlated and that Stability and Plasticity are real trait tendencies. Hence, research aimed at understanding correlates, causes, and consequences of the metatraits remains important for psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>How group personality composition affects person and group outcomes: An integrative analysis using the group actor–partner interdependence model.
A substantial part of people’s social lives unfolds within groups. However, there is a notable research gap concerning if and how the personality characteristics that people bring to group interactions combine to predict person and group outcomes. In this study, we used the group actor–partner interdependence model (Kenny & Garcia, 2012) as a framework to integrate prior approaches and understand how the composition of two socially relevant personality traits—agency and communion—affects people and groups. We analyzed data from 432 participants (Mage = 26.61, 51% female) who formed 108 four-person groups and engaged in four different group tasks. Our findings yield three key insights: (a) At the person level, people’s own trait levels were the main drivers of their behaviors, experiences, and performance. (b) At the group level, personality composition affected different outcomes than at the person level, with agency playing an overall more important role for group behaviors and experiences. (c) Notable composition effects at both levels emerged for conflict behavior: People who were similar to their group in terms of agency were more engaged in conflicts, and groups whose members had similar agency levels were more likely to experience conflicts as a whole. We contextualize our findings within a theoretical framework to better understand when and how personality composition in social interactions is important, and we review methodologies to capture its multifaceted components. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Security priming in everyday life: How do symbols of close others support attachment in adulthood?
Security priming refers to the idea that exposure to simple, attachment-relevant cues—such as photographs of loved ones—can enhance psychological security and related outcomes. While security priming effects have been robustly demonstrated in laboratory settings, there is growing interest in whether such techniques can be effectively applied in everyday contexts, with an eye toward scalable interventions. In the present research, we examined whether using a romantic partner’s photo as a phone lock screen image could influence attachment security. In Study 1 (N = 4,741), we found that people who had images of their romantic partners on their lock screens reported greater attachment security. In Study 2 (N = 306), participants in romantic relationships were randomly assigned to add photos of their partners to their lock screens. We found that, although there was evidence of selection effects (i.e., secure people having those images on their screens already), there were no security priming effects. In Study 3 (N = 249), participants were randomly assigned to remove images of their partners from their screens. In contrast to Study 2, this removal led to measurable declines in attachment security over time. These findings suggest that while lock screen images may reflect existing levels of security, their removal—rather than their addition—can have detectable psychological effects. We discuss the implications for designing low-cost, scalable interventions aimed at enhancing attachment security and for understanding the role of “invisible infrastructure” in shaping psychological functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>