Psychology Research Digest
Social Psychological Bulletin
This is an open-access no-APC journal (free for both reader and authors), that publishes original empirical research, theoretical review papers, scientific debates, and methodological contributions in the field of basic and applied social psychology. SPB actively promotes standards of open-science, supports an integrative approach to all aspects of social psychological science and is committed to discussing timely social issues of high importance.
The gender convergence effect in older age: A meta-analytic review comparing modern attitudes toward younger, middle-aged, and older women and men
As older women drive aging population trends, it is crucial to understand how target age and gender jointly influence perceiver attitudes. Although the prevailing "double jeopardy" perspective portrays older women as the most derogated age-gender group due to facing both age and sex bias, some evidence suggests gender attitudes converge with target age (i.e., a "convergence" perspective). Investigating these competing hypotheses, we meta-analyzed 55 reports (k = 92 samples, N = 37,235) comparing...
Publication date: Tue, 18 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>Teacher-student relationships and student outcomes: A systematic second-order meta-analytic review
Teacher-student relationships (TSRs) play a vital role in establishing a positive classroom climate and promoting positive student outcomes. Several meta-analyses have suggested significant correlations between positive TSRs and, for example, academic achievement, motivation, executive functions, and well-being, as well as between negative TSRs that result in behavior problems or bullying. These meta-analyses have differed substantially in TSR-outcome relationships, moderators, and...
Publication date: Mon, 10 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>Reasons to believe: A systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs
Belief in conspiracy theories has been linked to harmful consequences for individuals and societies. In an effort to understand and mitigate these effects, researchers have sought to explain the psychological appeal of conspiracy theories. This article presents a wide-ranging systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature on conspiracy beliefs. We analyzed 971 effect sizes from 279 independent studies (N(participants) = 137,406) to examine the relationships between psychological motives...
Publication date: Thu, 06 Feb 2025 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>Effects of acute exercise on cognitive function: A meta-review of 30 systematic reviews with meta-analyses
This meta-review provides the first meta-analytic evidence from published meta-analyses examining the effectiveness of acute exercise interventions on cognitive function. A multilevel meta-analysis with a random-effects model and tests of moderators were performed in R. Thirty systematic reviews with meta-analyses (383 unique studies with 18,347 participants) were identified. Acute exercise significantly improved cognitive function with a small-to-medium effect (N of standardized mean difference...
Publication date: Thu, 30 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>Parents favor daughters: A meta-analysis of gender and other predictors of parental differential treatment
Decades of research highlight that differential treatment can have negative developmental consequences, particularly for less favored siblings. Despite this robust body of research, less is known about which children in the family tend to be favored or less favored by parents. The present study examined favored treatment as predicted by birth order, gender, temperament, and personality. We also examined whether links were moderated by multiple factors (i.e., parent gender, age, reporter, domain...
Publication date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>Cultural diversity climate in school: A meta-analytic review of its relationships with intergroup, academic, and socioemotional outcomes
This first-of-its-kind meta-analysis (N = 79 studies; 56,552 students; k = 640 effects) provides a comprehensive assessment of five cultural diversity climate approaches that capture different ways of addressing cultural diversity in K-12 schools. We examined how intergroup contact theory's optimal contact conditions, multiculturalism climate, colorblind climate, critical consciousness climate, and polyculturalism climate were associated with children's and adolescents' intergroup outcomes...
Publication date: Mon, 09 Dec 2024 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>The development of children's gender stereotypes about STEM and verbal abilities: A preregistered meta-analytic review of 98 studies
This meta-analysis studied the development of ability stereotypes that could limit girls' and women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, as well as contribute to boys' underachievement in reading and writing. We integrated findings from 98 studies measuring children's gender stereotypes about STEM and verbal abilities. The data comprised 145,204 children (ages 4-17) from 33 nations across more than 40 years (1977-2020). Preregistered analyses showed...
Publication date: Mon, 09 Dec 2024 06:00:00 -0500 Access the article >>Supporting the status quo is weakly associated with subjective well-being: A comparison of the palliative function of ideology across social status groups using a meta-analytic approach
Research has suggested that the endorsement of ideologies supporting the status quo leads to higher subjective psychological well-being-an idea labeled as the palliative function of ideology within system justification theory. Furthermore, this approach has suggested that this association should be moderated by social status. Specifically, the association between the endorsement of ideologies supporting the status quo and well-being should be positive among high-status groups and negative among...
Publication date: Thu, 31 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>Defining social reward: A systematic review of human and animal studies
Social rewards are strong drivers of behavior and fundamental to well-being, yet there is a lack of consensus regarding what actually defines a reward as "social." Because a systematic overview of existing social reward operationalizations is currently absent, a review of the literature seems necessary to advance toward a unified framework and to better guide research and theory. To bridge this gap, we preregistered and conducted the first comprehensive systematic review of human and animal...
Publication date: Mon, 21 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>Categories of training to improve empathy: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Due to the vital role of empathy in promoting prosocial behaviors and nurturing social bonds, there is a growing interest in cultivating empathy. Yet, the effectiveness of existing training methods on empathy, especially on different dimensions of empathy (i.e., affective, cognitive, motivational, and behavioral empathy), varies tremendously, and the underlying causes for this heterogeneity remain insufficiently explored. To address this issue, we categorized various training methods into three...
Publication date: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>Fadeout and persistence of intervention impacts on social-emotional and cognitive skills in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review of randomized controlled trials
Researchers and policymakers aspire for educational interventions to change children's long-run developmental trajectories. However, intervention impacts on cognitive and achievement measures commonly fade over time. Less is known, although much is theorized, about social-emotional skill persistence. The current meta-analysis investigated whether intervention impacts on social-emotional skills demonstrated greater persistence than impacts on cognitive skills. We drew studies from eight...
Publication date: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>Early childhood executive function predicts concurrent and later social and behavioral outcomes: A review and meta-analysis
Executive function (EF), the set of mental processes and skills involved in goal-oriented planning, organizing, and controlling behavior, is believed to support child development across many domains of life. However, although ample evidence suggests a relation between childhood EF and academic skills, it is less clear what its role is in domains beyond academics. We report a meta-analysis of relations between early childhood EF (assessed at 36-60 months of age) and social, health, and behavioral...
Publication date: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>Age-related changes in emotion recognition across childhood: A meta-analytic review
Children's ability to accurately recognize the external emotional signals produced by those around them represents a milestone in their socioemotional development and is associated with a number of important psychosocial outcomes. A plethora of individual studies have examined when, and in which order, children acquire emotion knowledge over the course of their development. Yet, very few attempts have been made to summarize this body of work quantitatively. To address this, the present...
Publication date: Thu, 19 Sep 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>Gender differences in sex drive: Reply to Conley and Yang (2024)
Our meta-analysis on gender differences in sex drive found a stronger sex drive in men compared to women (Frankenbach et al., 2022). Conley and Yang (2024) criticized how we interpreted the findings and provided suggestions regarding the origins of these gender differences, an undertaking that we had refrained from doing in our original work. We concur with several important points made by Conley and Yang (2024): (a) women's sexual experiences are generally more negative than men's, which could...
Publication date: Thu, 22 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>"All we have to fear is fear itself": Paradigms for reducing fear by preventing awareness of it
Research on unconscious fear responses has recently been translated into experimental paradigms for reducing fear that bypass conscious awareness of the phobic stimulus and thus do not induce distress. These paradigms stand in contrast to exposure therapies for anxiety disorders, which require direct confrontation of feared situations and thus are distressing. We systematically review these unconscious exposure paradigms. A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses-based...
Publication date: Thu, 01 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Access the article >>The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
- Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961)
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