Psychology Research Digest
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Vol 130, Iss 5
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.
Downward spiral: Police-threat associations and perceptions of aggression during arrests are mutually reinforcing.
In the United States, encounters among police officers and civilians are laden with the potential for dangerous outcomes. At the same time, the ubiquity of digital and social media has made observing violent police–civilian encounters easier than ever. Perhaps consequently, recent evidence suggests that Americans automatically associate the police with and behaviorally respond to officers as a source of physical threat. However, little is known about the interplay between observations of violent police encounters and automatic police-threat associations. Four studies (N = 857) reveal a mutually reinforcing dynamic in which (a) automatic police-threat associations shape perceptions of aggression during arrests, (b) perceptions of aggression during arrests influence automatic police-threat associations, and (c) changes in automatic police-threat associations influence downstream perceptions of aggression. That is, people perceive aggression during arrest encounters through the lens of their existing police-threat associations, and these perceptions in turn reinforce those associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Investigating the conditional effects of action versus inaction decisions on regret.
This research posits that when people, who make a proactive choice for a justified reason, encounter an interim negative outcome (e.g., a temporary loss from a stock investment that could yield a profit in the future), they engage in the self-justification mechanism to view their decision more favorably, initiate self-serving bias to minimize self-blame for the outcome, and trigger confirmatory bias to interpret the outcome favorably. Therefore, individuals who are responsible for switching a course (action decision), or choosing not to switch a course (inaction decision), for a justified reason minimize self-blame and reduce counterfactual thinking, ultimately leading to lower regret for negative interim outcomes than individuals with no-decision responsibility. Furthermore, this research suggests that when a negative outcome is terminal (e.g., end-of-the-semester final grade in a course) or the foregone option is superior, this mitigating effect on regret is minimized and moderated. Nine studies, including two replication studies reported in the Supplemental Material, document the conditional effects and show that decision justification reduces regret; however, people experience more regret from counterfactual thinking about imaginary alternatives than from self-blame. The studies also suggest that action decisions are not more abnormal than inaction decisions, because they elicit the same level of decision responsibility and control to affect downstream constructs, including justification, counterfactual thinking, self-blame, and regret, equivalently. Overall, this research clarifies various constructs associated with responsibility, refines our understanding of the relationship between decision responsibility and regret, and deepens insights into the psychology of regret. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>What we owe to ourselves: Investigating people’s sense of obligations to the self.
Core to our moral sense is that we have obligations toward others, such that we are expected to curb self-interests in light of obligations to other individuals and society at large. But do we also have obligations to ourselves? Motivated by this underexplored question in moral psychology, we conducted six studies (N = 1,860) to systematically investigate how people view obligations to the self. Study 1 found that most participants endorsed the idea of obligations to the self, providing examples such as preserving physical and mental health. Study 2 found that, like obligations to others, people distinguished violations of self-obligations from personal preferences or social conventions, and judged them as wrong regardless of external authority or majority behavior. Study 3 demonstrated this tendency even in the case of a socially isolated agent, suggesting self-obligations are not reducible to obligations to others. Study 4 showed that people judged that both self- and other-related obligations justified a moral transgression, more so than personal preferences, goals, or social conventions. Studies 5 and 6 revealed that perceived harmfulness to the self is a key mechanism in shaping whether people judge an act to be owed to the self. Together, these findings highlight obligations to the self as an important category in our moral framework, offering a deeper understanding of the role of self-interest in morality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Clarifying the diploma divide: The growing importance of higher education for political identity.
Higher education is widely believed to have a liberalizing effect on students, yet empirical findings are mixed. In two studies (total N = 483,885), we investigated the “diploma divide” in the United States. In the past half-century, we found that adults with more education have consistently held more left-leaning views on social but not economic issues. Before the 2010s, however, there were no meaningful, educational differences in the degree to which people identified as liberal versus conservative. In the years since, college graduates have increasingly identified as liberal, while those with some or no college education remained steady. Moreover, in the mid-1990s, students did not come to identify as more left-leaning during their time in higher education. However, they have increasingly done so in the years since. Such within-person changes differ across fields of study, demographics, and other individual characteristics, but are minimally related to the kinds of institutions that students attend. Overall, these findings reveal a striking change in the relationship between higher education and political identity. They also undermine sweeping claims about liberalizing effects of education, calling instead for fine-grained theories about how, when, and for whom attending higher education affects which aspects of ideology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Political plausible deniability: Political difference can divert attributions of socially unacceptable bias.
While many social biases are considered taboo, bias against political outgroups is increasingly explicit, ubiquitous, and tolerated. We contend that expressing political bias can reduce third-party perceptions of socially unacceptable biases—a phenomenon we call political plausible deniability. By diverting attributions away from biases based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, individuals can express bias yet ostensibly align with social norms. Pretests indicate people intuitively understand the concept of a socially acceptable bias, with political bias rated most acceptable among 15 biases. Across 13 preregistered survey experiments, we find that third parties are less likely to perceive racism, sexism, and (sometimes) heterosexism when an actor expresses an antiliberal statement toward a Black, female, or gay target. These effects emerge across open-ended (Studies 1a–c) and Likert-type (Studies 2a–c, 3a–c, 4a–c) responses, which we replicate in a conjoint experiment (Study 5). Participants’ political leanings did not moderate effects. Finally, in 12 exploratory studies, we further illuminate political plausible deniability, for example, by examining anticonservative biases, comparing political with other (nonpolitical) biases, and exploring the role of intersecting target identities. Our research exposes an inconspicuous way that political bias may shape social perception, with implications for understanding how prejudice operates in everyday life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Confront in public, validate in private: Effective male allyship responses to sexist remarks.
Knowing how to respond to sexist comments and counteract their harmful consequences remains a challenging task for male allies. In this mixed-methods research, our preregistered qualitative study of 82 male leaders from the United States (Study 1) reveals that most intend to confront perpetrators of sexist remarks, with a preference for doing so privately rather than publicly; relatively few intend to validate the experiences of harmed targets. We contend that allies need to consider actions beyond confrontation—a response commonly recommended by scholars and in practice—as well as appropriate social contexts for these allyship behaviors to ensure the inclusion of women who are directly harmed by such remarks. We hypothesize that targets’ sense of belonging and voice intentions are optimally supported when allies not only (a) confront transgressors’ sexist remarks in public (vs. private) but also (b) validate targets’ harmed experiences in private (vs. public). Three preregistered and one complementary experimental studies (Studies 2–4; N = 1,216 U.S. women) from the perspective of women support our theory. Our findings suggest that confrontation should be enacted in public because it directly reinforces gender civility norms, whereas validation is better provided in private to demonstrate concern for dignity. In our final study (Study 5; N = 253 U.S. men), we provide critical insights into how public confrontation—targets’ preferred response—might adversely influence the attitudes and behaviors of confronted perpetrators (e.g., bias regulation). By incorporating multiparty perspectives, our research provides actionable recommendations for potential allies, especially men in leadership roles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Stable profiles of contact and prejudice: Few people report co-occurring increases in intergroup contact and decreases in prejudice over time.
The contact hypothesis proposes that positive intergroup encounters can causally improve intergroup attitudes, and its tenants have informed prejudice reduction efforts across the globe. Most support for the hypothesis is correlational, as it is assumed that correlations (partially) reflect a pattern whereby increases in positive intergroup contact cause increases in intergroup warmth. In the present article we interrogate this assumption. Latent growth class analysis can group people showing similar patterns of change over time into classes. We use this method to enumerate what percentage of people report co-occurring increases in intergroup contact and warmth over time. Using preexisting data sets, we examined starting points and trajectories of positive intergroup contact (Studies 1 and 2) and cross-group friendship (3 and 4). We drew on samples of adults from New Zealand (Study 1, N = 15,384) and Germany (Study 2, N = 2,726; Study 4, N = 1,667), and a sample of adolescents from the Netherlands (Study 3, N = 2,949). Fourteen intergroup contexts were examined. Results revealed contact varied markedly between persons; people were consistently grouped into classes characterized by high versus low levels of intergroup contact. Critically, however, few people reported substantive increases in intergroup contact. Instead, people reported relatively stable levels of intergroup contact across periods of up to 5 years. No single class emerged in which contact increased, and attitudes changed from negative to positive. One of the four studies found classes characterized by very small co-occurring increases in positive contact and intergroup warmth. We conclude with a discussion on the role of contact in our contemporary world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Individual differences in risk preference: Selection and socialization effects.
Risk preference varies considerably across individuals, but the consequences and causes of this heterogeneity remain insufficiently understood. This study examines the predictive validity of risk preference for various life events (i.e., selection effects) and the role of life events in shaping risk preference (i.e., socialization effects). Using a large representative sample from the German socioeconomic panel (N = 14,558), we employed propensity score matching to construct synthetic treatment and control groups—individuals experiencing (or not experiencing) a life event—while controlling for various confounding variables. We then evaluated the extent to which general and domain-specific measures of risk preference predict the occurrence of 12 life events related to family transitions (e.g., marriage) and professional development (e.g., self-employment), as well as how these life events shape risk preference. Our findings provide evidence for selection effects by demonstrating that risk preference significantly predicts the occurrence of various life events. Furthermore, the predictive utility of risk preference generalizes across domains, with general or composite measures demonstrating somewhat superior predictive power relative to domain-specific ones. In turn, after adjusting for selection bias, socialization effects were negligible, with most life events showing no significant association with changes in risk preference. Overall, our results suggest that while risk preference has broad predictive power across various life areas, life events have a limited influence on shaping it. These findings reinforce the predominance of selection effects and underscore the importance of carefully distinguishing between selection and socialization processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Cultural differences in the Personality Triad: The interplay of personality traits, situation characteristics, and behavioral states around the world.
Understanding the interplay of persons, situations, and behavior (the Personality Triad) is a key task of psychology. However, previous research has largely focused on Western samples. We examined the Personality Triad across cultures with N = 15,221 participants from 61 countries and one geographic region. Participants reported on one situation from their daily lives. We examined (a) situation characteristic–behavioral state, (b) trait–behavioral state, and (c) trait–situation characteristic associations, as well as (d) Trait × Situation Characteristic interactions predicting behavioral states. We focused on six traits (Big Five, Honesty-Humility), seven situation characteristics (Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Sociality), and three self-reported behavioral states (Agency, Enthusiasm, Self-Negativity). Importantly, we included 15 country-level variables (collectivism, self-construal, cultural value orientations, tightness, independent and interdependent happiness, national socioeconomic status) as moderators that might contribute to country differences in the Personality Triad. Bayesian multilevel models showed sizable and expected situation characteristic–behavioral state and trait–behavioral state associations with a high degree of generalization across countries, some cultural differences, and moderator effects contradicting theoretical expectations. For instance, we found weaker situation characteristic effects in collectivistic cultures and stronger trait effects in embedded cultures. Trait–situation characteristic associations were meaningful but smaller, and Trait × Situation Characteristic interactions were small and less often significant (although we observed some expected interactions). We found little evidence for country differences in the latter two relations. We discuss implications and future directions for cross-cultural work on the Personality Triad, including replications and extensions using intensive longitudinal designs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Linking temperament and personality traits from late childhood to adulthood by examining continuity, stability, and change.
Theories of personality development emphasize the continuity between who we are as a child and who we are as an adult. The conceptual overlap in influential trait taxonomies designed for children (Rothbart’s temperament model) and adults (the Big Five personality) has reinforced theories about developmental continuity, but key hypotheses remain untested because no studies have linked these trait models longitudinally. To bridge this divide, the present study used longitudinal data from a sample of 674 Mexican-origin youth who completed assessments of Rothbart’s temperament traits (i.e., Negative Emotionality, Surgency, Affiliation, Effortful Control) from ages 10 to 16 and assessments of Big Five personality traits from ages 14 to 26. Leveraging two waves of overlapping temperament/personality trait assessments at ages 14 and 16, we found the following: (a) continuity between childhood/adolescent temperament and age 26 personality, with the strongest associations between conceptually similar traits, and Effortful Control predicting all Big Five traits (except Extraversion), suggesting self-regulation broadly promotes maturation; (b) temperament starts predicting adult personality traits by age 12–14, consistent with theory positing the temperamental foundations of adult personality crystallize in adolescence; (c) conceptually similar temperament/personality traits reflect different expressions of the same underlying trait from age 10 to 26, established by latent growth models of joint temperament/personality factors; and (d) mean-level personality development across late childhood to adulthood showing that all joint traits maintain consistent rank-order stability and youth increase in Effortful Control/Conscientiousness, decrease in Negative Emotionality/Neuroticism and Surgency/Extraversion, and do not change in Affiliation/Agreeableness. Findings add novel support for widely accepted—yet largely untested—theories, although some unexpected results undermine prevailing assumptions about personality trait development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>